Chapter 11
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
CLAY
I held Monroe in my arms until her tears stopped falling and she let go.
The minute she stepped back, my arms felt empty.
Every word she’d said, played over and over in my head as she quietly excused herself and went back to her room.
I don’t know how long I stood there, staring at the two glasses of water still sitting on the counter before I decided I needed to do something to try and burn off all the nervous energy flowing through my veins.
After another parameter check, I headed for the home gym I put together in the room off of the living room.
I loaded a pair of forty-fives onto the bar and settled onto the bench.
Down.
Press.
Rack.
Repeat.
Somewhere around the tenth rep, Monroe's voice found its way back into my head.
“I was terrified to leave.”
I shoved the bar back onto the rack harder than I intended.
It was still too fucking early to call Sloane.
Not that sleep meant much in our line of work. If I called, he'd answer before the second ring.
My first instinct was to ask him how the hell he'd missed something this big.
Just as quickly, I knew the answer.
He hadn't.
Monroe's background check would've come back exactly the way she'd said it would. Early childhood education. Good references. No criminal history. No warrants. No reason to believe she was running from anyone.
Kael Mercer was the ghost in the file.
Unless you already knew where to look, men like him had a way of disappearing behind legitimate businesses, shell companies, and other people willing to take the fall.
It wasn't Monroe who'd slipped through the cracks.
It was the monster she'd escaped.
“I thought if I took the job with SBS, I’d be protected, too.”
She'd driven halfway across the country hoping she'd finally found somewhere safe.
Somewhere she could stop looking over her shoulder.
If that motorcycle had anything to do with Kael...someone had just brought the fight to my front door.
I sat there for a moment, staring at the floor.
Kaleigh had never once questioned whether Monroe belonged here, with us.
Not for a second.
And it didn’t take long for Monroe to make herself at home.
She cooked dinner in my kitchen most nights, breakfast on the mornings where I didn’t have time. Dressed up as a fairy princess, and laughed with my daughter over Disney movies.
She had somehow managed to become Maverick's favorite person on the planet, which still pissed me off a little considering that dog had followed me into places most people would never survive.
And now she thought one mistake from her past meant she could lose all of that.
I pushed to my feet.
Not happening.
My phone buzzed.
I glanced down.
Sloane.
Speak of the devil.
"Wilder."
"You're awake."
A humorless laugh left my mouth. "Obviously."
“We got a hit on the plate for that motorcycle.”
Every muscle in my body went still. “What did you find?”
“That's the thing. The plate doesn't belong to the bike.”
Of course it didn't. Men like Kael Mercer didn't make stupid mistakes like using their own plates on a bike if they were doing some kind of surveillance.
“Stolen?”
“Not exactly. Registered to a woman in Tampa. Mid-fifties. Owns a Honda Shadow.”
I frowned. “So the plate was cloned.”
“Yeah.”
“Any idea how long this guy’s been in town?”
“Working on it now. I had one of our guys pull traffic footage from the area around your house, the grocery store and the preschool. The motorcycle showed up more than once.”
My jaw tightened. Monroe really wasn’t being paranoid.
“Three passes yesterday. Two today.”
Fuck.
Someone was watching her…while she was taking care of my daughter.
“How close?”
“What do you mean?”
“How close did this asshole get to Monroe? To Kaleigh?”
“Clay.”
“Sloane.”
I heard him sigh through the phone.
“Close enough that I think there’s a legit cause for concern.”
I walked out of the gym and into the living room, checking the front window even though I knew there was nothing there.
“What do you know about Devil’s Ridge out of Colorado?”
Sloane paused for a second and I can hear clicking on a keyboard in the background. “You think they’re somehow involved in this? All the way down here?”
“If it’s not them, then they’re working with an affiliated club in the area.”
“I’m not saying I don’t believe you, but how do you know?”
I blew out a breath and told Sloane exactly what Monroe had told me.
I blew out a breath and told Sloane exactly what Monroe had told me.
Not every detail. Not the way her voice cracked when she admitted she thought I would ask her to leave or the way she looked at me like I was the judge deciding whether she got to stay.
That wasn't my story to tell.
But I gave him enough information that he could do some deeper digging.
By the time I finished, the only sound on the other end of the phone was the steady clicking of Sloane's keyboard.
"Sloane."
"Hold on."
I clenched my jaw and waited.
A few seconds later, the typing stopped. "Okay." The tone of his voice had changed.
"What?"
"Devil's Ridge isn't some local weekend warrior club."
"I know."
"No, Clay. You know what she told you. I'm talking about what I'm finding."
If Sloane thought he’d found out more than what I already knew then we were in trouble. I was familiar enough with Devil’s Ridge because a buddy of mine had run into some trouble with them not all that long ago when he was out west helping out an old Army buddy of his.”
“Well. Go on.”
"President is Kael Mercer. Thirty-two years old. Took over leadership about six years ago. Club has been around longer than that. Founded in 1967. Looks like their VP is Cross Mercer, Kael's younger brother.”
"Criminal history?"
"Nothing that sticks."
I scoffed. "Of course not."
Guys like Mercer weren’t usually the ones with records.
Sometimes they didn’t get their hands dirty at all.
They had an entire army of men who would do it for them.
Laundry lists of witnesses who suddenly went quiet, and patterns you learned to recognize if you’d spent long enough watching predators operate without consequence.
It also explained why nothing came back related to Monroe.
“A few arrests tied to fights and weapons charges, but nothing that ever went anywhere. A lot of rumors. A lot of people who suddenly decide they didn’t want to testify."
That tracked.
“What about the repair shop?”
"Registered as a legitimate business. Multiple locations. Profitable on paper. If Monroe is right about the money laundering, he's good at hiding it."
I glanced upstairs where she was hopefully sleeping.
"She said he got aggressive before she left."
The silence that followed was enough to tell me Sloane understood exactly what I wasn't saying. "Did he put his hands on her?"
"She didn't say."
“But…”
“I got the impression that he wanted to or would have if she stuck around.”
“Clay,” his voice carried a warning.
“I know.”
“No. You need to listen to me.” His voice hardened.
"You need to remember something. Right now, Monroe is probably still operating under survival instincts. She got away. She found somewhere safe. But people like Mercer don’t let go that easily.
He probably views her as property and these guys always come looking for what’s theirs. ”
“She’s not his anymore.” I growled.
Not because she suddenly belonged to me but, because she belonged to herself.
“Why don’t you take the day? Hang around the house, keep Monroe and Kaleigh with you. I’ll work on things from here and let you know the minute I find out more.”
“Yeah. Good idea. If you get wind that that bike is headed back in this direction…”
“You’ll be the first call I make. I’ll get one of the guys to drive around a bit too, keep an eye on things.”
“Good. Do me a favor and don’t say anything to Monroe about this. Okay?”
“I won’t say a word,” he paused for a brief second. “Yet.”
I frowned. “Sloane.”
“She deserves to know eventually, Clay.”
“I know. And we can tell her as soon as there’s something worth telling. I don’t want her freaking out any more than she needs to right now.”
The call ended and I checked the clock. If I got a quick shower and stretched out on the couch, I could maybe get a quick nap in, before Kaleigh woke up for the day.
Now that I’d talked to Sloane, I wasn't thinking about what Monroe had hidden from me.
I was thinking about what she had survived.
And what I was going to do to make sure she never had to survive it alone again.