Page 48 of Riding the Line (Steel Saints MC #1)

Maverick

I reached across the sheets, finding nothing but emptiness. The bed was cold, and early morning light softly illuminated the room. I blinked, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, and called out, “Vixen?” My voice was still rough, and I cleared my throat before calling out again, “Dalton?”

For a moment, I felt weird. Grown ass man sharing a bed with his brother. But it didn’t matter, didn’t count when she lay between us. I sat up and stretched, relishing the pop in my back. The door to the bathroom was open, and I could see that it was also empty. They must be downstairs.

Grabbing my shirt off the floor, I pulled it over my head as I made my way down the hall and past the motel rooms, greeting a few shell-shocked kids on my way.

To my surprise, a few of them actually responded with hesitant smiles.

If I knew her at all, Nicky was probably whipping them up one of the best breakfasts they would ever have in their lives.

I hope she made waffles. I fucking loved her waffles.

I yawned as I pushed the kitchen door open and found my brother pouring a cup of coffee, barefoot and dressed just in a pair of shorts.

“Nicky come down with you?”

“I thought she was with you?”

He gave me an odd look. “She wasn’t in bed when I got up. I assumed she was in the shower or something.”

Unease tightened my gut, and I turned to head back upstairs. Dalton followed, leaving his mug on the counter.

“She’s probably just in the shower. If we go barging in there, she’s gonna throw something sharp or heavy at us. ”

“No, ‘cos when she woke me up last night, she told me she was going to shower before coming back to bed. So, either she’s taking the world’s longest, and coldest, shower or—”

“Something’s wrong.”

I took the stairs two at a time, heading straight for my room. I checked the bathroom and wasn’t surprised to find it empty. Where had she gone?

Dalton appeared in the doorway. “Anything?”

I started to shake my head, and then I saw the carefully folded note on my pillow. “My boys” was written on the top in a familiar hand, and somehow I knew the second I opened that note, my world was never going to be the same.

I felt Dalton move closer, his eyes on that slip of paper too. “Not it,” he murmured.

I held the note so that we could both see what was written inside, but was shocked when I read the three simple words, surrounded by what I assumed were dried tears.

“Please forgive me.”

Forgive her. For what? What the fuck was going on? What had she done? Where was our girl? I looked up at Dalton and saw every question I had reflected in his eyes. He looked from the note she had left to me, and back at the note.

“What the actual fuck is this, Mac? What is going on?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. But we are damn sure going to find out.”

I let the paper fall onto the bed like it burned my hands, and turned to leave. I froze when I realized the picture on the wall was now just an empty frame.

This just keeps getting better .

On our bikes, we drove like men possessed, flying around every corner until we skidded to a stop outside Nicky’s house.

Her beloved Triumph was parked out front.

The front door was locked, but we both had a key.

I was on edge as we made our way inside, Dalton as equally tense, but not a thing was out of place.

Together, we headed upstairs to her room which looked the same as it had the last time we were here.

Dalton pushed past me, then stopped dead in front of the open closet.

I followed, looking inside to see what had made my brother look like his world just stopped.

And then mine stopped, too.

One of the boards on the back wall had been pried loose. Inside was a small compartment that had clearly been used to house God only knows what. Now, it sat empty.

“She was hiding something.”

I glanced at Dalton. No shit, brother. I turned from the closet and its lack of answers. It wasn’t until my second scan of the room that I noticed the phone on the bed. I said nothing, but Dalton saw it too.

“That’s the one I gave her.”

We shared a glance.

“I’ll call Jackson, you call Diego. Call fucking everyone. We have to find her.”

We searched for two days.

I don’t remember the last time I slept. Dalton only ate the food Maria forced on him. Jackson and Diego were running down every favor, hunting for every scrap of intel they could find. We scoured the fucking earth for her. But she had vanished, like some sort of ghost.

On the second night, I found Holly consoling a weeping Maria. The two of them had busied themselves getting the rescued kids moved on, but there were only a handful of kids left, and plenty of space freed up for unwanted thoughts.

I ransacked my brain for any mention of a place she would go.

Dalton even drove down to check the lake house.

She wouldn’t just leave us, I told myself.

Not Nicky, not Vixen. At night, lying in bed wide awake and staring at the ceiling, I retraced every memory of her.

From the second she had walked into the local bar like she owned it, I had watched her.

I knew she was trouble before she even set that piece of shit’s bike on fire, before she swung on me.

She had been a spitfire, and Dalton’s nickname for her just stuck no matter how hard she tried to shake it off.

I tried like hell to fight it, but it was like she was the other half of me.

I couldn’t stop loving her even if I had tried.

And damn if I didn’t try.

Monday morning dawned grey and ugly. Rain was pouring down, and there was no sound of her bustling around in the kitchen.

Dalton sat at the counter, staring at a cup of coffee that was quickly growing cold in front of him.

He glanced at me when I walked in, but didn’t say a word.

I poured my own cup and sat next to him.

After a few moments of silence, he asked, “When do we stop looking?”

I looked at him. Part of me wanted to yell, to berate him for wanting to give up. But I didn’t. He was just saying the same thing I had been thinking. I sighed, but didn’t answer, opting to sip at my coffee instead.

Our not-so-peaceful morning was shattered when Jackson blew into the room like his ass was on fire.

Holly was behind him, hollering at him to slow down, but he didn’t seem to hear her.

He disappeared towards the motel rooms, and Holly stood in the kitchen with a scowl on her face and her hands on her hips.

“What’s up with him?” I asked.

“Wish I fucking knew,” she scoffed.

A few minutes later, Jackson came back, and the three of us watched him with equal expressions of bafflement as he lugged one of the small TVs into the kitchen and plugged it in. “Y’all need to see this. I just got word.”

He plugged the TV in and began furiously flipping through channels before settling on a news station.

I opened my mouth to ask him what the fuck was going on, but then a familiar face had me snapping my jaw shut.

Nicky stood on stage behind the news anchor, except gone was the vibrant red hair and brown eyes.

In place of her usual jeans and faded t-shirt, she wore a crisp police uniform, with auburn hair tied in a tight bun at the nape of her neck, and a thin smile on her face—like she had been dragged on the stage against her will.

But I would recognize the woman I loved anywhere.

Dalton stood slowly, creeping closer to the monitor like he might spook it, and I gestured at Jackson to turn it up.

“… undercover for over a year under the alias Nicole Moore, Detective McGrady is credited with gathering critical evidence leading to the arrest of multiple high-ranking members of the DiAngelo family. Detective McGrady had reportedly been working on a related case when the FBI’s Organized Crime Task Force enlisted her assistance.

Now, it’s our understanding that you’ve never done an undercover operation of this magnitude—is that correct, detective? ”

Nicky’s—or whoever she was—eyes flicked from the anchor to the camera and back again before a man standing next to her gently guided her forward.

She gave the microphone shoved in her face a dirty look and cleared her throat.

“Um… yeah, that’s right. My lieutenant here,” she gestured at the man who had prodded her forward, “recommended me for the case. I’m still adjusting to my old life, this life.

But it was an opportunity I couldn’t turn down, and I wouldn’t change anything that happened even if I could. ”

“Absolutely—still, it must be hard returning home after over a year away. But you took down some really bad people. That must feel good.”

“Well, yeah. But I didn’t do it alone. There are a few really brave men and women who did some really great things. Honestly, it’s them we should be thanking. They’re the heroes, not me.”

The anchor gave her a confused look, and you could’ve heard a pin drop in the room as Detective McGrady was ushered off stage by her supposed boss.

I wondered what her real name was. No wonder we couldn’t fucking find her—Nicole Moore had never fucking existed.

She was a lie. She wasn’t ours. She never had been.

She was a pretty little thing who had come for one thing and one thing only.

She left in the night because she had come to do a job and, once the job was done, what reason would she possibly have to stay?

Certainly not me. She had gotten what she wanted from me.