Shelby

I shove my way through the front door of the clubhouse, my anxiety clawing its way up my throat. “Where is she?” I ask when Wyatt comes into view.

“I don’t know yet.” He skirts around the table, moving through the group of very large, leather-clad men. “I found this, though.” There, dangling from his finger, is Hayden’s pink backpack.

I gape at it, looking it over, internally pleading for it to tell me where my baby girl is. “Where did you find that?”

He drops the bag at his feet. “Garfield Park. I also found her cell phone.”

For a split second, the panic I’ve felt since Wyatt had texted me, telling me to meet him here, is replaced with hope. “That’s a good thing, right?”

Wyatt presses his lips together, worry creasing his handsome face. “I don’t know, Shel. I’ve been trying to locate her phone all along, but it was always off, or the battery was dead. But today it worked. I tracked it down to a comic book store in Austin. There was a kid there—a boy—who had her phone, saying he found it at Garfield Park. You neglected to mention the tournament Hayden was in not long ago.”

The accusation is more in his words than his tone. I glare at him, forgetting the men surrounding us. “I didn’t think it was important. Hayden is always online. What does the tournament have to do with anything?”

Wyatt throws his hands up in the air. “Jesus, Shelby! Everything is fucking important right now. The tournament might not play any part in this at all, but I find it pretty damn suspicious I found her phone with a kid from that same tournament, in the same place it was held, don’t you?”

A lump forms in my throat when I realize I may have had a clue to where Hayden’s been all along, but was too stupid to see it. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, tears racing down my cheeks. “I take her to that store all the time.”

Wyatt’s head drops forward and he exhales what I can only assume is a cleansing breath. While he attempts to get himself under control, I once again become aware of the mountain of muscle all around me, their eyes focused on Wyatt and I. My cheeks feel like they’re on fire. “Can we do this in private?”

Raising his head, he meets my gaze, his brows still furrowed in frustration. “No, we can’t. This is a family matter, and whether you like it or not, Hayden is my family, and so is every one of the men in this room.”

My emotions are all over the map, swirling and spinning inside of me like a hurricane, making it nearly impossible to know what to think or feel.

“There were three businesses with video cameras around the perimeter of Garfield Park,” he says, no longer just addressing me.

I watch as he walks to the front of the room, and for the first time, I notice his computer, and a long cord running to the big screen television they have mounted on the wall. “The convenience store had a camera up that pointed to the sidewalk out front, but apparently, it hasn’t worked in years.” Reaching down, he clicks on a few keys, and I watch the television where his screen is mirrored. A tiny arrow moves this way and that as he clicks on things so fast, I can barely read each item before it’s gone. “The liquor store had a camera that only shows a small portion of the road and sidewalk. They emailed me a copy of their footage. I’ve already scrolled through hours of it, starting with the day Hayden disappeared, but I didn’t see anything that had to do with the Kevin kid, nor her.”

The arrow on the screen moves one last time, and a video window pops up, a play button and counter running along the bottom. “The last bit of footage took some finessing to get. The bank has four different cameras set up on the outside of their building. Two of them face the street.”

Suddenly, there’s my baby on the screen. Her pink backpack is strapped over her shoulders as she walks along the sidewalk. Her long, dark hair is tucked behind her ear as she looks down at her phone. The video is grainy, and you can’t make out her features, but there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s Hayden.

“I almost gave up,” Wyatt says, walking to the front of the room as the rest of us watch the footage. “So many hours of video, each one boring as fuck. And then I see this.”

The room is silent as we watch the soundless video. Hayden walks a little farther, her tiny frame almost out of the picture when she comes to a stop. My heart races as she looks up and appears to say something. Who is she talking to?

A young boy appears. I don’t recognize him, but Hayden seems to. Maybe it’s a boy from school? Camp? The pair have only been speaking for a few moments when a rusted white van pulls up. The side door opens, and Hayden’s pulled inside. I watch in horror as the young boy jumps inside and slams the door closed before it speeds away. It all happens so fast. One minute she’s there, talking to a boy, and the next, she’s gone. Both of them are just... gone.

“You recognize that kid?” Wyatt asks.

I shake my head, assuming he’s talking to me. “I’ve never seen that kid before in my life.”

“That was the fucking kid who had her phone,” GP snarls from beside me.

“And the kid who lied to my face when I asked him about Hayden. We need to find this fucking kid. And once I’ve found Hayden, I’m gonna kill him.”