Page 33 of Bad Luck, Hard Love (Heaven’s Rejects MC #6)

THOR

The world stops spinning when I see the first bullet hole in our front door.

“No, no, no,” I choke out, leaping from the van before Ratchet has fully stopped.

The rental house looks like it's been through a war zone, windows shattered, siding splintered, my Harley lying in a twisted heap of metal and chrome in the driveway.

They didn't just shoot it. They fucking executed it.

“Charlotte!” I roar, kicking in what's left of the front door. The stench hits me first, gunpowder and blood, thick enough to taste. “V!”

The living room is a massacre scene. Furniture overturned, walls perforated with bullet holes, and in the center, a dark pool of congealing blood spreading across the hardwood like spilled wine.

“Check the perimeter,” I bark at Ratchet, who's frozen in the doorway, taking in the carnage. “Make sure they're gone.”

I move through the wreckage, stepping over shattered glass and splintered wood. “Charlotte!” My voice bounces off the walls, returning to me hollow and unanswered.

The kitchen is worse—cabinets blown apart, dishes in fragments across the floor. V's laptop lies in pieces, screen shattered beyond repair. I find his phone crushed under the table, the screen still illuminated with my missed calls.

“Clear outside,” Ratchet calls out before meeting me in the kitchen. “We need to check the basement.”

I take the stairs two at a time, Ratchet close behind me. The door hangs from a single hinge, blasted apart by what looks like shotgun fire.

“Charlotte!” I call again. “V!”

The basement light flickers overhead, casting erratic shadows across the carnage below, leftover from Vincent.

I scan the room frantically, looking for any sign of Charlotte or V.

Then I see it. In the center of the basement floor, lying in a fresh pool of congealing blood, a clump of light brown hair.

Charlotte's hair, torn from her scalp with such violence it still has skin attached to the roots.

My knees hit the concrete before I realize I'm falling. I reach for it with trembling fingers, the strands soft and familiar between my calloused hands. I bring it to my face, inhaling her scent—strawberries and cream, now tainted with blood.

“Thor, we need to call Raze. We need to get the club here.”

“The club is four fucking hours away,” I snarl, clutching Charlotte's bloody hair in my fist. “By the time they get here, she'll be halfway to God knows where. We don't even know if she's still alive.”

The thought sends ice through my veins. I can't picture her dead. Won't. The alternative—what Terrance plans to do with her—is almost worse.

“V could still be alive,” Ratchet says, scanning the basement. “There's not enough blood up there for a kill shot.”

I force myself to my feet, tucking Charlotte's hair into my pocket. Every muscle in my body screams for violence, for retribution, but there's no one here to hurt. Just ghosts and blood and the lingering scent of her fear.

“We need to find them now.”

“How?” Ratchet asks, practical as always. “Vegas is a big fucking city, brother. Terrance could have her anywhere.”

I pace the basement, forcing my brain to work past the red haze of fury. “Ace said Terrance is planning to transport her. That means he's keeping her somewhere temporary.”

“Hotels? Warehouses? We can't search the whole fucking city. We need help. We need the club,” Ratchet says, already pulling out his phone.

I want to argue, to rage against wasting precious minutes, but I force myself to breathe. My hands won't stop shaking.

Ratchet puts the call on speaker. It rings twice before Raze's gruff voice fills the basement.

“Vegas chapter's gone rogue. They've taken Thor's woman. V's down, possibly dead. We need every patched member on bikes heading this way now.”

A string of curses explodes through the speaker, “How bad?”

“Nuclear,” Ratchet answers, watching me pace like a caged animal. “The girl's ex-husband is working with Ace. Human trafficking. They're planning to move her soon.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.” I hear Raze shouting orders in the background, the familiar sounds of men mobilizing for war. “We're rolling in twenty. Four hours, tops.”

“We can’t wait that long,” I growl, finally grabbing the phone. “You understand what's happening to her right now? What he's doing to her while we stand here with our dicks in our hands?”

“I understand, but rushing in half-cocked gets you both killed and doesn't help V or your girl.”

“Fuck your strategy,” I snarl. “Every second we waste is another second he's?—”

“You think I don't know what you're going through? You think I haven't been where you are right now? You want to save her? Then you use your fucking head. Go in smart, not stupid. That's how you get her back alive.”

He's right, and I hate him for it. But Charlotte needs the road captain, not the lovesick fool.

“Do what you can to track them, and we’ll be there as soon as we can.”

The line goes dead.

“What about the tech? V had surveillance set up. Cameras.”

My head snaps up. “The cloud.”

“What?”

“V always backs up to the cloud. Paranoid bastard never keeps anything on just one device.” I'm already moving, taking the stairs two at a time. “His laptop's destroyed, but if we can access his account from another device?—”

“My phone,” Ratchet says, following close behind. “I've got his emergency login.”

Hope flares in my chest—a dangerous, fragile thing I can't afford to nurture. Not yet. Not until Charlotte is safe in my arms again.

Ratchet's fingers fly across his phone screen, muttering curses under his breath as he navigates through V's digital fortress. “Got it,” he finally says, angling the screen toward me. “Last upload was thirty-seven minutes ago, around when the attack started.”

The footage is grainy but clear enough. Black SUVs screeching to a halt outside. Men in Heaven's Rejects cuts pouring out, weapons drawn. V shoving Charlotte toward the basement door before taking position behind the couch, gun raised.

The footage is brutal. V takes down two attackers before a hail of bullets forces him behind the kitchen counter. He's moving well, fighting smart, until a shot catches him in the shoulder, spinning him like a rag doll. The camera angle shifts as he crashes into it, blood spraying across the lens.

“Fuck,” Ratchet hisses beside me.

I can't speak. My throat closing up, watching my brother fall while I wasn't there to have his back.

The footage jumps, clearly taking on some damage during the firefight, and when it resumes, the basement door is being kicked in.

The angle changes to a different camera, this one mounted in the basement corner.

And there she is.

Charlotte crouched behind the water heater, making herself small. Terrified but alive. My heart hammers against my ribs as booted feet appear on the stairs, flashlight beams cutting through darkness. They find her quickly—too quickly—and drag her into the center of the room.

Then Terrance appears.

Seeing him in the flesh makes my blood crystallize. He looks like he's attending a business meeting, not orchestrating a kidnapping. When his hand connects with Charlotte's face, something inside me breaks. The sound that escapes my throat is pure rage.

“I'll kill him,” I snarl, the words a promise carved in stone. “I'll peel his fucking skin off while he watches.”

“We'll find her,” Ratchet says, his hand gripping my shoulder. “And we'll make him pay. All of them.”

The footage cuts out as Terrance delivers another blow that sends Charlotte crumpling to the ground. The final frame freezes on her unconscious form being lifted into Terrance's arms, her head lolling back, blood streaming from her split lip.

“Play it again,” I demand.

Ratchet hesitates. “Thor?—”

“Play it the fuck again!”

He restarts the video, and I force myself to watch dispassionately, to see beyond the violence to the details that matter. The men's cuts. Their vehicles. The way they move. Anything that might lead us to Charlotte.

“There,” I say, stabbing my finger at the screen. “Freeze it.”

Ratchet freezes the image, enlarging it with his fingers. The frame shows one of the men dragging V toward the door, his limp body leaving a smear of blood across the hardwood.

But it's not V's broken body that catches my attention. It's his wrist. The smartwatch he never takes off is still there, glowing faintly as they haul him outside. The screen illuminates, catching the light from overhead.

“Holy shit,” I breathe, grabbing Ratchet's arm. “V's watch. It's still on him. And it's fucking working.”

Ratchet leans closer, squinting at the tiny screen. “GPS tracking?”

“Better. V syncs everything.” My mind races, hope flaring like a match in darkness. My fingers tremble slightly as I punch in a number I've only called a handful of times—Presley, V's wife.

The phone rings three times before she answers. “Please tell me you aren’t calling because Ricca is pissed at you, and you want m to talk to her off a ledge.”

“Hey, Presley, it’s Thor. Sorry to bother you. V's being a pain in my ass again.”

“What did he do now?” she asks, suspicion creeping into her tone.

I laugh, the sound hollow in my ears. “He snuck off to some Comic-Con thing in the city. Said something about limited edition Funko Pops he couldn't miss. Now we can't find him, and he's not answering his damn phone.”

“Are you serious?” Presley sighs. This sounds exactly like something V would do. “That man and his collectibles. I swear he loves those little plastic figures more than me sometimes.”

“You know how he gets.” Ratchet nods approvingly at my performance. “Don't you guys have that family GPS tracking thing set up? The one he insisted on after Han wandered off at the grocery store?”

“Yeah, hold on.” I hear her tapping on her phone. “Let me pull it up. I'm always tracking that man. Last week, I caught him at Dairy Queen. He is supposed to be on a diet.”