Quickdraw Slow Burn (Battle of the Bulls #3) - T. S. Joyce Page 0,33
kill him right now, but wait. Okay? Please wait. Show the herd that video after we get off the phone so they understand the threat, all right? I don’t think he’s a big cat, but he moves like one. He’s dangerous, but he’s just one piece of the chessboard and, trust me, the people who are sabotaging the PBSRC are playing chess, not checkers. If I had to guess, I think this has been in the works for a while, and they’re just ramping up for the finale. I ran the product numbers on the camera equipment you sent me. The stand is stolen as well as the battery pack, but the camera itself was purchased online from a store called Media Addict, and I used my hacker fingers to find out the credit card information. I don’t give a shit about the number, just the name on the card. Melvin A Turner. Now, I ran the video you sent me through facial recognition software stuff and got a name for that creepy asshole hunting Annabelle. His name is Arrow Caster. His name badge was a front; his name isn’t Dante at all. He’s an unregistered shifter, and I can’t for the life of me track down any family relations, so he either changed his name to Arrow or he’s a lone shifter. Rogue, maybe. Anyway, I dug for hours looking for anything that would link Melvin Turner to Arrow Caster, and the only thing I found was a receipt at a restaurant a month ago, right around the time the bulls were poisoned with Filsa. They ate dinner together at a little hole in the wall burger joint near the venue where the poisonings happened. They each paid for their own food, but there was a third party with them. A Trevor Watkins paid with a credit card, steak finger basket, add extra Ranch. That part’s not important. I just really love Ranch. Anyway, I started researching him, pulled up financial records, address, family, you know…the first step, but didn’t find anything strange. Not until I pulled the W2s from his job. His tax records say he’s self-employed by a company called Trusted. That’s it. Just Trusted. But if a company is LLCed, it should have a website. This Trusted LLC didn’t have a detailed one, so there was a red flag right there.”
“Tell him about the website you did find!” said another male voice in the background.
“Shut up, Wes! I’m just getting to the good part! So the only website I did track down was this simple page with one sentence typed across it: In the business of handling your business. Underneath that line was a single contact link. So…I hacked the contact link—”
“He hacked the motherfuckin’ contact link!” Wes crowed in the background.
“And there were a bunch of contacts, but one stood out. A Sloan Brander had contacted the site about two weeks before the Filsa poisonings, and in the email, it stated, and I quote—”
“Because he’s reading the actual email!” Wes called out.
“Because I’m reading the actual email,” Hunter said excitedly. “‘To whom it may concern, my associates and I have a problem, and not of the human kind. Our company has been longstanding for three generations but is now being threatened by shifters. I’ve heard of your work against them and you have my interest. We are at the make-it or break-it point. I’ve been told of your fee, and that is not a problem for me and my backers. I need an entire organization to go down, and it all rides on a specific set of shifters’ shoulders. Very strong shoulders. Whatever means necessary is fine.’ Then he gave his contact information. And do you know what I found out from that contact information?”
“What?” Quickdraw asked, waiting on the edge of the couch.
“Sloan Brander is the head stock contractor for the bull riding circuit that doesn’t include shifters. He is the top breeder of non-supe bucking bulls in the world.”
“Holy shit,” Dead whispered.
“So, he’s making a run at eliminating our entire circuit to feed money back into non-shifter bull riding?” Quickdraw asked.
“Probably to feed it directly back into his pockets,” Hunter murmured. “Far as I can tell, the attention is all on you right now. Their ratings and ticket sales have tanked, their bull riders are demanding the same pay as the riders in your circuit, and the stock contractors have started asking for the same winnings as the top three bulls in your