Saving Glory (Hells Saints Motorcycle Club Book 4) (14 page)

Sandy was standing behind the counter when they entered the lobby of the High gate. Already a tall blonde who wore blood red lipstick and matching acrylic nails, her tight bright pink shirt revealed she also carried about half of her body weight on her chest.

Riker was going to love her.

“Mr. Abiatti booked a half hour massage and he went in about five minutes ago.” Sandy leaned across the counter and whispered, “You make sure you’re out of there in time. And don’t move anything. Don’t turn anything on. Or off. And don’t take anything. You just want to look around right?” Sandy heaved her mighty chest. “He’s not even letting our housekeeping services in.”

“Don’t worry, he will never know we were there,” Claire promised.

Sandy took another quick look around the lobby and waited for a man to exit through the door before she reached down behind the counter and came up with the flat magnetic key card. “Okay, here you go. It’s on the tenth floor. Take the elevator up, but just in case, I’d take the back stairs down. Go out the emergency exit. The buzzer on the door doesn’t work—maintenance won’t have time until tomorrow to fix it. Leave the key under the towels on the maid cart at the end of the hallway. ” She slipped the key card across the counter, adding, “I get a personal invite to the next Saints thing—and you’re gonna hook me up with Riker.”

“Sure thing. And thanks, Sandy.” Claire smiled at her.

“What time is Abiatti checking out?” Glory suddenly asked.

“You bitches are gonna are kill me,” Sandy sighed. When Claire and Glory stood without moving, Sandy placed her lacquered nails on the computer key board. Three keys and a space bar later she looked up at them. “He’s leaving today. It doesn’t look like he paid for a late check-out. So good chance he’ll be out of here right after the massage. Now get your asses up there and do what you have to do, Riker’s a fine lookin’ man, but he ain’t worth my job.” Sandy drummed red talons on the counter and pursed her heavily painted lips.

The girls kept their baseball-capped heads down as they made their way to the elevator. They pressed the button to the tenth floor then walked down the hallway and paused at the door numbered 301. When Glory slid the card through the lock and the light flashed green, the two friends exchanged a look, inhaled a sharp breath and stepped inside.

Even without maid service, Santino’s room was, as Glory had expected it to be, in perfect order. Everything was neat and precise to the point of obsessiveness, just like the man himself. Shoes polished and lined up like soldiers, suitcase emptied and everything arranged just-so in the closet. Hair brush, tooth brush, comb, electric razor, shaving cream, cologne, and other grooming necessities all laid out at a precise angle on the bathroom counter. Bed made—and Glory couldn’t resist lifting the bedspread to look for—yep, crisp hospital corners. The sheets fitted so tightly against the bed Glory was surprised Santino could squeeze his way in at night.

His laptop lay closed on the desk near the window and the zippered leather binder sat next to it.

As they'd prearranged, Claire moved to the laptop and Glory went for the binder, praying that they would find them both unlocked.

Claire pressed down on a couple of keys and whispered. “No password. He just left this sitting here like this?”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Glory whispered back. Given Santino’s arrogance it made sense to her. “Remember Sandy said that Santino is not letting anyone in here. And even if he did, he would never believe that anyone would dare touch his stuff.”

“Lucky for us, then, that he’s an egomaniacal bastard.” Claire smiled, pushed the flash drive into the slot and began to scan through any files she thought might be helpful in figuring out what he was up to.

Glory grabbed the leather binder sitting on the desk. She unzipped it and laid out the photos of Hal alongside the flight manifest and began to take pictures of them. She found two more folders in the case filled with dates, a variety of schedules, the names of a few shipping companies and what looked like bank account numbers. She took pictures of those too, in case they might be of use later. Better safe than sorry.

The girls worked efficiently, quietly and thoroughly. Fifteen minutes later they were ready to leave. They did a quick perusal of the room to make sure everything was precisely as it had been. Satisfied, they lowered their baseball caps over their heads once again and closed the door firmly behind them.

Glory and Claire hurried down the hallway and tucked the key under the towels on the maid cart as instructed. Then they took the back staircase and ran down three flights of stairs. Glory held her breath when they opened the emergency exit door that proclaimed in big red letters—
The Alarm Will Sound.

Thank god it didn’t.

Now they sat together in the back parking lot.

“Mission accomplished.” Claire shot Glory a triumphant look from behind the steering wheel.

“Yeah.” Glory grinned and raised her hand for a high five. Then asked, “What do we do now?”

“Sandy said that Santino was checking out soon, right?” Claire looked at Glory.

“Yeah. That’s his rental over there.” Glory pointed to the black Escalade sitting at the far end of the lot.

“I took a peek at his flight itinerary; he’s not flying out until tomorrow. What do you think he’s going to be doing until then?” Claire asked her.

“I don’t know.” Glory shrugged then slid down further in the seat. “But that’s him coming around the corner now. What do you think we should do?”

“I think we should follow him for a while and see if we can find anything out,” Claire said with purpose. Then she put her sunglasses on and turned the key in the ignition.

Glory nodded and looked at her friend with heart-felt admiration. Claire had turned out to be the perfect partner in crime.

Sistah had some balls.

Hours later, when they were forced to look back on it, Claire and Glory both agreed that following Santino Abiatti was one of the more stupid and reckless decisions—in a pretty long line of stupid and reckless decisions—that the two friends had ever made together.

But, as the saying goes, hindsight is twenty-twenty.

Prosper hunched over the table, closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose in an effort to relieve himself of the pounding pain that radiated right through his temple, behind his eyes and down the back of his neck. From his stance across the room Diego scowled and shook his head. He stood at attention with his long strong legs slightly parted and his heavily inked arms wrapped tight across his muscled chest. His dark brown eyes were pinned to the small group seated at the table in an expression that clearly said—

Unfuckingbelievable.

Pinky sat stiff and rigid between the two terrified young women and her angry husband.

A flash drive, a cell phone, and a 9 mm gun sat on the scarred wooden table.

“Now tell me again—” Prosper snarled.

“Honey, I think we have been over this part of it,” Pinky interrupted him, reaching over to lay her small hand gently on her husband’s large forearm.

In a sudden and forceful move, Prosper flexed his wife’s hand off him. Then he pounded a fist down on the table and bellowed out in fury. “And we will go over it again and again and a-fucking-gain until I am satisfied with the goddamn answers. We’ll go over it all motherfucking night if I say we do.”

Pinky threw her husband a look of exasperation while Glory and Claire jumped in their chairs. Glory fought back rising hysteria.

“Well, like I was at the bakery opening—” Glory began, with fear choking her words.

“Jesus. Not that again. I got that,” Prosper spat. “I get it about the whole blackmail bullshit. What I want to know is when it was that you two geniuses decided it was a good idea to follow the fucker.” The big man looked at Glory and Claire like he was two seconds away from putting his powerful hands around their necks and squeezing the life out of them.

“That would be after we searched his room,” Claire said, in a voice barely above a whisper.

“And once more, how did you get in?” Prosper asked between clenched teeth.

“We bribed the day manager,” Glory answered.

“The bitch works for us, you said?”

“Yeah. She waitresses a few nights a week. And well—she kind of has this thing for Riker,” Claire muttered. “So I—uh—promised her I’d put in a good word.”

Prosper glared at her. Then he threw a look at Diego. “You know who the fuck they’re talking about?”

“Yeah. You know her too.
Sandy
.” Then Diego cupped his hands at his chest and made a bouncing motion.

Prosper nodded at the gesture as recognition lit his eyes almost instantly.

“Oh, yeah.” Prosper acknowledged. “Her.”

Then.

“I need a damn drink.”

As Diego reached into his leather cut and pulled the flask out of it, he cast a quick apologetic glance at Pinky. Then he walked over to his boss.

Prosper followed that glance back to his disgusted-looking wife. As he tore the flask out of Diego’s hand, he shouted at him, “Why you looking at my old lady? I don’t need her fucking permission to have a goddamn drink.”

Diego raised his hands up in surrender while Pinky glared right back at her husband. Prosper held the flask to his lips and paused just for a moment as if daring his wife to contradict him. When she stayed determinedly silent, but for a raised eyebrow, Prosper took a long pull of the Jack Daniels. Then he gave his woman another glare and shot back one more hit of the booze just to show her who was boss. Pinky, on her part, rolled her eyes at Prosper’s juvenile display.

Prosper saw the eye roll and grumbled, “Fuck the heart attack, it’s the females in my life who are going to kill me.”

Claire licked her dry lips and croaked out nervously as she nodded to the flask. “Do you think we could have some of that?”

“Absolutely fucking not,” he barked. But then his voice softened just a bit and his eyes met his wife’s across the table. “Woman, get them some water.”

“Yes, dear.” Pinky bowed her head in a parody of a submissive 1950’s house wife. “Whatever you say, dear.”

Prosper narrowed his eyes at her, but when she passed him on the way to the kitchen, he gave her a light spank on her bottom. Pinky responded by slapping her husband’s hand away, but before she left the room she winked at the girls as if to say
the worst of it is over.

“So what did you say her name was again?” Prosper asked Diego.

When Diego volleyed a confused look back at Prosper, Prosper let out a long suffering sigh.

“The bitch with the big jugs who let Thelma and Louise here into Abiatti’s hotel room?”

“Sandy—” Diego trailed off. Then he drew his brows together in thought. After a moment he continued with surety, “Brady. Sandy Brady.”

“Can we trust her?”

“Yeah. She’s cool.” Diego considered. “Especially if she’s wet for Riker. Besides, I think she’s too dumb to be dangerous.”

“That’s right. That’s Sandy.” Glory shook her head in enthusiastic agreement.

“Finally some good damn news.” Prosper muttered. Then he glared across the table and growled to the girls. “Keep talking.”

“Okay,” Glory continued. “So we made the decision to search Santino’s room to see if we could find out anything that might help us figure out what he was up to. Claire had the idea to bring along a flash drive—brilliant, by the way.” Glory flashed Claire a quick smile.

When Claire sat a little taller in her chair and preened with pride, Prosper sent her a warning look and shot out,

“Make no mistake. There is
absolutely
nothing smart about this.”

Claire gave her father a woeful look, took a deep drink of the cool water and continued where her friend had left off. “We
know
it was a dumb thing to do, but at least we accomplished our mission.”

When Prosper snorted in derision, Claire ignored him.

“Because we were lucky enough and Santino was stupid enough and arrogant enough to leave his business on an unsecured laptop, we had time to download all his files. We aren’t really sure if what’s on it will be of any use, but you can go through all that. And we took pictures of everything that was in the file folder too. That’s good, right?”

Prosper huffed and puffed.

And scowled and frowned.

But when he looked at his daughter’s eager to please expression, he capitulated slightly and agreed with reluctance, “Yeah. That was fucking good.”

“Prosper, sitting here now and looking back at the whole situation, Glory and I really do realize it wasn’t the smartest idea.” Claire said softly, her voice filled with honest contrition. “We understand that it was really, really stupid to tackle this on our own, but we were able to get in and out of that room so fast that we thought it might be just as easy to follow him.”

“Okay.” Prosper shook his head and sighed in resignation. “Tell me the rest of it.”

“Once we got what we needed out of Santino’s room, we waited for him to leave the hotel parking garage. Then we followed him down to the bypass. He took the turn-off that’s about a mile off the junction 95 artery, you know, where that factory used to be?”

“That building is just inside the Aces territory,” Diego said to his boss, and Prosper nodded slightly in acknowledgement.

Glory picked up the story from there.

“We knew that we couldn’t follow him down that access road. Nobody ever uses it anymore and he would see us, but I knew that there was an alternate short cut. A dirt road that kind of loops around and sits high off that exit. Hal bikes out that way and I had to pick him up last week when he blew out a tire. So we drove along there hoping to see what Santino was up to. We left the car at the end of the road and hiked a few yards in to the highest point. That pretty much led us right on top of the gate leading into the abandoned factory. There was a van waiting at the corner of the old parking lot when Santino drove up. He got out of his car and the guys in the van got out too. They talked together for a while. Then the men got back in the van and followed Santino up the road.”

"What did the guys in the van look like?" Prosper asked.

“Hispanic—they were all dark complexioned and had long black hair.”

“Sporting any colors that you could make out?” Diego added.

“No.” Glory shook her head. "They weren’t wearing cuts or any kind of patches. But they were all dressed the same way—wife beaters, jeans and black and white bandanas around their heads.”

“What about the bandanas? Anything distinguishing there?”

“No.” Glory chewed her bottom lip in concentration. “Nothing out of the ordinary. It’s the kind of thing you can get at any department store—" Her voice trailed off as she tried to capture a memory. “There was something, though.”

“Ink?” Diego had left the corner where he had been taking up angry residence and now leaned his calloused palms on the table. “What about the ink? Fuckers sporting any tats?”

“That’s it!” Glory burst out as Diego’s words jogged her memory. “They all had the same thing on their arms. Did you see that, Claire?”

“Yeah,” Claire nodded hard. “You’re right. They all had tattoos on their left arms. Running from their wrists to the top of their biceps. A long winding stripe—I don’t know what it was—maybe a road or—I don’t really know.”

“Could the tats have been snakes or serpents?” Prosper shot out.

The girls met each other’s eyes seeking confirmation, then Glory said with certainty, “Yeah, I didn’t think of it at the time, but definitely. They definitely had the right slithering sort of shapes to be snakes. And they were all the same.”

“Culebras?” Diego looked at Prosper with an arched brow.

“Sounds like it.” Prosper grunted and led out a long measured breath.

“What the fuck are they doing up here?” Diego asked Prosper.

“No idea.” Prosper rubbed the back of his neck.

“Something to do with heroin, I think,” Claire broke in.

Prosper and Diego’s head snapped in her direction.

“Heroin.” Prosper’s voice held a tone of deadly menace.

“How do you know it was heroin?” Diego asked from behind clenched teeth.

“We —” Glory paled and hesitated.

“And why the fuck didn’t you lead with that?” Diego snarled before she could answer.

“Because you and Prosper kept interrupting us!” Claire glared in response.

“Just fucking tell it now.” A vein in Prosper’s neck popped out.

“When Santino drove up over the hill the Hispanic guys that we just told you about followed him. But not all the way. They stopped about halfway down the road and pulled off. Then Santino pulled up in his car and met two other men who were there waiting. They looked Latino or Hispanic too. But they had suits on. They walked to the back of a big silver truck, slid out a long crate out of the back and opened it. The crate was filled with these bricks of white powder in plastic wrap,” Claire explained almost matter of fact. Then she tilted her head in thought. “I thought it was probably heroin, but I guess it could have been coke.”

Prosper and Diego looked at each other.

“Keep talking,” Prosper prompted the girls.

“Santino gave one of the guys an envelope and that guy motioned to his friend to unload the truck. I counted four crates. Do you think it was four?” Claire looked at Glory, who nodded.

“I got four too,” Glory confirmed.

“Oh, my God,” Pinky moaned and placed her head in her hands.

“What?” Both girls turned to her, but Prosper spoke first.

“You saw all this from the top of a damn hill, and nobody saw you? Nobody even once glanced up?” Prosper’s eyes were hard. “You sure?”

“Yup. We’re sure. Because after we saw them we figured it would only be a matter of time before they saw us standing there pretty much in plain sight. So we moved down and hid in the bushes.” Glory sat up tall with pride at their cunning.

Another moan from Pinky.

“Yeah. We’re not
stupid
,” Claire gave Pinky a questioning look at the expression on her face but then Claire added with aplomb. “Besides, we couldn’t video-tape from up on the hill. We were too far away.”

“Video-tape?" Prosper seemed to strangle on the word.

“Yeah, we used the video-tape feature on my phone. It’s all there." Claire pointed to the cell on the table. When she looked around at the shocked faces in the room she turned to Glory.

“I thought we told them about that. Didn’t we tell them about the video in the beginning?”

“I lost track of what we told them and what we didn’t.” Glory groaned in exhaustion. Then she said to Prosper, “But every question you have asked us should be answered when you view that video. Although I didn’t have time to check it.”

“Because that’s when the shooting began,” Claire’s eyes went wide. “Tell them about that, Glory.”

“The shooting?” Pinky echoed weakly.

“Yup. After the guy in the suit took the money and as soon as he had the cash in his hand, the van— you remember the van that we told you about? The one filled with the other Hispanic guys that stopped halfway up the hill?” Glory asked for clarification from the men.