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Everything in my body froze.
“Gwen and Amy practically held guns to my head,” he continued, signifying that he was probably tweaking on the energy drinks he consumed like they were water.
“And I know you’re one tough motherfucker, but even you would crack with those two bitches breathing over your shoulder.”
Though he might’ve been just a little bit correct, I could barely focus on anything else other than the name he’d just uttered. The name that no one in the club dared speak around me, not even Macy.
“They liked her. A lot. Everyone did,” Wire added. “And I thought, given the club’s history with women, I thought it would be best for us to keep track of her. You know, until...”
He trailed off, and I gritted my teeth. Until you get your shit together and bring her home. I knew that was what he’d left unsaid.
Yeah, that’s what all the other motherfuckers had done. Gotten their shit together, figured out how to be a monster in a cut while being something else entirely for their woman. I wasn’t like them, though. I wasn’t going to bring her home.
But he wasn’t calling me to try to convince me to do that. No one was going to do that unless they had a death wish. Wire was calling for a different reason. And I knew it wasn’t a good fucking one.
“Is she okay?” I barked into the phone.
Anderson looked up from the book he was reading across the room. Newly patched, yet he somehow had the balls to read a book on breastfeeding in the fucking clubhouse. I hated the motherfucker. Hated him for his happiness. His family. I hated all of them. And I would burn the fucking world down if anything had happened to Freya.
“She’s okay,” Wire answered quickly. “More than okay, depending on how you look at it.”
“You better stop dancing around whatever it is you have to fucking say,” I hissed.
“Okay, well I’ve been keeping track of her credit cards, her phone location, pretty much everything that Uncle Sam keeps track of in addition to a few things he isn’t smart enough to look at. Something came up on her health insurance. A visit to an OB-GYN. So I did some more creative digging and broke a few dozen laws. Got her records.” Wire finally took a breath. But then he said five more words, rocking my fucking world. “She’s almost four months pregnant.”
My heart stopped beating. But that couldn’t have been right since I hadn’t fucking had one since the moment I’d left Freya in her bed, naked and asleep.
Almost four months ago.
I threw the phone at the wall where it smashed into pieces.
THREE WEEKS LATER
FREYA
“Ms. Barker?”
I turned around to look at the man who’d called my name. He was wearing an expensive suit, was tall, clean-shaven and handsome. I did not recognize him, yet he knew my name, setting off my internal alarm bells.
He couldn’t have been a police officer, or any kind of government worker for that matter, because his suit was expensive. Tailored for him specially. No one in the government made enough money for bespoke suits.
My guard went up immediately, and my gaze went around the grocery store parking lot, barely a car to be seen. It was two in the afternoon on a Wednesday. After the lunch rush, before the moms who brought their kids after school had arrived. A lull. The larger chain grocery store down the street was more crowded, but I’d wanted to go to the expensive health food store, so I was here.
Alone.
I swallowed. This was a safe little town. A large majority of its residents were retired and nostalgic for an old America that didn’t exist anymore. It almost existed here, in this small town with only a handful of big-box stores. It was becoming more popular with the cashed-up, younger generation who were filtering in to open trendy boutiques and artisan coffee shops—where the coffee paled in comparison to Oliver’s, and they had yet to remember my name or my order.
Yes, this was a safe town. There was a perfectly normal explanation as to why this man knew my name and was approaching me in a quiet parking lot.
“Can I help you?” I asked, straightening my spine after closing the trunk of my car.
His gaze flickered up and down my body. I was wearing chunky heeled boots and a fitted tank dress, so the small swell in my stomach was clearly visible. I’d ‘popped’ overnight after my stomach had remained almost completely flat for four and a half months.
When his eyes stayed on my stomach for a little too long, I gripped my keys tightly in my palm. I was supposed to go for the eyes, that’s all I remembered.
“I’m going to have to ask you to come with me,” he said when his gaze returned to my eyes.
