Chapter 348: Two Hunts

Lucas had already been on Aaron’s trail for a full hour.

It started with the TikTok page Rechelle showed him. The account itself was careless ~ old posts, repeated locations, a few tagged cafés, and one livestream thumbnail with a half-visible window frame in the background. That alone was not enough. What mattered more was the digital residue people like Aaron never cleaned up.

Lucas used the profile links first. From there he pulled an associated email pattern, then a recovered login trail tied to a cheap secondary account Aaron had used months earlier. That account had once been active on a free web service with exposed IP logs. One of those logs was recent enough to matter. Cross-checking the IP against local network ranges narrowed it from the whole city to a commercial lodging cluster on the east side. A second pass through public booking fragments and a reused username finally pinned it down.

Value Lodge.

By the time the location locked in, Lucas sat back in the chair and let out a short breath of satisfaction. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just the quiet pleasure of a hunt that had gone cleanly. He turned the phone once in his hand, checked the map again, and committed the route to memory. Then he stood up and headed downstairs.

Rechelle was in the kitchen preparing lunch.

She had clearly decided to stay busy while he worked, moving between the counter and the stove with the kind of focus people use when they do not want to think too hard. The smell of food already filled the lower floor ~ warm oil, seasoning, something simple and domestic that clashed completely with the direction of Lucas’s thoughts. When she noticed him coming down, she glanced over her shoulder, ready to ask if he wanted anything.

Lucas spoke first.

"I’m heading out for a bit. Need to run a few errands."

Rechelle turned fully toward him, surprised. A spatula hovered uselessly in one hand. "Errands? This is my city. I know it better than you. If you need something, I can~"

"No need," Lucas said, already calm. "I’ll be back soon. Just a long stroll."

The way he said it made it obvious he did not want company. Rechelle studied his face for a second longer, reading the refusal without needing it spelled out. Whatever he was going to do, he intended to do it alone. That realization settled under her ribs with a familiar weight. She had asked him to stay. She had asked for protection. She had not fully prepared herself for what protection would look like once it started moving.

Her voice softened, but the worry stayed under it.

"Then be careful."

Lucas stepped in, kissed her lightly on the cheek, and gave her the kind of small reassurance that was meant to settle a room without explaining anything.

"I’ll be back soon. Nothing to worry about."

He left before the moment could stretch into questions.

Outside, the afternoon light sat clean against the driveway. Lucas took a ride straight toward Value Lodge ~ the place his tracking had marked as Aaron’s current hole. The city slid past the windows in layers: polished streets giving way to busier commercial stretches, then older blocks, then the thinner quiet of a side of town that did not pretend to be more than it was. He did not rush. There was no need. A man who had already been found once would either still be licking his wounds or already running again. Either way, the trail was fresh enough.

---

Meanwhile, the Dirty Saints did not waste time.

Once they left the wrecked Airbnb, they moved straight for the address Aaron had given them. No extra talk. No celebration. Just the restless energy of men who had smelled something bigger than a normal debt collection. The van cut through the city with purpose, carrying seven of them and the kind of silence that only appears when everybody is already thinking about money.

Traffic thickened, then thinned again as they left the cheaper districts behind. One of the younger men kept checking his phone. Another cleaned under his nails with a folded receipt and said nothing. The boss sat near the front, eyes on the road, jaw set in the expression of a man recalculating the size of a job while the vehicle was still moving.

By the time they entered Rechelle’s neighborhood, the change in atmosphere was impossible to miss.

The streets were cleaner. The houses sat farther apart. Even the trees looked better kept. The air itself felt expensive ~ quiet gates, polished driveways, high walls, and the soft confidence of a place built for people who did not panic over unpaid debts. One of the men near the window let out a low whistle. Another sat up straighter, as if posture alone could match the surroundings. Even the boss’s expression shifted. The earlier irritation hardened into focus.

This was not a cheap target area.

Looking at the mansion from a distance, the job suddenly looked more serious than Aaron’s swollen mouth had made it sound. The property did not shout. It did not need to. High walls. Controlled entrance. The kind of house that made twenty million feel less like a fantasy and more like a number worth waiting for. In their heads the payout climbed fast. Maybe more than twenty. Enough to make patience look intelligent.

So they parked the van farther down the street, far enough not to draw immediate attention, and settled in across from the property.

Engine off.

Windows half-down.

Eyes on the house.

They would wait.

Evening was the window Aaron had given them. Until then, they watched the mansion, counted visible exits, noted the rhythm of the street, and let the hunger build in silence.

---

Across the city, Lucas’s ride finally slowed to a stop.

Value Lodge sat in a completely different world from the neighborhood the Saints had just entered. The streets here were narrower, the buildings older, the whole area carrying the tired look of a place people used when money had already run out. Cheap signage hung above faded paint. A vending machine near the corner flickered weakly. The quiet here was not peaceful. It was the quiet of people minding their own business because they could not afford not to.

So this was where Aaron had crawled into.

Lucas stepped down and took in the lodging from the outside first. The building matched the digital trail, but the state of it already told a story.

Lucas approached the unit carefully.

The door was wrong before he even touched it. Frame damaged. Lock broken. A dark scuff marked the lower panel where someone had forced entry hard enough to leave proof. The air leaking from inside already carried the sour mix of beer, sweat, and leftover violence. Lucas slowed at once. He listened. No movement. No voices. Only the dull ambient noise of the street behind him.

Then he went in.

The interior was scattered. A chair sat crooked near the center of the room. Glass glittered close to the entrance. An empty bottle lay on its side by the wall, the last of its contents long soaked into the floor. The smell of alcohol was still thick enough to sit at the back of the throat. Lucas moved through the space without rushing, eyes going over every detail ~ the drag marks near the bedroom doorway, the blood-smudged patch on the carpet, the sense that several people had filled this room and then emptied out of it in a hurry.

Nothing about the place felt abandoned by choice.

By the time he reached the main room, one thing was already clear.

Aaron had not been living here in peace.

Someone had already found him.