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Found Wren. She’s safe. I’m staying in Kettlewell for now.
His reply came before I put the phone down.
Call me.
Can’t yet.
That wasn’t a request.
I know.
By Thursday morning I had eleven missed calls from Dutch. Colt had called three times. Holden called once, then sent a long text I read the first line of and put down. Austen called twice—I couldn’t listen to the voicemails she left until after I’d seen Wren.
I didn’t answer any of them. My focus was Wren and Wren only. She was here. I was waiting for her to decide whether she’d see me. Everything else could wait.
I needed somewhere to stay while she decided. I found the cottage on a card in a hardware store window on Harbor Row, three streets up from the water. Gray shingle like everything else. Two bedrooms. Heating that worked. The owner wanted first and last. I paid six months up front because I didn’t know how long I was going to be here.
The second bedroom had a bed and a wardrobe. I cleared it inside an hour, then walked the walls with a tape measure. Power. Line. Space for a bench.
For twenty minutes, I thought about measurements instead of Wren.
Once I’d finished, I sat down on the floor with my back against the wall, put my coffee beside me and laid my phone on the boards between my boots. Then I called Dutch and put him on speaker.
He answered on the second ring. “What do you need?”
“I thought you’d be mad.”
“I am mad. I’m also relieved you finally fucking found her. What’s the deal?”
“I haven’t seen her yet. Robin gave me terms. I wait. Everything goes through Wren.”
“So you haven’t seen your kid?”
“No confirmed sighting. But I know where Wren’s living.”
“Surveillance?”
“Not an option. JW Security has cameras covering the harbor and most of the town. They had me in minutes on Wednesday and left me standing there for forty before anybody came out. Five men. Close-protection backgrounds. Clean business, clean books and cover good enough that I audited it twice and passed it twice. They kept her from me for a year.”
Dutch chuckled. “They’ve got to be pretty fucking good to get past you, brother.”
“Yeah, I’d rate them.”
“Tell me what you need.”
I looked at the bare wall opposite me. “You’re probably not going to like it, but I’m not coming back without her.”
“As your president, I’m telling you that you have a job. You don’t get to ride out and walk away from it because your personal life went to shit.”
“You did.”
“Yeah. I did. Cost the club a deal and left my brothers carrying a job that was mine. Then I disappeared for three months. I’m not proud of it, and I’m not letting you use me as precedent.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Bullshit. Tell me how this works without Venom losing its tech officer.”
“I set up here. Same systems, same alerts, same response time. String holds anything routine if I have to step out. Anything specialist stays with me. I call into church and ride down when the job needs me in the room.”
