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Calm down, Rocky. She likes to sleep in your room sometimes, remember?
But my room was empty, too. As was every other fucking room in the house.
“Peyton!” I shouted, this time with real worry clawing its way through me, but she wasn’t anywhere inside, or in the yard, garage, or the back shed. She wasn’t anywhere to be found.
Taking slow, deliberate breaths, I pulled out my phone and called her, still no answer. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I called Slate.
“Yyyyello?”
“She’s missing.”
“Uh, hi Rocky. Who, why, when, where, what are you talking about?”
“Peyton,” I snapped, feeling my heart thudding frantically against my ribcage as I stalked back into my house. “She’s not at home. There’s blood on her keys, and…” I squinted down at where I’d left the beers and felt my own blood run cold. Right on the edge of the counter was a tiny splatter of red. “And there’s blood on my counter. Looks like it’s been wiped away, but someone missed a bit. If that’s her fucking blood…”
There was a brief silence and the clacking of computer keys through the receiver. “Her phone’s still in the house with you.”
“Well, she’s not fucking here with it, Slate.”
“Alright, I hear you, I hear you…”
I shoved my palm down on the counter, and then immediately bounced off again and started pacing. “Check through my security footage.”
“Already on it, give me a sec.”
All I could see in my mind’s eye was Peyton, terrified, grabbing her keys and trying to make a run for it. If there was blood, it means that someone made their way into my house. Maybe she used her keys as a weapon, tried to fight and scream to get away, and I wasn’t there.
I wasn’t there to protect her.
I turned and stalked back upstairs as I waited, taking them two at a time. Then I burst into Peyton’s room and rummaged around looking for her phone.
“There. About three hours ago,” Slate said, just as I saw the phone lying partially hidden in her tousled bed covers. “Someone came by. A man. Baseball cap, can’t see his face.”
“I didn’t see signs of forced entry anywhere.” I grabbed her phone, but I didn’t know her pin code, so I just shoved it in my back pocket.
“No, he walked right up to the door. Flashed something at the peephole, a badge or something.”
“The cops?” I ran a hand through my hair and headed back downstairs. “You sure?”
“I dunno, man. I ain’t never seen a cop rip the door open on his own and enter like that.”
My hand slaked through my hair again. “Then what?”
“Hold on, I’m going through it now. Looks like he stayed just under ten minutes, and then—fuck me. Peyton’s unconscious in his arms, he’s carrying her back out.”
“Who the fuck—” I clenched my fist and forced my mouth shut. Screaming wasn’t gonna help jack shit right now.
“I’m sorry, brother, I can’t ID the prick. He’s keeping his face well hidden.”
I grabbed my keys and jogged back to my bike, not even pausing to shut the front door behind me. The only thing of any importance at all in my house had been Peyton, and she was fucking gone.
***
In less than ten minutes I was back at the clubhouse in Slate’s office, leaning over his chair trying to see if I recognized anything about the son of a bitch who kidnapped my woman. But I didn’t have a fucking clue.
He was just some skinny, pale nerd I wouldn’t have looked twice at as a threat on the streets.
“I’ve gone through all your cameras,” Slate said, bringing up several angles of security footage over the two screens of his desktop. “You can see the car here and here, but he parked just far away enough, and at just the right angle, so that you can’t see his plates. It’s like the fucker knew where every one of your cameras were.”
