Page 261

I saw the look on his face when he found us piled in the back of that truck that might as well have been a hearse.
I was certain what he’d done. At least, I came to believe that helping us had been his intention and I hadn’t misconstrued his actions in some way.
I told the investigators questioning me that there was a man who had saved us, but they suggested I was delirious.
Hallucinating as they tried to convince me the events had occurred differently.
I couldn’t understand why they would lie.
Who they were protecting.
But the one thing I was certain of was I had to find that man. He was the only one who might know where Jana had been taken.
So, I searched through every news article and report I could find. Sifted through every crime there was, whether it seemed like it could be related to us or not.
Most of all, I searched for the emblem on that vest.
Iron Owls.
A violent MC out of Los Angeles.
God, I must have had a death wish because after almost a year had passed, I went there. Do you remember when I said I was going out to visit a couple of colleges? You were terrified for me and begged me not to go. Iknew then that I couldn’t let you in on what I was doing. It would have been too hard for you.
I went to the area where the Iron Owls were known to hang out. In the seediest, scariest parts of Los Angeles. Most everyone I tried to talk to were tight-lipped. Except for a single bartender at a dive bar that I normally would never chance going into.
“I can’t believe she went alone.”
“She was a fighter, too,” Kane whispered.
Swallowing hard, I turned back to her tablet.
He told me their president had been killed, and the members of the MC had scattered.
But that bartender? He was the break I needed. He knew a bunch of their names and gave them to me willingly. With a shrug of his shoulder. Though he told me he doubted that I was going to find any of them since they all had disappeared months before and no one had a clue where they’d gone.
I wasn’t deterred. I searched every name associated with Iron Owls that he’d given me until I finally found one that might have matched the face I remembered.
A mug shot from an arrest for petty theft when he was nineteen.
Kane Asher. Except just like that bartender had told me, the man had disappeared. There was no trace of him anywhere. No known address or social media or a mention of his existence.
I basically gave up hope on finding him, which meant I gave up hope on finding Jana. That sinking acceptance only grew as the years passed.
There was no question she was gone.
Forever.
So, I tried to move on and live. Tried to get you—my sweet, beautifulsister—to move on with me. Only you were stuck there, in that time, too traumatized to move forward with our dreams.
And my store, or our store, which is the way I’ll always consider it, was a testament to that. Moving on. Living when we’d been given another chance to.
I’d grown almost content with it.
At least coming to a concession that I was going to have to live with the loss.
Until years later, when I was on vacation with my friends at a ski resort in Northern California. In a town called Moonlit Ridge.
There was a club there called Kane’s. I’d laughed at myself when I got a buzz of anticipation. That feeling of desperation I’d felt to find Jana coming back at me in a torrent of sensation. I told myself I was being ridiculous. It was just a name.