Chapter 24
Wraith
“They didn’t just leave.” I slam the soggy, crumbled piece of paper with the tiny, neat writing onto the solid table as evidence.
My fist glances painfully off the wooden surface, but I use the tremors tracing their way up my knuckles, the sting and burn of pain, as a way to keep myself grounded, centered, to keep myself there, my feet rooted to the floor.
What I really want to do is tear through my skin, tear out of myself and fucking fly, fly out of that fucking room at the clubhouse where my brothers are assembled, Steel and Edge presiding at the head of the table, fucking soar through the air like a mass of molecules and find her.
I want to reassemble myself, the opposite of shattering, a coming together, when I find her, and destroy whoever dared to lay a finger on her.
On my woman.
Mine.
“She was taken,” I insist, when the entire room remains silent.
All my brothers assembled and not one says a word.
I catch the furtive glances. The looks under lowered lids.
The veins throbbing in temples and the tick of clenched jaws, but not one.
Fucking. Word. “I came home and the counter was littered with baking ingredients. She had everything set out. Do you think she’d just fucking up and leave and write a note in the middle of it all? ”
“Her sister came for her. Convinced her,” Wing grinds out, pain clenching up his jaw and dripping from every word. He looks like a wounded animal, a shell of himself, his eyes glazed over with grief and shame.
He was the one left behind. Of course he feels fucking shame.
Shame that he couldn’t do better. Shame that he couldn’t be enough.
I felt that same fucking shame well up inside of me when I read that note.
Shame for not being a better man. For having a shit past. For being disgusting and weak.
Shame that I let someone in on my innermost secrets, and they listened to it and found me wanting and dropped an arsenal of explosives into my life that tore me to shreds.
Then I turned that note over and I knew. I knew there was no fucking way she left on her own. That she meant any of it. That she was forced to write those things.
“No.” I shake my head hard, slamming my fist into the table again.
The sound cracks through the room and some of the brothers assembled shift uncomfortably from one foot to the other as the vibrations travel from my bruised knuckles up to my elbow, through my shoulder, and into my aching chest. “No. She didn’t leave.
She was taken.” I point at the rumpled piece of paper.
I feel like that page, torn, crumpled, fucking nearly ruined, but holding together through some fucking miracle, through sheer force of will.
“She wouldn’t have written this otherwise.
She left me a message. Not on the front, but on the back. ”
“It’s not possible,” Wing groans. “I was at the house the whole time. She couldn’t have been taken while I was there.”
“She could have,” I insist. “If you were sleeping. Showering. In the other room. You have no idea. Whoever took them is capable of anything. Getting in unseen and unheard. They knew what they were doing. They knew about us. Cased our homes. Our lives. They’d only been with us for a couple of days, so the guy is either well-trained, a psycho, or—”
“Or he’s an insider.” Edge looks like he wants to plant his fist into the table as well.
He’d probably break a knuckle or two, he’s so pissed off.
Since that morning when I left him at the clubhouse, his eyes have grown far more bloodshot.
He’s past needing a shave and even though he’s obviously showered, he still reeks like soot.
“Someone wants this arrangement we have with Viking sabotaged,” I continue.
“The warehouse went up in flames and all of a sudden Leena is missing. It was a diversion. Wing didn’t end up leaving and that probably wasn’t part of the plan, but whoever took Stephanie was skilled enough to get in without being heard. ”
“I was up early worrying about the warehouse,” Wing admits slowly. He glances down at the table, his head bent in a different kind of mortification when my words finally sink in. “I was sleeping. I woke up and she was gone.”
“It’s not your fault.” Edge’s strange copper hued eyes trace their way from Wing back to me.
His lips thin out into a nearly invisible line and there is the start of a murderous fire burning in his gaze.
“Either of you. We’ve been betrayed before, and you’re likely right.
All of this has just been a giant fucking clusterfuck.
I wouldn’t put it past any of those bastards to try and sabotage their own deal to justify a war. ”
Steel slowly shakes his head. He looks even more exhausted than when I saw him this morning, but his features harden into a deadly mask of rage.
“It hurt to find out that Tracker had betrayed us. You saying we have another traitor in our midst?” His strained voice and controlled words echo through the room like someone just shot off a cannon next to my face.
Tracker. My former brother. A guy who had no fucking problem giving us up to Viking and his dickface sons.
Viking gave him to us as part of the deal and offered to take out the trash.
I last saw him that night in the warehouse.
To think that another brother was a snake in the grass cut me to the bone. But I suddenly had a thought.
“Viking gave him a dirt nap, right?”
Steel and Edge look at one another.
“Right?” I ask.
“I guess so. We’ve had a lot on since then, the new chapter, the weddings, Leah’s pregnancy…” he lets out a long sigh. “After Viking offered to take him off our hands I put him out of my mind.”
“Why would he take them?” Wing’s head shoots up and his face is just haunted.
Edge lets out a strangled sounding noise that should be a damn full on yell of rage.
It’s the same sound that I feel clawing its way from my chest up to my throat.
I want to let it out. To fucking rage and tear the fucking clubhouse down around us and keep raging until I find Leena, destroying everything in my path like a fucking tornado, blazing like an out of control fire, until she’s back safe with me.
“Because he was promised something by Viking and the bastard didn’t deliver.
He turned him over to us. Obviously, he hates us.
Steel, maybe me, maybe fucking all of us.
He wanted to betray us. He wanted us squashed under Viking’s boot.
Instead, he got nothing. He wants this war.
He wants to pit us against each other,” Edge says.
“I need to call Viking,” Steel mutters as he pulls out his phone.
“Wait!” I start. “What if it’s Viking and someone working for him? We don’t know what’s happening yet. If it is Tracker, we don’t know for sure that this isn’t some long game of Viking’s that they planned together.”
Steel puts his phone on the table. “Viking is straight up. I don’t think he’d do anything to hurt his daughters.
He might not care for them, but when he made the marriage deal, he wanted me to promise they would be treated right.
But I take your point, we don’t involve him until we know what’s happened to Leena and Steph.
In the meantime, we assume that Tracker’s got something to do with this. ”
Tracker. My ex-brother. A man I’d ridden with countless times over the years.
“Tracker has the skills to do it. He knows us. Our weaknesses. Our fucking homes. He knows our club. Knows where we’d be most vulnerable.
He has the skills to find anyone, that’s why he was so valuable.
To make anything look like something it’s not.
He could easily have got into Wing’s house and taken Steph.
Threatened her with something that would have made her write that note, then used her as leverage against Leena.
I was gone. In Jacksonville and then at the clubhouse.
He fucking knew it. He probably started the damn fire just to draw us out. ”
“Or had someone there do it for him. He could be working with anyone, if it’s him. He was before,” Edge points out rationally, though his hands ball into fists on the tabletop.
I can’t keep it together any longer. I let out a wounded growl that is far more animal than it is human. “I want her back. She’s my wife. I won’t leave her in the hands of a monster.”
Wing shoves his chair back and pushes to his feet. “I’ll ride with you. We’ll find them. If it’s Tracker, most of us have ridden with him countless times. We know his paths. His hideouts. His fucking houses.”
“Doubtful,” Edge points out, irritatingly rational, while murmurs rip through the room. “This is Tracker here. The guy is ex-military. He knows what he’s doing. If he doesn’t want to be found, we won’t find him.”
“No, but maybe we can lure him out.” Snake sits beside Edge, his face screwed up in thought. The snake tattoo seems to be hissing at me from the angle I’m standing at. I feel like that snake. Coiled. Violent. Ready to fucking strike.
Edge grunts. “Any trap that would work would involve a fuckton of money or one of us offering ourselves up. It’s this club he took issue with, for whatever reason, and Steel and I head it.”
“Or with Viking. We could string him up and offer him as bait,” Shadow, our enforcer, points out.
Steel grinds his teeth so hard the click of his jaw pops loud in the room. “That’s not gonna happen. We are barely keeping this shit together as is. Viking’s not gonna find out that his daughters have been taken. We’ll get them back, even if I have to offer myself up to do it.”
The entire room draws a collective breath and holds it until Wing raises his head and looks Steel in the eye. “No. This isn’t your battle. You have an old lady back at home.”
“As do most of us,” Steel agrees, far too placidly.
Anyone who knows the guy can tell just what is churning under that seemingly placid surface.
I don’t mistake his calm demeanor for something it’s not.
Inside, he’s boiling over, just like the rest of us.
“I’m the Prez of this club. We all know what that means.
Leah knew what it meant when she agreed to be with me.
She won’t be happy about it, but I’m willing to put myself out there. We’ll figure it the fuck out.”
Edge rolls his eyes and lets out a sarcastic sounding grunt.
“We need Viking for this. If Tracker is watching us, waiting to see what will happen, we need him. I know you don’t want him to know that his daughters were taken on our watch, but this is our problem.
He’s part of the club, or at least he will be.
Together, we can make it look like Tracker is getting exactly what he wants,” he pauses and turns to Steel.
“Viking reached out to him once. He can do it again. Make a sincere offer the bastard can’t refuse.
He’ll say he saw reason. That he wants to take us down for good.
He’ll eat shit and grovel if he has to, which is what Tracker no doubt wants.
He thinks Viking screwed him over and he’s right.
I don’t know why he wants to destroy his own club, but I can promise you, he’s not gonna take us down.
He just has to look like he’s gonna do it. ”
Silence rules the room for a few long moments. I feel like I’m going to crawl out of my skin, split it right down the middle, and fling myself out the first open window, a black shadow that will travel every fucking corner of the earth until Leena is back with me.
Finally Steel clears his throat, as his right, as Prez, to have the final say. “I say we put it to a vote. We have to do something. This might be our only shot. I want to hear what you all have to say.”