“I’m gonna scout the place a bit more,” Wolfe said, glancing around at the various people gardening outside the commune.

Shel looked at the front door nervously. “Are you sure that’s safe?”

Wolfe shrugged. “Probably not, but who fucking cares? This is a rich guy, right? He can’t just kill me, not in daylight in this part of town. So the worst he does is call the cops on me for trespassing. Big deal. Besides, I’ve got orders and no real idea how to carry them out. Maybe Junior will listen to reason if I can find him.”

Shel calmed a bit as Wolfe talked. “How very practical of you.”

Wolfe chuckled. “That’s me. Practical.”

Wolfe stepped off the main walkway onto a smaller cobblestone path that led around the mansion, through the garden everyone was working on. Shel followed. Everyone was dressed like nineteen-seventies hippies, with loose floral or tie-die dresses on the woman and ratty jeans and tie-die t-shirts on the men. No bell bottoms at least. And half of them had sunglasses or straw hats, which were a bit out of place.

Their eyes followed him as he walked, and they whispered to one another. Wolfe rarely felt as much an outsider as he did in this moment, but he grit his teeth and ignored everyone beyond a casual glance to see if they were his target.

He got almost halfway around the house before his eyes lit on Junior, who was shirtless, of all things, and in a pair of black silk workout shorts, standing out like a gun in the club—and his skin was burnt already, proving something or other about his worthiness that he wouldn’t want to hear, Wolfe was sure. He snickered to himself as he walked over.

A thin girl with long blonde hair and symmetrical features was with him, wearing the long, loose, tie-die dress common to this group. She touched him as Wolfe walked up.

Thad turned to face Wolfe and his face blanched.

“W-wolfe!” he stuttered, “what are you doing here?”

“Trying to take you home, Thad,” Wolfe replied.

Thad stood from the dirt and brushed his knees off, and the girl followed him, hugging his arm. “You can’t take me back, Wolfe. I have to earn a deck.”

“By digging in the dirt through your entire thirties?” Wolfe asked, laughing. “Are you shitting me? You’ll be lucky if you make it two weeks, much less the ten years till the next drop night.”

Thad flushed but rallied. “Well, I have to do something. Besides, Jenny here will keep me company.”

Wolfe’s eyes briefly flicked to the girl. Nonthreat.

“Look, Thad, the Cobras might be after you and—”

“A likely story!” Jenny shrilled at him, then tugged at Thad’s arm. “We should go Thaddy.”

“Thaddy?” Wolfe asked, laughing involuntarily.

It was the wrong thing. Thad flushed, and then his face firmed. “I’m not stupid, you know. You guys should stop treating me like I am. You and Dad both, and Damian too, asking to take the whole club and stuff because I can’t handle it!”

He stormed off toward the main compound before Wolfe could react further.

“A whole thing, you say,” Wolfe said to Shel, who was staring after Thad with wide eyes.

***

Back at his busted car, Wolfe was pacing in frustration. He turned to Shel, who was watching him, her fingers drumming on the front side of the smashed hood of Wolfe’s car as she stared off into nothing.

“How am I supposed to handle getting Big Man Grimm’s idiot son back from a place he wants to be, and can legally stay? A place where he has the guardianship of a crazy powerful, upstanding citizen deckbearer?”

“I have no idea,” Shel said, continuing to stare off into the distance, idly twisting her finger in her strawberry blonde hair. “You’ll think of something. You always do.”

“I’m gonna call Damian,” Wolfe said, reaching for his phone. “Hopefully that fucker will know what to do. He originally wanted me to call him when I found his brother—maybe he’ll have an answer here.”

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

As Wolfe raised the phone, Shel’s eyes snapped to him and she walked over and tried to grab his phone hand. “Wait!”

Wolfe instinctively intercepted her hand, catching it in his own iron grip. He lowered his phone, however. “What?”

“Don’t call Damian… I’ve been thinking about this whole situation.”

Wolfe squinted at the tiny waif of a girl but let go of her hand. “You literally jus told me that you didn’t have an idea.”

“No, I mean this whole situation. The fight with the Cobras. The fact they keep getting the jump on us. The mole. All of it.”

“Okay?” Wolfe said. “What amazing conclusion did you reach?”

“I think Damian is the mole,” Shel said, staring dead into Wolfe’s eyes.

“What?” Wolfe asked, shocked. “That’s absurd. He’s gonna inherit everything in a few years anyway. What possible motivation could he have for whacking his dad?”

Wolfe didn’t like Damain, not one bit—he was a slimy, entitled, abusive little fuck that someone believed he was owed everything because he was daddy’s kid. But Wolfe remembered him from when he was still in diapers, bouncing on his dad’s knee. Hell, he’d bounced Damian on his own knee a few times. He’d even played jungle gym for him. Although he had been a demanding, whiny kid even then.

Besides, the wretched little dwarf certainly wasn’t up to Big Man Grimm’s standards. He was having a huge amount of trouble wrapping his head around the concept of Damian as the mole.

“I don’t know his motivation,” Shel continued, giving a slight shrug. “But Thad implied Damian wasn’t going to inherit everything, so that’s something. And nothing else fits. Who else knew you were going to come see me in the warehouse the first night? Just the people around the table that night—the inner circle. Of which you and Big Man Grimm obviously aren’t the moles, and Miriam could have turned on us at any time, so she’s out. Thad Jr is an idiot, and Heinrich got whacked—also a quick deck check situation, and he was loyal to Big Man Grimm. No one else has even really been involved in all this. Plus, Damian called off the killing of Billy, right?”

Wolfe nodded. That is crazy… he said the Reinfeldt were upset, which makes sense… except that they never told Big Man Grimm about being upset. Which makes no sense at all. If they felt I’d violated their territory, why not complain to the head of the Grimm family? I just assumed that since I couldn’t get ahold of Big Man Grimm, they couldn’t either… but still, why go to Damian?

“Yeah, he called it off,” Wolfe acknowledged, leaning against the broken car.

“There’s no chance it’s not Damian,” Shel said stubbornly. “I’ll bet if you call Damian, we’ll be swarmed with Cobras in no time flat. He has to get rid of his brother to get everything, that’s what Thad just said. Otherwise, the club and such will be split.”

Wolfe crossed his arms over his chest. He could feel his own rejection of her conclusion… he hated the idea of the son betraying the father, a good father that didn’t deserve it like his own father had. Or of a brother hurting his sibling. It really didn’t make any sense from Damian’s standpoint—what did he stand to gain beside a part of the club? A part he could likely buy out from Thad anyway… although Thad had seemed upset by the offer. Maybe he couldn’t buy it?

But, at the same time, Wolfe had to admit the logic—the opportunity was there, and the betrayals did seem to stem from Damian’s contacts. Even Nico—why go to Damian, for fuck’s sake, with this plan, instead of Big Man Grimm?

Wolfe was tempted to call Shel’s bluff, call Damian anyway, just to see if the Cobra’s showed up. It would be the point that Wolfe believed in his gut what she was saying.

Wolfe’s eyes widened. “Wait! That’s it?”

“What?” Shel asked.

“That—having the Cobras show up and try and assassinate Thad Jr—would probably solve our problems, in an admittedly risky and violent way. If the Cobras tried to get to him, and ran up against this deckbearer, we could get him out in the confusion! He’d go willingly!”

“That seems… really risky,” Shel said, tapping her fingers together.

“Sooner or later people are going to figure out he’s there, right? If someone is trying to kill Junior, better we’re here to intercept them. If they aren’t, or if it’s not Damian, then we don’t have a problem.”

Wolfe’s grin grew fierce. “If it is the Cobras, then we also get to kill those assholes and hopefully take their last few deckbearers down here. Except two. But I’ll get them later. Because if that’s the case, I can kill their leader, Mr. Klaus, while pretending I know nothing about Damian’s betrayal—and then have a clear shot to kill Nico later—which I’m looking forward to.”

Shel stared at his face. “You get scary sometimes, when you’re like this. Why do all that, and not just tell Big Man Grimm?”

“They’re all awful people,” Wolfe said. “And they’ve given me shit, personally. Between the two, I’d like to put them six feet under. As to Big Man Grimm, he’s locked up, and he left me two instructions, neither of which was to be compromised—kill Mr. Klaus and get the big man’s son out. I think this is the best way I can personally handle it. Like I said, just leaving him here will get him killed anyway, far more certainly, if you’re right. Plus, if it is Damian, we need to know that.”

“You can’t think of any other way to get him out?” Shel asked. “A safer way?”

“Can you? I remind you that if you’re right, we’re on a real tight fucking schedule here, because it’s almost certain Damian will find out soon, if he hasn’t already.”

Shel hesitated. “Well… okay. I can’t think of a quick way, I admit.”

Wolfe nodded and held the phone up. He texted Damian. “Your brother is at the Hibiscus Commune. They won’t let me in—I’m gonna try and get him out, but if you can arrange something else that would be great. Gonna be putting the phone on silent while I do so.”

Wolfe hung the phone up.

“Alright, let’s get prepared.”