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Thankfully, I didn’t, or else I’d have to lie to the sheriff and handle this on my own. “They’re not our girls. They look too young.”
“And no underage girls ever slip through the cracks?”
“Not for more than a night or two before Slate gets a check on their real IDs.” There was plenty legal pussy to sell that we didn’t waste our time with jailbait. “Slate can try to ID them for you.”
He nodded. “Yeah, thanks.”
“Speak of the devil,” I grunted as Slate ambled over to us from the electronics pile. “What’s up?”
His gaze slid to the sheriff cautiously and then he turned back to me, his expression fierce. “I found your old phone in your pile.”
When he didn’t continue, I raised my brows. “And?”
He looked once more between me and the sheriff meaningfully, and the older man took the hint and left with a smile and tip of his hat.
“And I checked through it before clearing the data,” Slate continued once Hudson was out of earshot, “just in case, you know? Looks like you didn’t cancel the service for ages.”
“Yeah,” I rubbed the back of my neck with a chuckle. “I was still getting those bills for months and months before I finally got around to canceling.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve got texts. From Stacy. You should read them.”
I shrugged. Stacy and I had a few nights together what now felt like a lifetime ago. She was a great lay but that was all she was to me, back then and now. We’d both moved on, and I didn’t go back, not ever. “Summarize them for me,” I demanded. It was a dick move, but Slate was acting like this was something important.
He shook his head. “Sorry, man. You’re my prez and my brother in arms, but I ain’t giving you this news. Take it.” He shoved the phone at me and took a step back.
The messages were from five years ago, which was about the last time I saw her, but the number of messages was alarming. “Shit,” I huffed as I read through the texts, each getting angrier than the last.
Okay, fine, asshole. You don’t want to be part of your kid’s life? Don’t. We’ll be just fine without you. I’m not asking you for anything, just the chance to meet your boy. I thought you were better than this. I guess not. Fuck you very much.
That was the last message she left. Five fucking years ago.
“What the actual fuck,” I muttered under my breath, noticing my heart was racing before looking up to discover I was standing alone in the bustling crowd. “Slate!”
His head jerked up from where he was back at the dwindling pile of electronics, and he winced when he saw me.
“What the fuck!” I shouted at him, part mad at myself, part shocked, and part ready to somehow blame him for a second, if only to have somewhere to direct the turmoil going through me. I waved the phone at him, and his eyes darted as if looking for an escape. “What the fuck!”
“Language!” an affronted mother huffed as she walked past with her twelve-year-old, but I ignored her and paced towards my tech guy. He took half a step back, but I pointed my finger at him as if by that alone I could glue him to the spot. “Stay!”
“Uh, prez, I don’t know if I should get involved—”
“Shut it,” I grumbled as I stopped before him, and I gripped my old phone tight in my fist. “I need to find her.”
“Oh, well in that case, here’s her address. It’s in Pine Valley.” I blinked and raised my brows as he handed me an old receipt with an address scrawled on the back. “I, um, figured you’d say that, so I sent myself her old contact details from that phone and got to work finding her while you were reading. The number is disconnected though, so you can’t call through.”
“Huh,” I took the receipt, feeling a bit calmer now that I had a plan of action and a means to get going on it immediately. “Remind me not to insult you techies anymore.”
“I do, prez, but you don’t—”
“Yeah, yeah…” I shot him a grin in thanks and turned away, but the expression fell quickly as I walked.
She’s been in Pine Valley this entire time and never came to the clubhouse to rip me a new asshole for abandoning my kid? That’s what the Stacy I remembered would have done, which didn’t sit well with me. I had to go there. Now.
Tapping the address into my maps, I watched as the route popped up and informed me the drive would be forty-five minutes in the current traffic. I’d make that thirty-five.
My tall frame ate up the parking lot until I was on my bike and heading out to hopefully meet my kid for the first time. Fucking hell, at thirty-six years old, I thought life couldn’t throw any more surprises at me. Me, a father?
Chapter Two
