Chapter 23
Saint
By the time I get back to the clubhouse, the edge is off.
The four assholes from the south lockup are handled, two breathing because I needed answers and two dead because they made themselves inconvenient.
Halo is pissed he missed the fun. Bricks laughed for half the ride back until I told him he could either shut up or join the bodies we were leaving behind.
He lasted exactly forty seconds before he started humming.
I should feel steadier. I almost do. I thought I could shoot enough noise into the night that the answer would come loose inside me, simple and usable by the time I walked back through the clubhouse doors.
It hasn’t.
But I know I need to say something, and that’s new enough to piss me off.
I need to find Oisín, put him somewhere quiet, and give him a sentence that doesn’t turn into strategy before it reaches him.
Not love. I’m not ready to make a liar out of myself with a word that large when I don’t know what to do with it once it’s in the room.
But something. I want you. I chose you too.
You’re not just useful. You’re mine in ways I don’t know how to say without making it sound like a threat.
Wrong words might be better than silence.
That’s where I am when I walk into the main room with Demo half a step behind me and Halo’s replacement crew pulling into the lot outside.
The clubhouse is louder than it should be for the hour, men moving between the bar and the hall, Moth’s runners crossing with files, Pike arguing with someone near the back about camera access.
The air tastes like coffee, gun oil, and waiting.
I look toward the bar first. Oisín isn’t there.
Tally stands behind it with a towel in one hand and her eyes already on me, which means she knows why I’m looking before I ask.
Demo stops beside me, still buzzing with leftover nerves from the lockup and too much adrenaline he didn’t get to spend.
I scan the room once, slow enough not to look frantic.
“Where is he?” I ask.
Tally’s face changes. “He went outside,” she says.
“When?”
“Forty minutes. Maybe closer to an hour. I thought he was cooling off, Saint.”
I turn toward Demo. “Check the bedroom.” I point at Pike. “Cameras. Courtyard, side gate, rear lot. Now.”
Pike straightens so fast he nearly knocks into the man beside him. “On it.”
Tally sets the towel down. “Saint.”
I don’t look at her. “Did anyone go with him?”
“No. I thought he was just stepping out. I was going to give him a minute.”
That isn’t her fault. I know that somewhere under the immediate, brutal need to blame every person in this building, myself included.
Oisín is my husband. My responsibility. Mine to protect, mine to answer, mine to keep from walking out into a blind pocket of night because I stood in my office with all the words in the world locked behind my teeth and let him go.
Demo comes back down the hall too quickly, face pale. “He’s not there.”
The clubhouse goes quiet, Moth appearing from the private hallway with his tablet already in hand, eyes moving over the room.
“What happened?” he asks.
“Oisín’s gone.”
“How long?”“Tally says forty.”“Less than an hour,” she says. “I’m sure of that.”
Pike calls from the back office. “VP, courtyard camera’s out.” Pike steps into view, holding up both hands like that might help. “It’s not dead, just looping. It’s showing an empty courtyard from earlier tonight.”
Shit. Everything about tonight suddenly feels like a setup rather than coincidence. “Those kids snooping around the warehouse weren’t the play,” I say.
Moth’s fingers move across the tablet. “They were the distraction.”
Demo’s voice comes out thin. “For Oisín?”
“For me.” The truth tastes like metal in my mouth. “They knew I’d take it personally if someone grabbed product under my nose. They knew Bricks would follow. They knew the room would move around me.”
Tally whispers, “Rogues.”
I’m already moving. The side door hits the wall hard enough to crack plaster when I shove through it. Cold air slams into my face. The courtyard looks normal at first glance, which makes me want to tear it apart by hand.
Moth follows with Pike and two men behind him. Demo stays at my shoulder even though I didn’t tell him to, his face pale but set. We search outward in a hard sweep, not because I expect to find Oisín tucked behind a shed, but because every second of standing still feels like a trap closing tighter.
There are signs once we stop looking where a man wants to be found.
A smear near the side gate where a heel dragged across damp dirt.
A faint dark spot on the concrete that might be blood or oil until Moth crouches, touches it with gloved fingers, and looks up without speaking.
Fibers caught on the bottom edge of the fence.
Scuff marks heading away from the building instead of toward it.
The trail dies where the rear service path meets gravel, and for several awful seconds, there’s nothing but cold wind and Demo breathing too hard beside me.
Then Pike calls from farther down the path. “Tracks.”
We find them a quarter mile down, beyond the reach of the nearest clubhouse camera and just past the point where the rear access road bends toward the old utility cut. There’s two sets of boot prints, maybe three, one partial drag mark between them.
I stand over the tire tracks with the night wind cutting through my shirt and see the board in my head.
The Rogues knew the camera points. They knew the lockup grab would pull me and Bricks off center.
They knew Oisín would be vulnerable if he walked out after our argument, which means either they were watching the clubhouse closely enough to read behavior or someone in Rogue territory knew exactly what kind of hurt would make him need air.
It also means someone in Obsidian is feeding them information.
I turn back toward the clubhouse, and whatever shows on my face makes Pike step out of my path without being told.
Demo follows me. “Saint—”
“Don’t.”
He shuts up, but he stays with me. Inside, Bricks comes in from the front door at the same time I reach the center of the main room, and the look on his face tells me Moth called him before I had to.
“I should be at your side,” he says.
“No.”
“Saint.”
“You and Moth are needed for the run.” I turn on him because I need him to understand before loyalty makes him stupid. “Canon will be moving on the eastern corridor. He took Oisín because he wants information and because he wants me off the board. If you leave the run uncovered, he gets both.”
Bricks’ jaw tightens. “I can put Halo on it.”
“I don’t trust Halo with this.”
“You trust Demo?”
Demo’s eyes widen beside me, but he doesn’t speak.
“I trust Demo to follow me into hell and not ask questions on the way,” I chuckle. “I trust you and Moth to keep my club alive while I get my husband back.”
Bricks’ face changes at the word husband as he steps closer, lowering his voice. “You sure you’re thinking clear?”
“No.” I hold his stare. “That’s why I’m giving you the corridor.”
Bricks nods once. “Keep your phone open.”
“Keep your fucking eyes peeled because I have a feeling shit is about to go sideways.” I look toward Moth, who’s still near the office door with his tablet in one hand and a phone pressed to his ear.
“If Canon hits while I’m gone, you don’t chase.
You fold the trap around him. Oisín gave us the map. Use it.”
Moth lowers the phone. “I already am.”
I move toward the front door with Demo at my heels, grabbing an extra magazine from the lockbox near the hall as I pass. Pike hands me a second sidearm without a word. Tally catches my wrist before I can clear the room.
“Bring him back, Saint.”
I merely grunt before pushing outside, Demo heading for the passenger side of the SUV. As important as the bikes are, I have no idea what condition Oisín will be in and I’m not hauling him on that. It’d be a death trap.
Sol steps out from the shadow near the front fender before either of us reaches the doors. He looks like he’s been there long enough to hear more than he should and not enough to help.
“Going somewhere?” he muses.
I get into the driver’s seat and start the engine as Sol comes to the window. I lower it halfway because if I open the door, I might use it to knock him down.
“Oisín is gone,” he says, like he’s testing the words. “Convenient timing.”
My hand tightens on the wheel. “Move.”
“He was always dirty.” Sol leans one forearm on the window frame as if this is just another lesson in another long line of lessons he thinks I still need.
“This is proof. The Rogue went back to his people and took what he learned with him. He gave them enough to move, then vanished before the hit. You’re too close to see it. ”
It clicks then, that this is how my father works.
That everything has to fall into his plan or it gets pushed away.
When Mom left, Sol never went after her, not that I know of.
I was too young and stupid to remember much but there were tears, no heartbreak, nothing to show that Sol ever loved the woman that birthed me.
“Grace left because of this,” I push out.
His face hardens. “Watch yourself.”
“No. You watched yourself for so long you forgot there are people in the room with you.” I step out of the car and toward him, and the old man in him squares up, but I’m not seven and he’s not the whole world anymore.
“Your inability to trust a single person is why she left. Not weakness. Not softness. You. She left because every time she reached for something human, you turned it into a liability and called that strength.”
Sol’s mouth twists. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“I know exactly what I’m talking about. I watched her disappear one day at a time while you sat in your office teaching me that needing anyone made me stupid.
I watched this club become a fortress full of men who fear you and call it respect because fear is the only thing you know how to keep.
” My voice rises, but I don’t pull it back.
“You’ll die in that office surrounded by men who obey you, and not one of them will love you enough to grieve anything but the mess you leave behind. ”
Sol’s face goes still. Then his eyes go mean in the way mine probably do when I’m looking for the fastest route to blood. “I’m not the one sticking my dick in the enemy and calling it loyalty.”
I catch him by the front of his cut and drive him back against the SUV. Demo makes a strangled sound, but he doesn’t interfere. Sol’s cigar drops somewhere near our boots, embers scattering across the pavement.
“He is my husband,” I push through clenched teeth, close enough that he can hear every word and feel the restraint under it. “I’m going to retrieve him, and then I’m going to show him exactly how much he’s worth because apparently I should’ve done that before I let him walk out of my office.”
Sol’s hand closes around my wrist. “You’re losing your head over a Ward.”
“No. I’m done letting you tell me the only way to keep my head is to cut out everything under it.”
“You walk into Rogue territory like this, you risk the club.”
“The club is already at risk. Oisín told us that. Oisín saved us time, men, maybe the whole eastern corridor, and you’re standing here calling him dirty because trusting him would mean admitting your entire life is built on a fear you dressed up as wisdom.”
I release him with enough force to shove him back another inch. “If you try to stop me, the handover happens tonight instead of in a few weeks.” I’ve never threatened my father but seeing the flicker of fear in his eyes tells me enough.
Sol’s eyes narrow. “You threatening your president?”
“I’m informing my father that the presidency is the only reason he’s still standing in front of me with all his teeth.” I step back toward the open driver’s door. “Don’t test which one matters less to me right now.”
I get back into the SUV and slam the door.
Demo climbs into the passenger seat like he’s trying very hard not to look at me directly and failing.
A second vehicle pulls up beside us, and Ash gets out with a rifle case in one hand and a duffel in the other.
He’s one of Bricks’ garage men, reliable in the way machines are reliable when maintained properly.
Ash opens the rear door and tosses the duffel inside. “Bricks said you needed a third.”
“Bricks talks too much.”
“He also said to tell you not to die because Tally will make his life unbearable.”
Despite everything, my mouth almost curves. “Get in.”
Ash climbs into the back. Demo twists around to look at the rifle case, then clamps his mouth shut so visibly that Ash gives him a strange look.
I pull from the lot hard enough that the tires spit gravel behind us, driving to where I can only hope Oisín is.
Bleeding, maybe. Hurt, definitely. Afraid, if he has any sense left, and still probably trying to protect the same club he chose over blood because he thinks his body breaking means loyalty failed.
I should’ve answered him.
Fuck, I’m going to get my husband back.
Then I’m going to learn how to fucking speak.