CHAPTER 16
AVA
The distant murmur of voices talking awoke me and I pushed up to sitting, no memory of even falling back to sleep.
If it weren’t for the fact the bed was badly rumpled and I lay in nothing but my bra under the comforter, I would have worried my whole experience with Jack had been some amazing, elaborate dream.
I grabbed my phone from the nightstand to check the time, then cursed up a storm when I saw it was after midday. I was instantly angry with myself for wasting so much time when I should have been working to find Colt.
“Selfish asshole,” I uttered to myself angrily as I threw back the comforter and swung out of bed.
My pain was still at minimal kevels, but there was some numbness down my right leg, which wasn’t unusual.
Because the signals from my brain were all messed up, and my nerves were affected I often got numbness in all of my limbs, and in my hands and feet too.
It was a symptom of my injury I had learned to handle.
I slammed my feet to the cold wood floor and shot up, determined to throw something on and get the hell out there to speak with Mason and see what he had for us to work with.
Colt was running out of time with every second that passed and I’d just wasted a whole morning fooling around with Jack and sleeping.
I couldn’t have hated myself any more in that moment. It wasn’t possible.
I pulled on some clean underwear, then a pair of jeans and a black t-shirt I wasn’t even sure was mine. It had just been folded up on the chair in the corner of the room, but it was clearly too big for me.
“Mason, tell me you have the surveillance footage,” I called before I even hobbled into the living area of Jack’s apartment.
By the time I walked in he, Jack and Deacon were all o their feet and moving towards me.
Jack gave me a bright smile and a wink, which only made me feel worse.
I knew if the situation were reversed and Colt were searching for me, he would barely have even slept, let alone stopped to take some time for an orgasm.
“Good morning to you too, sweetheart,” Deak said sarcastically and I glared at him instantly.
“It’s not morning though, is it? It’s after-fucking-noon and I haven’t done a damned thing to find Colt so far. Why the hell didn’t one of you get me the fuck up?” I barked.
“You needed to catch up on some sleep, Ave, and you know it. We already talked about this,” Jack sighed exhaustedly.
“I decide when I do and do not need sleep, not you!”
“Okay, timeout!” Mace called as he stepped closer to me.
“You’re up now and I have all of the surveillance footage lined up for the relevant dates, all ready for you to view.
How about we skip the attitude and you can get to work?
” He kept his tone gentle, but I knew from the way he was looking at me that his words weren’t a request.
“Fine,” I agreed as I avoided looking up at any of them.
I knew I was being a bitch. I wasn’t even truly pissed with any of them.
I was just irate with myself and needing to vent.
I knew I needed to rein it in, but I was so used to being pissy to hide my true emotions. It wasn’t going to be easy to stop.
Mason set me up in a large armchair close to the fancy electric fire that looked like it was crackling away way too realistically.
I had the laptop on my lap and Mason had very helpfully lined up the hours of footage I would need to scroll through from various clubs across the city.
While I didn’t know the face of the monster who took me, I would never forget the shape of his frame as he circled my hanging body, screaming at me to atone over and over again between tearing me to pieces.
I was sure I would recognize him if he were on any of the footage.
The guys obviously sensed my need for space because they all retreated after Deacon brought me a sandwich he had made for me and a huge mug of coffee, black – just the way I liked it.
I distantly heard Mason leave to head into work, a new case demanding his attention.
Jack was working at the kitchen counter, I presumed dealing with the running of Temple .
Deacon seemed to be working too where he sat opposite me with his own laptop open, but he regularly stopped and offered me drinks and snacks through out the afternoon, giving me the distinct sense he was really just keeping a wary eye on me, likely at the behest of the other two.
It was starting to get dark by the time I finally found something. My eyes were scratchy and dry and it had been a struggle just to keep them open for the last hour, the repetitive footage lulling me into sleep.
“Here!” I cried as I looked up, shocked to find Mason was back, and Jack was in the kitchen cooking. I had zoned out so much for the last few hours I hadn’t even been aware of any of them.
“You found something?” Mason asked as he approached and perched on the arm of the chair I sat in.
“It’s date three days before Colt disappeared,” I explained as I reset the footage to where I had seen that psycho murderer stroll in Temple like he owned the damned place.
I played the footage from the entrance as Jack and Deacon joined us, leaning in so they could watch too.
“That’s him!” I declared as a tall, slim man, dressed in all black and keeping his head lowered just enough to avoid the camera getting his face, showed his membership card to the young woman behind the reception desk.
They all watched in silence as he strolled into the club like he had definitely been there many times before.
“Jack?” Mace spoke first.
“I don’t recognize him. Do we get a view of his face?” Jack asked.
“Not on this camera. It’s like he knows it’s there, but maybe on the ones inside the club?” I relied as I started flicking through the files of footage for other angles in Temple at that time.
“How can you be so sure that’s him, Ava?” Deak questioned.
“I’m sure. I’d never forget the way he carries himself. That’s him,” I explained with certainty.
“The dates line up too. Three days before Colt disappeared. He was probably stalking Colt, waiting for the right time to grab him,” Mason added, and I nodded in agreement.
My heart was pounding way too hard. Yes, the footage gave us something to work with, but it was also ultimate from that the religious nut who stole a piece of me, definitely had Colt too.
What was Colt going through if he was still alive?
Even if we were in time to save him, could he ever be whole after enduring days and days of what destroyed me in a matter of hours?
I played the footage from all the cameras in Temple for that entire night, the guys all surrounding me and watching closely too.
The guy moved through the club, extremely watchful of everything going on.
Then he sat at the bar and ordered a drink.
He waited there, sipping what looked like a club soda until Colt appeared behind the bar.
Not once in all of that time did he show his face to any of the cameras and it became obvious he knew where they all were very quickly.
After he spotted Colt he followed him through the club and back to the entrance.
When Colt ran up to his office, the guy left the club and disappeared from sight of the exterior cameras.
“Fuck!” I roared as the last video ended and we had nothing but images of that fucker’s back.
“It’s something, Ava. I can have officers canvas the neighborhood for more surveillance footage.
Maybe we can get the license plate of this bastards car,” Mason said as he rubbed a gentle hand down over my wild and very messy hair.
I hadn’t sone a thing with it after waking up for the second time, not that I cared.
“He’s right. Theres no way that fucker hid his face from every camera in the area. We can find out who he is now,” Deacon agreed.
“I’ll make some calls and line up some uniforms to start canvassing all around Temple in the morning,” Mason said as he leaned into the kiss the top of my head, then slipped away to the kitchen to make his call.
“I’ll finish making dinner. We all need to eat,” Jack volunteered.
I nodded, then looked back to the image on the screen of that fucker shrouded by shadows just down the street from Temple .
I didn’t care how fucked up my body was.
If I ever got near that monster I was going to rip him apart with my bare hands!
“Ava?” I looked up and found Deacon stood before me.
He took the laptop from me, closed it, and set it on the coffee table.
“Enough work for now, okay? Why don’t you go and change into something comfortable before we can eat, then you can get comfortable on the sofa afterwards,” he suggested.
He was dressed in dark wash jeans that clung to him in all the right places, and a tight black tee that showed every line of his perfectly defined, massively sculpted body.
He smiled softly as I stared at him in awe, and it lit up his handsome face even more if that were possible.
I had zero idea why he would even want to get to know me.
He could have any woman he wanted. I was sure women chased him wherever he went, especially if he flashed them that sexy as hell smile.
“I need to call Kylan again. He was so upset yesterday when I spoke to him,” I told him as I ripped my attention back to reality, where it needed to be until Colt was safe. “At least today I can tell him we have something to work with.”
“I can call him for you?” he offered.
“No. I should. When Colt comes home and marries him, he’ll be my brother too. I need to be there for him right now.”
I stood up and groaned when pain started to radiate out through both of my thighs. I had been sat for too long and my body was not happy.
“What’s wrong, darlin’?” Jack asked as he looked up fast.