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“ T his is like a whore in church. Utterly useless.”

I don’t disagree with Pike, but I would have said it differently. Add a few more curse words and maybe throw about ten things, or twenty, and you’d be at my level of frustration.

Twelve hours. Twelve hours we’ve been at this and have gotten nothing.

Flint couldn’t get anything off the satellite he tried to pull imagery from.

Hell, even the Crazy Eights came up with jack shit.

Casper has put in every call to help that he can think of, but without anyone knowing who took her, we’ve got shit to go on.

Any way of tracking her was left inside the warehouse as well. The guy knew what he was doing. He either planned this well or has done it before, grabbing people and kidnapping them.

A thought pops into my head. Something Summer said about missing people. Maybe he has done this before. Maybe this guy is the missing link to what brought me and my team here in the first place.

“Get Flint back on the line,” I tell Radar.

We brought in the only other guy who knows how to operate the systems. I know the basics, but we need someone who understands the tech wording Flint and the C8 rep say so the rest of us can understand what’s going on.

Link is out of surgery, but he hasn’t come out of the anesthesia yet.

The docs say it’s normal, and they want him to come out of it naturally to prevent any damage or something.

I wasn’t really listening. Just knew that the one guy who might help identify the stalker is still out and no help to us right now.

“You got something?” Mickey lifts an eyebrow.

He’s been by my side the whole time. Brought me back from the edge a few times when I was about to spiral by giving me options to look into that we hadn’t thought about before.

So far, all our ideas have gone to shit.

But hey, what’s one more dead-end road to go down?

“Maybe.”

I wait till Flint’s on the line before I say more, collecting my thoughts to make sense of what sparked the idea in the first place.

“Yo,” Flint says over the tapping of his keys, and I can’t help but love that about him.

He’s been up all night with us, trying everything we ask him to.

We wouldn’t have to rely on him so much if we had an official tech guy here, but before I came, Cast Off ran off the original guy and put his own in the chair to keep things out of the club’s eye.

I popped that asshole the first day I arrived, and since then, the seat’s been vacant till I put Link in the chair.

“I want you to run a back trace on all the missing persons in the area. I want you to tell me how many went missing before I showed up.”

“One sec. Right, you got a time frame or just in general?”

I think on it for a second. “Give me the state’s missing number compared to when Cast Off was part of the club.”

“On average, I’d say it went up by 3 percent.”

“And when he was gone? ”

“Stayed the same till you got into town two months later. But that could be linked to the holidays and all.”

I nod, but he can’t see me over the line.

“What you getting at?” Lucky asks me.

I shrug. “Just something Summer said. That people were going missing before we got here. We know Cast Off was part of selling people. We thought it was more on a national scale since we found Candy here and she was taken from Texas, but what if he got locals too? What if he hired someone to take them?”

Mickey pushes off the wall he was leaning on and comes closer to the conference table. “You mean, what if the person who took Viv is also linked to the trafficking the club was involved in?”

I nod.

“Makes sense if he had the experience. The guy seems to be perfect. Not a single bit of DNA links back to him. If this was his first time, statistically, he’d have to have left something behind.

Something that would have us following him.

The successful killers are the ones who think it through enough that they’ve done it before.

They’ve plotted and executed it a million times to get it perfect.

What if this is him? The missing link we’ve been looking for? ” I ask around the table.

“Missing persons’ reports went cold in your area and the surrounding area up to 150 miles sinceyou got there,” Flint says over the phone. “Till two weeks ago, when a girl was taken about twenty miles south.”

“It could be random,” Lucky cuts in .

I look him straight in the eye. “Or they could be starting up again. Two weeks ago was the night of Shovel’s wake. Viv said she heard someone talking about getting something. What if that girl was what they were talking about?”

“Wait, are you saying someone in the club is in on this?” Grim asks and looks at the rest of us. Pike and Radar also look confused, but Mickey, Lucky, and I nod. “Fuck. I thought the club was cleared of all charges. Thought we were in the green.”

“Not in the green till this shit is cleaned,” Mickey says, as if it’s obvious.

I watch as the three of them hang their heads. They get what that means. The club’s ability to stay open depends on this.

“Flint, can you get facial recognition on those who were at Shovel’s wake and see if anyone here was also seen talking with Cast Off before we showed up?”

“It’ll take some time, but yeah. Give me an hour or two. I’ll call you back.”

He hangs up, and I hang my head. It’s not a lead, but it’s not nothing either.

“I’m going for a smoke,” Grim says and heads for the door.

“I’ll join you.”

No one says anything, even if I feel the eyes on me. I’ve been good for nine months. But if any time ever called for a smoke, it’s now.

I sit on the top section of the bench as Grim takes the bottom. He lights his cigarette, then offers me his pack and lighter. I pull one out with my lips and then cup my hand over the flame, take a deep inhale, and close my eyes.

It tastes good, but not amazing. Maybe I really am getting over this whole nicotine addiction thing. Or maybe I just gained a new addiction in the form of a blonde little menace who I want to fight with me every night.

I look over at her place and try not to imagine that I won’t ever visit it again. I shake my head as I take another drag. I can imagine it. That’s the worst part. I can see it, and I hate it. Fucking hate it. My stomach cramps, and I rub it with my other hand.

“Guess they got the water back on,” Grim says, and I look over to see him pointing to a hose running.

“Great,” I mutter and get up, tossing my cigarette as I jog across the road.

Viv might not be here, but when she comes back—and I have to think she will—I know she’ll bitch and moan if the water bill went up while she was kidnapped.

I know she’s probably already pissed about the situation. It’s just the type of woman she is.

I turn off the faucet and wrap up the hose.

I’ll have to tell the boys to make sure they put shit away when they start back up at Viv’s place.

The top might be bare bones, but her garage is still her bread and butter.

Her heart is in her work, and I refuse to let anything happen to that.

I might not have her heart, but I will take care of the thing that does.

I punch in the code she gave me and slide her back door open, letting myself into her space. I keep the lights off and just sink into what’s hers. I can’t smell her, but I can feel her. There’s just something about this space that makes me feel as if she’s right here with me.

I take an extra second to just be in her area and try to calm myself enough to get through the next hard moments. Because if this lead with Flint doesn’t work, I’ve got no clue what I’m going to do next.

Turning, I put my hand on the door and pause.

I tilt my head and then turn back around.

I heard something. It was faint, but it was there.

It’s early morning, and some light is shining in from the top of the bay windows.

Not a lot, but enough to look over every inch of this place and see that no one is here but me.

But then I hear it again. And this time I heard it above me.

I look up, searching for… something. Dust to fall like you see in movies.

A fucking neon sign would be good too. But then I hear it again and again.

Like someone is walking up there. And I know for a fact that none of my boys are there.

They’re out on the streets, scouring every dark alley to find me something.

“Son of a bitch,” I mumble as I take out my phone and make sure it’s on silent before I text Mickey.

The asshole is here.

His reply is instant. Where ?

In Viv’s plac e . I’m getting mad, but I keep it together. No idea if the guy knows I’m here or not. We had all her windows boarde d up when we worked on the interior of her house. We can’t see in, and as far as I know, no one can see out.

You sure?

I get why he’s questioning me, but he shouldn’t. I know I’m right on this. This sick fuck, whoever he is, would think it would be great to bring her back to her own home. A place he’s already been to. Somewhere that gets him hot.

You got any other reason for someone to be in her place?

I wait a beat, watching the three little dots appear and disappear before he finally responds with What do you want to do?

Demolish the fucker.

“What did you see?” I ask Grim as he comes into the club from the back. I called all my boys back, but I have them coming in from the rear entrance, which can’t be seen from Viv’s. No clue if the guy has eyes on us or not, but I’m not chancing it.

“Front door is wired to go off if we breach.”

The collective groan from the brothers only has me nodding.

Figured as much. When I exited the garage, I thought I saw some wiring, but I didn’t stick around too long in case he saw me staring.

Had to make it look convincing. That’s why I came back over and had another cigarette with Grim on the bench.