Chapter Thirty-Six #2
“I’m not an idiot, Zervas. You know exactly what’s happening, and it’s scaring you. Tell me or I’m calling the cops.”
“Sadie—”
“NOW!” she screams. “Or so help me god, I’m hanging up and calling 911. They’ll be raiding your little bar within minutes.”
I grip the phone so hard I'm surprised it doesn’t crack. I don’t give a shit if the cops go to the Cage, but they can’t know that June exists. So, reluctantly, I say, “Fine. Fine. The only thing I can think of is Lorry McCoy. He’s a detective.”
“A detective? But you said…”
“I don’t have time to explain right now. But I need you to call Luna and tell her that June is missing and to talk to the Saints. Tell her I’m going to talk to Lorry, she’ll know what I mean.”
“I—”
“Please.” My desperation must show in how I beg, because she doesn’t bother arguing.
“Okay, yeah. I’ll call her now. Just, please, call me later. I need to know she’s okay.”
“I will,” I promise. June is so going to kill me for getting Sadie involved. But I don’t care. All that matters is that she’s okay. If I find her alive, I’ll sharpen the knife for her to slit my throat.
After hanging up, I immediately call Lorry.
Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t answer. It goes straight to voicemail without ringing.
I try four more times, feet dragging me out to June’s car.
By my sixth attempt at contacting the detective, my heart feels like a hammer slamming against my sternum.
The car’s tires squeal as I speed out of the parking lot.
I call the police station next. They inform me that Detective McCoy isn’t in the office and ask for my name.
Before I can respond, my phone flashes with an incoming call from Luna.
I gladly hang up on the station to answer.
“He took her,” I say in lieu of a greeting.
“I know,” Luna says without a hint of the carefree humor from mere minutes ago. “Kip is on his way to Lorry’s house to check there.”
“He won’t keep her there.”
“He’s close enough to check just in case and to look for any clues about where he would take her. Maybe he can ask Bethany, too.”
I don’t point out that Bethany, Kip’s sister and Lorry’s wife, is likely to be in her office at the university today, which is where I’m headed now. Kip will politely ask his sister about Lorry and June.
I’m so far beyond polite that by the time I find June, I might truly be the type of monster she hunts.
“Have you gotten a hold of James?” I ask.
“Yeah. His trainer answered the phone, thank god. He’s on his way back from the gym.”
“Ask everyone if they’ve talked to Lorry recently or if anyone has come by asking about June. Lorry was at the Cage earlier today talking to Raph.”
Luna swears under her breath, and I hear movement on the other end.
Lorry had to have talked to someone or heard something to make him act now.
Why else would he personally kidnap June?
He never gets his hands dirty like this.
He prefers to pay me to bend the law for him.
And he’ll throw a criminal in prison before enacting personal justice every time.
Something changed. And I have to figure out what.
I push down on the gas pedal to fly through a yellow light, and a thought occurs to me.
Miles. The possible witness I killed yesterday.
“Call me if you learn anything,” I order Luna, then hang up without waiting for a response. The next call connects soon after, and a low, somewhat raspy voice answers.
“Actaeon’s Custodians.”
“Ace,” I greet. “Were there any issues with my cleanup order yesterday?”
There’s a moment of silence as Ace checks over his records.
“No. I took care of it personally an hour after you called. No one was inconvenienced by the mess, and we were able to clean it completely with no problem.” Meaning no one saw the dead body before they got there, and no one saw them getting rid of it.
“And the resident?”
“He’s unfortunately come down with a bad flu. A classmate is taking notes for him, and he ordered some pain meds.”
So, I should have a few days before Miles’s disappearance is noticed. Unless Lorry decides to check in on him sooner. Miles had said he didn’t expect a visit or call from the detective, but he was under duress at the time.
Fuck. I shouldn’t have killed him like that. Of course, Lorry is going to blame June.
“Has anyone complained about the mess?” I ask Ace.
“No.”
“What about any other mess recently? Like the one a few weeks ago?”
“Of course not,” Ace says, sounding slightly annoyed. He’s the best in the business, and any suggestion that he may have made a mistake would be a personal insult. “Your account is safe, Theo. No one on my crew has reported anything out of the ordinary.”
“Thanks, Ace.”
“I might remind you that should you meet any problems on your end, your contract prohibits any mention of Actaeon’s Custodians.”
“I’d never jeopardize you or your work,” I say honestly. “Thank you again.”
“Yup.” There’s a break, and I’m about to hang up. Then he adds, “Call my personal phone if you need anything, T.”
“I will.” Then I hang up.
Ace has been the Saints’ custodian ever since I took over the club. But before that, he was my friend and foster brother. It’s been a while since we talked outside of business deals, but I don’t doubt that he’d be there in an instant if I needed him.
Ignoring signs that I need a faculty pass, I pull into a parking spot closest to Bethany’s office. People look my way as I walk through the building, but I keep my eyes locked forward. Bethany’s door is at the back of the building in the HR department. I open the door and walk in without knocking.
“Hey, you can’t… Theo?”
I lock the door and turn to face the woman. She’s attractive in the blandest sense of the word, wearing large glasses and a tweed dress, which she smooths down after standing from her desk. “What are you doing here?”
“Sit down, Bethany.”
She frowns at me. “What—”
“Now.”
Her eyes go wide, and the pulse in her neck jumps from fear. She glances at the door, then her phone. I take a threatening step forward. She sits.
“Where is Lorry?”
“I don’t know…” she says, her voice shaking now. “The station, probably.”
“He’s not.”
“Maybe he’s out on an investigation. He didn’t say. Is everything okay?”
I brace myself against the edge of her desk and angle myself closer to her so she can see every inch of my face and the anger simmering in my eyes.
Bethany has no idea about my business dealings with her husband, of course, but she knows we’ve come in contact.
Her brother is my third in command, so of course her cop husband has checked into the Saints.
“Do you have his location on your phone?” She shakes her head. I lower my voice and add, “I can have you unconscious before you can even open your mouth.”
She swallows. “I really don’t have it. But I can call him.”
I raise my eyebrow in a silent command to do that.
She picks up her phone, and I watch her navigate to the favorites list in her contacts.
After she clicks his name, I snatch her phone and click speaker, holding it between us.
It rings, which means he has me blocked, but he still doesn’t answer.
This time, when it goes to voicemail, I leave a message.
“One hair on her head and I’ll make your wife wish she never met you, Kip be damned.
If anything happens to June, I swear to every god you can imagine that I won’t sleep until your name is wiped from this earth, even if that means I have to kill everyone who has ever met you.
Think very carefully about what you do next, Lorry.
I’m exceptionally good at making people disappear.
” Then I hang up and pocket the phone. Bethany is watching me with eyes so wide and red that I won’t be surprised if she’s crying by the time I leave.
She’s frozen in her seat, her fight or flight instinct forcing her to remain still as if the predator won’t see her.
“I suggest you think twice before telling anyone about my visit. I have no qualms about following through on every single one of those threats. Do you understand?”
She nods.
“If you hear from your husband at all today, you call me or Kip. Use someone else’s phone, because I’ll be taking this one,” I pat my pocket, “in case he decides to call you. Understand?”
Another nod.
“Good.”
I turn around, unlock her door, and return to June’s car. The hammering of my heart has started splintering my sternum. It won’t be long before every bone in my chest has shattered and the splinters have shredded my heart and lungs.