Free Hitmen Triumph by Sigmund Brouwer Page B

one of the bikers growl at Nate. It came through very clearly, although my fm was buried in his backpack. It was the biker with the deep, deep voice.
    â€œLet’s go,” Tattoo Biker said. “For a ride.”
    â€œWhere?” Nate asked. “Why?”
    â€œShut up,” we heard Tattoo Biker say through the speaker on Mercedes’ dash. “Trust me. You’ll find out. And when you do, you won’t like it.”
    They pushed him into a white van.
    The one they had used to drive me away from Chinatown.

chapter twenty-three
    We followed. From downtown, the van went east on Memorial and then turned off onto Zoo Drive. There were a few other cars on Zoo Drive, and it was dark. I doubted the bikers knew we were following them.
    We passed the lights of the Calgary Zoo. The day before, I thought I’d had plenty to worry about at the zoo. Now, as we passed by it again, I realized things were much worse.
    â€œYou’re an idiot,” Tattoo Biker was saying to Nate. “You really thought you could foolus by pretending we needed to scare your brother away?”
    â€œDon’t know what you’re talking about,” Nate said. My fm was doing a great job, sending the conversation to my processor. At the same time, the processor sent sound to my spider and to the speaker on the dash. Where Mercedes was also recording it.
    â€œWe’ve got a videotape that proves otherwise,” the second biker told him. “You sent your brother into Chinatown the next day to snoop around. He was in disguise, but when you run the tape, you can see him hiding something. He’s deaf, right? It was a listening device he hid in there. He left it there when some girl went in to ask questions and buy a pirated DVD. And you know who the girl is? The daughter of a guy who owns a bunch of movie theaters.”
    â€œYou guys are crazy,” Nate said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    â€œNo?” came the question from Bent Nose Biker. “We’ve had someone watching you since then. Tonight he went into the pizza place and sat in a back booth. Our guy sawyou have a meeting with the undercover cop. Explain that, why don’t you?”
    Undercover cop! That’s why the black-bearded guy had gone to the police station. He was a cop! Just like our dad.
    â€œSome guy stopped at my table because he knows I play for the Hitmen,” Nate said. “If he’s an undercover cop, I’ll take your word for it.”
    â€œNice try,” Tattoo Biker growled. “If that was just coincidence, want to tell us how your parents died?”
    Nate didn’t answer.
    â€œYour dad was an undercover cop too,” Bent Nose Biker said. “Worked the Lower Mainland near Vancouver. A cop who pretended to join a biker gang to try to nail drug dealers.”
    Nate still didn’t answer. My hands were fists. I was beginning to figure things out.
    â€œYeah,” Tattoo Biker said. “We heard one of the bikers in the Vancouver gang was driving a cement truck one day. You know the rest, don’t you?”
    â€œI have nothing to say,” Nate said.
    â€œWe’ve put two and two together,” Tattoo Biker said. “You’re some kid trying to get payback. But guess what—you lost.”
    I thought back on some of what I’d heard Nate say at the pizza place.
He’s been following me...We need to do something about it...So can I tell him.
    I remembered Max’s answer.
Tell him what you need to tell him. Just make sure you don’t get caught. We need to make sure, one way or another, that he’s completely out of this.
    This meant that Nate had called me to meet him at the pizza place because Max had given him permission to let me know what was going on. Nate had not called in the bikers. They’d captured him. And now I knew why.
    Nate wasn’t betraying me. Or our parents. He was doing what Mercedes was doing.