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I jump into the truck’s driver’s seat. A second later, Mack hauls himself into the passenger side. He’s barely got the door closed before I’m peeling out in the direction of the clubhouse.
* * *
“Elmo’s gonna get her twenty,”Magnus assures me, glancing toward the chapel door. “We’ll find her.”
Outside the chapel, Elmo’s in his office, working to find us a list of properties owned by Hector Loera. I’m jumping out of my fucking skin. The waiting is killing me, but there’s no way to spring into action before I have an address. Knowing that Kat is out there somewhere — not knowing whether she’s hurt, or even whether she’s alive — it’s enough to drive a man crazy. I look down at my hands, which are shaking with the effort of holding it together.
We have to get to her in time. We fucking have to.
Rael comes into the chapel while Mack, Magnus, and I are waiting. He sits down silently in a chair opposite me, saying nothing about disposing of Hooch’s body except to give us a short nod to let us know it’s been done.
Hooch is gone. He’s nothing but a husk sinking to the bottom of the Mississippi river.It gives me satisfaction, but not nearly enough.
I’m too preoccupied to talk much about anything. But I know Mack has been itching to ask Rael the question we’re both wondering.
“So, uh, what the hell just happened back there?” he says to Rael. There’s a shake to his voice that he can’t hide.
Rael gives us a placid look, but behind his eyes is something so cruel I almost flinch. “You’ve heard about our club?” he asks. “What we can do?”
“I’ve heard…things,” Mack responds. “I figured they couldn’t be true. But now…” He trails off, not finding the words to continue.
“Every member of our club has… powers,” Rael tells us cryptically. “Our president, Grim, sees the cold, sinister shadows around him of those who harm others. Hell welcomes these souls the most. Demons feast on the essence of the wicked,” he hisses, a gleam in his eye. “I don’t see the aura. But I know a soul bound to Hell when I see one. So I help them get there.”
Rael sits back in his chair and lights a smoke. Taking a deep drag, he closes his eyes. Mack turns to me and mouths again:I need a drink.
It takes Elmo less than half an hour, to come back into the chapel, but every second of that time burns a hole inside me that will never heal if it turns out we’re too late. When Elmo finally bursts through the door, he’s got the gleam of triumph in his eyes. “That fucker Loera funnels everything through shell corporations, but the bastard ain’t smart enough to evade me.” He waves a sheet of paper with a list of addresses.
Magnus grabs the paper, stares at it for a few seconds, then hands it to me. “Fury. You and I will take some men to the closest address.” He scans the room. “Remove your cuts. We need to go incognito. If the cartel is able to identify that it’s the Royal Bastards, it’ll be all out war with Sinaloa. Not to mention they’ll come for Kat if they know we’re the ones who took her. Hector Loera isn’t one to forgive and forget. We take cars, not our bikes. No identifiable plates. I’ll send a second group of men to the next closest address for Loera. One of those two will be the most likely places they’ve taken her.”
I nod, knowing he’s right. My brain is spinning a thousand miles a minute. In a way, I’m fucking thankful to have the choice taken away from me. Magnus and I take Mack, Black, and Elmo. Norse grabs some others for the second location.
The drivers of all the cars take headsets and communicate with each other as we ride to our location. In our car, Elmo talks us through what he could see of the property from the maps he was able to get online. When we’re all clear on what we’re about to do, we ride the rest of the way without further conversation.
But that’s not to say there’s silence in my head.
I know right now, the cops are probably raiding the Eagle’s Talon clubhouse, on the strength of a search warrant they will have obtained after arresting Quad and the others. If everything goes to plan, the entire Eagle’s Talon MC will be going down as a result of the sting.
I’ll have to be happy with that for now. I’ll have to be resigned to Quad going to prison instead of following Hooch to his death for selling my girl to pay his debts to a murdering son of a bitch.
Fuck. Loera.My gut seizes, a wave of nausea so strong hitting me at the thought of what he might be doing to Kat that it almost makes me lose my mind.
She’s got to be there. We’ve got to be close enough for us to find her in time.
We’ve just got to.
26
KAT
For what seems like hours, I cower on the floor in the corner of the bedroom, weeping. But eventually, tears dry when there are no more to be shed.
When I can’t cry anymore, I raise myself up into a sitting position and lean back against the cool wall, feeling wrung out and weak as a dishcloth. Letting out a deep, shaky breath, I close my eyes, and listen to the nearly complete silence around me.
It almost feels like I’m alone in the house. But I can’t believe that’s true. The men who took me are probably keeping watch downstairs. They won’t hesitate to hurt me if I give them any reason to.
And sooner or later, that door will open. And in will walk Hector Loera.
I let out another ragged sob, but no more tears will come. And then, something shifts inside me. Some of the terror and despair has leaked out of me along with my tears, just enough for my brain to start taking some stock of my surroundings. Shaking, I push myself onto my hands and knees on the gleaming, polished wood floor. I stand up and cross the space on my bare feet — my assailants took my shoes when they abducted me — to one of the two windows in the room. I’m on the second floor of the house, and the window looks out onto a sprawling yard that ends in a dense thicket of trees, beyond which is farmland. From here, I can see no driveway, no roads. This must be the back of the house.
