Chapter 83 Briefing the brothers
Sage's POV
The clubhouse was loud when we walked in, louder than it had any right to be given the weight of everything hanging over all of us. Brothers sat around tables nursing beers and talking in loud voices that died down the second Ryder, Jaxon, and I came through the door.
Jaxon called an emergency management meeting in his office immediately. Snake was the first to arrive there, leaning against the door with a bottle of whiskey in his hand and a look on his face that told me he already knew things weren't going well. Diesel was there too, sitting in a chair at the back with his phone in his hand, and that's when I first noticed it, the way his thumb kept moving across the screen like he was reading something urgent that he didn't want anyone else to see.
"Alright, everyone's here." Jaxon moved to the center of the room and waited for the remaining conversations to die down completely. "We need to talk about what happened today and figure out our next move before we run out of time."
Ryder stayed close to me the way he had been doing since the attack, his hand resting on the small of my back in a gesture that was both protective and grounding. I leaned into him slightly, drawing strength from his presence while my mind was still racing through everything Martinez had told us.
Jaxon laid out what happened at the clinic without revealing every detail, keeping certain things vague in case the mole Martinez had warned about was sitting right in front of us. He mentioned the photo threat we'd received and the fact that someone was clearly reporting back on our activities to whoever was behind everything.
"So we've got a leak," Snake said, his voice flat and hard. "Someone in this room or connected to this club is feeding information to our enemies."
"That's what it looks like." Jaxon's eyes moved slowly around the room, landing on each face for just a moment before moving to the next. "Which means we need to be very careful about what we discuss openly and who we trust with what information going forward."
The room went quiet after that, the kind of heavy silence that settles over people when they realize the threat isn't just outside their walls but might be sitting right next to them. I watched the brothers' faces carefully, looking for any flicker of guilt or discomfort that might give something away.
That's when I really started paying attention to Diesel.
He sat in his chair with his phone still in his hand, and every few minutes he'd glance down at the screen and his jaw would tighten. Once, when Jaxon mentioned my dad's name, Diesel's hand jerked like he'd been startled, and he shoved the phone deep into his jacket pocket before anyone else could notice. But I noticed. I was watching him closely enough to catch the way his shoulders tensed and the way he avoided making eye contact with anyone at the table for the rest of the meeting.
After Jaxon finished talking and the brothers started breaking off into smaller groups to process everything, Diesel stood up abruptly and muttered something about needing air. He headed for the back exit of the clubhouse, the one that led out to the shooting range, and something about the way he moved made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
I tried to focus on the conversation Ryder and Jaxon were having about next steps, about how to try to find the mole, but my eyes kept drifting back to the door Diesel had disappeared through. The nervous energy I'd been picking up from him all evening wouldn't leave my mind.
"You okay?" Ryder asked quietly, noticing the way my attention had drifted.
"Yeah, just tired." I forced a small smile. "It's been a long day."
He squeezed my hand and turned back to Jaxon, but I could tell he didn't fully believe me.
The meeting wrapped up with Jaxon telling everyone to keep their heads down and stay alert. Snake volunteered to run surveillance on the buildings near Martinez's clinic to see if anyone showed up at the vantage point where our mystery photographer had been hiding. Diesel had already left by the time the meeting ended, slipping out without saying goodbye to anyone, which was unusual for him.
Ryder drove me back to the house and spent twenty minutes checking every room, every window, every lock before he was satisfied that we were safe. He kissed me on the forehead and told me to try to get some sleep because we had a long day ahead of us tomorrow. Within minutes he was out cold, his body finally giving in to the exhaustion he'd been fighting for days.
But I couldn't sleep.
I lay in bed staring at the ceiling while my mind turned over everything I'd seen at the clubhouse. Diesel's nervous energy was what bothered me the most. Martinez's warning echoed in my head, that the answers were with the people closest to my dad, the ones who had the most to gain from his death.
Diesel had been close to my father. He'd been one of dad's oldest friends in the club, someone who had been by his side for over a decade. He had access to the clubhouse, to the business dealings, to the kind of information that could be used as leverage against someone.
And he was clearly hiding something.
I thought about calling Jaxon, about telling him what I noticed and letting him handle it. But the clock on my nightstand read eleven forty-five and Dante's deadline was ticking away with every passing minute. We didn't have the luxury of being patient anymore.
I also thought about telling Ryder, but he was dead asleep beside me and even if I woke him he'd never let me go alone. He'd insist on coming with me, which would mean two people trying to follow someone discreetly instead of one, and the chances of being spotted would double.
I thought about the photo that had been taken of us at Martinez's clinic, the warning to stop asking questions. Someone was already watching me and following my every move. The smart thing to do would be to stay home, stay safe, and let someone else take the risk.
But smart hadn't gotten us any closer to finding my father's killer in the weeks since his death, and I was running out of time to play it safe.
I slid out of bed carefully, moving as quietly as I could so as not to wake Ryder. I grabbed my jacket from the closet, my phone, and my keys, and I crept down the stairs and out the front door into the cool night air.