And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about that.
Worse than that, I felt completely at a loss and useless. I didn’t have the first clue on where to start.
“You care about my sister?” Cami asked and the dense shock was clear in her voice. It was also given away by the scrunched-up, confused face.
“Yes, Cami,” I said pointedly. “I really fucking care about Laurel.”
“Brand told me that Cami nor Chris has been in contact with her for a week. And she hasn’t shown up to work?” Iron asked.
“No,” I said shaking my head deciding that I was now talking for all of us. “I called Cable when I didn’t find her at her place and asked him to see if he could find out if she was in any of the hospitals.” I turned my attention to Cable.
He just grimly shook his head.
“What if she was admitted and had no identification on her?” I asked but was pretty sure that someone would have recognized her. The Benson family was pretty well known in this city.
“There were no Jane Does at either hospital. Not for a few weeks now.”
“So then we need to try to retrace her steps after she left here that night.” Iron spoke the thing I needed to hear the most. Because I was at a loss as for where to go from here.
“She left the bar and told me that she’d called an Uber and was meeting it out front. I offered to walk her out but she waved me off.” Chris hung his head as he recounted the night’s events. “I started to protest but she told me it was already waiting outside. I let it go, thinking the place was busy enough and I knew there were probably people hanging out front. It’s not like someone would be stupid enough to roll right up to a motorcycle club’s bar and start shit.”
That was true.
“Now that I think about it,” Chris said suddenly looking up at me. “She said that right after I saw you slip out the back.”
“Yeah, she must have followed me back to my room. I hadn’t been there long before she knocked on my door.” I sighed, knowing what happened next. I knew they did too so I just kept going without saying it. “Then what would she have done?” I looked at Cami thinking that she knew her the best. They were sisters after all.
“She probably never even ordered an Uber.” Cami looked off in the distance like she was trying to work something out.
“She would have walked home,” I said through gritted teeth.
I knew it.
And I hated that I hadn’t thought beyond the moment that night.
“She’s broke,” I went on trying to hold down my anger. “You know that. We all do even if we act like it’s not true. She’s barely able to keep the lights on in that shit box she lives in. She never had any intentions of paying for a ride home. She couldn’t even if she wanted to.”
“But why? She knows we would have paid for it. Or gotten one of the sober prospects to take her home.” This came from Mouse.
“Pride,” I grunted. “And she probably thought she was going to stay in my room when she followed me there.”
“Now that you mention it,” Cami said cutting in. “She seemed hesitant about coming out. And I don’t think she paid for a drink all night.” She looked over at Brand. “Everyone kept buying them for her. Is that why she kept flirting?”
The realization of it hit me right then. Like a big slap to the face. She wasn’t trying to push me away. She wasn’t trying to ignore me. She was trying to hide the fact that things were that bad for her. That she had to resort to getting my brothers to buy her drinks in order to keep up the façade.
“Fuck!” I roared.
She pretended I wasn’t there because she knew the moment she looked at me that I would know. Because whether or not she had wanted to, she’d let me in and she couldn’t hide things from me like she wished she could.
How the fuck couldn’t I have seen it that night?
Why am I just getting a damn clue now?!
“Calm down, brother,” Ky said in an oddly soft tone.
“Yeah, okay,” I said holding my hands up because though he sounded calm, his body looked rigid and ready to tackle if need be. “So say she walked home…”
I didn’t finish that thought. I was out the door and down the stairs before I even realized it. I needed to retrace her steps to find some damn clues. If there was anything left to find. It had been a fucking week after all. But I had to try. And fast, because the day was quickly losing light.
