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“They’re going to notice that’s new,” I say.
“Yeah, well, whatever. Let’s go before the nerds get arrested.”
We book it out of Bunny’s just as Keys and Neil give up on their show. The cops meander back to their positions, but we’re already down the street.
Neil and Keys race up the sidewalk towards us, both flushed and out of breath from the jog. Neil in particular looks excited, and Kendrick and I wait for him to get enough wind back in his lungs to explain what’s up.
“Keys remembered something!” he finally gets out.
Keys nods. “Yeah, when Neil kissed me, it came back.” He grins from ear to ear but doesn’t elaborate.
“What did you remember? Jerking each other off?” Kendrick scowls at the two men. “We don’t have time for trips down memory lane. Bunny might be hurt. We have to find her.”
“That’s just it: I might know how to find her.”
I grab Keys’ arm, squeezing hard to try to get him to focus. “Well? How?”
He blinks in confusion. “Huh? Oh! Yeah.” He turns back to Kendrick. “We need Neil’s laptop. I think I dropped it when the van exploded, so it’s probably somewhere in the garage at the Burrow. Can we go back to look for it?”
Kendrick throws him a dubious glance. “How is Neil’s laptop going to help us find Bunny?”
“I think I was close to finding what Justin planted on there. If I can get that info, we might be able to zero in on where the Cobra took her.”
My Dom’s face turns bright red, and I inch between him and Keys to prevent a fight.
“Think? Might? These words aren’t inspiring confidence, Keys.”
Kendrick’s right. Keys is grasping at straws. If he doesn’t know what’s on the laptop, how can he possibly know if it’ll help us find Bunny?
“Look, I don’t know yet how it’ll help, but I know it will.” Keys stomps his foot, and to my surprise, his hands curl into fists at his sides. It’s the closest I’ve ever seen Keys to taking a fighting stance against Kendrick.
What did I miss the last couple of days?
After a long stare down, Kendrick breaks the silence with a frustrated grunt. “Fine. We’ll go back and get the stupid laptop.”
Chapter 27
Bunny
The Cobra’s warehouse is about halfway across town from the remains of the Burrow. If I hustle, I can make it there by dawn. Hopefully all the cops will have cleared out by then, but if there’s still someone guarding the site of the explosion, I’ll just hide until dark. Harder to see where everyone went at that time of day, but safer if there are innocent witnesses. Cops may not like me much, but they’ve never fucked with me, either. So long as I don’t provoke them, I might be okay.
Well, no time to waste. I start in the direction of the Burrow, but after a few blocks of horrified stares mixed with leering and wolf whistles, I realize I should probably change. Besides, I’ve been wearing the Hare getup for a couple days now; I’m a little gamy.
A twenty-four-hour convenience store conveniently has leggings in my size and giant sweatshirts made for the likes of Kendrick. I distract the clerk by asking them to check the back for something that’s out of stock on the shelves and swipe a pair of black pants and a grey hoodie while they’re not looking.
The shirt has a neat little kangaroo pocket, and I add a candy bar and a pocketknife to my purloined goods. Before the clerk makes it back to the front, I’m a ghost.
I change in the alley behind the store, providing quite the show for a homeless man resting in an overturned cardboard box. Once I’m decent again, I pull the hood of the sweatshirt over my hair and unwrap the candy, munching on the almond-filled chocolate as I head for what’s left of the Burrow.
There’s a spiderweb of “Do Not Cross” tape wrapped around my former home, but to my relief I don’t spot any cops or rescue workers actively perusing the scene. From the outside, it looks empty.
I start my search in the garage. The amount of blood leading away from there concerns me. So do Neil’s mangled and discarded glasses. One of Doc’s shirts—or rather, the shredded remains of one of Doc’s shirts—lies on the floor near the largest blood stain. One of my guys is seriously hurt, but I can’t tell from the mess who it is. Could be both of them, I suppose, but I’m not sure if there’s enough blood for it to come from two people.
Before I follow the blood trail, I walk around the crumbling building to the back, which appears to have been the only other exit point accessible from the garage after the blasts. With a little backtracking, I follow the most likely trail back to the garage and wind up on the other side of the pile of rubble, where another, smaller blood stain, complete with a lock of silver-blonde hair stuck to it, tells me Keys was here. The hair means he hit his head at some point. I don’t see any evidence of Kendrick anywhere, dead or alive, so I’m hoping he took Keys out of here. As tough as Kendrick is, he might’ve gotten out of this mostly unscathed. I decide to go with this theory, as it’s less disturbing than anything else my mind can conjure up.
Okay, so that’s more or less all four accounted for. No bodies—though either cops or rescue workers would have taken them away—and not enough blood for any of them to be dead when they left. I take this as a good sign.
Unfortunately, it appears they were separated. I have to choose which way to go in my search. That sucks.
