Chapter 51
Sitka slams shut like a fist. Red and blue everywhere. Sirens slice the air. Radios bark codes. Cops flood the streets, and harbor patrols choke the docks.
None of it matters if Dove isn’t safe.
I scan faces, lights, and shadows, looking for her where she can’t possibly be.
Monty Strakh stands at the center of it all, calm in a terrifying way I’ve only seen once before. The night I met him at the doctor’s dead-body dinner party.
Phone glued to his ear, Monty points, and people snap to attention around him. Private security. Federal favors. Maritime contacts. Money moving faster than the law ever can.
“I want the town shut down yesterday.” He pauses, listening to the mayor on the phone. “You heard me. I want the floatplanes grounded. Ferries stalled. Coast Guard cutters idle in the water. All roads bottlenecked. Every possible exit becomes a barricade with a badge in front of it.”
He’s done this before. When Frankie vanished, he bent the world until it screamed.
He’s doing it again.
But I can’t stand still long enough to watch.
When Carl confirms the cameras were smashed and the footage wiped in both shops, that’s my cue to go.
I take my motorcycle and tear through Sitka. Up the hills. Down by the water. Through neighborhoods where porch lights flick on, and faces appear behind curtains. I search alleys, doorways, and shadows that look like people until they don’t.
Through it all, a familiar engine rumbles behind me, close enough to feel like a hand on my shoulder.
Leo.
Every turn I take, he takes. Each burst of speed he matches without crowding me. He’s not chasing. He’s shepherding, babysitting, making sure I come back from this ride in one piece, even if I hate him for it later.
As we rip along the waterfront, my throttle hand twitches, urging me faster, harder, anywhere but inside my head.
Every denim jacket turns my stomach. Every thirty-something woman makes my heart kick.
She’s nowhere.
This town spans nearly three-thousand square miles. She could be anywhere.
And Jag…
Satan save me from my own stupidity. Jag said he was leaving Sitka today. He couldn’t have been clearer about it.
He also said he wanted Dove to stay with me. He said it like a promise. Looked me in the eye when he said it.
What changed?
Did he read my journal? Did seeing the worst parts of me make him question my ability to protect Dove? I’m not that broken kid anymore. I survived. I learned. If he read all of it, he would know that, godsdammit.
I ride harder, faster, reckless enough that the bike shudders beneath me. Warm air knifes my lungs. My hands ache from gripping the bars too tightly. Leo stays with me, a constant pressure in my mirrors.
Did Jag kill the guards, peel out of there, and snatch Dove while I was on the pier? Did he plan the decoy before or after he sucked my thumb like a blow job? Was that always the move? Bait me, split my focus, take what matters, and disappear?
Dove told me he was manipulating me. She warned me, and I didn’t listen.
I wanted to believe Jag would read my story and stay long enough to tell me his. I wanted to believe the best version of him was real.
Now I don’t know what I believe.
I only know the streets keep coming up empty, and my chest is tearing itself apart from the inside. Every second stretches too long. Every minute without her ratchets my panic.
I circle back toward the harbor, engine screaming, eyes burning, brain stuck in a loop, replaying her smile, her kiss, and the way she told me to go.
My gut told me to stay. Why didn’t I listen to it?
That thought doesn’t leave. It claws.
I ride until my hands shake, my vision blurs, and the city pushes in from all sides, daring me to break.
Leo speeds up alongside me and points in the direction of the tattoo parlor.
Has there been news? Did they find something?
I crank a one-eighty and gun it back toward the shop with Leo glued to my flank.
The barricades come into view, a mayhem of metal, lights, and uniforms. No way to get close. I ditch the bike and take off on foot, knowing Leo will deal with it.
Monty waits for me at the door. That alone is wrong.
He steps closer, his expression ice-quiet. “There’s another body.”
My brain refuses it. I left before they finished cataloging the scene, but another body? How the hell did I miss that?
“Who?”
“Declan.”
I stagger, and Monty reaches for me, pulling me against his chest.
Declan. Loud, coffee-drinking, conspiracy-weaving, always-talking, always-there Declan, who taught me how to use a tattoo machine and showed up every day.
Except today was his day off. He wasn’t supposed to be here.
“How?” I grip the lapels of Monty’s suit jacket, wrinkling the expensive fabric. “Where?”
“Stabbed before he entered the shop.” Monty embraces me, cupping the back of my head. “He didn’t make it inside. They found his body in the side alley.”
The world goes red at the edges. I hear myself breathe like it’s someone else. Too fast. Too hard. My hands curl and uncurl, and something inside me tears loose.
Jag Rath.
Did he do this? Did he kill four guards and Declan? And rip Dove from my life?
It’s always him, Wolf. It’s what he does.
Her words drill into me, and my grief turns feral. It shreds into howling ribbons of fury, ripping from my throat.
I shove past Monty, my thoughts scattering as I race into the city, toward the night, toward whoever did this.
Jag? His enemies? His associates? I want names. I want faces. I want the sound of someone realizing they chose the wrong place and the wrong people.
“Wolf!” Leo bellows from somewhere behind me.
I run faster.
Declan is dead.
Dove is missing.
I don’t care how long this takes or what it costs me. I will find her.
The docks, the alleys, the dead-end streets… I comb every inch of Sitka for hours.
Cigarette after cigarette burns down to my fingers as I replay every word Jag said. Every look Dove gave me. Every instinct I overruled because I wanted to believe in fairy-tale endings.
Rage boils up my spine, bending my frame under the pressurized coil and drawing me so tight my teeth ache from clenching.
I kick a trashcan into the side of a building and roar at the top of my lungs.
My fingers crack one by one as I flex them, testing how much force I can put behind a strike before bone answers bone.
I punch a piling. The air. The brick. The violence needs somewhere to go until I can wrap my hands around a throat, paint the pavement with blood, and drink vodka from the skull of whoever did this.
I pace. I stop. I pace again. My boots grind glass into the concrete.
Where is she? Is she scared? Hurting? Fighting like hell to get back to me?
I shake out my hands, hard. Again. Again. My shoulders burn from holding myself back. My breath comes too fast. Smoke swamps my lungs as I light another cigarette and let it burn down too close, too consumed by a dark place where all I see is death.
I’m back on that cliff. The place where I stop being strategic and start being terminal.
Haven’t I learned anything?
Rage like this won’t find Dove. It just makes more bodies.
I crush the cigarette under my heel and stand there until the red haze thins, the city comes back into focus, and my hands stop shaking.
My legs give out, and I sink to the ground, my back against an alley wall.
I’m not alone. Haven’t been all night. Leo peels away from the shadows and lowers beside me, snaking an arm around my shoulders.
He doesn’t speak, knowing I’m on the edge.
My jaw grinds. My chest hammers. The violence hasn’t left. It waits behind my breastbone, pacing and snarling.
I force myself to sit there, picking at a rip in my fishnets, widening it without thinking.
My kilt is all twisted from the run, and when I rub my face, my hands come away black. Makeup streaks my fingers, and I stare at the mess, breathing slowly. Controlled. In. Out. Again.
Leo stays silent and solid at my side, letting me pull myself back together piece by piece. The fury still rattles my ribs, but it quiets enough for me to stand.
Leo rises with me. As I start to turn away, he catches my arm.
“Hey.” He grips my face in both hands. “You’re not alone.”
“I know. I lucked out with the best least-favorite brother from another uncle.”
“Don’t get sappy on me.” He rests his forehead against mine. “It’ll ruin the moment.”
“If I get any sap on you, that’s on you for standing too close.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” He pulls me closer and tucks his nose into my hair, breathing me in and holding me steady.
He used to hold me like this in Hoss when the trembling wouldn’t stop. When Denver’s evil broke me. When sleep came in scraps and fear did most of the talking. Leo couldn’t fix anything back then, but he stayed. He let me borrow his strength until I could find my own again.
Same grip now. Same patience. He holds me until he feels the shift, until my weight settles back into my own legs, and I’m no longer leaning.
“Let’s go find your girl.” He releases me, trusting me to stay upright.
I turn back toward the street, back toward the hunt, back to the tattoo parlor with Leo on my heels.
The crime scene lights illuminate the entire block. Tape flutters. People murmur. Monty’s presence sits heavy over everything, his power and reach unfurling in real time.
He’s built for this kind of war. So am I, when I stop letting my heart drive.
I step inside, and everything in me shifts from feral to cold.
Monty stands near the back wall, issuing quiet directives. Leo sticks to my side, eyes tracking every corner. Kody’s absence tells me he took Frankie back to the island. Good.
Carl relays updates into a headset. Jasper leans against a workbench, sleeves rolled, watching for threats. More Strakh guards swarm the property, some I don’t recognize. New faces, clean lines, disciplined postures… Pros. Monty’s pulling from deeper benches.
Wilson, the private investigator, is here, too, flanked by his own people. They claimed a table with laptops spread out on it.
The uniforms, radios, and clipped voices of Sitka PD crowd the perimeter, trying to look useful while staying out of Monty’s way.
The bodies are gone. Photos have been taken, evidence logged. The forensics team finished their sweep and cleared out.
I cut straight to Monty.
When he clocks me, he pauses mid-sentence, his eyes sweeping over my busted knuckles, rigid posture, and smeared makeup. There’s concern in the way he examines me. Real concern. He just doesn’t let it show.
“You good?” he asks quietly.
“Focused.” I set my jaw. “Catch me up on everything.”
He nods and pivots us out of the traffic flow, shielding the conversation with his body.
“We found this.” He reaches into a satchel and hands me the journal. “It was under the mattress on the cot.”
“Under it? Like it was hidden there?”
“Yes.”
I flip through the book, hunting for any sign Jag touched it. Dog-eared pages, notes in the margins, anything. But there’s nothing. No fingerprints. No tells. It looks exactly the way I left it.
“If Jag didn’t give a shit…” I pass it back. “Wouldn’t he have left it out in the open?”
“Don’t read intent where there’s absence.” He returns the book to his satchel. “Wilson’s pulling cross-referenced feeds.”
Beside us, the private investigator turns a laptop toward me, displaying harbor feeds, CCTV traffic videos, and private cams.
“No luck on the camera here or at the mechanic shop?” My pulse races.
“No. Those were destroyed and can’t be recovered.” Wilson switches to another screen. “We have plate hits pending, cell pings moving, and guard rotations mapped down to minutes.”
“Is the city still locked down? All exits blocked?” I look at Monty, knowing he doesn’t have that much power.
“Not the way it needs to be. I can’t shut down Sitka like a private island, and I won’t interfere with an active police investigation.
” He sighs. “But I’m leaning on permits, port authority cooperation, and private security checkpoints on the main arteries.
Anything commercial or chartered is slowed, logged, and flagged. I have eyes on all of it.”
“So civilian traffic still moves.” My stomach sinks. “Commercial flights, public ferries, fishing vessels…”
“Yes.” A muscle ticks in his jaw. “I can’t stop the world, Wolf. But if someone tries to disappear from Sitka, they’ll leave a trail. And we’re watching it.”
Wilson nods beside him. “We’re correlating departures with your timelines.”
“This is as tight as it gets.” Monty meets my eyes. “Without crossing lines that don’t come back clean.”
I hear what he’s not saying. He’ll stay clean where it counts and dirty where it can’t be traced. Every asset he owns will face outward, and anywhere the rules stop watching, he’ll step over them. If someone sneezes in Sitka tonight, he’ll know which direction it blows.
“Okay. How do I help?” I hold out my arms. “Tell me where you need me.”
Wilson’s people make room for me at the table and start assigning tasks, splitting teams, and cross-checking assumptions. Leo slides a coffee toward me and takes an empty chair, waiting for his assignment.
If Jag did this, we’ll find the fracture point. If it’s his enemies, we’ll follow the blast radius. If this is something else entirely, it won’t stay hidden long.
I’ll personally make whoever did this answer for Declan, and I won’t stop until Dove is back in my arms, alive and safe.
Whoever did this just activated every tool my family owns and every piece of restraint I have left.
Now we hunt.