Page 9 of Gator

Gator grasped my arms and lowered me into a chair. “Easy, there.”

“We’ll go check it out,” Hawk said, jumping up.

Gator reached for me and grasped my arms to steady me while Wolfe, Hawk, and Keith sprang into action. They headed down towards the back door, but Gator stayed with me.

Andy leapt up, too. “I’ll go get Jesse.”

Gator took my face in his hands. “What happened, baby?”

Mika leaned in from across the table, a hand over his mouth, eyes wide.

Gator looked at Caleb. “Would you run and get him a glass of water?”

“Sure.” Caleb hopped up and headed for the bar.

Gator turned my chair around and spun his to face me. He took both of my hands and looked at me. “What happened, baby?”

I took another deep breath and then told him the story, starting with seeing the young man and realizing something was off. When I told him I followed them outside, his body tensed, buthe didn’t say anything; he just let me keep talking at least until I told him how the guy said they would take me, too.

“Fuck, Julius, what if they had taken you?” Mika said.

I looked over at him. “I know, but I couldn’t just let him leave with the other guy without trying to help. But as soon as I realized I couldn’t save him, I ran inside and locked the door behind me.”

Chapter four

Gator

I wanted to lecture Julius on how foolish it was to go after them on his own, but it wasn’t my place, plus I understood why he did it.

“You did what you could, but getting yourself out of there was the smart thing to do. There are cameras out back. I know that because we installed them. We’ll get Jesse to pull up the footage for us, and I’ll send it over to Kat.”

“That poor boy,” Julius said. “It was obvious he’d been drugged. Who knows what they’re going to do to him!”

I wanted to tell him we’d find him and that everything would be okay, but I didn’t like to make promises I wasn’t sure I couldkeep, so I didn’t. “You did everything you could. Now it’s up to the professionals to find him.”

“I don’t feel like I did anything at all,” he said with a sigh.

Hawk and Andy came back to the table, and Hawk sat down beside Mika and pulled him close. “They were long gone by the time we got there. Wolfe is with Jesse in his office watching the video footage from the alley.”

“You don’t think…” Mika trailed off.

“We don’t know anything yet, Mouse.” Hawk kissed the top of his head.

“Think what?” Julius asked.

“Last spring, Mika had a run-in with some bikers who were working as muscle for a human trafficking ring, but one of the bikers turned state’s evidence for a lower sentence, so they were able to catch the people responsible.” I didn’t know how much Mika had told Julius or just how close they were, and I didn’t want him to have to air his business here in the club if he didn’t want to.

Julius’s eyes widened, and he turned back to Mika. “That mess with your ex? I thought he was just an abusive asshole?”

Mika nodded. “Oh, he was that, but he was also involved in that whole mess, but like Gator said, one of the guys turned on them, so I thought it was finished.”

“We don’t know that was what was going on here,” I said. “But we’ll give Chance Kelly a call just in case.”

Chance was an FBI agent and a friend of Wolfe’s. He’d been there when we’d taken down the guys last spring.

Wolfe and Jesse came over, and they both took a seat. Wolfe let out a sigh. “We watched the video. We were able to get a face shot of one of the guys and of the back of the car. I couldn’t make out a license plate, though. We might need to expand the coverage in the alley.”

“That’s probably not a bad idea. When we first put it in, we were only worried about the area around the back door, but after this, I can see why having more coverage out there would be useful.” Jesse agreed.