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Acer’s voice lost all its teasing. “Anything. I’m at my computer now.”
“Jazz’s brother Paul somehow got out of lock up and he came here. He’s got Jazz. I need everything you can find, Acer. Hotel room, rental car, credit cards if he has ’em. I need to know everywhere he’s taken a shit over the last week.”
“On it. I’ll be in touch as soon as I can.”
“You need his last name?” Gumby asked.
“Nah, I got it.”
They hung up without any other words. Now that there wasn’t anything to do but wait, all the emotions he’d been squashing over the past ten minutes came rushing to the surface.
“Fuck,” Gumby whispered as he and Screw walked back into the clubhouse. A heaviness born of intense grief had settled over the men. No one spoke. Most sat staring at nothing with hard eyes and clenched fists while they waited for some word on Jazz. Waited to take action. Waited for blood.
“I’m gonna skin him alive.” The croaked vow was spoken with deadly assurance as Screw began to transform his pain and fear into fury.
“And I’ll hand you the fucking knife.” That was if Gumby could keep himself from using it first.
Screw drifted closer, just a fraction of an inch, but the intent was clear. Gumby didn’t think twice about wrapping his arms around his man and kissing him right in front of his entire fucking club. So much had fallen into perspective over the past day. What mattered and what didn’t.
Screw mattered.
Jazz mattered.
Family mattered, but if they couldn’t get on board, then they weren’t real family. This group accepted him with open arms, and he’d be damned if he was going to lose another member of his newfound family.
They’d get Jazz back or he’d fucking die trying.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
JAZZ COULDN’T STOP the shivering. Her muscles trembled and her body shook with an out of control fury. She’d bitten her tongue twice with the force of her chattering teeth. Blood had been pouring in rivers down her face since the explosion in the diner. A clumsy touch with her frozen hands revealed a gash along her hairline. She must have gotten hit in the blast. The volume of blood coating her face, clothes, and arms seemed tremendous.
Breathe, you know head wounds bleed a lot.
After driving into the mountains for fifteen minutes with the windows down, Paul threw her over his shoulder and carried her into a house.
She’d fought, best she could, but her limbs had grown clumsy and inefficient. Struggling wasted what little energy she’d mustered. Still, the feeling of skin gathering under her fingernails as she’d raked them across his flesh had been satisfying.
He’d sat her on a couch before opening all the windows in what was actually an adorable house. Quaint, with a modern farmhouse feel, the home could have come straight off Joanna Gaine’s TV show.
At first, she’d attempted talking to Paul. Tried begging, pleading, rationalizing, promising him the world. Anything that could possibly trigger sanity and get him to release her. But as she’d known from the other times he’d gotten his hands on her, conversation was another useless endeavor.
All he’d done in response was mumble some sort of prayer of defense against evil spirits.
So now she sat in someone’s house, shaking on the outside and screaming on the inside.
Viper was dead.
He’d died protecting her.
Viper was dead because of her. She could barely muster fear for the pain Paul would inflict because the agony of Viper’s death exceeded anything her stepbrother could do to her.
“I know it’s cold. It has to be that way.”
“F-fuck y-you,” she said, teeth clanking.
Paul moved faster than she’d have thought possible considering how he’d been gasping for breath after hauling her into the house. He was pale, sweating, jittery, clearly not in good health. Maybe even coming down from his latest high.
He yanked her up from the couch. “Your words can’t hurt me, devil,” he said as he grabbed her shoulders and shook her, hard.
“Paul! Stop!” The room spun as her brain rattled around in her head.
He released her and took a step back. “This is the last time, you hear me?” He spoke as though truly communicating with a demon spirit present in her body.
Jazz took a step back, but he’d fucked up her equilibrium. Her vision flipped upside down as she tumbled to the floor with a cry.
Paul came at her, knife in hand. The familiar scene caused terror to rip through her.
“N-no.” She shook her head, scrambling backward on numb hands and feet. “No, P-Paul. P-please.”
As she clambered, crab-walking away, he kept coming.
“S-stop!” she cried as her bloody hand slipped. Paul came closer. “P-please.” She scooted her ass along the floor, pushing with aching thighs. Terror overrode the cold but her limbs still moved with a slow inefficiency.
Her back hit the wall. God, she was trapped.
