I had to fight the urge to bristle. Who the fuck was he to talk about Mercy when he’d probably egged on Ezra’s decision to kick her out? But he obviously suspected we’d stayed in contact with her against Ezra’s direct orders. I had to keep my cool.
Which meant keeping my mouth shut and letting the other guys do the talking. I wasn’t much good with my words, and I didn’t think using my fists to shut Axel up would win us any points with the big boss, as much as I might have enjoyed doing it.
“If she’s around, she’s been staying out of sight,” Wylder said without betraying any emotion. “We obviously haven’t gone looking for her, considering my dad’s feelings on the subject. Why? Are you worried about her safety, Axel?”
Axel snorted. “Somehow I think you must be.”
Wylder gave him a bored look. “As far as I’ve been able to tell, Mercy’s very good at taking care of herself.”
Axel eyed the four of us for a moment longer, looking like he was hoping his gaze could dig right into our skulls and read our minds. My hands itched at my sides. I wished so much that punching him on his stupid, smug face was a good alternative to answering his questions. Imagining doing it calmed me down a little.
“Whatever you get up to, I hope you’re keeping your loyalties in mind,” Axel said finally, and sauntered off.
Gideon waited until he was out of sight and then muttered, “We definitely have to stay careful. I’ve noticed a couple of the men who report to Axel watching us around the mansion. They’re probably keeping track of when we come and go.”
I stiffened as an awful thought hit me. “They couldn’t track us with one of those fancy thingamajigs you use, could they?”
He rolled his eyes. “I doubt they have enough brain cells to even think of it, but I check our vehicles over carefully before we leave. And the new van I’m having custom-made is almost ready. We won’t keep that here at the mansion.”
“That fucker, spying on his own people,” Wylder muttered. “If he spent half as much energy tracking down Xavier and his boss as trying to screw me over…”
His phone rang before he bothered to finish that sentence. He checked the caller ID and brought it to his ear. “What?”
Whatever the guy on the other end said, it made Wylder’s expression darken. “Seriously?” he said, scowling. “The balls on those assholes.”
As he hung up and turned back to us, my pulse hiccupped. “Is it Mercy?” I whispered, remembering to keep my voice quiet.
Wylder shook his head, his mouth set in a grim line. “No, a contact of mine in the Bend was calling. He says the Storm’s people are handing out free samples of Glory—from our waterfront property.”
“What the fuck?” I said. No wonder he’d been pissed.
“Exactly. Come on, let’s deal with this before my dad has yet another reason to be bashing faces. Maybe Axel will keep his trap shut if we prove we’re handling more problems than he’s managed to.”
* * *
It was only a half hour later, as we cruised along the highway toward the condo development Ezra had recently bought into that was right near the border of Paradise City and the Bend, that an obvious question occurred to me. “Why the fuck are they giving out free drug samples?”
“Glory is one of the main ways the Storm’s people have been funding their operations here,” Rowan said from where he was sitting next to me in the back. “They must have brought a new shipment in, and they want to get as many people hooked as possible so they can sell the rest and bring in the cash quick.”
Wylder had insisted on driving this time, his knuckles standing out stark white because of how tightly he was gripping the steering wheel. “And they’re doing it out of prime Noble territory just in case they can get us in trouble with the cops as a bonus.”
“But the project isn’t completed yet,” I said. “Anyone could have broken in. Even I know it’d be stupid for us to deal right out of a property that’s in our name. Who’s to say the Nobles are involved?”
“The cops don’t care about logic,” Gideon said in his know-it-all way. “They like easy targets. If they can pin the blame on us that easily, they’ll go for it whether it makes sense or not. We can deal with the attention, but having the cops sniffing around will distract us from the bigger issues.”
“So we’ll just make sure that doesn’t happen,” Wylder said, gunning the engine so the car roared along even faster.
“We should take the lay of the land first, see exactly who’s there and what they’re doing and saying, before we go at them,” Rowan put in. “We need to find out everything we can about these guys.”
Wylder nodded. “They don’t know we’re onto them. We go in, scope things out, and then lay down our kind of law.”
When the tall, half-finished building came into view up ahead, Wylder pulled off onto a quiet street a few blocks away and parked the car. Gideon stayed there, monitoring whatever traffic cam feeds he could tap into in case he needed to send us a warning, and the rest of us set off on foot.
The waterfront property was being built right on the bank of the river that cut its way through the heart of the Bend before skirting around the city. Work was progressing fast, and the steel frame gleamed against the sky. The lower part of the site was hidden away by a temporary wall of steel and plastic panels.
As we approached, I saw a stream of people ducking in where one of the panels had been wrenched to the side. These must have been the people coming to get the drug, not already high, but I could tell that a lot of them weren’t any strangers to the experience. Most had a jittery look to them, their gazes twitching around as they made their way in. The sight made my skin crawl.
The weed I smoked to help me relax and brief highs from party drugs were one thing. You could indulge in those and not fuck yourself up. But these people looked like they’d been into the serious shit, the kind of crap that took over your life and turned everything good in it rotten. If they thought Glory would help them fill that hole, it wasn’t anything I wanted a part in.