Chapter 31
Trigger
I’ve been searching for Sadie for hours.
Every empty parking lot, every abandoned building feels like another reminder that time is running out.
The city suddenly feels enormous, filled with far too many places for one woman to disappear.
I rack my brain trying to think of something, anything, that could tell me who took Sadie.
Every conversation we’d had over the past few weeks flashes through my head in no particular order.
Every joke. Every text. Every complaint about Ethan.
Every story about Owen or Dani. Somewhere in all of it has to be the answer, but the harder I search for it, the more it slips through my fingers.
Either that or I’m too fucking blind to see it.
My grip tightens on the handlebars. Ethan. I don’t care what Dash says, it has to be him. The thought barges its way back into my head, no matter how many times I shove it aside.
I’ve half a mind to ride over to Ethan’s place and make sure that he’s really there like his woman says. She could easily be covering for him. Dash could have looked away at the wrong moment. Ethan could have slipped out without Dash noticing through some secret passage and…
And I’m totally losing my shit.
I know it. I can hear how irrational I sound, but knowing I’m spiraling doesn’t stop it happening.
Every possibility feels equally likely now because none of them makes any sense.
I know I’m grasping at anything that lets me believe we still have a chance of finding Sadie quickly, because the alternative is unbearable.
If Ethan isn’t responsible, then somebody else has taken her, and we’ve spent the entire day watching the wrong man.
That thought is enough to make my stomach churn.
Still, now the seed has been planted, the idea has already taken root in my mind, refusing to let go.
It rapidly spreads through my head like a weed, choking every sensible thought that tries to grow beneath it.
Chief will probably rip me a new one for going over there again to intimidate Ethan, but I couldn’t care less, not if it gets me results.
Not if there’s even the smallest chance I’m right.
Not if it gets me one step closer to Sadie.
I need to see with my own eyes that he’s right where he should be.
“Fuck it.”
I wrench the handlebars into a sharp U-turn, the rear tire squealing across the asphalt before biting into the road again.
The engine roars beneath me as I twist the throttle, and the familiar surge of acceleration does nothing to quiet the panic hammering through my chest. My phone starts to ring.
I glance down at the holder mounted to my handlebars.
I’m not surprised to see that the display reads ‘Chief’.
It’s almost as if the bastard has developed a sixth sense for when I’m about to do something monumentally stupid.
I decline the call without a second thought and open the throttle wider.
The engine growls beneath me as the houses become a blur.
Every red light feels like a personal insult.
Every slow-moving driver becomes another obstacle between me and the answer.
The driveway never even enters my mind. The front tire of my bike chews through Ethan’s perfectly manicured lawn as I gun the throttle, ripping up turf before I slam on the brakes hard enough to make the rear wheel skid sideways, stopping inches from his porch steps.
A woman, who I assume is Ethan’s girlfriend, and Dash are sitting looking cozy on the front porch. They spring to their feet. “Trigger—”
I don’t even look at them as I stomp up the porch steps, the wood shrieking under my heavy footfall. By some miracle, the front door is unlocked, so I don’t have to break it down. I’m through it before either of them has time to reach me.
“Wait, you can’t—” Brielle’s sharp protest follows me inside.
The door groans its displeasure at my intrusion. I storm inside, desperate to get my hands on the bastard. I go from room to room searching, and every empty room pushes the panic another notch higher. I don’t know whether I want to find Ethan or pray that I don’t.
“Dash, stop him!”
“Trigger, what the fuck?”
Doors slam behind me as I continue to scour the ground floor. “Where is he?” I shout over my shoulder, frustration building with each empty room.
At the end of the hallway, I reach a basement door.
My pulse spikes. Basements hide things. People hide things.
What is Ethan hiding? I ask myself as I grab the handle and violently rattle the locked door.
Just as I’m bracing myself, drawing back my leg, fully intending to kick it off its fucking hinges, Dash’s hand firmly grips my arm.
“Trig, stop. He’s not down there.”
“Let go,” I growl. I don’t bother voicing the thought, but Sadie might be.
“Ethan’s in his office upstairs,” Brielle adds, voice trembling. “Please, he’s upstairs.”
I wrench my arm free and spin away, catching a glimpse of Dash’s concerned expression and Brielle’s frightened face before I push past them, charging back to the entry hall. The staircase disappears beneath me two steps at a time.
“Please, you can’t go in there,” Brielle pleads, calling after me. “He’s busy!”
As if I’d give a shit about his job. I don’t even slow down. The first door reveals an empty guest bathroom. The second I swing open so violently that the handle slams against the wall with a crack that reverberates around the room.
“What the—” Ethan leaps to his feet behind his desk, whirling around so quickly his office chair collides with the wall.
For one brief second, I search his face for guilt, fear, anything to confirm my gut fear; instead, I find nothing but confusion and fear.
Footsteps pound up the steps behind me. “I tried to stop him,” Brielle pants, coming to a breathless halt in the doorway.
“What the fuck have you done with her?” I ask.
“He’s trying to help,” Dash says as he catches up with me.
The fight drains from me like air rushing from a balloon.
I’d become so convinced that Ethan had snuck out that he was somehow keeping Sadie here. One look at his face destroys that fantasy, and I know the truth. He doesn’t know. I was wrong. Ethan didn’t take her. The crushing weight of that realization settles over me.
“It’s not him, Trig,” Dash says softly, placing a steady hand on my shoulder.
The words knock the air out of my lungs.
For the last hour, I’ve convinced myself Ethan was the answer because I needed somebody to blame.
Now that certainty disappears, leaving nothing but fear.
Everything inside me goes numb as black despair overwhelms me.
I barely register Ethan’s demands to know what the hell is going on or Brielle’s rushed apologies and explanation as she tries to calm the storm.
Their voices blur together into meaningless noise.
I almost don’t hear what Dash is trying to say until he repeats it.
“Did you hear me, Trigger?”
I lift my head, heavy as lead.
“I said that we think we know who took Sadie.”
Color seeps back into my vision. “What?”
Before Dash can answer, his phone starts ringing. He glances at the screen and answers.
“Chief. We’ve got a bit of a situation here. Trigger needs to hear it from you…” He pauses and switches the call to the loudspeaker.
“Listen to me, Trigger. We think Tyler took her. I tried calling you earlier,” Chief says without preamble.
“The guy from her gym. He turned up at the bar the other night being a bit of an asshole. I didn’t think anything of it and…
” he pauses. “I guess I got jealous when I saw them talking. Maybe if I hadn’t, I would have seen him for what he is. A fucking predator…”
Tyler. He’d been there from the beginning.
Standing in plain sight while we’d chased Ethan across the city like idiots.
We’d laughed about him. Teased Sadie about him.
None of us had ever considered that somebody like Tyler could become dangerous.
We knew that if it wasn’t Ethan, then we were looking for a monster.
But we forgot that monsters usually look perfectly ordinary.
“Where does he live? We gotta go there,” I growl.
“We don’t know yet,” Chief replies, frustration tinging every syllable.
“That’s what Ethan’s trying to find out.
He’s good with computers. We’ve contacted the cops and me and Shadow are on our way to the gym now.
Dani messaged his friend who she hooked up with the other week.
She’s at the clubhouse with Owen, and she’ll call if she hears anything. ”
Everyone starts talking at once, throwing out theories, questions and plans, but their voices fade into the background.
All I can hear is the roar of blood in my ears.
The news should be a relief, but all I feel is shame.
I should have known, should have thought of him. How the fuck didn’t we see it?
We all should have. It never even crossed our minds, after all, Sadie had been interested in him, he was a flirt, a ladies’ man, the kind of guy who just moves on to the next woman, or so we assumed.
I wouldn’t even go as far as to say we judged Tyler on assumptions, because if I’m being honest, I didn’t even think of him.
He was a minor rival, just some guy Sadie crushed on briefly.
We didn’t consider him because he was handsome, charming and flirtatious, the sort of man who always seemed to have women around him.
We’d assumed rejection would barely register to a man like that.
It never crossed my mind that he might not have handled rejection any better than I would have. The thought turns my stomach because I know exactly what I’d be capable of if somebody took Sadie away from me, and I hate myself for understanding him even a little.