Chapter Nineteen
Derby
I wake up before I open my eyes and know something is wrong.
The house is too quiet.
Not morning quiet. Not the soft kind where rain dries on the porch and a kid sleeps hard after too many dinosaur fruit snacks. This is empty quiet. Hollow quiet. The kind that pulls every nerve in my body awake before my brain catches up.
No August mumbling in his sleep.
No Blue Rex hitting the floor.
No Amelia breathing beside me.
I reach across the bed.
Cold sheets.
My eyes open.
For one stupid second, I think she is in the bathroom.
Then I remember the way she moved before dawn. The whisper against my half-sleep.
Bathroom.
Come back, I mumbled.
I will, she said.
I sit up so fast the room tilts.
“Amelia?”
No answer.
The door is cracked. The hall beyond it’s gray with morning light, the kind that should mean coffee, cartoons, and August arguing about whether dinosaurs can eat toast.
There is none of that.
I swing my legs off the bed and stand, naked and cold and suddenly aware of every sound not happening in my house. No little feet. No woman moving in the kitchen. No cereal bowl. No whispered Mama. No soft laugh. No smell of burnt toast or coffee or kid shampoo.
My body knows before I do.
Still, I check.
Bathroom first.
Empty.
The small room.
Empty mattress. Blanket folded crooked. No August. No dinosaur backpack. No Blue Rex.
The air leaves my lungs in one hard punch.
“August?”
Nothing.
I move faster now.
Living room.
The fort is still there. Cereal-box courthouse leaning sideways. My boot turned back upright. The shoebox jail empty. A few fruit snacks stuck to the coffee table. Blue Rex is gone.
Kitchen.
Her phone sits on the counter.
Turned off.
Beside it, my empty coffee mug. The pan from the dead pancakes. Her truck keys.
Her truck keys.
For one second, I can’t process them.
She did not take the truck.
My mind goes straight to blood.
Jeremy.
I tear to the front door, throw it open, and step onto the porch barefoot. The driveway is wet with early dew. Her truck is there. Widowmaker sits where I left her. No broken glass. No tire marks that shouldn’t be there. No drag marks. No sign of struggle.
I check the cameras. Lottie in an SUV. She left with her. The world narrows.
Lottie.
No.
No, that woman had better have a damn good reason before I put her husband in a shallow hole out of spite.
I run back inside and grab jeans off the floor. My shirt is where Amelia left it after pulling it over my head. Her scent is still in the room. My skin remembers her mouth. My bed remembers her body.
My house has never felt more like a crime scene.
I find the note on the kitchen table after I put on my cut.
Folded once.
My name written in Amelia’s hand.
Derby.
The letters look shaky.
I stare at them for too long before opening it.
I’m sorry.
I had to keep you from becoming something you’d regret.
Please don’t follow.
Take care of yourself.
That is it.
That is all.
No explanation. No where. No how. No goodbye that says what last night was. No apology big enough to cover the empty bedroom.
I read it once.
Twice.
Then my hand closes around it so hard the paper crushes in my fist.
Please don’t follow.
I laugh.
It comes out wrong.
Ugly.
Dead.
She used the keys.
That is the thought that cuts cleanest.
I gave her a way out, and she used it.
Not the truck keys, maybe. Not the ones on the counter. But the choice. The door. The damn freedom I put in her hand because I thought I was strong enough to watch her decide.
Turns out I was full of shit.
I tear through the house again because panic ain’t logical and rage likes to check twice. Closet. Bathroom. Cabinets like August might be hiding behind canned soup. Back porch. Garage. Nothing.
No Amelia.
No August.
No Blue Rex.
No Lottie.
Only a note and a dead phone and my house full of all the places they just were.
At first, the fear is simple.
Jeremy took them. He held a gun to Lottie. Then the signs line up and ruin me differently.
The bags are gone, but not torn away. August’s shoes are gone, but the muddy pair stayed near the door. Her mother’s box is gone. The phone left on purpose. The truck left because it can be recognized. Lottie’s SUV gone because Lottie took them.
Careful.
Planned.
Not stolen by Jeremy.
Stolen from me.
By women.
By choice.
I put one hand on the table and bend over it, breathing hard enough to hurt.
I don’t know if I’m relieved or furious.
Both feels too small.
My phone buzzes on the counter.
I grab it.
Legend.
“What?” I bark.
A beat of silence.
Then his voice, rough. “You know?”
My blood goes cold again. “Know what?”
He curses.
That tells me enough.
“You knew?” I say.
“No. I woke up to Holler at my gate looking like a man whose wife just made him stupid by association.”
“Holler’s back?”
“Early.”
I close my eyes.
Lottie’s done it.
“Where are they?” I ask.
“Come to the clubhouse.”
“No.”
“Derby.”
“Tell me where they are.”
“Come to the clubhouse before you do something stupid.”
“I’m already dressed.”
“Then you’re halfway there.”
I hang up.
Not mature.
Don’t care.
I shove Amelia’s note into my pocket, grab my keys, and step outside.
The little dinosaur keychain she bought me hangs from the ring.
Stupid as hell.
I stare at it until my vision blurs around the edges.
Then I climb on Widowmaker and ride like the road owes me a body.
The Lockup is already awake when I get there.
The old jail squats under a gray Kentucky sky, gate open, brothers moving in and out like something has gone bad enough to wake the dead.
Legend’s bike is out front. Oaks’s. Whiskey’s.
Royal’s black machine. Holler’s old Harley parked crooked near the gate.
Holler is on the porch.
Big man. Broad through the chest. Beard shot with gray. Built like he was carved out of mountain. He has one hand wrapped around a coffee mug and the other rubbing the back of his neck like he has been doing it all morning.
He sees me coming.
His face says he knows he ain’t the one I want but might get hit anyway.
Smart man.
I park hard enough gravel kicks.
Holler lifts one hand. “Derby.”
“Where is she?”
He sighs. “If I knew every place my woman went when she decided the world needed fixing, I’d be dead from exhaustion.”
I stride up the porch steps. “Where is Lottie?”
He takes one look at my face and sets the coffee mug down carefully.
“I got a guess.”
I grab his cut before I can decide not to.
His hand catches my wrist, strong as a clamp. Not fighting yet. Warning.
“If you want to swing on me because Lottie did Lottie things, go ahead,” he says. “But know this. If my woman decided to move a body or a runaway, she didn’t ask because she knew I’d tell her to pack snacks.”
I stare at him.
He stares back.
The worst part is he means every word.
I let go of his cut and shove past him into the clubhouse.
The main room is a mess of men, phones, coffee, and ugly silence.
Old cell doors line the back wall. The long table is covered in laptops, mugs, printouts, and the kind of tension that makes men forget they are holding weapons until somebody moves wrong.
Legend stands at the table with Whiskey beside him.
Oaks leans against the bar, arms crossed.
Royal is in the corner, quiet enough to be dangerous.
Wildcat has a laptop open, fingers moving fast.
Sophie ain’t here.
That absence hits like another bruise. Whatever happened between her and Legend ain’t fixed itself overnight. Good. Let everybody suffer. I ain’t feeling charitable.
Legend looks up.
His face is hard, tired, and furious.
Not at me.
Not only at me.
“Where is she?” I ask.
“We’re confirming.”
“You better confirm fast.”
Oaks pushes off the bar. “Brother.”
I point at him. “Don’t brother me.”
Whiskey closes the laptop he ain’t using and steps forward. “Her phone is still at your house?”
“Yeah.”
“Truck?”
“There.”
“Lottie’s SUV?”
“Gone.”
“Holler’s phone?”
Holler comes in behind me, already irritated. “She left it charging on my kitchen counter. Woman never forgets her lipstick but leaves a phone like it ain’t a federal crime.”
Legend’s jaw flexes. “She knew we’d track it.”
“Obviously,” Whiskey says.
I turn on him. “You knew?”
His eyes narrow. “No. If I knew, I would have planned it better.”
Not helpful.
Maybe honest.
Still want to punch him.
Wildcat looks up from the laptop. “She asked me to clean some phones. I did because that’s what I do.”
“Can you trace her?”
“No toll tags. No card use. Lottie pulled cash yesterday. More than she needed for groceries.”
Holler mutters, “Damn woman.”
There is pride in it.
I want to hate him for it.
I do.
A little.
Legend’s phone buzzes. He answers, listens, says nothing for a long minute, then ends the call.
Everyone looks at him.
He looks at me.
“They’re safe.”
Safe.
The word almost drops me.
Almost.
“Where?”
Legend exhales through his nose. “Oregon.”
The room goes still.
I stare at him. “Oregon.”
“Lonerock.”
My hands curl. “Why the hell would Amelia go to Oregon?”
Legend’s eyes sharpen. “Because her mother came from there. Because Lottie knows people there. Because Vale can’t reach her there.”
I step toward him. “Who has her?”
He looks like he doesn’t want to say the name.
That makes me want to break furniture.
“Legend.”
“Hot Mama.”
For one second, the room is silent.
Then I say, “The fuck kind of answer is that?”
Holler makes a sound that might be a laugh if his wife weren’t actively committing interstate betrayal.
Oaks mutters, “Hot Mama got her.”
I turn on him. “That supposed to mean something to me?”
“It will,” Royal says softly.
I hate cryptic men.
I hate all men right now.
Legend points to the chair. “Sit down.”
“No.”
“Then stand there and learn something before you ride west blind.”
That stops me because he is already assuming I will ride west.
Good.
At least we are not wasting time on bullshit.