Page 49 of Sunrise (Monarch Club #3)

Vault

Waiting for system updates is the worst. It’s the only time I’m ever impatient.

The damned thing has been stuck at eighty-five percent complete for the past fifteen motherfucking minutes.

I don’t like having downtime at the club, even if it’s when no one’s here.

My dependency on knowing all systems are in place is what holds my sanity together.

Safety is always my number one priority.

Popping the top off an energy drink, I sit back in my chair, making it twist back and forth while I continue to wait. My cell vibrates on the desk and Knox’s face lights up my screen.

Yay. A distraction.

“Hey.”

“You good?” he asks cautiously.

“Yeah, why?”

“I don’t know. I got a bad feeling.”

Knox is always saying stuff like that. “You see the text from Soph?”

“Yeah,” he sighs. “She’s going to the lab.”

“Maybe that’s your bad feeling. You’re worried about her seeing Bill and James, and we can’t go with her to make sure she’s all good.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” It doesn’t sound like he’s buying it. “I got a weird text from her, though. It says, ‘they’re stunning’ and I have no clue what the fuck she’s talking about. Did you do something?”

“The roses,” I say. “She sent me a hella hot pussy shot with one of the buds from the bouquet. I’ll show it to you later. Swear to God, it should be artwork to hang at the club. It’s half stuffed up her cunt, and she’s fingering the petals.”

“Hold up.” Knox’s voice tenses. “I didn’t send her flowers.”

I sit up in alarm. “What?”

“I didn’t fucking send her flowers, Alex.”

My immediate reaction is to load her security cameras and check her house. But the fucking system update is still at eighty-five percent, and I can’t use my computer until it’s complete. “Shit. SHIT !” Panicked, I stand, tipping my chair over and instantly pull up the feed from my cell.

“What is it?” Knox yells at me. “What the fuck’s going on, Vault?”

The playback glitches twice before I’m able to pull up her feed. I see a delivery driver at her door with a massive bouquet. They exchange a few words, and he hands them over then leaves immediately.

“Sunnyside Florist,” I say, reporting what I see on the side of the van. “The roses came from there.”

“Want me to go find out who sent them?” he asks.

“Hang on.” I speed up the playback. Sophie leaves through the front door, dressed for work. She wobbles a little when she goes down her steps. The sun glare hides her from me once she’s in her car. A man walks down the sidewalk from the right side of the camera .

“Jesus Christ,” I mutter, watching this play like a fucking horror movie in my hands.

The man opens her driver’s side door and says something to her.

From this angle, it’s hard to tell, but it looks like Sophie’s not moving.

Like… at all. He looks up at the camera and fucking waves .

Then he pulls her out of the car. She’s not fighting him back.

Her head flops forward as he hauls her out and puts her into the backseat.

Then he slams the door and calmly strolls up to the camera I installed at her front entrance.

“Nice try,” he says with a huge ear-to-ear grin. “But she was mine first.”

With that, he rips the camera off the mount and smashes it, cutting the feed off.

I’m out the fucking door, screaming for Knox to get to Sophie’s as fast as possible.

But he’s not on the line anymore.

???

Knox

Dressed for work, I grab the gun from my closet, stuff it behind my back, and race to my bike. Lifting the kickstand, I start the engine and blaze out, running every goddamn red light trying to stop me from reaching my girl.

I knew something was wrong.

I felt it in my gut.

We should have never let her out of our sight. Those security cameras weren’t enough. We should have installed laser beams and a pack of guard dogs around her entire perimeter .

Ignoring every speed sign and traffic light, I don’t care how many felonies I rack up. Whizzing between cars, dodging and weaving anything in my goddamn way, I lean into the next turn so hard, my knee nearly scrapes the asphalt.

Suddenly, Vault rides out of an alleyway. We merge together, tearing up the street that’s packed with traffic. He hops the curb and takes the sidewalk. I slip between vehicles and nearly get clipped by a delivery truck.

We blast through another red light and his bike screams as he takes off in front of me, getting on the beltway. Once I’m off the ramp, I top out at a speed that makes Vault look like he’s standing still.

My vision tunnels. Vault catches up and I realize I’ve slowed down. He takes the first exit and ends up beating me to her house.

“Sophie!” he screams.

She’s not here. Of course, she not fucking here. Someone’s taken her to God knows where to do God knows what.

I don’t even know why we came. We’re useless.

“How much time’s passed?” I ask him.

He’s wild eyed with panic. “What?”

“How much fucking time has passed since she was taken?” He shakes his head like he can’t comprehend what I’m asking. “Pull up the feed and check the time, Alex.”

He whips his cell out, hands shaking from adrenaline, and taps the screen several times. I look around, up and down the street, as if Sophie’s going to miraculously pop out of her hiding place.

“Twenty minutes,” he says. “She was taken twenty minutes ago. ”

“Okay. We can work with that. You go that way. I’ll go this way.”

We should have put a location device in her car. And a microchip under her skin.

“We have to call the cops, Knox.”

“There’s no time!” I yell. “She’ll be long gone if we don’t fucking hurry.”

He yells at me for being unrealistic, but I ignore it and hop back on my bike.

I’m going to find our girl or die trying.