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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Rook

I heard the rumble of bikes as they rode all around Shady Valley, looking for a sign of Tessa. Or someone who may have seen her.

“Hey, okay,” Coach said, grabbing my shoulder to stop my pacing beside Tessa’s abandoned car. “That shit ain’t helping anything. Calm down and focus.”

“I can’t.”

My mind was shooting off in a million different directions at once. None of those paths particularly well-lit or leading anywhere positive.

“Alright, look,” Coach said, grabbing my other shoulder too. “Take a breath and calm your ass down. You aren’t helping Tessa if you’re lost in your own useless fears.”

He wasn’t wrong.

The rest of the club—and even the women who didn’t have kids to watch after—were out looking for her. While I lost my shit on the side of the road.

I sucked in a deep breath, feeling it narrow my thoughts down. So I took another. And another.

“There you go,” Coach said, releasing me. “Now tell me what I don’t know about Tessa’s past.”

Which was everything. Since she told my brothers even less than she told me.

“She grew up in biker clubs. Bad ones, from the sound of things. And I think she was… running from someone. Someone powerful.”

“An ex?”

“That’s my best guess.”

“Okay. Before we go assuming he found her, is there any way he could have found her?”

“I dunno. Maybe. Yeah. I think marriage records are public in California. But, I mean, that’s some serious digging to get to that.”

“There’s no other way she could have—”

“Fuck,” I growled, leaning back to look up at the sky.

“What is it?”

“She got a ticket driving home from visiting my mom.”

“Those are public in California,” Coach said.

“Yeah, they are. And easier to find than the marriage records, I’d think. For a novice.”

“Alright. So, it’s possible he tracked her here. But how did he get her out of her car?” he asked, gesturing toward it. “If she saw him, she never would have gotten out willingly, if she was on the run from him.”

“True.”

“How could he have gotten her then?”

My gaze lifted to him then as my mind narrowed to a precision point.

“Grocery delivery,” I said. “He could have ordered groceries.”

“And if he did—”

“The app would have the record of the address,” I said, practically lunging across the front seat to grab her phone.

Only to find it locked.

My heart clenched at her lock screen—the picture of us at our wedding, my forehead pressed to hers.

“Locked?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Can you… hack in?”

To that, I snorted.

“No. Not even cops with all their software can hack into a password or code-protected phone.”

“You’ve seen her unlock it, though, right?”

“Yeah.” Only about a hundred times.

“Then focus. Remember.”

“Dude, who the fuck can—”

“You can,” he cut me off. “It’s all in here,” he went on, tapping my temple with two fingers. “Focus and unlock the memory.”

“This isn’t the fucking time for meditation or whatever-the-fuck—”

“It is if you want in her phone. So, if you want your girl back, clear your goddamn mind, and let the memory come back.”

My brows shot up, surprised at the fierceness in his voice. Coach, almost as a rule, was a calm voice of reason. He was the yoga-loving, meditating, woodworking member of the club.

But, I reminded myself, those were only some of his layers.

Coach was also the guy who went out of his way to fuck up the lives of the corrections officers who made his life miserable while he was locked up.

He was a guy who went away for a brutal assault against a man who’d hurt his sister.

I wondered for the first time if maybe all of the yoga and meditation was his way of keeping that darker, violent side of himself in check.

I took a deep breath and let my eyes slide closed as I held Tessa’s phone. I drifted back to the night before as we sat close together.

The TV was playing a particularly brutal scene in a show we had both been watching, and she reached for her phone to fiddle with one of her silly little matching games until the ugliness was over.

I’d been distracted by the rings on her finger at first. But I caught the last four numbers.

The year.

“I think it’s a date,” I told Coach. “From this year.”

“That’s a good start. You’re probably only missing two or four numbers.”

My mind went to the date when she’d finally run away from her old life. But I had no idea when that was. And there were too many dates to guess before getting locked out.

“What about your wedding day?” Coach asked.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not… like that. She’s not like that.”

“She’s got your wedding picture on her lock screen.”

“To convince Nancy.”

“Tell me you’re not actually this dense,” Coach said, shaking his head at me. “Whether or not she’s at a place yet where she can admit it, that woman is crazy about you. She looks at you like you’re a slice of that cake Detroit and Everleigh made. But to be clear—you are exactly equal with that cake,” he said with a little smile.

“She loved that cake.”

“And she loves your dumb ass too. Now try the damn date. You’re wasting time.”

I had nothing to lose.

I typed it in.

And the fucking thing unlocked.

“This is where a less evolved man might say I told you so .”

I might have snorted at that.

But the phone unlocked right to the delivery app.

With a big warning page popped up.

Your delivery is extremely late.

So she had been lured.

Then picked up.

And maybe someone drove her car out here so no one could look for her.

That meant… she was probably still in Shady Valley.

I clicked the little Got it button to bring me back to the main screen.

And there it was.

A Shady Valley address.

“No,” Coach said when I turned and rushed toward my bike without a word. “We gotta take the car,” he said, grabbing my arm. “They’ll hear the bikes coming.”

“Right,” I said, handing him the phone as I jumped in the driver’s seat of Tessa’s car. The keys were still in the ignition, so I turned it as Coach called the others.

“You have weapons?” I asked as I floored it past the apartment buildings.

“Got two. Gonna have to wait for backup.”

“I’m not waiting for shit if she’s in there.”

Who the fuck knew what might be happening to her?

Given that she didn’t want to talk about it, I had to imagine it was worse than her mother trying to sell her to a club president when she was a teen. And there was no goddamn way I was going to make her wait even a second for rescue if she was enduring more of that just when she was supposed to be safe.

I was just about to turn into the mobile home park when a car raced up on my fender.

”The fuck—” I started, but when I glanced in the rearview, it was Sway’s girl Murphy behind the wheel.

Murphy, the weapons designer.

Murphy, who likely had a trunk full of shit we could use to get Tessa free.

Without thinking, I pulled to a stop and flew out.

“What do you have?” I asked as she got out and rushed toward her trunk.

“Anything you could possibly need,” she said, reaching into the trunk to hand me a simple Glock before going back for other shit. “How many people are you expecting?” she asked, waving toward a trio of fucking machine guns . Which, yeah were military-grade only. We had a hard time even sourcing any for clients. But there were three casually resting in Murphy’s trunk.

“Think that would be overkill,” Coach, a voice of reason again, said.

“How about a flashbang?” she asked, pulling out a stun grenade. “If they’re in a trailer, getting in without a gunfight seems unlikely. And some of those walls are thin as fuck. Anyone walking outside could get hit.”

That was fair.

And there were a lot of kids in this neighborhood.

“Yeah,” I said, pocketing that.

“And I always recommend a solid knife for close combat,” she said, handing me a lethal-looking knife with a slightly curved blade and a handle you slipped your hand inside. “So you don’t drop it when your hand is slick with blood,” she explained.

I took a knife and a few magazines before rushing back to the car.

“Tell the guys to make it on foot,” I called back to her.

“Yep,” she called back, already reaching for her phone.

I took my own advice, parking the car far enough away from the trailer that was mostly hidden by a row of old trees.

“Ready?” I asked, glancing over at Coach as he climbed out of his side of the car.

If I hadn’t looked over right then, I might have missed the transformation.

He went from his usual calm, peaceful self to something tight and rigid and, to be frank, pretty fucking terrifying.

“Yup.”

There was no time to stop and wonder what kind of demons Coach was hiding under all his Kumbayas and pranayama and shit.

Tessa needed me.

My hand tightened on my gun.

I’d never really been a violent man.

But when it came to protecting those I loved, there was no step too far for me.

I’d carve out someone’s intestines and wrap them around their throats if I needed to.

And make no mistake about it, I loved Tessa.

I planned to get her safe.

Then tell her that.

But first…

I reached for the flashbang as I crept up the front steps.

Inside, metal music was blaring from some speaker somewhere, making it easier to reach up and grab the door without someone hearing.

I pulled the pin.

Then, as I pushed my arm in the door, I ran my thumb over the safety lever just before tossing the grenade into the trailer.

My own ears popped at the bang , even from outside the trailer.

But there was no time to worry about that.

I charged inside, Coach at my six.

I heard the crunch of footsteps as someone else came rushing up.

But as soon as I was inside, all I could focus on was finding Tessa.

I expected to feel my heart pounding out of my chest, my blood surging through my veins.

Instead, I felt an almost alarming kind of calm wash over me.

So much so that I didn’t even flinch as Coach flew past me, taking down one of the bikers in a running leap.

Crow rushed in behind him, going after the other two.

The third jumped in front of a door, blocking it. And whoever was inside.

Tessa .

I tightened my hand on the gun and raised it. I slammed it with all my force into the fuck’s face, catching him both in the nose and mouth.

Blood spurted from his nose and lip and I watched in a sick detachment as pieces of his front teeth fell from between his lips before his hands rose to block my view.

I shoved him to the side, hearing more men running in, barking out orders.

They could handle the toothless guy.

I had to get my girl.

I threw the door open and rushed inside.

And there she was.

Used as a human shield against a hulking guy with brown hair, a stringy beard, and coal-black eyes.

All I could see was the relief in Tessa’s eyes.

And the gun at her temple.

“Let her go,” I snarled.

“No. She’s my woman.”

“Yeah? Well, that’s my ring on her finger. Pretty sure that means she’s mine .”