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I don’t bat an eye. “I think it is since you’re clearly not at the bar to meet people. Aside from me, I haven’t seen you talk to anybody. However, you’re very interested in people with a very specific tattoo. You also don’t want your friend knowing that you’re visiting a bar. And, I have a strong feeling your brother isn’t gone on a trip with some ‘friends.’”
Sarah looks pale, her hand clutching onto the back of the chair, her lips trembling.
I can’t take that devastated look on her face, and I cover the distance between us in two wide steps. Crouching at her feet, I hold her hands, which are cold as ice, concern in my voice, “Sarah, what’s going on? Where’s your brother?”
She opens her mouth, and her lips tremble as she whispers, “I don’t know.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“He’s missing.” She pulls her hands away from me and wraps her arms around her middle, misery and fear radiating from her. “I don’t know where he is. I don’t know if he’s okay. I don’t even know if he’s alive.”
Things aren’t adding up here. “Why were you in the—”
The tattoos.
Carefully, I ask, “Sarah, do the Street Serpents have anything to do with your brother’s disappearance?”
She jerks her head in a nod, and my blood runs cold.
“And just exactly what were you planning to do?” I ask dangerously, eyes narrowing.
She doesn’t meet my eyes. “Bryan joined the gang. I found out about it a while back. He was trying to get out. One of his ‘friends’ in the gang was someone we grew up with. Roy. I thought that maybe if I saw him, I could talk to him, find out something, do something.”
I remember the picture I saw in her room, and I realize why Bryan is so familiar. “Bryan visited the bar a few times.” I let out a whoosh of air. “That’s why you were there.”
“I’m not trying to stir trouble.” She looks at me through tears in her eyes, and her voice cracks, “I just want my baby brother back.”
Looking at her pain brings back memories of a time that I had pushed deep inside me, of a laughing young girl with the same eyes as me, her little pigtails trailing behind her as she raced after me, pigtails that I spent over an hour making for her.
Hating the sight of the tears on her face, I cup her face and wipe them away with my thumbs. “Do you have a picture of Roy?”
She shakes her head. “No, but he has a cross-shaped scar on his right cheek.”
I freeze. “Are you ta
lking about Roy Mortimer?”
She gives me a confused look. “You know him?”
Imagining Sarah anywhere near that man makes my heart stutter in my chest. Her face in my hands, I growl. “You cannot go anywhere near that man, Sarah! He’s one of the top enforcers of the gang.”
Sarah pales. “That’s a bad thing, right?”
“He’s a vicious man. If he finds out that you’re sniffing around for information, he’ll make you disappear with a snap of his fingers!”
She pulls away from me and walks over to pour herself a glass of water, her hands unsteady. “He won’t hurt me. I know Roy. I just need to–”
I grab her by her arms and whirl her around to face me. “I said, no!”
She bares her teeth at me. “And you don’t tell me what to do!”
So, she has claws.
I release my grip and take a step back, my voice low. “I’m saying this for your own good, Sarah.”
She doesn’t look me in the eye. “Bryan is all I have. I raised him, protected him, sacrificed everything for him. If something happens to him, I don’t think I’ll be able to live with myself.”
She raises her eyes to meet mine, and I see the fear mixed with the determination. “So, it doesn’t matter whether Roy is a murderer or an enforcer. It doesn’t matter if I get hurt. Nothing matters if I can get Bryan back.”
