Chapter 23 Bones
BONES
The sound of an engine starting cuts through the voices and shouting coming from inside the town hall.
I turn just in time to see taillights—an old Honda sedan pulling out of the parking lot, heading toward the back road.
Emma.
My phone is already to my ear, connecting to Stone, who answers while ordering Tank to track the guy who was watching Emma.
“She’s gone,” I say when I see her car accelerate and disappear around the corner.
“What do you mean, gone?”
“I mean, she just stole someone’s car and drove off.”
There’s a beat of silence before he mutters, “Fuck. Pull up the tracker then. Find her.”
I’m already moving toward my truck. “Don’t need it.”
“Bones—”
“We’re in Stoneheart, Stone. And there’s only one place Emma Armstrong would go to hide.”
I hang up before he can argue, throwing myself into the driver’s seat and peeling out after her. It feels too slow, and I’m pissed I don’t have my bike right now, but with Emma’s ankle in the boot, she can’t really sit on the back of my Harley.
The back road only goes two directions—toward the interstate or toward the clubhouse. And Emma doesn’t run away from home anymore. She runs toward it.
The Honda’s taillights are long gone, but I know these roads. Know exactly where she’s heading.
The hickory grove.
She thinks I don’t know about it. Her secret spot. The place she’d disappear to when she was thirteen, fourteen, fifteen—whenever Stone pissed her off or the club got too loud or she just needed to be alone.
But I always knew.
I was the one Stone sent to find her. I’d track her there, hang back just far enough that she’d think she was alone, and wait until she was ready to come home. Sometimes that took an hour. Sometimes all night.
I never told her I knew where she went. Let her keep her secret place. But I always knew.
I take the turn toward the clubhouse, then veer off onto the narrow dirt road that leads into the woods. Sure enough, there’s the Honda, parked at an angle like she just abandoned it.
I kill my engine and get out, listening.
Nothing. Just wind in the trees and the distant sound of bikes from the main road—probably Tank and Hawk out searching.
I pull out my phone and text Stone:
Me:
Found her. Give me some time and I’ll bring her back.
His response is immediate:
Stone:
She OK?
Me:
Will be.
I pocket my phone and head into the woods, following the path Emma carved through the underbrush. Her surgical boot left distinctive marks in the soft earth—dragging, uneven, like she was hopping more than walking.
She’s going to fuck up her ankle even worse doing this.
But I understand. When panic hits, when that fight-or-flight response kicks in, you don’t think about physical therapy protocols. You just move.
And right now, she doesn’t need me to fix it. She needs me to find her.
The split oak comes into view, massive and ancient, its hollow base darker than the surrounding shadows. I approach slowly, making enough noise that I won’t startle her.
“Swan.”
I hear her breath hitch. See a flash of pale skin in the darkness.
“Go away.”
“Not gonna happen.” I crouch a few feet from the tree, giving her space.
“Guess this means you have access to my tracker again, huh?”
I shake my head. “Stone offered. But I didn’t need it. I know where you go when shit gets bad.” I lean against a trunk, arms folded, and listen as her breathing steadies inside her little fortress of bark and memory. “Classic move, by the way. Hot-wiring a car? Duck’s proud of you, I bet.”
She’s silent for a few seconds, which is basically a confession.
“The first time I did this, I got lost for hours,” she says, voice small.
“I didn’t even have a phone. So I just waited in here and pretended I was a creature in a fairy tale, and that if Dad wanted me, he’d have to come all the way into the woods to find me. He never did.”
“Stone’s not a woods guy. Never has been.”
“Yeah. You were though, right?”
“Was I that obvious?” I say, trying not to smile.
She pulls her knees tighter to her chest, her voice muffled against her forearms. “You thought you were stealthy. But I always knew you were there. Never understood why you didn’t come over here instead of just lurking.”
“You needed your space, so I kept out of sight. Usually climbed up there.” I point to the heavy branch that juts out a dozen feet above us. “Sat up in the crook, watched over you. Not to be a creep. Just . . . couldn’t leave you alone out here.”
Her head lifts, and under the moonlight I can see her cheeks streaked with dried tears. “Yeah. I know. I used to imagine you were keeping watch, like a wolf or something. Protector spirit of the club president’s ungovernable daughter.”
“Pretty sure wolves don’t eat gas station beef jerky and listen to Audioslave.”
She laughs—a wet, derelict sound—but there’s real relief in it. I’d chase that sound to the ends of the earth if it meant another second of her not crying.
“You OK?” I ask after a beat.
“No.”
The word makes my ribs ache, and I push my palms against the moss, sit with my knees up like her. There’s a soft, private quiet out here, the hush of the woods offering cover for ugly feelings. “Want to tell me what happened back there?”
Silence.
“Emma.”
“The man.” Her voice gets shaky. “The one Vernick was looking at when you told everyone it was Summit.”
“The one near the exit?”
She nods. “He was one of them. One of the men who grabbed me. Who put me in that van.” Her voice cracks and she swipes at the tears on her face.
“Are you sure?” My hands curl into fists.
“His face—I’ll never forget his face.”
I force myself to breathe, to stay calm, because Emma needs calm right now.
But my mind is buzzing, searching my memories.
How the fuck did one of them escape? I remember the warehouse, the men I put down.
No luck, no mercy. I emptied the clip, then a spare, then made sure every one of those bastards was dead. Every single body.
Except maybe one. Fuck.
“I’ll take care of it.” I keep my voice level. “He won’t bother you again.”
She looks up at me, her eyes searching mine in the darkness. “What are you going to do?”
“Same thing I did to everyone else from that warehouse.” I shift closer. “But right now, I need you to come out of there. Let me see you.”
She hesitates, then starts maneuvering out of the hollow. It’s awkward, and I can see her wince with every movement. When she’s finally free, I reach for her, pulling her against my chest. She comes willingly, collapsing into me like her strings have been cut.
“Where’s your boot?” I ask, looking down at her injured foot.
“I took it off. Threw it somewhere.” Her voice is small. “It was hurting too much, and I just—I needed it off.”
“Jesus, Emma.” I lean down to look at her foot properly. She’s at least got her compression sock on. But I can tell she’s hurt it, see the pain etched across her face, even though she’s trying to hide it. “You can’t just take off your surgical boot and run through the woods. You know that, right?”
“I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“No shit.” I cup her face. “Where’d you throw it?”
“Over there somewhere?” She gestures vaguely to the right.
I pull out my phone and turn on the flashlight, sweeping it across the ground. It takes a minute, but I spot the surgical boot half-buried in leaves about twenty feet away.
“Stay here,” I tell her, shifting her off my lap and onto the ground before I retrieve it. The Velcro straps are tangled and covered in leaf litter. I do my best to clear it away before bringing it back to her.
“This is going to hurt,” I warn, starting to put the boot back on.
“Everything hurts right now.”
I’m as gentle as I can be, but she still hisses in pain as I work the boot back into place. Her face goes pale and she grips my shoulder hard enough that I feel her nails through my shirt.
“You probably set your recovery back a few weeks,” I say, securing the last strap.
“Worth it to get away from him.”
I look up at her. “Running is still your first instinct, huh?”
“What else was I supposed to do? Stay there and have a panic attack in front of two hundred people?”
“You could have signaled to me. Your dad. Any one of the brothers. Then we could have gotten you out of there and grabbed that guy before he could leave.”
“I wasn’t thinking, Bones. I just—I saw his face and I couldn’t breathe and I had to get out. That’s all I could do.”
I soften my tone, pulling her closer. “I know. You did what you needed to do. I just—I hate that you hurt yourself to get away.”
She leans her head on my shoulder, and I press a kiss on the top of her head before I stand, scooping her up along with me.
“Bones, I can walk—”
“Not on my watch.” I adjust my grip, making sure her injured leg is supported. “You’ve done enough damage for one night.”
She doesn’t argue, just wraps her arms around my neck and rests her head against my shoulder as I carry her out of those woods.
“Someone’s going to be pissed about their car,” Emma mumbles against my skin as we pass the stolen Honda and reach my truck.
“Tank will handle it. Get it back to the owner, make everything right.” I settle her into the passenger seat as carefully as I can, then walk around to the driver’s side.
The drive to the clubhouse is quiet. Emma stares out the window, one hand pressed against her leg just above where the boot ends, like she’s trying to hold the pain in place.
“What are you thinking?” I ask.
“That I’m tired.” She doesn’t look at me. “That I’ve been tired for a really long time.”
I don’t know how to fix it for her, so I settle for covering her hand with mine. “You want to talk about what happened, or just sit quiet a while?”
She doesn’t answer right away. Just stares at her reflection in the window and shakes her head, then nods, then shakes again like she’s arguing with herself.
“I’m a coward,” Emma says finally. “I thought after everything, after the therapy and the healing, I wouldn’t fall apart like that. But I did.”
“That’s not cowardice. That’s trauma.” I keep my voice even, drive one-handed so she knows it’s not just words. “You saw the man who kidnapped you. Your body did exactly what it was supposed to do—get you somewhere safe. That’s not weakness. That’s survival.”
She looks at me, her mouth set in a line. “No. I survived because of you. I’ve always survived because you keep swooping in and fixing everything for me. I’m just . . . I feel like a liability.”
“You’re not a liability, swan,” I say, squeezing her hand so tight I’m surprised I don’t bruise bone. “You’re the reason I’m still here. You’re the only reason I give a damn about any of this.”
She lets out a sound somewhere between a scoff and a sob. “That’s not a healthy dynamic, Bones.”
“Don’t care.”
“You should. Unless you want to be stuck with my broken ass forever.”
“That’s been the plan since I was sixteen.”
That gets a ghost of a smile from her. “You never even liked me back then. You just felt sorry for me. I was such a pain in the ass no one wanted to deal with me.”
I shake my head, eyes still on the road. “I never felt sorry for you. I liked you so much it made me stupid. Only reason I didn’t do anything about it is because Stone would’ve kicked my ass for it.”
She laughs lightly. “God. Can you imagine? He reacted so poorly to us as adults. Imagine how he would have reacted if we’d done anything as kids.”
“He’d have pulled you out of the dance academy and locked you in a tower.” I laugh. “But I would have visited. Smuggled in energy drinks and sugar cubes, since I know you run on those. We could have made it work.”
She leans her head back, eyes closed, but her lips twitch like she’s fighting a smile. “I never knew what to do with you—at first, anyway. You were just this weird, scrawny kid with long eyelashes and no sense of self-preservation. I thought you’d get yourself killed before you turned eighteen.”
“Not dead yet,” I say, sparing a glance at her. There’s color creeping back into her cheeks, the stress of today fading at least a little. “And I have a lot of self-preservation now. It’s all reserved for you.”