“Spider, did you know about this?” Dragon snaps, cutting Rat off.
“No, I’m—”
“No, Prez,” Rat interrupts. “I’d just found out before I headed down here. I didn’t have a chance to tell him before church started.”
Rat always has my back. At this rate, I’m gonna owe him a whole new gaming system.
Again, Dragon waits for more. Rat taps his phone screen.
“I went through some of the recent messages on his cell. There was a text message with geographic coordinates. I couldn’t trace who the text is from; it must have come from a burner. But the coordinates belong to that mansion we went to.”
“Adamson’s mansion,” I say, and Dragon’s expression echoes my surprise.
Rat nods. “It looks like he was there on the same day we were.”
“How the fuck do you know that?” I can’t help sounding a little awestruck. Rat’s always been known as miracle worker with tech stuff, but how can he tell where someone makes a call from on a cell?
Rat grins at me. “That’s easy, Spidy. The text had a time along with the coordinates, which I assume was meant to tell him to be at the mansion for that time. He made a call to someone close to that specified time, so we can assume he made the call from the mansion.”
“A call to Adamson,” Dragon fills in, and again, Rat nods.
“Yeah, and get this. He sent a text a couple of hours before we found Emma at the diner.” Rat pauses and scrolls through his phone. “The text just says, “Visual.” But right after that one, he received one that had coordinates to the diner and a time. And,” he adds when Dragon stares and I whistle, “the kidnapper sent a text back right around the time he had her in his van.”
I swallow. “Which was?”
Rat looks right at me. “Package obtained.”
My teeth grind. I look at Dragon and suppress a growl. He called my Wildcat a package? It’s ridiculous, but having that fuck talk about what’s mine as if she belongs to Adamson makes me wish I’d torn his arms off before I’d shot him. And it makes me want to do the same to this Adamson fuck when I find him.
Dragon massages a muscle that’s throbbing in his forehead. “Interesting. So, this motherfucker Adamson hires some guy to steal Spider’s new obsession?” Dragon quips.
I glare at him and he ignores it.
“Looks like,” Rat says.
“But why does this Adamson guy want to mess with Spider?” Dragon asks. “And what does he want with the thief?”
Striker leans forward, his hands clasped on the table. “Yeah, I mean, this asswipe could have tried to get any one of our women. Is there some personal beef he’s got with Spidy?”
“And if he’s got a beef with me, why not take me?” I add. “Why take Emma?”
Dragon rubs his beard. “And, if he wanted to get back at the club by taking one of the women, why not take Tequila or Dee? Dee’s an ol’ lady. Emma’s nothing but a fucking thief.”
I hate that my fists clench until my knuckles crack under the table.
Pushing Dragon’s words aside, I shake my head, wracking my brain. I only learned about this Adamson when the prospect sang for us hoping we’d spare his life after the gun deal went south with Gunner. I look Dragon straight in the eye.
“None of this makes sense. We’re missing too many pieces of the puzzle.” I exchange a look with Striker, who appears as confused as I am. He was there when everything went down with Gunner. He shakes his head, lost.
From what we learned, Adamson was just another buyer. Maybe he saw our club as competition, but if he wanted to take the club down, why would he think taking Emma would do that? Obviously, Adamson has ignited a war between us and Satan’s Bastards. Probably part of his plan. He’s trying to ruin us. I’m starting to wonder if he’s the one who set Briggs on us and ruined the deal.
“Well, we are going to get to the bottom of this,” Dragon says. “I’ll see if Dex will lend me a couple of his prospects to go sit on the mansion and see what they can find there. Spider, keep a close eye on your pet. All three of you, keep digging and find this fucker. We need to put him in the ground before he makes any more trouble for us. “