their hands. They’d started so young. Some had a taste for it, a liking. Others just didn’t know how to stop. Some, like the members of Torpedo Ink, had no idea how to live in society. Absinthe figured those working for the Russian hiring out as assassins for the Ghosts and possibly others had a liking for killing.
“Keep going, Absinthe,” Steele encouraged. “Sadly, I think you’re making sense.”
Czar nodded, steepling his fingers together, those penetrating eyes fixed on his face.
Absinthe kept his expression a mask. “What better way to penetrate our club? Send one or two to join the club patching over, and once accepted into the club—which they would be—hell, they’re probably well-known to the others. They were in the school together. All they have to do is get information on us and our loved ones. They’re assassins and they’re coming after us. They’re the ones who ride as the Ghosts when they want to convince another club they’re legit.”
He’d put it on the line. He’d been working it out for a while, the pieces of the puzzle moving around in his head, until he had them all locked into place. He could see the others catching up fast. Savage was already there, agreeing with him. Ice and Storm nodding. Maestro and Keys right there. Lana and Alena reluctantly agreeing, but not wanting to think that someone might infiltrate through a possible club. The rest of the members were just as fast once he presented the idea.
Something had nagged at the back of Absinthe’s mind ever since they had first rescued Plank’s wife, and it had finally come together as Czar was speaking. The president of the Diamondback’s Sea Haven chapter had been grateful, but wary—and frankly, he had reason to be. Their club didn’t add up. They seemed benign enough on the surface, but they had been able to do what the Diamondbacks hadn’t. More than once they had caught the president in a tight squeeze. When Plank had first approached them in their bar, to tell them about his wife being kidnapped, he thought he had the upper hand, but they had him in a crossfire situation. Again, when they brought her back, they had too many weapons in their vehicles. He would have gone down in a blaze of gunfire no matter the protection he thought he had.
“I’m going to play devil’s advocate here,” Czar said. “The Russian had no way of knowing we make up Torpedo Ink. He wasn’t aware of us, at all. Even when I assassinated Blythe’s stepfather and he was part of that, all those years ago, he had no inkling that I would ever cross paths with him again. In order for him to put someone into a chapter asking to be patched into Torpedo Ink specifically, the Russian would have had to know about us. He would have had to know we were from Sorbacov’s school and that we were a threat to him.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Absinthe agreed. “He had no way of knowing that. This group of assassins for hire, what do they call themselves, Code?”
“According to their offices in San Francisco—and they do have offices in a very upscale office building right in downtown San Francisco—they are called Sword Security. Nice little graphic. They don’t solicit business, nor do they take it from just anyone. You have to be recommended to them, and they don’t come cheap.”
“So, we have Sword Security set up in San Francisco and who knows where else. I’m guessing more than one place, am I correct?” Absinthe asked.
Code nodded. “Three cities, and they travel as well. I’m looking into them to try to find out how many they have on their payroll.”
“The Russian runs them. They’re his assassins. He took the reins when Sorbacov and his son died. These men wanted someone to tell them what to do and they needed the work and the money. They banded together, just the way the others did from Gavriil’s school, the ones that we patched over from Trinity County into Torpedo Ink,” Absinthe continued. “Sorbacov died, all of us were free and most of us had no idea what to do.”
“That still doesn’t mean the Russian would know enough to send one of his assassins undercover into a club just on the off chance that we had formed a club,” Czar said.
“He most likely didn’t,” Absinthe said. “He had his assassins working for the Ghosts, remember? They were pretending to be a club, getting in with