Page 26 of Coach (Shady Valley Henchmen #8)

Coach

I didn’t like how things felt after she interrupted my meditation session.

And, to be fair, we both held some blame there.

Este, for lying to me. More than once.

Me, for being upset about it instead of confronting her, asking her why she felt like she couldn’t give me the truth.

I just didn’t understand why the hell she felt the need to lie.

For me, I felt like we were past that. We were opening up. She’d told me so much about her upbringing. Less about her early adulthood, but I’d gotten pieces.

In turn, she got my childhood, my life before prison, what it was like inside, and how it felt readjusting to being on the outside again.

We were heading somewhere. I could feel it down to my damn bones.

So why the hell would she feel the need to lie about what happened to her face?

Had the Novikoffs threatened her?

That didn’t feel like them to me. Then again, we only had a casual business-type connection to them. I really didn’t know much at all about how they handled their business or even how they treated their employees.

I hemmed and hawed about how to handle it the whole next day. For a good part of it, I figured I would let her come to me when she decided she wanted to be more honest.

But as the night fell and she still didn’t show, I realized that it was childish to wait. If I wanted answers, I needed to ask the questions.

It was late as I made my way into town, using the club’s SUV instead of my bike so I could drive Este and Trix back to the clubhouse once we got shit sorted.

The pool hall was closed. Este was probably washing the day away and trying to get some sleep past the racket of renovation sounds at her house. The last thing she likely wanted was a confrontation. The longer we let this stew, though, the harder it was going to be to get past it.

So I made my way to her street, frowning at her darkened house.

Was she asleep already?

But she told me even when she slept, she kept a light or two on in the house.

“I know it only feeds the fear, but I can’t stop doing it.”

Knowing there was nothing around that was still open, save for the pub, I made my way up the porch steps.

Each step felt like it got heavier.

It wasn’t apprehension about a difficult conversation, though.

It was something else.

Something that had the hairs at the back of my neck standing up, that had my skin pricking.

It was the same sensation I felt when the cop car sirens wailed outside my house, knowing I’d just lost years of my life.

It was what I felt while doing a drop for the club and seeing shadows move in behind us, knowing we were surrounded and fucked.

It was the sensation of something having just gone horribly wrong.

I tried to shake off the sensation as I got to the door and lifted my hand to knock. Once. Twice. Three times.

But there was no sound from inside.

Not even Trix barking.

And from what Este said, the dog hated anyone at the door.

Unease intensifying, I walked around the porch, checking the backyard.

Nothing.

And I’d checked when I’d driven into town.

She hadn’t been walking anywhere.

Her car was in the driveway.

She was home.

My stomach clenched, wondering if she was inside and hurt. Had she started a new project and cut herself? Was she bleeding out? Had she been on a ladder and had it knocked out from under her? Was she unconscious in there somewhere, clinging to life?

I rushed back to the front door, knocking harder.

When I got no response, I tried the knob.

My heart flipped when it turned in my hand.

And when I reached inside to flick on the light… and nothing happened.

What the fuck was going on?

“Este,” I called, reaching for my phone to turn on my flashlight. “Este?” I tried, louder.

It was just then that my torch flicked on.

And caught on a prone figure on the kitchen floor.

Not Este.

Trix.

“Trix?” I called, my voice choked.

I dropped down beside her, my hand going to her belly, feeling for a rise and fall and feeling a little bit of the tension around my heart lighten.

“It’s gonna be okay, girl,” I assured her, petting her soft fur as I scrolled to my contacts.

“What’s up?” Colter answered.

“I need you to drive to Este’s house. Right now. Then load up her dog in the SUV and drive her to an emergency vet.”

I could already hear him moving. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know. Este is nowhere to be seen. The power is out. And Trix is out cold on the kitchen floor. Breathing but… something’s not right.”

“Do you need me to bring Saint?”

“No, let him stay there. I’m gonna call Slash.”

I could hear his bike roar to life before he hung up.

I murmured an assurance to Trix before turning and running through the house, calling out for Este.

But she wasn’t there.

She wasn’t fucking there.

I heard Colter’s bike making its way down the main street and ran back through the house. Carefully gathering Trix in my arms, I rushed outside just as he was walking toward the house.

“Shit. She’s really out of it,” he said, moving ahead of me to open the trunk for Trix.

“Yeah. You remember the way to the animal hospital?” I asked, digging inside the trunk compartment for a spare gun stashed there.

“Yeah,” Colter said, eyeing the gun. “You sure you’re good?”

“Fine,” I said, the word bit off between clenched jaws. “Get Trix treatment. And keep me updated.”

With that, we exchanged keys.

I waited until he peeled off before reaching for my phone again.

I shot off a text to Slash, telling him that Este was missing and that I was going to figure out where the fuck she went.

Then I turned off my ringer.

Because I wasn’t about to listen to him telling me to wait for backup, to think clearly, to tamp down the rage that was burning through my veins like battery acid.

I tucked my phone away.

I checked the gun before I slipped it into my waistband.

Then I let the fucking fire catch and burn as I tore down the street.

There was a light on in the office side of the pool hall, but I knew better from the looks on their faces than to trust that they would simply open the door if I knocked.

Adrenaline surging through me, I grabbed the metal trash can out front, lifted it up, and sent it sailing through the front door.

My gun was in my hand before I even made it through the new opening I’d created.

“Where the fuck is she?” I roared, gun aimed at the brothers through the glass wall separating the office from the rest of the pool hall.

“Whoa,” Mikhail said, holding up both hands. “Coach, relax.”

“Don’t tell me to fucking relax,” I snarled, moving into the doorway. “Where the fuck is Este?”

“What makes you think we would know that?” Konstantin, cool even with a gun aimed at his throat, asked.

“Because you were the one to fuck up her face. And those marks on her mouth? A gag, right?”

My voice was shaking.

My arm was shaking.

My fucking soul felt like it was shaking.

“She wasn’t supposed to tell you about that,” Mikhail said, exhaling hard.

“You motherfucker,” I snarled, stepping forward until the gun was pressed to his forehead. “What did you do to her?”

“We talked,” Konstantin said.

“Talking doesn’t put marks on a woman’s face.”

“Admittedly, we planned to do more,” Konstantin went on. “But it turned out we had the wrong person.”

“Wrong person?”

“She wasn’t stealing from us. We were mistaken. She informed us of that. And we let her go. With a hefty price for her silence.”

Nothing about what he was saying sounded false to me. But these were professional criminals. They lied for a living.

“If that’s all it was, then where the fuck is she now? Why is her dog half-dead?”

“Her dog,” Konstantin repeated.

“Yes, her dog. She loves that fucking dog and it was out cold on the kitchen floor.”

“It was all she asked when she thought she was about to die,” Konstantin said.

“What…was?” Each word was a sentence.

“She begged that we let the dog out, so you might see she wasn’t being taken care of and take care of her.”

In what she thought were her last moments, she trusted that I would make good on my promise.

“We might be monsters in our own way, but we wouldn’t hurt a dog,” Mikhail said.

“No. Just kill women.”

“Actually,” a female voice said just a second before I felt the cold muzzle of a gun press to the back of my neck, “I believe I’m the only woman-killer here.”

“Not the time, Stas,” Konstantin said, gaze never leaving me.

“Seems like it’s the perfect timing,” Stas shot back, pushing the gun more firmly against my neck. “Lower your gun.”

“Stas,” Konstantin barked.

“Coach!” That was Slash’s voice. Because this wasn’t a clusterfuck enough already.

“Oh, a party,” Stas said.

“Coach,” Slash said over the sound of his boots crunching broken glass. “Saul,” he tried, voice calmer. “Put the fucking gun down.”

“They did something to Este.”

“We didn’t put our hands on her,” Mikhail said. Then, at the cocking of my gun, he added, “Tonight.”

“She was fine when she left work,” Konstantin said.

“Bullshit.”

“Saul, come on. This isn’t the way,” Slash tried. “Stas, seriously?” he asked as he got closer. “How the fuck is that helping?”

“He’s got a gun to my brother’s head.”

“I see that,” Slash said.

I saw him out of my periphery as he moved past me, then quickly shoved Mikhail out of the way to stand in front of the gun himself.

“Calm. The. Fuck. Down.”

My jaw was twitching, my teeth aching from clenching so hard.

“This ain’t you, Saul.”

“You’re wrong about that. This is me.”

“This is the part of you that you’ve busted your fucking ass to fight. And you’re letting it win now?”

Konstantin moved past me, snatching the gun out of his sister’s hand.

“She’s missing.”

“Okay,” Slash said, nodding. “Then we find her. But we gotta get our fucking heads on straight to do that. How are you helping Este like this?” he asked. “Get your fucking head in the game.”

My arm lowered.

The fire was still burning, still threatening to consume me, but after a few deep breaths, the flames weren’t licking at my mind any longer.

“Konstantin, I’d apologize, but it sounds like he has reason to be pissed at you,” Slash said.

He got a shrug from the Bratva boss at that.

“Stas, I feel bad for the town if you’re back,” Slash went on. “Coach, let’s go.”

When Slash used that tone, he was brooking no argument. I followed him out.

“You’re out of your fucking mind,” Slash said once we were outside. “But if Nyx was missing, I guess I would be too. So I’m not gonna chew you out too much about this. But I need to know you’re rational enough right now not to be a fucking risk.”

“I’m working on it,” I assured him.

“Okay. I’m assuming you checked out her place?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright. Is her car there?”

“Yeah.”

“Does she have any friends in town?”

“Just the club.”

“Could she have gotten sick? Called an ambulance?”

“I don’t know… maybe.”

My fucking mind was racing. I didn’t know anything for sure. Except Este was missing and Trix was sick.

“Okay. I’m calling Rook in on this. Let’s see if he can find any ambulance or police records about her. Or security or CCTV footage of her. See if we can get a direction to go in.”

“Alright,” I agreed.

If there was anything to be found, Rook could find it. But I couldn’t fucking stand around waiting to see.

“I’m going around to check abandoned buildings,” I said.

“Turn your fucking phone on.”

I reached to do that, checking to make sure there was no word from Este or and update from Colter.

Then I was heading off to check out all the hidden places in Shady Valley someone could hold another person.

If she was being held against her will, there were a lot of buildings in town to do it—places no one would think to look.

But I was looking.

At some point, I saw Slash heading off to do the same on the other side of the street.

It wasn’t long—maybe an hour or so—before my phone was buzzing in my pocket.

Not Colter with an update yet.

Rook.

“Tell me you have something,” I demanded, kicking a milk crate out of my way inside a spiderweb and rat-infested old building.

“Saint mentioned she went to college in West Virginia.”

“Yeah.”

“Did she happen to play soccer?”

“Yeah. Why?” How the fuck did that factor into this?

“Because I found something.”

“What is it?”

“An old restraining order.”

That gave me pause.

“From college?”

“Yeah.”

“Against who?”

“George Dover.”

Who the fuck was George Dover?