Chapter 88 What's up with Snake
Sage's POV
Bookies don't usually send surveillance teams to make sure their money gets paid."
"That's what I was thinking too."
"We need to look at this from both angles. Jaxon talks to Diesel about the gambling like he said he would, and we keep digging into whether any of it connects to what happened to Vincent." Ryder reached for my hand. "But you stay here. You stay inside. And you don't go anywhere without me or Jaxon or one of the brothers. Not to the bathroom, not to the mailbox, nowhere."
"Okay."
"I mean it, Sage."
"I know. I said okay."
He squeezed my hand and we sat there in the growing light until exhaustion finally pulled us both under.
The next morning Jaxon came back home from the clubhouse before I'd even finished my coffee. He had already talked to Diesel, true to his word, and the conversation had gone exactly the way he predicted it would. Diesel had confirmed the gambling debts, had given Jaxon the names of the two bookies he owed money to, and had looked more relieved than guilty about the whole thing. Jaxon had quietly verified the information through Snake's contacts and it checked out. The money Diesel had been handing over in that warehouse was exactly what it looked like on the surface, a debt being paid to keep some very dangerous people from collecting it in less civilized ways.
"So Diesel's not our guy," Jaxon said, sitting at the kitchen table with his coffee growing cold in front of him. "At least not for this."
"That still leaves the question of who was at that warehouse watching Sage," Ryder said from where he leaned against the counter with his arms crossed.
"Yeah. And that's what worries me." Jaxon pulled out his phone and showed us both the photo from the threatening text again. "Whoever took this wasn't there because of Diesel. They were there because of Sage. Which means they knew she was following him, or they were already following her and she just happened to end up at the same place Diesel was."
The three of us sat with that thought for a while, each turning it over from different angles.
The conversation shifted to the other names on the list after that. Martinez had been cleared of direct involvement in the murder, or at least cleared enough that we didn't think he was the one who pulled the trigger. Diesel's secrets turned out to be about gambling. Which left Snake, Jaxon, and Ryder himself as the remaining suspects on Dante's list.
Jaxon dismissed himself from the list with a dry laugh that had no humor in it. Ryder did the same, not because either of them thought the other was innocent by default, but because the logic of the situation made it unlikely that either of them would have murdered Vincent and then thrown themselves into investigating his death with such genuine urgency.
"That leaves Snake," Jaxon said quietly.
"Snake's been acting off lately too," Ryder said, and something in his tone told me he'd been thinking about this for longer than this conversation. "Disappearing at odd hours. Being secretive about his phone. I haven't thought much of it until now but looking back it does stand out."
"I noticed it also recently," Jaxon said. "I've been observing him and I've seen Snake making calls outside where no one could hear him. Multiple times."
Ryder pushed off from the counter and grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair. "I need to go check on a few things at the clubhouse. Someone might have more information if I talk to them discreetly."
He kissed me on the forehead before he left, and the look he gave me over his shoulder at the door said everything his words didn't. Stay here. Stay safe. I'll be back before you know it. Jaxon rolled his eyes and grunted and walked away too.
The next day and a half crawled by with excruciating slowness. I stayed at the house the way I had promised, which was harder than it sounded when every instinct in my body was screaming at me to do something, anything, instead of sitting around waiting for other people to find answers on my behalf. Ryder checked in constantly, texting me between conversations at the clubhouse, calling me at lunch, coming home that evening to sit with me on the couch and go over everything they had learned so far.
Snake's behavior was becoming the thing everyone was paying attention to now. Brothers had noticed the late-night phone calls on days he was at the clubhouse and not home, the way he disappeared during meetings, the way he flinched whenever certain topics came up. Nobody had confronted him about it yet because they didn't think anything about it. Jaxon wanted to make sure he had enough information before making any moves.
On the morning of the second day after the warehouse, Ryder left early again. He told me he was going to the clubhouse to work on one of the bikes in the garage. It was just something mindless and physical to keep his hands busy while his brain worked through the Snake situation. I watched him drive away from the kitchen window and tried to ignore the knot in my stomach that had been sitting there for days and refused to go away no matter how many times I told myself everything was going to be okay.
It was already day two. My forty eight hours were nearly up. And I was nowhere near a final decision yet.