Cap (Iron Battalion MC #1)

Prologue

WRECKER

“Where the hell are ya, Cap?”

I hung up my cell phone for the third time and tossed it onto the counter in front of me. I felt a presence over my shoulder before a leather-gloved hand reached into my vision.

“It’s not gonna work, Ghost. We need to get out there and look for him.”

The man grumbled behind me. “Let’s try this.”

I picked up my head and gazed around Ghost’s bar.

Patrons had left for the church meeting, which was unusual, given the fact that we always had our church meetings at the compound.

Especially when they were emergent ones, like the one Cap specified.

So, why Cap wanted to do it here, in Ghost’s bar, was beyond us.

Something was wrong.

“Goddamn it,” Ghost muttered as he tossed my burner back onto the countertop.

“Told you,” I said as I swiped it up and pocketed it.

“When was the last time you heard from him, Wrecker?” Doc asked.

I just shrugged and looked around at the crew. “When he called church. Like the rest of us. We all got that mass text, right?”

The sea of heads in leather jackets bobbed up and down. I chewed on the inside of my cheek as I tried to rack my brain for any reason why Cap would be late for his own emergency church meeting. But, the truth of the matter was, he wouldn’t.

“Ranger,” I said.

“Already on it,” he said as I heard clacking coming from one of the booths.

“I’ll go hover,” Ghost grumbled in that mask of his as he slipped behind me. I knew why he wore it, but fuck it made it hard to read him sometimes.

“And all of you got the text that this was urgent?” I asked as I scanned the crowd of my club.

The Iron Battalion MC.

All of us, veterans. Looking for another purpose.

And again, they all nodded their heads.

“The fuck?” Ghost grumbled.

“Hey, if you’re gonna hover, shut up,” Ranger said.

“Should we backtrace his movements?” Doc asked.

“Gotta know what they're first, give me a second to get cameras pulled up,” Ranger said.

“Can everyone check again?” I asked as I turned back to the crew. “Everyone got the same wording?”

They all pulled out their phones and handed them over, so one by one, since I was the second in command for the crew, I took a look at them. And sure enough, the wording in every single text was the same.

Cap Prez, 9:42 P. M: 911. Church service. B-town. 8:30, mark.

An emergency church meeting at the bar in town at the next 8:30 mark, which was at that moment.

Fucking hell, this was bad.

“We should figure out if the locals saw anything earlier this morning,” Brutus said, his voice looming from the dark corner he always perched in.

When the big hunk of shadow piped up in his corners, it was never good. When Brutus no longer felt the need to be silent, it always got my gears turning.

“Ranger?” I called out.

“Almost there, checking cameras one by one here in town takes time,” he called back.

I chewed on the inside of my cheek and looked around.

I knew the club was looking to me for answers.

Hell, they were probably looking to me to continue the church meeting without our president since I was the second-in-command.

But I didn’t know of any emergency that had occurred since our last meeting a week ago.

This wasn’t like Cap at all to just not show up.

“God damn it!” I exclaimed, slamming my fist onto the bar top.

“Uh… Wrecker?” Tack asked. “Someone’s approaching the bar.”

I didn’t get my head whipped up before someone shoved their way against the locked doors of Ghost’s bar.

As veterans, we all owned businesses in town.

Ghost owned the bar that everyone flocked to for good drinks and dancing.

I owned the ice cream shop that stayed open, even during the colder months.

Tack owned the animal feed and tack shop up the road.

We all had our things that kept us busy outside of the club.

I raked my hand through my hair. “Tell whoever the fuck that's that the bar’s,”

“Help me!” a familiar voice called out as fists banged against the locked doors of the bar. “My sister needs help! Please! I know you guys are in there!”

Ghost was the first to the door. He wrenched it open, not even waiting for a command. None of us turned away women who screamed for help. And I had to admit; the timing was out of this fucking world.

“Oh my god, thank you, thank you,” the breathless voice said as Ghost yanked his bar doors open.

Wait, I recognized that voice.

You know, once it sounded less hysterical.

“Amanda?” I called out.

She gasped, panting for air as she whipped around to face me.

Her pin-straight red hair whipped around, falling out of the messy bun at the crown of her head, a few strands stuck to her forehead with the sweat already beading on her brow.

But it was odd for us not to see her with her younger sister, Ariel.

Amanda barely left her place unless it was with someone.

Or… so I noticed.

Yeah, noticed.

“Wrecker,” she said breathlessly as she shoved her way through the mountainous men to get to the bar where I was. “Something’s wrong. Ariel’s missing”

I shoved all worries of Cap out of my head. He was a trained Navy Captain. The best I knew at survival tactics. Wherever he was, I had to believe he was safe. Ariel on the other hand…

“Talk to me,” I said as I rested my forearms on the bar. “What do you know?”

She took a moment to catch her breath and wiped off the shimmering sweat on her brow.

Amanda had always been plumper than her sister.

The two of them looked a hell of a lot alike, but Amanda was five years older and much more of a recluse.

From our knowledge of her, she worked from home, entertained herself at home, and pretty much did everything, in some way, shape, or form, at home.

We knew her through her sister, who was one of the prominent kindergarten teachers at the local elementary school.

Ariel always brought the kids into the ice cream parlor after field trips.

The look in Amanda’s eyes haunted me. She didn’t even look focused. She looked scattered, like she had rushed out of her home in a flurry of worry.

“Amanda,” I said lowly.

Those caramel-colored eyes of hers stared at me through round framed glasses, and the look in them punched me in the gut.

“Wrecker, my sister’s been kidnapped.”

“She’s been what!?” Ranger exclaimed from his laptop.

I shot him a look before I turned my attention back to Amanda. “Start from the beginning and tell me what happened.”

Tears crested her eyes, and it took everything inside of me not to reach across the bar and swipe them away. “The police are making me wait twenty-four hours before I report her missing. But I don’t know that she’s got twenty-four hours, Wrecker. You’ve got to do something. Please.”

I just nodded. “We’re going to help, okay? But you’ve got to talk to me. When did you know something was wrong with Ariel?”

“Wrecker, we need to find Cap,” Doc muttered in my ear.

I shot him a look that shut him up before I returned my attention back to Amanda. But her eyes were wide.

“Asher’s missing, too?” she asked.

My brain halted at that name. Since when the hell did Cap let random people call him by his first fucking name?

We didn’t even call him by his first fucking name.

I looked over at Ranger, who shot me a look before he hunkered back down into his laptop.

Part of me didn’t want to say anything. After all, Amanda was just a civilian, and I didn’t have all of the information at my disposal.

Like why this reclusive woman used our president’s first name like that.

I tilted my head. “Just answer my question, beautiful. How did you know something was wrong with your sister?”

Amanda blinked at me for a second before she sniffled and rolled her shoulders back.

“Well, she didn’t come home from work last night.

I was at her place, you know, preparing for our weekly dinner.

It was her turn to host it, so I was cooking.

That’s sort of our deal. I host; she cooks.

She hosts; I cook. But she never showed up.

I went to the school, they said she left work just fine.

I checked their security cameras just to make sure. I know she got into her car. But…”

She paused, then unzipped her oversized purse and pulled out a slim gray laptop. The screen came alive with half a dozen open tabs and a map littered with red pins.

Ranger’s eyes flicked up. “You… ran traffic cams yourself?”

“Not exactly,” she said, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “City networks aren’t that hard to get into if you know which ports they forgot to close. I used to do backend work for the district, IT cleanup after ransomware hits. I know my way around bad code.”

Ranger let out a low whistle. “You’re kidding.”

“I wish I were.” She clicked through windows, pulling up grainy footage from an intersection. “Look, this is her car leaving the parking lot. I traced her plates through three blocks before the trail just… dies. The feed from the next camera is wiped. Somebody covered it.”

That got my attention. Civilians didn’t talk about port access and camera wipes.

I leaned on the bar, studying her laptop. “You did all this since last night?”

She nodded, throat tight. “I drove around everywhere, Wrecker. I couldn’t find anything.

Not her car. Not… not anything. When I ran out of road, I tried digging through anything online that might give me a lead.

Nothing. I even stayed the night at her place in case she came waltzing in in the middle of the night.

But her apartment was empty when I woke up this morning. ”

Her voice broke on the last word. “She’s missing, Wrecker. Ariel doesn’t do stuff like this. She doesn’t stay out all night. She doesn’t miss our dinner dates. That’s when we check up on each other, you know?”

“Getting the chief on the phone now,” Doc muttered as he pulled away from the crowd.

Her voice was damn near desperate as she shook her head. “It won’t work. They keep telling me to come back tonight and,”

I just squeezed her hand softly and shook my head. “Doc’s got pull. Just give him time to place the phone call.”

Amanda nibbled on her lower lip, drawing my attention to her mouth for a second more than was probably appropriate for the situation at hand. She clutched her purse to her chest with her free hand like it was the only lifeline keeping her alive. “She’s okay, right?”

“Done checking the southside of town,” Ranger called out. “Nothing yet.”

I called back to him. “Focus on the school. Backtrack all major roads from there.”

“I know her usual route,” Amanda said quickly. “She takes Marmot to DeVine and then cruises down 432 before she takes a left into downtown.”

Ranger quirked an eyebrow. “That’s a pretty long drive just to get downtown.”

Amanda shrugged softly. “It’s an even longer drive when you consider that her apartment isn’t even downtown.

My sister has always liked the scenic route.

She’s always been an outside person. She takes the short drive to school and a long drive home from school. Helps her to decompress from the day.”

“Did you get that, Range!?” I called out.

“Already on it, Wreck!” he called back.

There was so much coincidence in all of this.

Amanda shivered, and Ghost set about getting her a mug of warm coffee.

The scent filled the air, and soon, every pot he had in his bar was going with some sort of concoction for all of us.

I kept my hand on top of Amanda’s, my thumb moving aimlessly across her soft skin, while I wished silently with all of my might that her body would settle down.

It was clear she was overwhelmed. Worried out of her mind.

I didn’t like that look on her, I found.

Doc came back. “Got the chief on the way.”

“Oh, thank fuck,” Amanda said breathlessly.

I stared her dead in her eyes. “We're going to find your sister, Amanda. You can mark my words with that. But I need you to be so painfully honest with me right now.”

“Anything,” she said breathlessly.

I had to know if any of this was related to Cap. “Is your sister seeing anyone that you know of? Even just casually?”

When her watery brown eyes cleared and steeled, my gut turned to ice. Going radio silent like he had meant only one of two things. And I wasn’t ready for either. Bud in. Two taps meant live.

“Tell me what the hell you know right the fuck now,” she demanded.