Page 55 of Devour

AXL

My blacked-out Ducati roars underneath me as the road opens up past the estate gates. I twist the throttle once we’re on the back roads. Priest is beside me on his bike, with Kase and Crew right behind us.

“So is her pussy everything you dreamed it would be?” Priest asks over the comms in our helmets. My jaw tightens as Kase and Crew’s laughter cuts through in response.

“Shut the fuck up.” I can take a joke but not when it comes to my girl and any part of her body. She belongs to me. I don’t give a shit what they think about it.

“Guess not.” Priest accelerates beside me. “You’re still the same asshole. No magic pussy on Saylor.”

“Mention her pussy again and I’ll break both of your fucking arms.”

“Leave him alone, Priest.” Crew chimes in. “It’s not Axl’s fault that you’re jacking off by yourself in your room like a fucking teenager.”

Kase loses it, chuckling hard.

“I’m surrounded by fucking children.” I gun the throttle and pull ahead. The Ducati rips through the curve, and the wind cuts through my jacket. Priest is laughing, and I’m deciding how hard I’m going to punch his ass when we stop.

“For the record,” Kase says once the laughter dies, “Crew’s girl is down for just about anything. So you should get on that, Priest. She’ll do anything for you. Axl too. She’s like a bitch in heat wanting to fuck him next.”

“Not a chance in hell.” My grip tightens on the handlebars. “And if she comes near me again, Crew, you’d better handle your bitch before I do.”

“She’s a slut.” Crew doesn’t say it as if he’s insulting her. It sounds a lot more like a compliment. “And she likes dick. It’s just how she is, which is fine by me. The last thing I want is for her to get fucking attached. Not like Axl over there, who is going to have Justin as his best man in his wedding to pretty girl.”

“Fuck you.” I speed ahead and pop up on my back wheel, doing a wheelie. Priest follows and does the same, riding next to me. Then we both pop back down.

The gate that no one knows about appears through the trees. It’s rusted and overgrown, exactly how it’s supposed to look. The Sinclairs control the code and change it regularly. I look at the numbers Dane texted me a bit ago. I punch them in and delete Dane’s text, and the gates open. We roll on through, the gates immediately closing behind us.

We park the bikes behind the building. I climb off of mine, draw back my fist, and punch Priest in the shoulder. “Next time, it’s your fucking face.”

Priest rubs his shoulder and grins. “It was worth it.”

“You’re a fucking idiot.” Kase pulls his helmet off and stretches his neck. “Just make sure we’re there when you poke the fucking bear so we get to watch him kick your ass.”

“You have to keep Axl on his toes. He works better that way.” Priest shoves me, and I shake my head. He’s been my best friend since we were kids, and there isn’t a man alive I trust more. But he knows how to push my fucking buttons. And he does, as often as he can.

We head inside. The building is set up with all the access and equipment we need to do work that we don’t want anyone to know about. The stations are set up to bounce IPs and ensure that any digital footprint we leave is erased. It’s some of the best tech in existence and provides backdoor access to every database you can imagine. The Sinclairs don’t fuck around when it comes to this shit, and neither do we. Anything we find in this room stays here until we hand it directly to Dane Sinclair.

Crew goes straight to his usual work station and pulls out the folder Tate gave us.

“I was thinking we start by dividing up the pages of missing women.” Crew opens the folder and starts laying pages across the table. “We’ll see what connections we can find first.”

Priest drops into his chair and puts his boots on the desk. I knock them off without looking at him.

He leans forward, crossing his arms. “I looked over the file again while you all were busy fucking. And jacking off.” He smirks at Kase. “There are forty-seven women on this list. I’ve already found a pattern. The ones Tate flagged each disappeared around six months apart, while the others are a month or less. The states in which they were taken from also vary with no disappearance in the same state within a month. Somebody spaced these out on purpose. It doesn’t seem random—more like someone who knows how to keep cops from connecting the dots.”

“That’s interesting.” Crew stops sorting and looks up. “If it’s a Raven, they can buy off every cop between here and the coast. And they’d know exactly how not to get caught. But they’d have to know for sure that the Council wouldn’t find out.”

“Or they have protection from the Council.” I hope not, because that could make this a suicide mission. “Tate said this could go as high as the top. If someone on the Council is involved or looking the other way, then this is going to be way more difficult. And more dangerous.”

“And if someone’s pulling this off without Dane finding out, that’s not some low-level Raven. That’s someone with serious fucking reach,” Kase says.

“We don’t know if that’s even the case yet.” Priest leans back in his chair. “Let’s follow the facts and see where they lead.”

“Agreed.” I crack my knuckles. “Let’s divide up the list and see where we can find connections to Raven families. Dane gave us access to the entire list of members.”

Most Ravens never see the full membership list, except the Council, and they don’t know we’ve been given access.

We divide the names among the four of us and get to work. The membership database is massive. There are thousands of names organized by family, generation, and tier. Every marriage, every birth, every death, whether they served as a Talon or Dove, auction records, and more. If these women have a connection to a Raven family, we’ll find it here.