Chapter 14
Patch
Beth’s been gone about twenty minutes. I saw her go to the restroom earlier. When I check, she’s not there. Thinking she might have gone to the bar for a drink to take the edge off or even the back patio to decompress, I’m alarmed to discover she’s nowhere to be found.
I’m tasked with the unenviable job of letting Siege and Rigs know that while we were all busting our asses to find her sister, she took off on us.
I head back to the meeting room and break the bad news.
Once he finds out that she’s not answering her phone either, Siege lets out a string of curses.
The look on Rigs’ face tells me he’s no happier than our club president.
Zen’s monitors are lit with different pieces of information on Lila’s case.
Smoke has Adult Protective Services on speaker. Lila’s pulmonology information was in the packet Serena filed. APS confirms the risk and states that they have filed a missing person’s report on Lila.
We need to find the stepfather. Hopefully, that bastard has Lila with him.
If not, we’ll beat the information outta him if we have to.
However, that still doesn’t answer the question of where Beth’s gotten to.
And more importantly why would she leave when we were trying to track down her sister.
I don’t like the sound of this, but Zen had been monitoring her stepfather’s phone and there had been no calls or texts sent today.
We’re still trying to figure out where Lila might be and what’s happened to Beth when Roxy shows up at the door.
Rigs shoots her an annoyed look. “Out. You know club girls are not allowed back here. We don’t have time for you right now.”
She glances nervously at me before explaining, “I think something strange is going on with Patch’s old lady.”
Everyone stops what they’re doing, and all eyes are on Roxy. I motion for her to come into the room. “I want to hear what you have to say, but if you’re distracting us with some lying bullshit, I’m gonna be pretty pissed.”
Roxy’s unruffled demeanor is legendary around this clubhouse, but today she’s looking all kinds of uncertain. “I’m not playin’. And I’m not sure if I should be butting into her business if she wants to leave you. I’m just gonna tell you what happened and let you judge for yourself.”
I jerk my chin at her. “Why the fuck would she be leaving me? Just spit it out.”
She takes a deep breath and launches into a story.
“I saw Beth a couple of hours ago, she looked upset and told me she was finished with Patch and with this club. She said you all wouldn’t tell her what was going on, and she didn’t understand bikers. She wanted to go to Patch’s place and get her car, so I gave her a lift.”
I stammer, “You took Beth away from the protection of the clubhouse without permission?”
Roxy goes stiff and raises her voice. “She doesn’t need your permission to leave, and I don’t need your permission to give her a lift. I thought I was doing her a favor.”
I give her a hard look. Roxy has never done anyone a favor in her entire life.
“Okay. I wanted rid of her and if she decided she wanted to leave then I was gonna help her get as far away as possible,” she says, having the grace to look a bit embarrassed about her motives.
Rigs grits out, “Get on with the story.”
“When we arrived at Patch’s house, she gave me gas money, thanked me for the ride, ran to her car, and took off like a bat outta hell. Literally, like she was scared shitless. What the hell did you guys do to her?”
Not willing to give her a single ounce of information, I said, “Nothing. Is that all you have to report?”
“No. I guess I was curious so I followed her. Also, her giving me the gas money was kinda nice. No one has done anything like that for me before. She drove west to the county line, pulled over, and took a picture of the sign with her cell phone.”
I can hear several people gasp, and I might have been one of them, because that’s damn strange behavior.
“Well, still being curious, I followed her some more, and she ended up at some rich guy’s house.
I parked across the street and waited. After a bit, they came out with another woman, and she looked drunk as hell.
Beth helped her into the back seat, and they all drove off. Does any of this make sense to you?”
I nod. “Yeah, that woman was her sister, and she’s sick, not drunk. Where did they go from there?”
“I was gonna keep following them, but I was running out of gas.”
Curious, I ask, “Why did you give her a ride in the first place?”
She looks uncomfortable but answers truthfully.
“Like I said, at first, it was to get rid of her because she’s an outsider.
But then she was nice to me and gave me money for gas.
I was confused but also worried something bad was about to happen to her.
I didn’t want to be responsible if I could have said something but didn’t and she wound up hurt or worse. ”
I look at Roxy with new eyes. “I’m not gonna lie to you. My old lady’s in danger, and you might have just saved her life. I’m not gonna forget that.”
After telling us the address where Beth met up with her stepfather, she flashes me a smile and flounces out of the room, proving to my mind that you can’t always predict how people are gonna react when they see things go sideways.
We all load up, eager to get our hands on Beth’s asshole of a stepfather.
Tank takes his truck so we can get Lila back to her care home, assuming of course that we are lucky enough to find her.
Dutch rides shotgun, and the rest of us take our bikes.
I throw my medical bag into the back of Tank’s truck because I want to have what I need to treat Lila if she’s in a bad way.
Barnaby Lane is pretty easy to find once we hit Gosport. It’s one of those really nice housing developments where each house sits on around five acres and has an in-ground pool. We park two houses down from the address. Siege, Rigs, and I walk up to the front door. We knock once.
A couple of minutes later, the door opens to a familiar face. I know her stepfather pretty well because our families traveled in the same circles. He tries to close the door, but I put my palm against the wood, and I step into the doorway, forcing him back into the house.
“Don’t be an asshole, Jefferies.”
“You have no right to barge into this house.”
Seeing him face-to-face, knowing he just trafficked my old lady, is too much, so I give him a hard fist to the face. Of course he doesn’t fight back. Domestic abusers never do. They love treating women like shit, but when facing off with another man, they begin engaging in avoidance-type behavior.
He pinches his bloody nose and grumbles, “Why the hell did you do that?”
“Because you’re fucking around in my personal life and I don’t like it.”
“Get the hell out before I call the police.”
“APS asked for a welfare check on Lila. That means you’re obligated to cooperate,” Siege says as my club brothers come pouring over the threshold. He holds his phone so Beth’s stepfather can read the message.
“Where are they?”
“Where are who?” he says.
“Don’t give me that shit. You know damn well who.”
Pushing him back through the house, I keep going until we hit the living room. “There’s some medical equipment here, so he had Lila at one point.”
Siege cuts to the chase. “How about you tell us where Beth and Lila are before we tear this place apart and you with it?”
He stammers, “You can’t bust into this house and do as you like. We live in a country of laws.” He keeps glancing at Tank moving around the room, rummaging through drawers.
“Let’s just sit down and talk this out.”
This dumbass thinks he’s going to control the situation. I jerk my chin at Rigs, who’s standing at the door. He goes over to the window and snaps the blind shut. Several other brothers join Tank in looking for useful information.
I shove him down into a seat and loom over him menacingly. “You took Lila from her care home. Then you somehow lured Beth back home and now they are both missing. The way I see it, that makes you guilty of kidnapping.”
“You can’t prove any of that?”
I bend down and look him in the eye. “Yeah, we can. We have an eyewitness that says you left here with both of them several hours ago.”
“You’ve got nothing.”
I’m getting pretty worked up. “You better give me a name right now unless you want this to escalate.”
He swallows before saying, “Both of them are safe, and that’s the only thing that matters.”
He flinches when I reach for him. “Don’t you fucking move.”
He panics, dives out of the chair with more agility that I think a man his age should have and takes off running.
He doesn’t get two steps before I grab his wrist, anchor the elbow with my left hand and place my thumb in the ulnar groove.
I can tell the moment I hit the sensitive nerve there because he screams like a baby.
When I let up, he exhales through his mouth, giving a dramatic groan.
My club brothers just stare at me, like I have two heads. It’s clearly never occurred to them that I would be willing to deal out pain to get my old lady back. It’s because I’m a doctor.
“Give me a name,” I growl.
He stares at my cut, his mouth opens and closes. We both know that a few more pinches and he’s going to tell me anything I want to know. “Vincent,” he says.
“I want a full name, obviously.”
“I just know him as Vincent,” he repeats, trying to sound convincing. The motion dies under my hand.
Dutch walks back from the kitchen carrying some kind of organizer with pockets.
He flips through until he pulls a business card with a heavy stock and a black monogram of a walnut shell setting in a stylized V.
Glancing at Siege, Dutch says, “There is a phone number without a title or address.” He sets it on the glass coffee table.
Mr. Jefferies stares at the letters. He flinches when Tank comes back with a tablet from the nightstand and places it beside the card.
The tablet is unlocked and a message thread sits open.
Tank announces, “It’s a fairly incriminating conversation about how Beth is now agreeable to be his new companion in exchange for wiping his debt clean.
” Tank stops to take a deep breath before continuing, “There is an image of Beth and Lila in a foyer with fancy spiral ironwork behind them. The sender’s phone number matches the number on the card. The timestamp is a few hours old.”
“Let’s get going,” Siege says.
“What about him?” I ask Siege. “We need to interrogate him properly.”
“Zip tie him, Tank.” You two escort him back to the clubhouse and put him on lockdown. We’ll have a go at him right away. He’s gonna tell us what we need to know or else.”
“You can’t just abduct me.”
I turn on him. “Why not? You abducted Beth and Lila. Turnabout is fair play in my opinion.”
It’s clear Robert Jefferies is a little too used to having his own way in life and didn’t quite know how to handle having all of it being removed in one fell swoop.
As Tank walks past with him in tow, my hand shoots out, hard and fast around his throat.
“Just want to let you know that if any harm comes to Beth or Lila, I’ll personally see that you get a dirt nap.
Think on that while you’re dragging your feet. ”
Now, I don’t know for sure that I have it in me to murder a man in cold blood, but I want him to reflect on his choices and worry about his safety, just like he’s made Beth and Lila.
He goes pale as Tank gives him a rough push towards the back door. We shove him into the truck between Dutch and Tank. They take off with him. The rest of us jump on our bikes and head back to the clubhouse.
***
By the time we make it back to the clubhouse, that asshole has clearly had time to think about his situation. He comes barreling out of the pickup truck, screaming about how we can’t make a lawful citizen’s arrest and that we were abducting him.
Smoke approaches him. “Stop being a dipshit. You’re not under arrest. You’re being secured at our property for safety reasons.
We’re gonna give you to the cops when we’ve finished with you.
Violation of a medical welfare check? That’s another crime the police can add on top of the abduction and trafficking charges. ”
Tank and Dutch hustle him off to the basement. Zen gets busy reviewing information from all the devices we brought back.
Smoke walks in and lays out the evidence. “We have an eyewitness that says you took Beth and Lila away in your vehicle. You named another person, and we found his business card amongst your personal effects. It looks like we have what we need to turn you over to the police.”
“You want to make this easy for yourself? You can tell us, or we can beat it out of you,” Rigs says menacingly.
Robert groans and looks at Smoke “Not you again. I thought you left. You gonna lawyer me to death?”
Smoke responds humorlessly, “I’m like a bad penny or your worst nightmare. Anyway, talk to us about the whereabouts of Beth and Lila. If something bad happens to them, it’s going to fall back on you.”
Rigs walks over and leans down to look into the stubborn man’s face. “If you don’t talk, I’m gonna start pulling out your teeth one by one.”
I call out to Zen. “Start with his cell phone. Maybe check his Google Maps or see if he’s sharing his location with anyone.”
Zen immediately starts working on his phone, while the rest of us take turns having a go at Jefferies.
We’re playing nicely, but I want to hurt him so bad.
I tell him, “We’re gonna find out where they’re at, sooner or later.
You might as well tell us, so we don’t have to start cutting off ears and shit. ”
The stubborn fool gives me a withering look. “You’re a doctor. Doctors don’t cut people’s ears off.”
“Do I look like a doctor right now? If it gets my woman and her sister back, I’m gonna cut off your fingers one by one and feed ‘em to you.”
“That’s some pretty sick shit.”
“Sicker than trafficking your own daughter? I don’t think so, asshole.”
“We’re not going to give you an infinite number of chances to cooperate,” Siege growls. “Give us the address. You’ll still be turned over to law enforcement, but at least you’ll still be alive. On the other hand, if you keep playing stupid games, I guarantee you will end up winning stupid prizes.”
Zen finally speaks up, excitedly, “I think I found it in his contacts list of all places.” He rattles off the address, causing Jefferies to jerk his head up to give him a dirty look. “You are going to ruin everything. Why can’t you assholes mind your own business?”
Siege slaps Zen on the back. “Good work, Zen.” Turning to Smoke, he says, “Go ahead and turn him over to our contact at the Las Salinas PD. Give him all the evidence we collected and have him meet us at Vincent’s address.”