Page 24

Tusk

W hen the smoke alarm goes off, I come to my feet, knowing deep in my bones that something is wrong. We don’t smoke inside the clubhouse, mostly because it’s a fire risk and because the old ladies claim it stinks up the place. Although the club girls sometimes sneak a smoke when they think none of us are around, my instincts tell me this is something more. Obviously, I rush out the front door because I won’t risk my daughter on the remote chance there is an actual fire.

We have a safety team that is responsible for clearing all the rooms both upstairs and in the basement, and escorting any prisoners we’re holding out of the building. The front is the staging area, the place we all meet to make sure everyone gets out okay. Evan rushes up with the list of people they let in at the front gate and begins calling names.

Meanwhile, I’m watching the front door like a hawk as my hands tighten around Victoria’s carrier.

Clara and Tex come running up to me. Tex has a toddler in each arm. Clara asks, “Have you seen Brittany leave? She went to the restroom.”

“I’ve not seen her,” I say.

Clara grabs the carrier from me, a silent request for me to look for her. “Thanks,” I mumble before taking off back into the building at breakneck speed. I bump into Crow, who tells me, “The building is clear, brother. Also, no sign of fire.”

I hurry past him, hearing him call an all-clear in the background. I race back to the women’s restroom and bolt through the door, pushing every stall door open. All four of them are empty. I check the men’s restroom just to be sure. Then I rush upstairs to the room we were sharing, it’s totally empty, including the en-suite. I head back down to the bar, which is already filling back up with brothers. Zen and Siege walk past. Zen has his tablet in one hand, showing the screen to Siege. “Someone pulled the fire alarm in our meeting room,” Zen explains.

I don’t waste any time. I run full speed back to the room we use for church. It’s a large room. It has to be big enough to accommodate all the brothers at once. I stop dead center. There are several chairs turned over, probably because people were rushing to get out of the building. Just as Siege and Zen come through the door, I see something that sickens me. It’s a splatter of blood on the white wall, right between the door leading to the armory and the one leading to Zen’s office.

I stomp over to it and take a picture with my cell phone.

Suddenly, Siege is at my side. “What did you find, Tusk?”

“Looks like fresh blood.” Three feet away is a pulled fire alarm lever. “Brittany never left the building. Crow’s team cleared it, and I double-checked upstairs.”

Siege turns his back on me as he pulls his cell phone out of his pocket and begins texting. Unnerved by what happened to my old lady, I glance at the back door. It’s not far from the fire alarm. I fast walk out the door and begin looking for clues. It’s unbelievable to me that she just up and disappeared, there’s no way Britt would do that. Especially not leaving our daughter. On the pavement beside the back patio, I see tire tracks where it looks like someone burned rubber when they pulled out. There is what looks like a drop of blood right behind the tire tracks.

Rigs and several other club officers walk up. He squats beside me. “I heard about Brittany.”

Swallowing thickly, I ask, “Do you think this is her blood?”

Rigs stares off into the distance for a brief moment, like he’s putting the pieces of the puzzle together. “It’s possible that she was abducted coming out of the restroom. I don’t know why she would have been in the meeting room unless she was going out the back door to the patio.”

“You think someone who was already in the clubhouse did this? One of the brothers slammed her face-first into the wall and dragged her out of here?” I look him straight in the eye when I ask that question, and he doesn’t blink.

His gaze is steady. “It looks like someone did, but not a brother. Someone bigger and stronger than her. Maybe a prospect.”

Tank voices his opinion from nearby. “I think they slammed the back of her head against the wall, leaving an almost perfect circular indentation.”

Rigs tells him, “Gather the prospects. Clear them of weapons and bring them to the meeting room. Nobody says anything until we interrogate them.”

“Don’t we have a security feed in the meeting room or out here on the back of the building?” I ask.

Zen answers, “No cameras are permitted in church. We have them in the hallways and in the rear of the building, but the vehicle appears to have been partially on the patio, so I don’t know if the cameras were positioned correctly to capture it. Mostly, the back cameras were installed to cover our blind spots and let us know if anyone is coming at us from the field back there.”

“Fuck. I need to find her.”

“Don’t worry,” Rigs says. “We will.”

We all head back into the building. The meeting room is filling up with freaked-out prospects. They all grab seats. Rigs and Siege begin interrogating them immediately.

Siege starts by announcing, “It looks like Tusk’s old lady might have been overpowered and taken during the chaos when the fire alarm was pulled.” Glancing at Rigs, he adds, “They might have even pulled the fire alarm to cover their escape.”

Rigs asks, “Were any of you alone when the fire alarm sounded?”

Tex’s son, Levi, raises his hand. Rigs frowns, “Where were you, Levi?”

The teen looks embarrassed. “I was making out with Tonya in one of the pool alcoves.”

Tank chimes in. “They weren’t exactly going unnoticed. Dutch and I saw them.”

Rigs shoots Levi a stern look. “You’re too young to be messing around with club whores. I’m sure Tex is gonna want to talk to you about that.”

Levi flushes crimson but answers, “Yes, sir.”

Zen has fetched his laptop and is typing away on it. I’m almost certain he’s searching the security feeds.

Siege’s voice rings out loud and clear. “We all know how tough Brittany is. If someone managed to get her out of the clubhouse then it must have been someone strong enough to overpower her. I know my Cleo would fight tooth and nail if someone tried to take her away from our kids.”

Rigs picks up where Siege leaves off. “Same with Mattie. No patched brother would do something like that.” Looking straight at his son, he asks, “Were there any visitors logged in at the front gate tonight?”

Evan is still carrying his log from the gate on a clipboard. Scanning the list, he begins shaking his head before dropping the clipboard back down to his side. “No visitors. You think it was one of us prospects?”

Siege speaks up, “All of you have been vetted, and you have my trust, but it looks like it’s an inside job.”

Tank adds, “Unless one of you can think of a more likely suspect.”

That invitation is met with silence because, of course, they can’t. If there was a more likely suspect, we’d have started there. I remember watching cop shows where the cops rush to the scene of a crime and pass the criminals without realizing it. So, I ask, “Did anyone leave after the alarm sounded?”

Evan is already nodding, but it’s Zen who speaks. “It was Silver, right?”

Evan replies, “Yes. How did you know?”

Zen says, “I’ve just managed to get into the feed and I’ve got her and another woman walking Brittany out the back door.”

“Dammit!” I exclaim.

Siege orders, “Put it on the big screen, Zen. I want to see.”

Zen switches on the large screen that covers the better part of one wall, and gasps ring out. Two women I recognize are walking Brittany out of the restroom and into the meeting room we are now standing in. My old lady clearly has blood streaks in the back of her pretty blonde hair. I curse under my breath because I know exactly what fuckin’ happened to my old lady.

One of the prospects asks, “Who’s the other woman? I’ve never seen her before.”

“It’s Gina, my fucking ex-wife. I don’t know what the fuck’s going on, but she and Silver are up to something.”

Evan mutters, “I didn’t think of women ganging up on her. I just automatically thought it must have been a man.”

The whole room breaks out in whispers, but I pull out my cell phone and call my ex. Naturally, she doesn’t pick up. That’s her oldest and best trick—not answering her phone when she’s up to no good. I leave her a scathing voicemail. “I don’t know what the fuck you think you’re doing, but I want you to turn the car around and bring Brittany back. We caught you on our security feed sneaking her out the back door.”

Zen asks, “Do you and your ex use a location-sharing app?”

“No, and Brittany left her phone on the table when she went to the restroom.”

I watch Zen frown as he checks his screen. “Looks like it’s still in the bar.”

I call Tex, “Can you and Clara come back to the meeting room?”

“Yeah, we’ll be right there, brother.”

Clara busts through the door first and runs right up to me. Setting my daughter’s carrier down, she asks, “Did you find her?”

I point to the round indentation in the wall with a splotch of blood on it. “Your sister and Silver knocked her out and abducted her. Zen’s got them on the security feeds.”

Clara gasps, and her hands come up to cover her mouth.

I ask, “Wanna bet who she left the boys with for this little crime spree?”

Tex’s aggravated voice drifts to my ears, “How the fuck did she even get inside the building? And how did a pregnant lady with a big round belly take Brittany down?”

Siege answers, “Silver helped her. We’ve got to find them.”

Clara’s expression turns from horror to one of determination. She pulls out her cell phone. But before she can dial the number, I tell her, “I already tried to call her, but she didn’t answer. I told her we caught her on security cameras, and she needs to get back here with Brittany.”

Putting her phone away, she says, “I don’t want to tip her off that I know. Tex and I will camp out at my parents’ house under the pretense of helping with the boys. We’ll let you know the second she shows up.” Picking up my daughter’s carrier, she says, “Don’t worry about Victoria. Tex and I will keep her safe.”

I lean over and give my daughter a little kiss on the forehead. “Stay safe, sweetheart. Me and your mommy will be back before you know it.”

She just stares up at me with the wide eyes of a baby just getting old enough to be curious about her surroundings. She makes a cute grab for my hand as I pull back. Unfortunately, she forgets to un-ball her tiny fists, so it’s more like the lightest of punches. It makes me smile.

Siege tells them both, “Thank you. The second we hear from you, we’ll send out brothers to pick her up.”

Clara’s expression takes on a worried edge, but she nods. Tex hustles them both out of the room, and we get back to it.

Turning to Zen, Siege says, “Meanwhile, we’ll try to track her credit card purchases and such.”

“Already on it, Prez,” Zen says, as his fingers fly over the keyboard.

I start calling everyone I know, trying to find out the last time they saw my ex. Between calls, my phone jingles. It’s a notification that the card I put the boys’ child support on has been swiped. “I got a hit on the card I put child support on.”

Zen jerks his chin for me to let him see. He scrolls through my phone and grins. “She used it at Gnarly John’s Gas and Go.”

“Fucking hell, I know exactly where that is. Good thing she didn’t use it at a chain gas station. It might have been hard to figure out which one she stopped at.”

Siege announces, “Prospects, back to your regular duties. Tusk, Dutch, Tank, and Rigs, you’re with me. Let’s ride out to Gnarly John’s and see if we can figure out which direction they took when they left his place.”

I’m happy to be out there tracking my woman down. Waiting around, talking, and doing shit makes me panic inside. I’m just hoping those two idiots didn’t do something terrible to Brittany. Images of them rolling her dead body into a ditch along the side of the road rise unbidden in my mind. I try and calm myself down, Gina is crazy, but she’s not a murderer.

***

It doesn’t take us long to gear up and hit the road. We take our bikes. I’m more stressed than I can ever remember being. The last time she went missing, I knew she had run from me. This time, Someone has taken her.

I know naked fear for the first time in my life. But I know that my fear can’t be anything close to the terror that Brittany is experiencing. Gina and I have a long history of toxicity, but I never thought she was capable of something like this. I’m not about to let her or Silver off the hook for hurting and terrifying the woman I love. I vow to make them both pay, even if they are women. I don’t care about that anymore.