Page 42 of Ruin

I wanted to grab him and shake him until he told me the truth. It was obvious that he was lying, but equally obvious that he had zero intention of giving me any information. I thought there was a 100 percent chance that he’d seen Saraya—probably even talked to her—but she’d sworn him to secrecy somehow.

Damn the girl. Damn the girl. What was she up to?

I marshaled all the patience I had in my body—which wasn’t much—and sighed. “Jimmy,” I said quietly. “She’s missing, and I’m worried. There are several people who might have taken her against her will, and if they did, her life is in danger. Now I know she told you to keep it a secret. I know she probably had a really good story all ready for you. But I’m telling you, if you don’t tell me where she is and what she said to you, I’m going to go get my gun and shoot you in the balls right now.”

Jimmy’s eyes grew even wider at that, and he gulped audibly.

Good. I head his attention. Maybe he’d finally realize that my word was more important than Saraya’s.

To my surprise, though, he didn’t immediately tell me what had happened. Instead, he leaned toward me, lowered his voice, and said, “No need to do that, boss. I know all about the mission.”

The mission? Our mission? No he didn’t, and that wouldn’t have had anything to do with Saraya, anyhow. What was he talking about? What mission could she have—

Oh. Oh my—fuck.

People who wanted to kidnap her.

Her constant harping on how this was all her fault.

A secret mission that she hadn’t so much as whispered to me about.

I was running for the house before the last thought left my head, screaming at my men to get their weapons and follow me.

“Where are we going?” Brock huffed, working to keep up with me.

“Saraya’s gone after Devil,” I shouted back. “And we’ve got to find her before she does anything stupid!”

CHAPTER 23

KNIGHT

BY THE TIME WE GOT to the bikes, my mind was moving quickly through all the places she might or might not have gone—as well as all the reasons we could or couldn’t show our faces there. The problem was simple: The cops were looking for us, and though they evidently hadn’t thought to search Brock’s house yet, they would most certainly arrest us the moment they saw us in the city. It was the reason we’d been so careful up to this point.

And it was going to make searching for Saraya even more difficult.

I wrapped a bandana around my face and put on my helmet, thanking the universe for giving me a vehicle that almost required this sort of protection, and looked over to see Remy and Brock doing the same thing. Jimmy and the other men were staying here in case Saraya returned—and because I was furious with Jimmy for having let her go in the first place. Remy, Brock, and I had one mission, and one mission only: figure out where the hell she’d gone and bring her home.

Okay, that was two, but who the fuck was counting?

The positives: She didn’t have transportation that I knew of, and she also had only one mission. She was going after Devil. I could feel it in my bones. So as long as we could figure out where he was before she arrived...

My attention snagged on the group of bikes in front of me, and I frowned. Something was off there. We didn’t have our whole crew here, obviously, but there should be more bikes here than there were. Two for Remy, Brock’s, my two—

Wait.

I yanked my gaze back to where my bike was sitting, freshly back home after it had sat in that restaurant’s parking lot for several days, and looked around it. My second bike was gone. The one I’d brought over specifically for Saraya to practice her skills.

Saraya. The bike I’d brought for her.

That little minx had taken the bike I gave her to head for Devil and whatever her plan for him was.

Fury roared through my body at the thought of her taking my bike—my bike!—to anywhere within spitting distance of him, and the idea that she was going back to him, racing back while I was looking the other way, set fire to the gasoline of my anger.

I was beyond furious. I was so hot I could have been breathing flame and it would have felt natural.

And I wasn’t sure whether I was angrier at him drawing her... or her for going.

The anger grew as we roared toward town, each of us bent over our handlebars and keeping our faces low in case there were cops on the street. Sure, our bandanas should hide our identities, in theory. But the cops around here knew our bikes, and I didn’t think we could maintain our anonymity for long.