Page 14 of Karma (Deranged Drifters MC #23)

Chapter Fourteen

Griffin’s Beach Colt

B eing gone on a run wasn’t on Colt’s plan, especially with Lex’s psychotic brother on the loose gunning for her. Correction: New psychotic brother. He didn’t have a choice, and he hated every minute he was away.

There were issues with potentially bad merchandise, a fun side effect of working with two suppliers, and Colt brought the customers to the Drifters. Ones who wanted to talk to him and only him.

He’d offered to send Jennings in his place, but they refused. If they weren’t one of the largest customers the Drifters have, Colt would have told them to fuck off and find a new supplier.

Lex assured him she’d be fine with her goon squad outside. The text messages they exchanged last night proved her right, but he hasn’t heard from her all morning. And she wasn’t at the clubhouse when he returned.

Parking in front of the garage, he cracks his neck and looks at the front porch. Lucas’s car is outside rather than at school, but Lex could have given him a ride. And she may not be at the clubhouse because she ran an errand, which isn’t preferable, but Venom wouldn’t let her go alone.

All assumptions about Lex being safe and sound go out the window when he sees the front door broken from being kicked in. He pulls his gun from his holster, ready to shoot Phillip inside his house. He looks around for Venom or anyone else, but no one’s around.

Bursting inside, he doesn’t find Phillip or Lex. He finds Lucas rocking on the floor beside the couch.

“Luke?”

“She’s gone,” Lucas says, his voice cracking and tears filling his eyes. “Phillip took her.”

His heart races, and he lowers his gun. Lex is gone? “What happened?”

Lucas recounts the morning, which explains why his car is out front, and Colt pulls his phone from his pocket.

Pressing the button, he remembers he never brought his charger with him, and it’s dead.

Tossing it against the wall, it shatters, and he tries to find a way to remain calm. “It died. I didn’t know. Fuck!”

“She’s in the trunk of a car. Headed east. That’s all I know. Undertaker knows. Said he’d take care of it. Venom just called Lex back, so he knows, too. This is all my fault.”

He quickly walks over to Lucas and pulls him to his feet and into a hug as he tries to curb his own panic. “It’s not your fault.”

“I should have done something. When you’re not here, I’m the man of the house. I should’ve grabbed a gun and shot him as he was leaving. Found a gun somewhere, but I didn’t. I don’t… I should have insisted you teach me how to shoot.”

Grabbing Lex’s phone, he sees the low battery level, too. “Where’s your phone?”

“In my room,” he whispers.

Colt runs to Lucas’s room and calls Undertaker, but he gets no answer. Shaking, he calls Hailey.

“Hey, Luke. Aren’t you supposed to be in class? Are you finally being bad and skipping class?”

“It’s me,” Colts says, trying to keep his voice steady. “Hailey, I need you to go and pick up Calla from preschool, and then I need you to pull Noah from school. Head to Ky’s house and stay there until I call you.”

“You’re scaring me, Colt. What’s going on? Is Lucas okay?”

He swallows the lump the size of Texas in his throat, and he struggles to hear anything past the racing heartbeat in his ears. “Lucas is okay. He’s with me, but Phillip has Lex.”

“What?”

“We’re going to find her, but I need you to take care of the younger kids for me. Please, Hailey, I can’t be worried about all of you guys, too.”

“I’ll take care of it,” she whispers. “You’ll find her before he… before he kills her, right?”

His lip trembles, but he fights the crippling fear. “We’re getting her back.”

Hanging up, he calls Ky, his hands shaking. “Who’s this?”

“It’s me,” Colt says. “My phone’s dead.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Let Felicity know that Hailey’s coming to your house with Calla and Noah. I need her to stay there with them, and I need you to call everyone and get them to the clubhouse now.”

“He got her, didn’t he?”

Colt can’t answer. He’s bordering on the verge of a psychotic break as it is, and he only mutters, “Mmhmm.”

“Felicity said Lex knew it was going to happen. I’ll get everyone to the clubhouse, and we’re going to get this motherfucker.”

Hanging up, Colt takes a few breaths to settle himself before walking back out to the living room. He feels exactly how Lucas looks, but he has to be the adult. The one kept in check. Freaking out will not help. “You good to ride?”

Lucas nods and follows him outside. Taking the spare helmet, he climbs on behind Colt and holds onto him as Colt does his best not to wreck them. His stomach ties in knots as he does his best to avoid thinking about the worst possible scenarios.

The lot has more motorcycles parked than Colt anticipated when they pull in, and they run into the clubhouse to find almost every person from all three charters waiting.

“Venom made the calls before I did,” Ky says.

“Brock?”

“Phone’s off, so I can’t track Undertaker,” Brock says as a few men part and show him typing at the bar. “I’m sorry, man.”

Lucas stands tall, but his voice cracks as he sounds nasally. “He put her in the trunk of a black four-door Ford with the license plate F-U-Nash-One.”

“If that’s not a fucking message, I don’t know what is,” Venom growls and glares at VP.

Brock’s typing fills the otherwise silent room, and Colt’s hands shake at his sides as he waits. Waits to find out if Brock can locate his wife. Something to lead them to her. He just needs something, anything. How to find her. How to save her.

“I’m trying to find anything on the traffic cams,” he says with a shake of his head.

“He went east on the highway,” Lucas says.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Brock slams his laptop shut. “Fuck!”

“What?” Colt asks.

“He’s heading out of town. There aren’t any cameras to tap into to try to locate her that direction.”

“What the fuck do we do?” Venom asks.

Colt stares at the Chapel. “Those pictures of Lex,” he says and runs it to grab them. “Did we ever find where his shop was? The one with the Lex wallpaper on it? The one that Gerard and Nina found?”

“There’s nothing much to search on from my end. Does anyone recognize it?” Brock asks.

Looking around the room, Colt wills anyone to say it looks like an old abandoned building not far away from them. Right outside of town. Somewhere quick where he can find his wife and save her. “Anyone?”

Everyone shakes their heads, and Colt clenches his fist at his side. What the hell do they do? Drive east on the highway in hopes of catching a car with that plate and pray Phillip doesn’t drive over a cliff with Lex in the trunk?

“The car is too old to have a GPS system in it, so I can’t get into that, either,” Brock says. “It’s a 2002 car registered under the name Chuck Norris. And I never got his number.”

“You have to do something,” Lucas says. “You have to save her. I can’t… I can’t lose her.”

“Buddy—”

“She saved me,” he says, looking right at Colt with tears shining in his eyes.

“She saved me when I didn’t think anyone ever would or could.

When he stormed into the house, she shielded me.

Then she told me to listen to him because she didn’t want him to hurt me.

The gun was pointed at her head, and she was worried about me . ”

Hugging him, Colt wipes his own tears. “She loves you, kid.”

“She told me she loved me before he yanked her out by her hair. It felt like she was saying goodbye, but I’m not ready for her to be gone. Not when this is my fault. She shouldn’t have been home. She was supposed to be here.”

“What else did he say?” Jennings asks. “When he was there, what else did he say to you?”

Pulling away, his lip quivers. “He’s been watching her. He knew she wasn’t supposed to be home, and he knew she didn’t have any protection detail.”

“Colt, I swear, I followed her here. After drop off at school, she came here and walked into the clubhouse,” Venom says. “I never would have left her alone otherwise.”

“She came home for me,” Lucas says. “Phillip said that if I listened, he might leave her somewhere we could find to have something to put in the grave we’ll visit.”

“You did the right thing,” TK says. “If anything happened to you, Lex would never forgive herself.”

“I’ll never forgive myself for letting him take her!” he screams.

Putting his hands on Lucas’s shoulders, Colt looks him in the eye.

“You did what you could. If you hadn’t listened, you wouldn’t be here.

That means you couldn’t call Undertaker.

You couldn’t get the license plate. You couldn’t tell us which direction they went.

She would be gone, and so would you, and we’d have nothing. You did everything right.”

“We have to do something,” he says, his lip trembling.

“We should drive out there. Follow where he may have gone. Maybe… Maybe he got a flat tire and had to pull over. Maybe… What if we could catch up to him? Or maybe she found a way to get out. Or… Or get someone’s attention, and the cops are talking to her right now. We should go… We…”

The desperation in Lucas’s voice breaks Colt, and all he can think about is how it’s all happening again. Just like when the Slashers took Lex, Colt has no way to find her. He didn’t find Lex for three days before, and it was the longest three days of his life.

Psycho locks eyes with him, and he knows the crazy man understands exactly what he’s thinking. He was there the night Lex was kidnapped, but just like then, they’re up a creek. How the fuck do they find her?

“Lex is smart,” Venom says, cutting off Colt’s spiraling thoughts. “She’ll find a way to stay alive and get in touch with us. Give us something to find her, and we’ll save her.”

“How?” VP asks. “Does she have her phone on her?”

“No, it’s at home, dead,” Colt says.

Lucas glares at VP. “This is all your fault.”

“Excuse me?”

“Phillip is doing this because of you. He hates you so much he put it on his license plate, and now he has my mom. This is all your fault!”

“She’s not your mom, kid. She just took you in because she felt sorry for you, and—”

Colt’s fist hitting VP’s jaw feels as good as he’s imagined it would for the past few years. “She is his mom. She’s more his mom than you have ever been Lex’s father. Whatever happens to her is on you, so you better figure out where your oldest kid would take her.”

“You expect me to pull something out of my ass?” he asks, rubbing his chin. “I haven’t seen him in thirty-five years!”

“I expect you to be a fucking parent for once in your goddamn life!” he shouts. “My son’s right. This is your fault, and when this is over, you better be prepared to grovel to keep your place at our table because I’m as done with you as I was with your second son.”

“You can’t—”

“This isn’t the time to try to defend yourself,” Jennings says. “If you want to force a vote right now, you won’t win. There are very few people, if any, who will fight stripping you of your leather.”

He looks betrayed, and Snake moves to the Chapel. “Okay, the shop. There are quite a few pictures of a shop. Did you have a shop at a house that you lived at with him? Or one that he would have had when he lived with his mom?”

Colt feels a small glimmer of hope until VP shakes his head. “No, we lived in a small two-bedroom house outside of town. His mom and I split when he was two, so Nero wouldn’t remember me living with him. I was in his life for a few more years after that.”

“Okay, did they live in another house after that one?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll look it up,” Brock says.

Arm wrapped around Lucas, Colt feels them vibrating at the same frequency. They have the same fear of losing Lex, and he wishes he could wipe away Lucas’s guilt. It’s not his fault. Not even a little bit.

“No shop,” Brock sighs.

“The only shop I ever had was when I was married to Maggie. It was on the property, but Nero was never there. I washed my hands of him after his mom refused to get him help.”

“How could you just walk away like that?” Venom asks. “Not even my mom did that to me, and she was a raging bitch who let her boyfriends and husbands abuse me.”

“Margaret had just given birth to Zane, and I had another family to protect.”

“Father of the fucking year,” Colt says.

Sighing, he looks outside. How do I find you, baby? Help us find you.