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shit, so much the Horde didn’t know, in that whole situation. Even now, eight months after it was ostensibly behind them, Sherlock still kept poking around, trying to find answers.
     
    But none of that was why Hoosier wanted the officers to meet with Trick today—not exactly, at any rate.
     
    It was unusual for the officers to call one patch in for a meeting, and Trick looked commensurately wary. He’d pulled out of the outlaw work after his ordeal. Nobody had begrudged him that, or turned any kind of suspicion his way. He’d sacrificed more than most for the club, and he’d stayed true. But Sherlock knew that if he had been called into a meeting like this, especially after he’d stepped outside the outlaw circle, he’d be worried.
     
    Trick indeed seemed worried. He’d only been back in town a couple of days; today was his first day back at the shop. He waited until everyone had sat in their customary seats, then asked, “What’s up?”
     
    Connor sat forward, and Hoosier didn’t object. Connor was Trick’s best friend, and Hoosier still had some lingering slowness in his speech. “We got some news, brother. It won’t be easy to hear, but the first thing we want you to know is that you’re clear of any grief.”
     
    Trick raked a hand through his long hair. “Fuck, Con. Out with it.”
     
    “Stiles is dead.”
     
    Mark Stiles was Trick’s wife’s ex and the father of her little girl. He’d threatened to cause everybody trouble until Sherlock had found some dark dirt on him. They’d thought they’d achieved a ‘mutually assured destruction’ balance with him, keeping him in line. La Zorra hadn’t been happy with that arrangement, but she had deferred to Trick’s wish to keep him alive—Trick’s little stepdaughter loved her father. Instead, La Zorra had made an overture of her own to bring Stiles into her fold.
     
    “What? Fuck. What’d he do?” There was tension in his voice, but Sherlock thought that Trick looked a little relieved, too. Understandable—Stiles had been a jackass, and he’d been in Trick’s way.
     
    Connor looked at Bart, who gestured to Sherlock to pick up the thread—which he did. “We only know any of this in retrospect. It was done before there was even a trail. I don’t know whether it was an attack of conscience or stupidity, but while you were gone, he went to the Feds. The only reason it went nowhere fast is that he happened to land on a Fed that La Zorra owns, the one who took over your case, or whatever it was, last year and got you out. George Ellery. La Zorra was his first call, and she was on it so fast, Stiles was dead within an hour.”
     
    “Ellery also turned the rats out to us,” Lakota added. “He’s solid.”
     
    After Trick had been hauled in, the club had scrambled to understand why. Suspicion had fallen on Jesse quickly, because he’d been acting off for weeks. When Sherlock and Bart had found enough to level an accusation at a long-standing member and his buddy Titus, the two had already run for the Fed cover. When Ellery got involved, he’d handed them back to the Horde.
     
    What had happened next would be burned into Sherlock’s head for as long as he was capable of memory. A rat’s day of reckoning was the harshest the club could mete out.
     
    Bart shook his head. “I’d caution against any of us getting too comfortable with anybody. Who the fuck knows what we’re dealing with in the government. Whatever it is, it’s darker than black ops. We are off the grid.”
     
    Sherlock nodded; he agreed completely. “Yeah. At this point, what we don’t know is everything, and we can’t find a way in. If we’re not rooting around in La Zorra’s drawers, then the only intel we have is what comes out of her mouth.”
     
    Trick sighed, watching his fingers trace grooves and scars in the blonde oak of their table. “When I saw her last, back in December, she said something cryptic and provocative. She said, ‘Not all agencies