Chapter 12
TWELVE
Chest heaving, Locust planted his hands on his hips as he watched his woman’s car disappear around the corner.
“Motherfuck!” he roared.
What was she thinking? She was going to get herself killed! At that thought, his guts roiled, his heart stuttered. Fuck. He couldn’t panic; he needed to follow her.
Sucking in a breath, he turned around and jogged back to his bike. He cursed.
Both tires were losing air.
“Fuck!” he snarled when he spotted the hole in the back tire. What the fuck had she done? Hell, she knew he’d follow her, so she’d sabotaged him, puncturing his motherfucking tires so she could get away clean. Or at least she thought she would.
Grinning stupidly, he pulled out his cell and hit speed dial.
The call was answered on the second ring.
“You done playing Peeping Tom with the blonde?” Red asked, humor in his deep voice.
Locust grunted. “Like you’re one to talk, you sick fuck.” Red chuckled. “I need to you track Nadia’s cell. She took off.”
Red snorted. “That means she doesn’t like you, asshole.”
Growling, Locust snapped, “Her motherfucking step-brother trashed her closet looking for that goddamn burner phone. With the kind of trouble that fuck is in, I don’t want his sister out there, unprotected.”
The need for violence thrumming through his veins, Locust waited in the silence from the other end.
Second later, Red reported, “The phone is popping up right next to yours, brother.”
Locust turned to look at the house. Fuck. She must have left her phone there.
What the fuck was she thinking, leaving her house without her phone, without a way to contact him if something happened?
You think she’d contact you? You’re the last one she’d call. And the truth of that twisted the knife in his chest. He had to get her back; he couldn’t breathe without his woman. And she was his woman…she just had to fucking let him explain, to tell her how he felt, then they’d be good—no great! —again.
“You wouldn’t, by chance, have snuck a tracker on her…like subcutaneous?” Red asked, making Locust furrow his brow.
“What the fuck? No, goddammit,” Locust exclaimed, shaking his head. Yeah, he was an invasive asshole, but he drew the line at outright violating her.
“What about her credit cards? I can flag ‘em, wait and see if she uses them,” Red offered, but Locust grunted at that idea.
“Nah, brother. I remember seeing her purse on the counter. Probably right next to her phone.” Scraping his hand over the top of his head, he found no comfort in the familiar feeling of the bandana fabric under his fingers.
“How do you want me to do this?” Red asked, probably wondering if he should put out an APB through their police contacts or rouse the brothers to go on the hunt for her.
Heading back into the house, he slammed the front door behind him, then strode toward Nadia’s bedroom. He opened the door hard enough for it to bang against the wall, and immediately he saw how she got out.
The fucking window.
Goddamn stubborn woman! He couldn’t help admiring her wiliness, though. He just wished she hadn’t wielded it against him .
“I don’t know what the fuck to do, Red,” Locust admitted, hating the fear in his own voice. “But I have to find her before whoever is after her fuck up of a brother finds her.”
“Speaking of her brother,” Locust tensed, “I’ve got a lead on him. Facial recognition software picked him up heading into Mohegan Sun. That was a few hours ago. I sent the info to Patriot, and he said he’d send Horde and Tornado to pick him up.”
Not him? Shit. Patriot was probably wary about Locust pounding the little shit until he was bleeding from his asshole. And Patriot was right to be wary.
“They grab him yet?” They had to get him before the Souci’s did; that family was deadly as fuck, and Ratchet had got himself on their bad side.
“Not yet. They can’t just take him off the casino floor, they have to wait for him to leave. The little jackpot junkie will probably be in there for hours,” Redtube remarked, a hint of disgust in his voice. The man had his vices and kinks, but one thing he didn’t tolerate was letting your vices and kinks rule your life, and that fucker Ratchet was a puppet to his addictions.
Back in the living room, surrounded by the scent of her and the memories of all the good they’d shared in that one room, Locust closed his eyes as a deep, weary sigh exploded from his chest. Rubbing his jaw, he opened his eyes and peered out the front windows to his disabled bike.
“Send out a club-wide text, let the brothers know to keep an eye out for Nadia,” Locust demanded, knowing Redtube would be right on it. “I’ve got to call a prospect for a fucking tow.”
Before Red could ask why Locust needed a tow, Locust ended the call. Scrolling through his contacts, he hit the number for the club’s garage. Tony Dos answered on the third ring, and Locust told him to come to Nadia’s with a tow truck. Tony Dos said he’d be there in twenty minutes, so unless Locust wanted to hitch a ride with another brother, riding bitch, he needed to wait for Tony to get there so he could ride back to the garage with him. It was easy enough to replace the tires, but that could take another hour he didn’t want to spend without tracking down his wayward woman and spanking that luscious ass of hers.
Fuck. He hated waiting, especially with his woman out there, and potential danger in the wings.
Outside, an old Buick drove by, its exhaust sputtering and clicking, telling Locust the system needed replacing.
Now. It was silent. The weight of all he’d done was already heavy on him, but after Nadia’s confrontation…what she’d said…the silence in her house, her sanctuary, was pulsing with the echoes of her words.
“You think that I’m so pathetic, all you need to do to get me to comply is kiss me, make me feel like you actually want me, and then the lonely fat chick will follow right behind you like you’re the goddamn biker Pied Piper?”
He remembered them, word for word, because they were etched into the stone around his heart. There was so much wrong with what she’d said…but so much right as well. He had hoped that kissing the shit out of her would make her compliant, but his intentions weren’t to make her think she was weak or pathetic—she was far from it. All that she’d endured in her life, from losing her family, from the shit Ratchet had put her through, with what he’d put her through, she was one of the strongest, least pathetic people he’d ever known. It was one of the things that made him fall for her in the first place; her strength, her ability to find peace in all the chaos.
What made him truly livid, though, was how she saw herself, what she’d spoken about herself.
“…lonely, fat chick….”
The moment those words had slipped from her mouth, he’d recoiled, shocked, raging.
How could she believe that? She was the sexiest woman he’d ever seen—all those curves, that soft, fragrant skin, those lush, mouth-watering tits, that dick-hardening, bouncy ass…and those long, thick legs…fuck, he was growing hard just thinking about her. It wasn’t even her body that was the most beautiful thing about her, it was her eyes, her smile, the way she lit up a room, the way she lit up when she saw him…before he’d hurt her. Everything about Nadia Thompson was perfect. How could she not see that? He didn’t give a fuck about society’s physical ideals, about the Instagram models or the actresses or the Victoria’s Secret Angels that most men found attractive. He didn’t need a size zero to get his dick hard, never had. Agreed, the typical civilian often pictured large, tattooed bikers with skinny blondes with big tits and hair, but he liked his women thick, curvy, plush—able to take a pounding. And it wouldn’t hurt if they had a little class, too. Freak in the sheets, lady on the streets. That was Nadia; she was everything he’d ever wanted in an ol’ lady. A wife. His forever.
But she didn’t see that.
Probably because you slid into her life with false intentions…and you never told her how you felt about her.
Yes, but his focus on duty to the club died a quick death the moment their gazes met on the side of the highway. He’d taken one look into those glorious hazels and he was fucking gone. Done. She owned him. He’d just been so caught up in what the club needed of him as the Unchained enforcer, and what she needed him as her man, that he foolishly thought his two lives wouldn’t cross.
Snorting at his stupidity, he threw himself down on the couch, and dropped his head back to close his eyes once more. How was he supposed to find her? Of course, he’d check Emerald Greens to see if she headed to her office there, but he doubted she’d make it that easy on him; she’d been seriously pissed at him.
There was nothing he could do but wait until someone spotted her; Patriot didn’t want him near the casino, so he couldn’t kick Ratchet’s ass, which meant sitting around with a thumb up his ass.
He didn’t know how long he sat there in the aching, oppressive silence, but the ringing of his phone jolted him from his swirling thoughts.
It was Stallion, a former Unchained nomad who’d recently put in for permanent status so he could settle down in Wilkes-Barre and take up a position in the club.
Locust answered, “Stallion, you good, brother?” Stallion, though throwing himself into club duties, had been withdrawn lately.
“I’m good, but I’m sure you’re gonna be better than me when I tell you that your woman is here,” Stallion drawled.
Shooting up from the couch, Locust growled, “She’s there? At Cool Hands?” Stallion had taken on the job of security at Cool Hands, a club co-owned hangout in downtown Scranton.
“Yeah, brother. I don’t know how long she’s been here; I just got back from lunch.”
Swallowing down the urge to get there by any means necessary, Locust asked, “She alone?”
“Yeah, but Terrance said she asked to the use phone,” Stallion replied.
Locust hummed, knowing instinctively that Nadia called Vicki, her best friend and ride or die. More than likely, Nadia was hoping Vicki would give her money or a place to crash. But that would happen over his goddamn dead body.
Just then, Tony Dos pulled up outside, and Locust let out a curse; for a millisecond, he’d forgotten he was fucking stranded…because his clever, devious woman had made sure of it. He smirked at that, proud of her.
I’m still gonna spank that lush ass, though.
Now that Tony Dos was there, he didn’t have to wait around anymore.
Hurrying to the front door, he locked it behind him with the key he’d copied the day he’d installed the cameras. It was how he’d gotten into her house that morning.
It took eight minutes to get his bike on the back of the tow truck, and another twenty-three minutes to get to the garage. Once he got there, though, he found he didn’t have the patience to wait for tire replacement. Snagging the keys to the garage-owned 4x4 truck, he spun out of the parking lot, headed to Cool Hands.
He was going to get to his woman, he was going to make her listen to him, and then he was going to fuck her until she knew just how much he worshipped her.