about it.
He kept his gaze to the floor.
Her voice broke the silence.
“You can’t tear him apart when you get to him, Mo. I’m not visiting my man in the pokey and I hear conjugal visits are hard to arrange.”
His neck still bent, he turned his head her way.
“Lottie, shut up.”
“You got it,” she whispered.
He looked back to the floor.
Lottie went back to being Lottie.
She took off her makeup. Brushed out her hair.
Saw to business.
Including the business of giving him room to do what he had to do.
Soon.
Fuck.
Soon.
Thank Christ.
Now all he had to do was stop himself from committing murder between now and getting her on her back in her bed.
With what he’d been through since meeting Charlotte McAlister…
Piece of cake.
* * * *
He’d been wrong.
It was not a piece of cake.
What he had not been wrong about was that this was their guy.
Threat neutralized, Lottie was home, asleep, had no idea he was not there, and Axl was sitting in her living room just in case she woke up and found out he was not there, Axl could tell her what was going down and she’d continue to feel safe, not all of a sudden without a bodyguard.
Mo was in the guy’s house with Hawk and Smithie.
The man had been identified by Smithie and his bouncers as an irregular regular. He didn’t come often, but they’d all seen him, more than a few times. Too innocuous to be red flagged, they’d never have called it.
Until Mo had.
In his house, there was no sick-fuck shrine to Lottie.
What they found after Jaylen asked the man for a word, he tried to bolt, Axl locked him down, they detained him in Smithie’s office and got his wallet off him, then sent a team to his house, a team that included Hawk, were a number of very disturbing journals.
And a basement that was being equipped to do all the things to Lottie he’d written that he intended to do.
Yes. He was building his confidence and preparing to follow through.
That was part of his visit to the club that night. Keep an eye on his mark, or now his marks, build his hate and assess the lay of the land.
The man was still in Smithie’s office.
This huddle was about next moves.
“Any involvement of law enforcement at this juncture that has any hope of sticking would include perjuring ourselves repeatedly,” Hawk noted.
“I’m down with that,” Smithie said.
Mo said nothing.
He was still trying to get out of his head how much plastic sheeting had been put up in the basement.
And the neatly aligned instruments laid out on a table.
But Hawk knew Mo would never perjure himself to the cops.
Unless ordered to do so for the good of the mission.
Or to protect someone who meant something to him.
So he didn’t have to answer.
“Second option is I contact a man I know who’s adept at disappearing people,” Hawk went on.
Mo focused more fully on his boss.
“I’m down with that too,” Smithie declared heatedly.
He was still seeing plastic sheeting as well.
Not to mention that table of instruments.
“I’m not talking a hit, Smithie. I’m talking forced relocation where the chance of return is nil. This includes check-ins to make sure that nil stays nil. For an added cost, it includes permanent incapacitation,” Hawk explained.
“I’m down for that too, even if I don’t know what permanent incapacitation means if it doesn’t include this sick fucking fuck being very fucking dead.”
Right.
Smithie was holding on by a thread.
Mo knew the feeling.
“No fingers. No tongue. No eyes. A combination. Or in extreme circumstances, no legs or paralysis,” Hawk told him.
“And again I’m feelin’ like I hit the lottery because none of these choices sound bad to me,” Smithie returned.
“Smithie, you would have to live with that,” Hawk pointed out.
“And you think this’ll be a problem?” Smithie demanded to know.
“I think right now you’re pissed as fuck and freaked as hell and all that is on top of you being worried, with that increasing with every day this guy went uncaptured and every letter you got. So I’m not sure you’re thinking straight,” Hawk retorted.
“Tell me, Hawk, you perform some magic with Mitch or Slim and they find cause to search this house legally and find what we found, what happens to this guy?” Smithie asked, calling up Hawk’s buds, Mitch Lawson and Brock “Slim” Lucas, two DPD cops, two good men and the first ones Hawk went to if he needed law.
“I don’t have the power of clairvoyance, Smithie,” Hawk told him.
“Me either. But I’ll