Chapter 89 Snake is next
Ryder's POV
Tommy cornered me in the garage after Sage had followed Diesel to the warehouse, and I could tell from the moment he walked in that whatever he was about to say wasn't going to make my day any easier than it already was.
I was elbow deep in the engine of one of the club's older bikes, using the work as a way to keep my hands busy while my mind churned through everything that had happened in the past forty-eight hours. The rhythmic turning of the wrench and the familiar smell of grease and metal were the closest thing to peace I'd been able to find since this whole nightmare started, and I wasn't happy about having it interrupted.
"We need to talk about Snake," Tommy said, and the serious tone of his voice made me put the wrench down and look up before he even finished the sentence.
Tommy's expression was the kind of careful and guarded that meant he'd been sitting on something for a while and had finally decided it was time to bring it up. He leaned against the workbench with his arms crossed and watched me wipe my hands on a rag, waiting for me to give him my full attention before he said another word.
"What about him?"
"He's been making funny private calls late at night. He's always outside where no one can hear him, always alone, and always at times when most of the brothers are either asleep or too drunk to pay attention." Tommy's jaw tightened. "I've seen him do it at least five times this week. Every single time someone gets close enough to hear what he's saying, he ends the call immediately and acts like nothing happened, like he's just been standing outside getting some fresh air."
My hands tightened on the rag. The information landed in my gut the way I knew it was going to, heavy and uncomfortable and impossible to ignore. Snake was one of the people on Dante's list, one of the five suspects who had been close enough to Vincent to have had both the opportunity and the access to kill him, and now he was sneaking around making secret phone calls that he didn't want anyone to overhear.
"You sure about this? You're not misreading the situation or jumping to conclusions based on something that could have an innocent explanation?"
"Yeah, I'm sure." Tommy pulled out his phone and held it up so I could see the screen without having to move closer. "Last night I followed him when he went outside during the club meeting. He walked all the way to the far corner of the parking lot where the light doesn't reach and talked for twenty minutes straight. I stayed about thirty feet back behind one of the supply trucks where he couldn't see me, but I couldn't hear a single word of what he was saying because he kept his voice so low." Tommy scrolled to a video file and held the phone out toward me. "But I got video of him making the call if you want to see it for yourself."
I took the phone and watched the footage. The angle was slightly off because Tommy had been recording from behind cover, but it showed exactly what he'd described. Snake stood in a dark corner of the parking lot with his phone pressed to his ear and his free hand moving through the air as he talked, the kind of restless, agitated gestures a person makes when they're arguing with someone or trying desperately to explain something that isn't going the way they want it to go. He paced back and forth in a tight circle, ran his hand through his hair twice, and at one point stopped moving entirely and just stood there with his head down like whatever he'd just heard on the other end of the line had knocked the wind out of him.
"Fuck." I handed the phone back and picked up the wrench again, turning it over in my hands without actually using it. "This makes him look guilty as hell."
"That's exactly what I thought too, especially with everything that's been going on with Vincent's murder and the investigation and all the threats we've been getting." Tommy pocketed his phone and pushed off from the workbench. "Which is why I'm bringing it to you instead of taking it to Jaxon first. You know Snake better than anyone else in this club, and if there's an innocent explanation for what he's doing I figured you'd be the one to see it."
The observation was fair and it told me Tommy was thinking clearly about this instead of just jumping to the worst possible conclusion. But the truth was that Snake's behavior was starting to fit a pattern that I couldn't easily explain away, no matter how well I knew the man or how long we'd been brothers.
"I'm going to talk to him," I said, setting the wrench down on the workbench with more force than I intended. "Right now, before he has a chance to come up with whatever cover story he's been preparing in case someone noticed what he's been doing."
"You want me to come with you?"
"No. Just me. If I come at him with backup it'll feel like an ambush and he'll shut down completely. I need him to feel like this is a conversation between brothers, not an interrogation."
Tommy nodded and headed for the garage door. "I'll be around if you need me. Just say the word."
I found Snake in the clubhouse kitchen, which felt almost too convenient, like the universe had decided to make this particular confrontation as easy as possible. He was standing at the counter making coffee with the kind of slow, deliberate movements that told me he was trying to look relaxed, but there was a tightness in his shoulders and a watchfulness in his eyes that gave him away to anyone who knew him well enough to read the signs.
He looked up when I walked in and his expression shifted from relaxed to guarded in a heartbeat, the way a deer looks when it hears a branch snap somewhere in the woods and suddenly has to decide whether to freeze or run.
"Ryder. What's up?"