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“You can’t be hurt that bad if you’re grinning like that,” Mama Hen said as she walked up with a sawed-off shotgun with a hot pink stock in her right hand, Maxie trotting at her side.
“What are you… doing here?” Rex asked as he stared up at her.
“Well…Someonehad to stand guard. Your mate took off to end the fuckers who attempted to end you.”
His head throbbing, Rex narrowed his gaze. “Shewhat?!”
Jolene
After leaving Warden’s Pass, Jolene took a right on Phillips Road and turned left onto County Road 452 going East. Rex said five miles, so she alternated between watching the odometer, the road, and the properties that were scattered along the distance.
Just over four and a half miles from Phillips Road, she saw an abandoned two-story house. Taking a right into the driveway, she visually scanned the property. Jolene didn’t see signs of anyone, and there were no vehicles besides her own small SUV.
Pulling out the small flashlight that she kept in the glove box and a gun from her holster, she got out and kept her head on a swivel as she slowly approached the house. The driveway was dirt, mostly packed, but she could see fresh tire tracks. Someone had been there recently.
Glancing at the front porch, she saw that there were rotted and missing boards. Deciding the back porch and door were the better, safer option, she headed that way.
Doing her best to not make much noise, Jolene creeped up the three steps at the rear of the house and crossed the small porch. The back door was wide open. Remaining vigilant, she entered the dark space and stopped just inside to listen. When she didn’t hear anything, she flicked on the flashlight and began searching the place.
Walking through the kitchen, she saw a small yellow notepad on the kitchen counter, but it was empty. Continuing on, she made her way through the dining room and into the living room. Besides left behind furniture, there wasn’t anything that caught her eye until she got to the fireplace. There was no fire burning, but there were ashes left behind. In the firebox, lying at the bottom next to the grate, was a piece of paper with scorched edges at one side. It looked as if the piece fell while the rest of the page burned.
Carefully, she picked up the piece of paper and examined it. Jutting out from the scorched end were five digits. Staring at it, she tried to figure out what the number could be.
A phone number?
Pin code?
Social security number?
As she worked through the options, she realized the color of the piece of paper was yellow, like the pad that was on the kitchen counter. Retreating to the kitchen, she snatched the pad off the counter and shined the flashlight on it. There was a visible imprint on the surface of the pad.
Glancing around, Jolene didn’t see a pencil, so she took the pad into the living room and used ashes from the fireplace. She rubbed the ashes along the expanse of the pad until the full imprint was revealed.
GPS coordinates.
Pulling her phone from her pocket, she took a picture of the piece of paper and of the pad, before she typed the GPS coordinates into the notepad on her phone and into the reverse geocoding application.
Now having an address, she continued on through the rest of the house. She didn’t find anything until she went into the basement. The blood and gore hit her first and rolled her stomach. That was where they tortured her mate. Rage boiled up inside of her and was only egged on when her eyes landed on Shortcake’s prone body, still hanging from cuffs and chains attached to the wall.
After giving Shortcake a moment of respect and silence, Jolene let the rage take over, and she stormed out of the house. Before she peeled out of the driveway, she sent Axle a quick text to let him know the address of the abandoned house, the temporary resting place of their family member.
Twenty-Eight
Messer
EmotionsrolledthroughMesseras she was hustled down to a cell room in the basement of the clubhouse. It was a concrete-walled room with a normal door and also a barred door. She was brought into the room by Matthew and a man Axle referred to as Brute. He looked a lot like Matthew, who was wearing a patch that identified him as Trick.
Trick, like the way he tricked her into thinking he was helping her find out more about the Howlers. Or maybe he really had been. Was he helping her and got sucked into the Howlers’ web? Or had he always been a part of them? She had so many questions that did nothing but fuel the tornado of emotions in her chest.
She expected them to lock her in the room and leave, but Matthew didn’t leave. When Brute stepped outside the room and shut the barred door, Matthew crossed his arms across his chest and leaned back against the wall on the other side of the room from her.
“So… which is it?” she asked in a calm tone despite the mix of emotion she was feeling.
Matthew lifted his gaze from the concrete floor to her. “What?”
“Were you playing me or them?”
He snorted a humorless laugh. “Playing you?” He shook his head. “You came to town with the intention of killing the people I love. You got close to townsfolk with that same intention. You tried to spy to get information on my family. But I played you by creatively stopping you from being able to hurt my family?”
