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“Zariah!” I bark into the phone, yelling her name over and over.
She doesn’t answer.
“Zariah, fuckin’ answer me. Are you there?”
Nothing.
A crackle on the other end of the line alerts me to the fact that someone has picked it up. I go to call her name again when a male voice fills the other end of the line. “You won’t be seeing her again. You should have kept out of it.”
Then the line goes dead.
I throw my phone across the room, roaring in rage. Alarick comes busting in followed by Cohen and, the moment they see me, Alarick demands answers.
“He’s got Zariah.”
“Who?”
“Fuckin’ Blanche.”
Alarick’s face tightens. “Tell me what you know.”
“She called me. Said he knew. I asked her how he knew and she said because she found out who the fuckin’ rat was, and she knows now that person would have given him information. Then, she was fuckin’ gone.”
“Who the fuck is feedin’ information?” Alarick barks, his fists clenched.
“She didn’t fuckin’ get to tell me. We gotta get over there, right fuckin’ now.”
“You got the address still?” Cohen asks, grabbing a gun from the cabinet and shoving it into his jeans.
“Yeah,” Alarick confirms, taking two guns. “Let’s ride.”
We move quickly, just the three of us. We’ve been together the longest—I trust these two with my life. They’re not rats, I’d bet my ass on it. Everyone else, though. They need to be left out of this until we can confirm who is fucking doing this to the club. To our fucking family.
My chest clenches as we get on our bikes.
I think about Zariah and where the fuck that dick is taking her. He could take her anywhere and we might not find her. The chances of something going wrong are very fucking high. These people don’t want the club involved, and I’m afraid they’ll go to great lengths to keep us away from it, even if it means taking us all out one by fucking one.
She doesn’t deserve this, though.
I fucking let her down. I let her think I used her. Let her think I didn’t care. Truth is, I do fucking care. I care more than even I’m willing to admit. She does something to me, brings something out in me, and that scares me. It scares me because she could make or break me. I’m afraid of that. I’m afraid of going down for the rest of my life for something I didn’t do.
Fuck.
I should have corrected her when she thought I was using her.
Little does she know, fucking her was the best damn thing I’ve had in my life in a good long time. The way she took to me, wild and free, made everything fucking worthwhile. I held back, out of anger, spite, maybe even a little fucking hurt. I can’t do anything about that now. I gotta fix this. One way or another, I gotta fix this for her.
She has a son.
I can’t let anything happen to her.
We ride without hesitation to the address found on the note Zariah scrawled out the night she figured out that we weren’t doing the right thing by her. I feel like a fucking dick for doing that, but there’s no point in thinking about it now. The only thing I can think about now is finding this son-of-a-bitch and making him pay for what he’s done to her.
The house is quiet when we arrive. After knocking, or pounding, on the door for a good five minutes, we give up and smash a window. Here’s hoping this fucker doesn’t have an alarm. Alarick covers his arm with his jacket and smashes the glass out of the way so we can climb through. Once we’re inside, we separate and start looking for something, anything. I find an office on the first floor and there, I see Zariah’s things, including her phone on the ground.
I reach down for it, picking it up and placing it in my pocket.
That’s when I see the blood. Not a lot of it, but enough to tell me she’s hurt. There is a smear of it on the floor, and a few droplets leading out the door.
My chest coils as I walk over to his desk. I rummage through fucking everything and find nothing. Not a computer or laptop, no papers that have any indication of where he might be. Fucking absolutely nothing. The only thing on there is the case file they were working on and other cases filed away neatly.
This man is smart.
He knows how to get found out and he’s covered his tracks.
He’s the best of the best, and he knows it.
That’s exactly how they’ve been able to get away with this for so long.
It’s why we can never find them.
He’s made sure they’re covered.
All of them.
How the ever-loving fucking hell are we supposed to find Zariah, when this man has covered his tracks so well?
Frustration explodes in my chest, and I lift the desk with both hands, launching it with an angry bellow that sends it flying into the wall. A loud crack can be heard, and the desk lands with a thud onto the ground. I’m about to turn and walk out when I see something underneath the desk. It’s some sort of compartment built in. I move closer, getting down onto my knees and rattling the lock on it.
I don’t have the key.
That’s fucking fine.
I don’t need one.
I find the heaviest thing in the room—a golf club—and I swing at that fucking desk until the compartment breaks and drops open. Inside is nothing more than a small sheet of paper that reads “Nice try. Keep looking.”
With a rage I didn’t think was possible, I roar.
He’s playing with us.
He fucking knows damn well we’re searching his house.
He also knows we’ll find nothing here.
We need something. Anything.
There has to be a way to bring this fucker down.
“What’s goin’ on in here?”
I spin around to see Alarick at the door, glancing around at the mess I’ve made. “He’s fuckin’ with us,” I bark, standing and pacing. “He knows we were going to come here and search. I can guarantee there is nothin’ in this house. He’s made sure of that.”
“That’s what I was worried about,” Alarick murmurs. “He’s too smart. We need to find a way to outsmart him.”
“How?” I growl. “How? There is nothin’, fuckin’ nothin’. He’s goin’ to make sure we never find him, and even if we do, it’ll be too late. He’s too smart.”
“There’s always a way,” Alarick mutters, his voice clipped.
“We’re runnin’ out of time. He’ll hurt her before we find her. We’ve been on this entire fuckin’ thing for months now and we’re no closer than where we started. There is no way in fuckin’ hell we’ll find him before my trial. I’ll go away and Zariah will be fuck knows where, because we don’t be able to find her.”
“You’re wrong.”
We both turn to see Cohen standing in the doorway, a picture in his hand. It’s an old picture, small and frail. He holds it out, and Alarick takes it off him, studying it.
“I found this in the boxes that are in the basement. It was with a bunch of old photos, nothin’ spectacular, but this one stood out to me.”
“Why?” Alarick asks, studying it. I walk over and stare at the picture too. It’s of a young boy and an older boy. The man is Blanche, that much is clear. He’s only a teenager, maybe a bit younger. His features are very distinct. There’s no missing him.
I don’t see how a picture of Blanche is going to make a difference to anything.
“Look at the boy, the little boy. Really fuckin’ stare at his face. Is it familiar?”
I narrow my eyes staring at the face of the little boy. I study it for minutes, maybe even longer. It is familiar, sure, but I’m not sure I recognize him.
“Fuck,” Alarick breathes. “No.”
“Yeah,” Cohen mutters. “Yeah, you’re seein’ it correctly. We just found our fuckin’ rat.”
“No,” Alarick goes on. “No this can’t be fuckin’ real. It ain’t real, Cohen.”
“It’s as real as you and I standin’ here. There is no doubt about it. There is no denying who that picture is of.”
“Who?” I bark.
Both of them look at me. It’s Alarick who speaks.
“It’s Samson.”
No.
Fuck.
No.
~*~*~*~
ALARICK IS WALKING out of the house before any of us can stop him. He's got his hands bundled into tight fists, and he's panting with rage. We're all in shock. There is absolutely no doubt about it. I've known Samson for a long time, and I never, not ever, thought he had something to do with this. It's as though my heart is bein' ripped out of my fuckin' chest. The betrayal is real.
But right now, Samson is the only thing we have that can lead us to Zariah.
Alarick wants to kill him; I get that.
His club is his life, and you do not fuckin' betray your club.
If we kill him, though.
This is over.
That's why Cohen and I charge after him, both of us knowin' that we have to stop this before it goes too far.
Before he does something we really can't come back from.
"Alarick, stop," Cohen yells, his voice bellowing down the halls.
Alarick doesn't stop.
He charges out the front door and towards his bike.
We've got seconds if we're lucky.
"Pres," I bark, "you can't hurt him."
Alarick doesn't pause.
He doesn't even flinch.
Fuck.
Cohen and I charge at him, knowin' the only way to stop him is to do something drastic. Cohen catches him around the waist, and I step in front of him. He lets out an agonized roar. "Let me fuckin' go, you cunts."
Alarick rarely loses it.
He certainly doesn't say that word a lot.
He's wild, but mostly, he's hurt.
Achin' in a way we can't even begin to understand.
"You kill him," I growl, getting up close. "They win."
He pauses, panting with a rage I've never seen from him.
It's terrifying.
Samson will go down for this, but it'll break every single piece of Alarick open to have to be the one to take him down.
That's horrible.
So fuckin' horrible.
"Let. Me. Fuckin'. Go." Alarick seethes, baring his teeth.
"Listen to me," I roar. "You kill him, and this will never be over. I'll get locked away. Zariah will die. Is that what you fuckin' want? I know you're not that stupid, Pres. You gotta think. I know you're angry, but you gotta fuckin' pull your head in and switch your brain on. Samson is the only fuckin' person who can give us our answers. Who can lead us to Zariah, to Dax, to all of them."
Alarick makes a low, almost pained sound in his throat. "He betrayed me."
"I know."
"He fuckin' ripped my heart out."
"I. Know."
Alarick closes his eyes, the pain in his expression real.
This is killing him.
"We've got to be smart about this," Cohen murmurs, slowly releasing him. "We have to be fuckin' careful about what we do here. You know we do. You go, ride it off, take whatever time you need to fuckin' get your head around this, but I can't let you go to Samson and bust this all wide open. Can't, boss."
Alarick opens his eyes. "I know."
"Get on your bike, find your girl, go break somethin' apart. Do whatever you gotta do. Then you find us, and we're goin' to finish this the way it should have been finished months ago. You can deal with Samson after that."
Alarick studies both of us, and then without a word, gets on his bike and disappears.
I glance at Cohen, and his expression is no doubt the same as mine. Shock. Pain. Rage. A brother, someone we would have trusted with our lives, has betrayed us. Let us down. He has broken us into a thousand tiny pieces. You don't come back from that. Samson will die because of his actions, and that thought alone makes me want to fuckin' bellow with agony and rage.
"Why?" Cohen mutters, his voice low.
"I don't know, brother."
"He has been with us for-fuckin'-ever. Never let us down. Never put a foot wrong. Why the fuck would he help these people? Who are they to him?"
"I don't know."
Cohen tips his head back and roars, "Fuck!" into the air as loudly as possible.
I clasp him on the shoulder. "We gotta keep it together, for Alarick's sake. He ain't goin' to deal with this, you know he ain't. We gotta hold him up."
"Yeah," Cohen growls. "Yeah, I know."
"Let's get back to the club, get eyes on Samson. We need to find out what he knows and how he's passin' on the information. It's the only way we're goin' to end this. Zariah doesn't deserve to go down for this."
"No, she fuckin' doesn't. Let's ride."
We get on our bikes.
And we ride.
Both of us feeling the same pain deep in our chests.
Utter. Fuckin'. Betrayal.