CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

 

The empty hotel suite was like a black hole. It sucked Jax in. There was no escape, and even though he knew Seven was gone, he couldn't fight the feeling that she had just been there.

Bile sloshed in his stomach. Desperate to be analytical and find anything she may have left behind, he knew it was a lost cause when he walked in. "Seven?" Goddamn it, he was too late. "Are you in here?"

The mere seconds it took him to move through the suite and check the bathroom were a waste. The instant he'd thrown open the door, Jax knew she was gone. He could feel it in a desperate, terrifying way.

He saw no signs of a struggle. Seven would fight. No doubt Parker was pulling security footage now, but the cartel could slip her out of the building unseen in any number of ways. He walked to the desk, and his eyes dropped. A note?

What the hell was that?

 

Hi, Jax. I need time to myself and went for a walk. Don't wait up, not sure when I'll be back. I'll check in when I can. xxoo

 

Fucking hell. What did they do to get her to write that? He reached for his cell phone and called Boss Man, who picked up on the first ring.

"Hey, she left a note—"

Jared cut him off. "Where are you?"

"Where the fuck do you think I am? Seven's room."

"It takes you that long to find a note?"

Jesus Christ. What crawled up Boss Man's ass? It wasn't as if he were dicking around. Maybe he took his sweet time looking around a small room. Maybe he had a hard time with the fact that his girl was gone and every single step tortured him. But he didn't need Jared's damn attitude right now. "Yeah, man. What the hell? Seven left a damn note. Are you interested?"

"Truthfully, Jax, I'm interested in why it took you so long to find a note in a room that's two hundred square feet. Where the fuck was the note?"

"Her desk." Jax wasn't hiding his frustration at all, and that wasn't a great idea after getting into a fight with Deacon earlier. Everybody had an issue with Jax's attitude. But at the moment, he gave no fucks. They wanted him to work faster? Two minutes wasn't going to make a difference when it came to processing the fact that Seven wasn't there and he was losing his shit. "Look, man. Seven. That's the only thing I'm going to think about and worry about."

"Sugar's on her way to you now. I have something I have to figure out, and I will be there in a second. Don't leave that room."

Where the hell did Jared think Jax was going to go? To the strip or to get a beer? Catch a little R and R? A knock sounded on the door, signaling the arrival of his least favorite fan. "She's here," he said, grinding his molars. "I'm not going anywhere, and I'll see you when I see you."

Jax threw the notepad down and stormed to open the door. He had a key card to Seven's room but was surprised that Sugar's forceful knock didn't knock the door down. He twisted the door handle, and Sugar pushed through, a leather-clad bulldozer imitating what Jared sounded like but in real life. "Well, hey to you too."

She walked through the room, not acknowledging he was there, then traced the same path to the bedroom and bathroom and came back. She slammed her hands onto her hips. "So?"

So? Well, fuck you too, Sugar. "Seven left a note. It's total bullshit."

Sugar's eyes narrowed to slits. "Where?"

Jax mocked her one-word snappy tone. "Desk."

After her quick inspection, Sugar shook her head. "Goddamn it. What'd they do to get that written?"

"That's what I would like to know. But everybody is acting like they have an AK shoved up their asshole."

Sugar all but hissed at him, and Jax turned, not wanting to engage with his boss's wife, when the trash can caught his eye. Two crumbled pieces of paper lay in the waste pail, and Jax's heart jumped. He had no idea what Seven's deal with folding was. They hadn't talked about it, but he noticed there was a definite thing there. Crumpled definitely wasn't folded.

He strode over, grabbed the pail, and dumped it onto the desk next to Sugar. Then he flattened the two pieces of notepaper on the desk. Sugar moved next to him, and they stared at the three pieces together.

Nothing. There was nothing there, only two notes on which she had clearly screwed up what they had told her to say before starting over.

Still, the discarded notes struck him as important, but he didn't know how. Something was, though.

Sugar stared at him more than the papers. "Okay, Detective. She gets nervous writing under orders."

There was no way that Seven, the woman who folded everything, had crumbled up two pieces of paper and tossed them away. She was neurotic about the way things were folded. "There's something here. I don't know what it is."

"Too bad we can't ask Deacon, isn't it?" Sugar pursed her lips together, antagonizing him with the one name that was like bamboo shoots under his fingernails.

Jax wasn't going to justify the job and ignored her. The wording looked the same…

The door shook with the pounding of a knock. Jared's bad attitude obviously hadn't gone away, and Jax turned to answer the door. Boss Man brushed by him as coldly as Sugar had but didn't do the same sweep. Instead, he sat down on the edge of the couch.

It had taken him longer to get to the room than Jax had expected, but dealing with Mayhem was a pain in the ass.

"Parker reviewed the hotel's security footage, the security cams from neighboring hotels."

"Yeah, and?" Jax asked, sensing the hesitation.

"Seven walked out by herself. What's her note say?"

Damn it to hell. "That she needs time to think and leave her alone."

"I have a bigger problem on my hands right now."

Jax's eyes bugged. "Than Seven going missing? I'm doing everything I can to clear those problems out of the way. What possible problem can you have that doesn't have to do with bringing home those kids and my woman?"

"Deacon Lanes."

Jax roared, throwing his arms out. "Deacon Lanes. Deacon motherfucking Lanes. Nothing about him has to do with her. We have what we need from him. He doesn't matter anymore. If I never hear his name again, I'd be okay. Everybody's on my ass for years—why do I have an attitude, why don't I play well with others? Deacon. Fucking. Lanes. But now I don't care anymore. Titan's supposed to take care of each other. Right? That's what I've been hearing the entire time I've worked for you. Hell, since before I worked for you. You know our history, and I guess now it's time for you to choose. Who's it going to be? Have I done everything to be Titan loyal and Titan strong? Because I sure have fuck tried. Maybe not with a smile on my face every goddamn time. But I dare you to find a time that I didn't support every man and woman I worked with, push them to be better. So you have a problem with me dealing with Deacon Lanes? Ground me. Take me off the team."

Jared's jaw ticked back and forth. "You're grounded." He turned around and left, not saying another word.

Jax's world came crashing down. He'd never questioned how much Titan had become who he was. He didn't know that he could feel pain until recently. He knew anger lived inside him. But it wasn't until Bianca and Nolan had gone missing that he knew he could fear. Then came this very moment when he realized he had just lost the only way he knew to go get Seven and bring her home.

"What just happened?" he numbly muttered, walking toward the couch, hearing every footstep as it echoed in his ears.

Sugar laughed—and Jax snapped to face her, having forgotten that anybody else was there.

"That's what happens when you murder somebody and don't loop in the boss." Sugar pushed away from the desk, sauntering out of the room, as Jax connected the dots between his raging speech and what he thought he'd just learned.

"Deacon's dead…"

Sugar paused briefly, glancing over her shoulder, then walked out, letting the door slam behind her. Someone had finished the job he'd always fantasized about doing but never did. An odd sense of relief and a smile came over Jax. He wasn't Deacon. He'd never wanted to be the cold-blooded killer that took a life without orders to do so. Avenging personal pain seemed so different than protecting his country and those he believed were innocents. Though still blown away to be feeling anything like fear and pain, he was even more confused to feel joy for a brief moment because the devil was dead.