Page 95 of Texting the Wrong Bikers

I wrench my arm free and spin away, catching a glimpse of Dash’s concerned expression and Brielle’s frightened face before I push past them, charging back to the entry hall. The staircase disappears beneath me two steps at a time.

“Please, you can’t go in there,” Brielle pleads, calling after me. “He’s busy!”

As if I’d give a shit about his job. I don’t even slow down. The first door reveals an empty guest bathroom. The second I swing open so violently that the handle slams against the wall with a crack that reverberates around the room.

“What the—” Ethan leaps to his feet behind his desk, whirling around so quickly his office chair collides with the wall.

For one brief second, I search his face for guilt, fear, anything to confirm my gut fear; instead, I find nothing but confusion and fear.

Footsteps pound up the steps behind me. “I tried to stop him,” Brielle pants, coming to a breathless halt in the doorway.

“What the fuck have you done with her?” I ask.

“He’s trying to help,” Dash says as he catches up with me.

The fight drains from me like air rushing from a balloon.

I’d become so convinced that Ethan had snuck out that he was somehow keeping Sadie here. One look at his face destroys that fantasy, and I know the truth. He doesn’t know. I was wrong. Ethan didn’t take her. The crushing weight of that realization settles over me.

“It’s not him, Trig,” Dash says softly, placing a steady hand on my shoulder.

The words knock the air out of my lungs. For the last hour, I’ve convinced myself Ethan was the answer because I needed somebody to blame. Now that certainty disappears, leaving nothing but fear. Everything inside me goes numb as black despair overwhelms me. I barely register Ethan’s demands to know what the hell is going on or Brielle’s rushed apologies and explanation as she tries to calm the storm. Their voices blur together into meaningless noise. I almost don’t hear what Dash is trying to say until he repeats it.

“Did you hear me, Trigger?”

I lift my head, heavy as lead.

“I said that we think we know who took Sadie.”

Color seeps back into my vision. “What?”

Before Dash can answer, his phone starts ringing. He glances at the screen and answers.

“Chief. We’ve got a bit of a situation here. Trigger needs to hear it from you…” He pauses and switches the call to the loudspeaker.

“Listen to me, Trigger. We think Tyler took her. I tried calling you earlier,” Chief says without preamble. “The guy from her gym. He turned up at the bar the other night being a bit of an asshole. I didn’t think anything of it and…” he pauses. “I guess I got jealous when I saw them talking. Maybe if I hadn’t, I would have seen him for what he is. A fucking predator…”

Tyler. He’d been there from the beginning. Standing in plain sight while we’d chased Ethan across the city like idiots. We’d laughed about him. Teased Sadie about him. None of us had ever considered that somebody like Tyler could become dangerous. We knew that if it wasn’t Ethan, then we were looking for a monster. But we forgot that monsters usually look perfectly ordinary.

“Where does he live? We gotta go there,” I growl.

“We don’t know yet,” Chief replies, frustration tinging every syllable. “That’s what Ethan’s trying to find out. He’s good with computers. We’ve contacted the cops and me and Shadow are on our way to the gym now. Dani messaged his friend who she hooked up with the other week. She’s at the clubhouse with Owen, and she’ll call if she hears anything.”

Everyone starts talking at once, throwing out theories, questions and plans, but their voices fade into the background. All I can hear is the roar of blood in my ears. The news should be a relief, but all I feel is shame. I should have known, should have thought of him. How the fuck didn’t we see it?

We all should have. It never even crossed our minds, after all, Sadie had been interested in him, he was a flirt, a ladies’ man, the kind of guy who just moves on to the next woman, or so we assumed. I wouldn’t even go as far as to say we judged Tyler on assumptions, because if I’m being honest, I didn’t even think of him. He was a minor rival, just some guy Sadie crushed on briefly. We didn’t consider him because he was handsome, charming and flirtatious, the sort of man who always seemed to have women around him. We’d assumed rejection would barely register to a man like that.

It never crossed my mind that he might not have handled rejection any better than I would have. The thought turns my stomach because I know exactly what I’d be capable of if somebody took Sadie away from me, and I hate myself for understanding him even a little.

Chapter 32

Shadow

Sadie’s good-for-nothing-ex came up trumps and got us an address. The house doesn’t look remarkable. It sits at the end of a quiet suburban street lined with almost identical detached homes, each one with neatly clipped hedges, polished windows and flower beds bursting with color. The little brass plaque beside the yellow door bears nothing more sinister than the house number. It looks like it belongs on the cover of a gardening magazine. There are no boarded-up windows, no overflowing trash cans, no obvious signs that anything is wrong.

I’ve spent enough years walking into villages that looked peaceful while hiding unimaginable horrors to know that evil rarely announces itself. The street is painfully ordinary. If Chief hadn’t called us here, I would have driven straight past without giving the place a second glance.

I kill my engine and remove my helmet, listening. I drown out the rhythmic ticking of my cooling engine, the birdsong, children playing in the neighboring backyards. Military training is difficult to switch off. Years later, I still find myself searching for the things most people never notice. A person wearing a coat on a hot summer’s day, a car that keeps circling, a curtain twitching too often.