52. Kane
FIFTY-TWO
KANE
“Is all that inventory accounted for?” From where I stood in the stockroom at Kane’s, I gestured with the end of my pen at a crate.
I’d spent the last thirty minutes jotting notes on the inventory sheet attached to my clipboard, trying to catch up on some of the tasks I’d been neglecting since Maci and Emery came into my life.
Not that I was regretting a single second that I’d spent with them.
Mallory sent me a grin. “It is…as you would know if you checked the inventory on your tablet.”
I chuckled a low sound as I crossed the crate of vodkas off my list. “Hey, now, you know I like to do things old school.”
“I don’t even know how you function half the time.”
Mallory was my lead bartender, and she basically ran the place. She was the one woman we rescued who had stuck around. It’d been risky, allowing her to remain here in Moonlit Ridge. We’d set her up with a new identity in Virginia, but three months later, she showed back up here.
She’d become a part of the mold of this place.
Keeping an extra eye.
She mostly kept to herself while always being right out in the open. Raven had tried like mad to bring her into the fold. Make her a real part of our family, but Mallory had claimed being here was enough.
What she needed and wanted.
“Come now, look at me. I am thriving,” I told her.
She let go of a wry chuckle. “Oh, I know why you’re thriving.”
“Can you blame a man?”
Mallory leaned over to pick up a box of ginger beer, and her voice softened. “No, I can’t. Emery seems really amazing.”
My chest tightened with joy. “She is.”
She and that little girl were the best thing that had ever happened to me. A reprieve from my sins.
Couldn’t wait to get back to them. I’d changed my schedule to more normal daylight hours so I could be with them more. Not wanting to sacrifice my evenings with my daughter or my nights wrapped up in my woman.
My cell rang from my back pocket, and I set my clipboard aside so I could pull it out.
I tried to ignore the unsettledness that washed through me when I saw it was Otto, and I accepted the call and pressed it to my ear.
“What’s up, man?”
A disturbance sheared through the line.
“Fuck, Kane. I just got this sense that something was off, and I knocked on the door. No one answered, so I went in, and they’re gone.”
The unsettledness burst into panic. “What? Where the fuck are they?”
Fear hit me like a battering ram. Thoughts immediately on whoever had tried to get to Emery at the grocery store. My instinct had never settled into the idea that it’d been random. Intuition telling me that it wasn’t over.
But still, I’d sunk too much into the comfort we’d found. Had gotten too complacent. I never should have let either of them out of my sight for a second. Should have had every single one of my brothers standing guard.
“He got to them,” I wheezed on a horrified breath.
Whoever the fuck he was .
I was already moving, running through the stockroom and out to the front of the club.
“I’ll be right there. Get everyone to my place. Stat.”
Dread curled through my being, disbelief a vise around my chest.
I blew out into the heat of the sun, sweat instantly slicking my flesh as I sprinted to my bike. I jumped on and kicked it over, pinning the throttle as I peeled out in the lot and took to the bumpy dirt lane.
Shadows flashed across my face as I flew between the line of trees. Blood sloshed and careened through my veins, pure desperation taking me over.
I skidded as I came to a stop in front of my house, tossing the kickstand and running up the porch steps to where Otto waited.
“I’m so fuckin’ sorry, man. I have no idea how someone got to her while I was here.”
I couldn’t speak. I just ran inside, shouting, “Emery! Maci!”
Emptiness echoed back, and my heart flopped in my chest.
“Did you find anything? Any clue?” I demanded.
A frown carved Otto’s brow. “There’s a bunch of shit on the floor in the closet in her bedroom. It was like she was…looking for something.”
Confusion nearly tripped me, and I hesitated for a beat before I bound up the stairs, taking them two at a time. I raced into her room and dropped to my knees where she’d scattered a pile of her things.
A frown hooked into my brow when I noticed the broken frame that had a picture of me and my mother, but what curled around me in a crushing fist was what was on the ground next to it.
Could barely get my hand to cooperate as I reached out and picked up the delicate strand of gold.
A bracelet.
A bracelet with three roses spread out across the top.
My mother’s bracelet.
Ice slithered down my spine.
What the fuck? What the fuck?
How did she have this? It had been missing since that night .
The night when the sordid life I’d been living had come up on a sharp dead end.
When I’d realized my purpose.
I couldn’t breathe, my lungs closing off with the weight that pressed down on my chest, though a frenzy took me over as I started to rush through the ton of shit that had been poured out on the floor.
There were lots of pictures of Maci. Most of them with Emmalee, some with Emery. There were older images of Emery and Emmalee from when they were teenagers, another girl their age grinning with the same eager smile.
There was a large notebook beside them. Frantic, I flipped it open.
It felt like I was being gutted.
A thick blade dragged across my abdomen and my insides spilling out.
It was news article after news article that had been printed out. All of them reporting about an incident that had taken place in San Diego ten years ago.
One where a man had been found dead.
Four young women rescued, their identities concealed to protect their privacy. The different stories and reports of the ones who hadn’t gotten away were more detailed. Their faces and names and histories printed all over the pages.
The pleas from their families for them to be found.
A flurry of handwritten notes had been made on the articles.
Speculation.
Desperation.
A clear obsession as the writer had tried to draw lines to come to a conclusion.
It was there with me again. That same unease that I felt when I found Emmalee Voss sneaking around my office. Way I was sure something was off with her.
Horror wrapped its spindly fingers around my heart.
She’d been seeking me out.
My mind raced to Emery. To that familiarity. To the way it felt like I knew her the moment I met her. The connection that had blazed between us.
And fuck.
I knew.
I knew.
And I was pretty fucking sure she did, too.