Chapter 22 #2
“Who is she?” I asked, not looking up from the young woman’s blurred picture.
“My friend Sabel,” she rasped. “The cops aren’t doing shit about it, just like the others, and—”
“Others?” Langston asked at my back. His hand wrapped around my waist almost like he needed the reassurance that I was close and safe.
The woman eyed Langston, then West, who stood at my side. She arched a brow at me. “Both of them?” I snorted and nodded. “Damn, girl, leave some for the rest of us. Don’t be so fucking greedy.”
I shrugged. “They came as a package deal, a two-for-one-special type of thing.”
She smiled for just a second before it faded when she looked down at the flyer she’d clearly made and had taken on the duty of posting around Anchorage.
“Cops said she’s not missing, that it hasn’t been long enough. But Sabel always comes home, always, and last night she didn’t.”
“You said others?” Langston prodded with a gentleness in his tone that I knew was a conscious decision. Such a good guy, my Captain Asshole.
“Yeah, the others. They’re one second doing”—she jerked her gaze to the cracked concrete—“jobs, then boom, gone, never to be seen again. The cops don’t take it seriously, though, because of what we do.
” The corner of her lip curled upward. “Some of us even went to this FBI guy, found his information online, and he didn’t give a shit either. ”
“How long has this been going on, the women going missing?” I asked. My stomach churned, all the happy and excitement from the day now replaced with worry and dread.
“I don’t know… a year, maybe longer. Though it’s not the first time.”
“What do you mean?” West asked.
“Some of the older girls said there were a bunch of missing women back when they were just starting, but then one day it just stopped.” She rubbed at her arms and glanced up and down the street as if expecting the one responsible to jump out from the shadows.
“Now it’s happening again. I just want to find my friend. She’s all I have.”
I carefully slid the paper free from her tight hold. “Can I have this copy? We might know someone who could help.” And maybe tell us why the hell women were turning up missing here in Anchorage too.
“Sure, I made a lot of copies to put up.” She held up the small stack of flyers.
“Want some help?” West asked. He turned to me and Langston. “You two head to the bar. I’ll help her put up the rest of the flyers and then meet you there.”
I looped my arms around his neck and pulled him down for a quick kiss. “You’re a good man, West, you know that?”
“I have to be to have any hope of deserving someone like you, Juno.”
My heart clenched at his words. “We deserve each other.”
After one last quick kiss, I waved at the woman and allowed Langston to guide me down the sidewalk toward our original destination.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I murmured, gaze locked on my shoes. “It can’t be a coincidence, right?”
“I don’t know. Anchor Bay is best accessible by boat, and that’s an hour’s trip. That would be a lot of fucking effort, for what?”
“For what?” I parroted. “That’s the big question if they are linked. Why at home and why here?”
“And let’s not forget the type of person missing are opposites there and here. On the trail, it’s healthy, adventurous young women, and here, it’s—” He cringed. “—the opposite.”
“Yeah.” I held up the flyer and studied the woman’s picture, loving her fire-red dyed hair.
“I just can’t shake the feeling that it’s connected somehow.
And what she said about it happening before, isn’t that what Jasper said to Liam and Memphis that day in the street?
Caroline was trying to connect disappearances from years ago to what’s happening now. Something to do with her mom, I think.”
My brows pulled in tight as I tried to remember what the guys had mentioned about that run-in with Jasper Cain weeks ago. That was before he turned up murdered. But how could someone be connected to the missing women from two decades ago and now? That part didn’t make sense.
With a resigned sigh, knowing there was nothing I could do now, I folded up the flyer and stuck it into my back pocket.
“I can’t believe we’re headed to my hometown tomorrow.
And then the big shit show—I mean wedding—the next day.
Did I tell you Stephanie wants me to come to her bridal shower tomorrow if we arrive in time? ”
“Will you?” Langston opened a heavy wooden door and guided me through with a gentle hand pressed against my lower back.
The mixed aromas of stale beer, fried foods, and smoke permeated the air, reminding me of Dave’s back home.
My heart swelled at that thought. Yes, Anchor Bay was my home now.
More of a home than I’d ever had before, filled with people who truly cared about me, and it wasn’t just about Langston and West. It felt like a loving family, everyone checking in on you when you were down, stopping by when you were sick, considering you when making community plans or changes.
Yes, Anchor Bay was my home.
“What are you smiling about?” Langston asked as he helped me onto the high-top barstool before taking a seat beside me.
“Just happy. But to answer your question, I don’t know if I’ll go.
It’ll be a game-time decision. The only thing we’re committed to going to is the wedding, and I like it that way.
This will give us plenty of free time for me to show you around the three-block town without having to rush to get somewhere. ”
“Sounds like a plan to me. The less time I’m around that asshole, the better—for his sake, anyway.” He looked over his shoulder to the bar and then back at me with a small frown. “I have to order over there.”
I shrugged. “I’ll be fine on my own, here in the middle of a crowded bar while you’re twenty feet away with a clear line of sight to where I’m sitting.”
He grumbled something under his breath about me needing the sass spanked out of me and stood. After promising several times that I wouldn’t move, he turned, making his way to the bar.
Blowing out a slow breath, I relaxed against the hardwood chair back and allowed my gaze to wander around the dive bar. Most of the tables were full of what seemed to be friends or coworkers all enjoying a drink after work, laughing and talking loudly with one another.
A couple sitting at a high-top table similar to ours caught my attention.
It was like a flashback to how Eric and I used to be when we went out alone.
The guy nursed a beer, several empty pint glasses littering the table in front of him, as he played on his phone while the woman stared off into space, acting like him ignoring her was okay. They both looked miserable.
Never again would I allow that, to feel so invisible and alone while sitting right next to my partner.
All the hard work and active healing I’d done since moving to Anchor Bay had shown me I was a pretty amazing person.
I’d started my own company doing website design and system programming for small businesses, took up self-defense classes with Oliver, and put myself out there with the women in the Uplift community, who welcomed me with open arms. For years I was coerced to push aside who I really was and what I wanted, but that was in the past.
One part of my new life that I absolutely didn’t expect but now cherished were the women in the Uplift community who quickly became friends I never wanted to live without.
They didn’t give me the option to be a loner; instead, they showed up one day with wine and cookies.
Now book club, where we drank more than read, was a night I looked forward to the moment the previous one ended.
“It’s less about my feelings toward Stephanie,” I mused when Langston returned with our drinks—beer for him, vodka soda with a lime for me, “and more that I’m done wasting time on things because it’s ‘what you’re supposed to do.
’ Fuck that, right? Why should I be forced to spend hours of my life stuck in a room with a bunch of women who I don’t like, playing nice and acting like a give a fuck if Stephanie got the china she registered for? ”
“People still do that shit?” Langston asked, taking a sip of his beer.
“Yeah, all to put it in a special cabinet, only to be brought out when the queen comes.”
“Gotta love a good Friends reference.” I whirled around with a wide smile to face West. “I’m so glad I’m obsessed with a woman who can quote movies and shows with me.”
“Obsessed, huh?”
He kissed me on the cheek and sat down, grabbing Langston’s beer right out of his hand and taking a drink.
I took a drink to hide my laugh at the disgusted expression Langston shot him. “You two are adorable.”
They both turned to me with unamused expressions.
“We’re not adorable,” West said, giving Langston back his drink. “We’re….”
“About to kill that motherfucker at the bar if he doesn’t stop eyeing our girl,” Langston grumbled.
A serious expression replaced West’s dimpled smile. “Which one?”
“Stop it, you two,” I cut in. “He’s probably trying to figure out our dynamic, not looking at just me.”
“He wants what’s ours,” Langston muttered as he took another sip of his beer while death glaring across the bar.
“Or wants to join in?” I said with as straight a face as I could muster. “How do you two feel about adding to our group?”
Both heads whipped my way with raised brows. I couldn’t hold back a second longer; the laugh that was desperate to escape erupted, making the table next to us turn our way. I slapped a hand over my mouth, attempting to quiet myself.
West sagged in his chair. “Funny, sweet cheeks. Very funny. You had me there for a second.”
“Like I need more,” I chuckled. “I already have two slightly obsessed—”
“Remove the slightly,” Langston added.
“Protective—”
“Add in over-the-top,” West chimed in.
“And practically perfect in every way men.”
“While I don’t agree with your Mary Poppins-coined description of us, I do agree that we’re all you need.”
“Forever,” Langston said before downing the last of his drink and watching me over the glass rim. The heat in his eyes made my breath catch and stomach flip. “We’re all she’ll ever need. We’ll make sure of that.”
Holy hell, who knew being claimed by someone like these two would be so fucking hot instead of suffocating and terrifying? Forever seemed like a long time, except when it was referring to the three of us together, just like this.
Then it didn’t feel nearly long enough.