Page 79 of The Lies We Tell

“Can you talk now?”

“Not really. Just wanted to hear your voice.”

“Oh, Ike. Sleep. Eat. Shower. One step at a time. Mute your phone. I’ll call back and leave some voicemails for you, yeah?”

She’s done it before. Left me the very messages I need to hear. “Yeah.”

“You safe?”

I glance to the door. “Enough.”

“Okay. Promise me you’ll sleep. You’ll think more clearly if you aren’t tired. I love you.”

“Love you too, sis.”

I hide the phone in the pocket I cut in the back corner of the mattress and try to do as she says.

It takes a while to fall asleep, but when I do, it’s deep.

Chaotic hammering wakes me what feels like minutes later, but a glance at my watch says it’s hours. “Iris has been taken,” Halo yells as he busts open my door.

“What?” I ask, slamming upright, wiping sleep from my eyes. “How?”

“She’d gone home to pack. Was going to move in with Spark tonight. Big romantic gesture and all that shit. We were all going to go help her move once she was done. She’s been taken from her house. Alarm went off. We’re riding.”

I grab my keys and phone and sprint outside. People are clambering onto their bikes and speeding after one another.

“What alarm went off?” I ask Niro before he peels away.

“Vex had given her a pocket alarm, she set it off. Spark checked the camera footage from her door and saw it. The Righteous Brotherhood have her.”

My heart drops and I feel light-headed. I know what they did to Briar. What they probably intended to do to her, and I realize there isn’t anything I won’t do to make sure Iris comes home whole.

When we arrive at Iris’s, I see two prospects being treated on the lawn.

I missed so much. I didn’t even know why Iris was here and not at the clubhouse. “What gives?” I ask King.

“You gotta help me scrape him down off the ceiling. Anything happens to her, we might lose him for good.”

King slaps my shoulder and steps up to the house.

I follow.

Spark’s touching the shattered mirror with cracks and dents the size of Iris’s head. The fuckers smashed her into it.

Briar had all those scratches down the side of her face. I know I’m conflating things. But I know how badly those men can hurt a woman.

“Where the fuck is she?” Spark groans, then closes his eyes and breathes deep.

I know the rhythmic box breathing we’re all taught in the military. Four-second inhale. Hold for four. Four-second exhale. Hold for four. I do it with him.

Moral support.

Willing him to calm.

King looks around. “We should go back to the club.”

Spark’s eyes flash open. “I’m not going to the fucking club. I’m looking for Iris.”