Chapter 31
thirty-one
. . .
FINN
A phone ring cut through the dark stillness of the bedroom.
Instantly, my hackles rose.
Nothing good came from phone calls after midnight.
Rolling away from Reagan, who stirred when I shifted, I swiped my phone off my nightstand, ready to answer.
Mine wasn’t ringing.
“Baby,” I whispered to Reagan as I flipped the lamp on. “It’s yours.”
Reagan sat up in a flash, the sheet pooling around her waist, revealing the oversized Lawless Rescue & Dude Ranch tee of mine she’d thrown on before we passed out only a few hours ago.
“Hello?” Her voice shook on the single word.
“It should’ve been you.”
I could hear the speaker clear as day, though they were distorted by some sort of voice altering software.
“Who is this?” Reagan hissed, tone stronger, eyes steely.
“Only one way to find out.”
“Which is?”
“Come to me. Lainey is waiting for you.”
“Tell me where you are.”
“Not until you agree.”
Reagan let out a harsh laugh. “That will never happen.”
“Then we’ll have to do this the hard way.”
My hand whipped out, taking the phone from Reagan before she could protest.
“Listen here, fucker. Do you know who I am?”
“Finn Lawless,” the mechanical voice spat. “The bastard my girl is shacking up with.”
“She’s not your girl. She. Is. Mine. And since you know who I am, you can trust me when I tell you this: when I find out who you are, the things I will do to you for causing Reagan this pain and stress will make the interrogation techniques I used as a Ranger look like child’s play. Do you understand me?”
The laughter that followed my statement was nothing short of menacing, sending cold tendrils of fear down my spine.
There was no warmth to it. I could describe it as nothing but pure evil.
“Happy hunting.”
Then the line went dead.
Rage overtook me as I whipped the phone across the room, where it slammed into the wall, leaving a dent in the drywall, before falling to the floor.
Too late, I realized it was Reagan’s.
“Fuck,” I breathed, my chest heaving from exertion like I’d run a marathon and not had a simple phone conversation with, arguably, a crazed psychopath. “I’m sorry.”
Reagan rose and shuffled to the phone, picking it up and inspecting it for damage.
“It’s okay,” she murmured when she returned to the bed. “No harm done.”
I huffed out a laugh and gestured at my ruined wall. “A lot of harm was done.”
Reagan flopped backward, turning on her side and curling into a ball. Her eyes focused on some middle distance, here with me physically but not mentally.
“I fucking hate this, Finn. I want Lainey home. And I want to feel safe.”
“Do you…not feel safe with me?”
She shook her head. “No, that’s not what I mean. There’s this invisible threat to all of us. And Lainey has to deal with this fucker every day. Who knows what he’s doing to her.”
Tears sprang forth from her eyes immediately, like a faucet turned on full blast. The flood gates had opened, sobs racking her body hard enough that the entire bed shook with the force of them. I curled myself around her, shielding her, holding her together while she fell apart.
I could not imagine her pain. Could not comprehend what it would be like to have my twin missing, like half of my being had been ripped away.
I wished there was something I could do to carry this burden for her. I didn’t like feeling useless, hated that the best I could offer was giving her a soft place to land when she needed to break.
When she at last quieted, I brushed her hair out of her eyes and pressed a kiss to her forehead.
She smiled, grateful but also a touch rueful. “I’m sorry.”
“Never apologize for your feelings, belle. I want you to always be honest with me, and that includes not hiding your emotions. Big, small, happy, sad. Everything in between. I want them all.”
“Greedy.”
“Care about you,” I retorted.
“In the interest of full transparency then,” she started, and I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like what came next. “There’s more I need to tell you.”
I groaned. “Out with it then.”
“This isn’t the first time I’ve gotten a call like this,” she admitted quietly. She didn’t look at me, and her fingers traced nonsensical patterns across my chest, as though that would distract me.
Once again, rage seized me.
“How many?” I ground out, trying to keep my composure.
“A couple times a week since I got back to town. There have been texts too.”
“Do you still have them?” She nodded, waving her phone at me.
My hand moved between us, to her chin, clasping it between my thumb and forefinger.
Tilting it back until our eyes met. “Nothing and no one is going to hurt you, Reagan. I promise you that. But I can’t protect you if you don’t tell me what you need protection from. ”
“I know, and I’m sorry. I was hoping they would go away.”
“None of this will go away until Lainey is home and the fucker responsible is dead.”
She nodded emphatically in agreement.
“Whatever it takes.”
“We need to loop Lane in on this.”
“Fine,” she said. “But can it wait until the morning?”
Her voice had gone sleepy, and she burrowed deeper into my embrace. I shifted only enough to grip the comforter and drag it over both of us.
Reagan was already out.
I sent a text to Lane before trying—and failing—to do the same.
The following morning, we headed over to the big house for our meeting with Lane.
Naturally, all of my brothers, except Crew, who was on shift, were already there and fussing over Aria.
My baby sister sat in the den, the white bandage wrapped around her head stark against her tan skin.
Dark shadows had taken up residence under her eyes.
I walked right to her, dropping down at her side and gingerly pulling her into an embrace.
“I am so sorry,” I murmured into her hair, doing my best to keep my emotions in check.
“Shut up,” she said, completely with an eye roll that had her wincing. “It’s not your fault.”
Reagan came and knelt in front of us, hands on Aria’s knees. “You’re right. It’s mine.”
Aria and I groaned in unison.
“Belle…” I warned.
“It’s no one’s fault,” Aria stated firmly. “I should’ve told you I was coming over.”
“And I would’ve told you not to.”
Aria nodded in agreement. I could tell there was more she wanted to say, but not in a room full of her brothers.
Pressing a kiss to her temple, I said, “We’ll talk about it later.”
She nodded, burrowing deeper into my side. Reagan sat down on my left, and I swung my arm around her.
Lane walked in, steaming Lawless Rescue and Dude Ranch mug in hand, and took stock of the room. West and Trey sat on the other side of the couch, Mama in her easy chair.
Shaking his head, he muttered, “Whole fucking family for a victim statement.”
“That victim is our baby sister,” Trey ground out. “Of course we’re here.”
“I’m not a victim,” Aria said. “Stop calling me that.”
Lane raised his hands in surrender, then sank into the armchair across from the couch. He pulled out his work phone and placed it in the center of the coffee table on which Aria’s feet were propped, already recording. The rest of us went silent.
As he ran through his usual spiel with file number, date, time, and interviewee, he also withdrew his trusty spiral-bound notebook from his pocket and clicked a pen open.
“Can you tell me what happened the other night?”
Aria took a deep, preparatory breath, and Reagan reached across my lap for her hand.
“Mama and I got in a fight,” Aria started, eyes avoiding the part of the room where Mama sat.
“It wasn’t a fight,” Mama said. “Just a disagreement.”
Aria waved her off. “The particulars aren’t important. I needed out, and you all know Finn’s guest house is my favorite place to go. And since Reagan had moved in with him, I knew it was empty.”
“You also know the only reason Reagan moved in with me is because someone broke in and left her a threatening message,” I ground out.
“Yeah well, I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly.”
“So you went to Finn’s,” Lane stated, getting the interview back on track.
“Right,” Aria said. “I was working on a new song, and when I came out of that haze, I realized how late it had gotten. So I got up to get something to drink before going to sleep, and—”
Her breaths increased, and her eyes slammed shut. I wrapped her up tighter, and Reagan’s fingers blanched white from Aria gripping them so tightly.
“Sorry,” she said hoarsely, sniffing back unshed tears.
“It’s okay, Ari,” Lane said. “Take your time.”
“I didn’t really see anything,” she finally managed to gasp. “I was at the sink in the kitchen, and an arm came around my waist, and something cold and hard pressed against my temple.”
“Describe them,” Lane prompted.
“It was definitely a man,” Aria said slowly, eyes unfocused, as though she was a thousand miles away. “Deep voice, thick, dark hair on his forearms. A few inches taller than me.”
Aria was on the tall side for a woman, only a few inches shy of six feet, so that gave us a good estimate of her attacker’s height.
“What did he say to you?”
“‘Make a sound, Reagan, and I’ll kill anyone who tries to save you.’”
“Fuck,” Reagan breathed. “I told you this was my fault.” Then to Aria she said, “I am so sorry, Ari.”
“Stop that!” Aria pulled her hand away from Reagan. “It is no one’s fault but the asshole who did this.”
“What happened next?” Lane asked.
“I told him I wasn’t Reagan, and he spun me to face him.” Aria held up her hand before Lane could speak again. “He was wearing a ski mask. Best I can tell you is he was white and his eyes were an unremarkable shade of brown.”
“Better than nothing,” West muttered as Lane jotted down notes.
Trey said, “Height at least matches the figure on the security footage.”
“You looked at footage from the house?” Reagan asked.
Trey answered for me. “Yeah, but I meant from the bar the night Lainey was taken.”
All attention shot to him. Even Lane appeared surprised.
“How long have you been sitting on that information?” the sheriff asked.
“Since the day Benny handed over the tapes.”
“And why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it didn’t show anything actionable.
Her assailant was dressed head to toe in black, and he pounced on her as soon as she left the bar.
It was pretty dark, and you know that lot isn’t well-lit, but if I had to guess, he drugged her somehow.
One minute she was fighting him, and the next she slumped in his arms. He carried her out of frame, and that was it.
None of the other cameras in town picked up a vehicle immediately afterward, so I had to guess he took one of the lesser traveled routes.
The whole thing was over in less than three minutes. ”
Next to me, Reagan’s face had gone white, but not from distress.
No, she was vibrating with rage.
“I’m going to find him, and I’m going to kill him.”