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I looked over at Zach, and his smirk was contagious. A small inside joke between us despite how angry I was at him. He didn’t look at me. His fingers flew over his computer.

“I don’t keep patient files in the office. Those were all for show. My files are kept on a secure server that only myself and one other person have access to.”

A few of them looked over at Zach, and he nodded.

“What day was that?” King asked, and I knew why he was asking.

“February 7th.”

“Mellie, it doesn’t take two weeks to drive from Oklahoma to Nebraska—”

“Gunner, shut the fuck up,” Cash ordered.

“What made you turn back?” Blade asked, and I looked at him with my eyebrows raised. “You said you were planning to disappear, but you went to Little Rock. Why?”

He caught that quickly; I wondered if he had spent time running himself. My brother was part of a 1% club. I imagined they all ran from something at one point in their lives.

“When we left Oklahoma, we went west. Two days into our trip, I came out of the hotel and found a note on my windshield. We were in El Paso, Texas. And I turned around and drove to Little Rock.”

Travis reached over and grabbed my hand. I clung on to him. I needed strength to get through this, and I wasn’t sure I had any. I hadn’t felt any of these emotions while on the road. It was like now that my brain knew I was safe, that Dani was safe, it was allowing my body to feel everything I had blocked out.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Ghost

“Why the fuck did you go there?” Gunner asked, standing from his seat. “You were never supposed to go back there,” he rasped, his voice was laced with guilt, and I remembered the story I’d heard about his baby sister being assaulted at the club.

I needed to find out who it was. That fucker was dead.

“Because you never told her you left, asshole. She went looking for help from her goddamn brother who was fucking gone,” Jingles said, slamming his fist on the table.

Jingles was still dealing with his own source of guilt and shame over what happened to Ellie. The two brothers had more in common than they realized.

Gunner fell back into his chair. His elbows landed on the table with a thud, and he buried his face in his hands.

I squeezed Melissa’s hand and encouraged her, “Go on, Princess.”

Gunner growled at the endearment and I looked at him with a shit-eating grin.

Get used to it, asshole!

“What did the note in El Paso say?” Jack asked.

“It’s your fault,” Melissa answered. “Up to that point, the notes didn’t seem threatening, and I still wondered if they were from Danny or Dante. But from what I had learned about both of them, neither one felt like they would play games with their daughter’s life. So, I drove to Arkansas.”

Melissa looked at her brother and, with a voice filled with resentment, said, “Steele told me about the move.”

“Mellie, I’m so fucking sorry. If you’d just let me explain.”

“This isn’t about you right now,” I growled at the man I considered a brother. A brother I wanted to beat the shit out of. “Go on, Princess.” My fucking heart soared when for the second time she ignored the endearment. I told myself it was because she loved hearing it.

“After Steele told me where you were, I decided to come here, but the notes had stopped. It was almost a week before I got the next note in Albuquerque that said,‘She’s mine.’Then three days later outside of Vegas, another note said,‘You stole her.’I need help keeping Dani safe. I can’t do it alone. I don’t know what happened to Danny or Dante. I have no idea if they are coming back. But until they do, that little girl is mine.”

“Princess, Danny was in an accident,” I said.

Her hands went to her mouth.

“Is he ok? What about Dante?”