I watched the white van turn off Mount Zion Lane, and something dropped in my gut. I’d been sitting outside the shop, smoking a cigarette and thinking about what I was gonna say to Alba when I went home.
I’d tell her I knew she was scared and trying to protect me, but if we were in this together, then we had to stay together. I’d make her come for the next two hours to prove I meant it. Then I’d take it out on her ass for stressing me the fuck out.
The van made the left at the corner and kept on driving, my focus zeroing in on the dented back fender. I shifted my gaze to the NC tags. What was that piece of shit was doing so far away from home?
The dent and the NC tags were the only reason I noticed it. If it weren’t for those two things, it might have driven by without any further thought.
But I did notice it, and I stood to take a few steps closer.
There were only five people who lived on this street. I didn’t know all of them, but I’d never seen that van before. Call it a lover’s intuition, but something seemed… off.
I scrambled to dig my phone out of my pants, but I didn’t have any alerts telling me something was wrong at the Wright house. I didn’t want to admit to myself that I stalked Alba, but fuck it, who’s pretending at this point? Yeah, I opened the security app on my phone just to check in on the video feeds and make sure everything was okay.
The first thing I saw was the back door wide open and a pair of boots sticking out.
Trojan.
“Shit!” I sprinted back into the shop, surprising Thor and Selene. Bear slouched in one of the corners, but he bolted upright at my presence. “They took her! They fucking took her!”
“What?” Selene stood, but Thor looked down at my phone and reached for his own, dialing someone and holding it up to his ear.
“Crow,” he said. “Check the feeds. They got Alba.”
“I saw a white van drive by.” I grabbed my keys out of my pocket and sprinted toward my bike. “It was them. Go up to the house. I’ll see if I can track them.”
“Wait, Jericho!” Bear shouted, trailing after me, but I was off before he could stop me. I didn’t know how I knew, but I did. My girl was in that van. I had to stop it. I had to.
I turned left at the corner and sped up the two-lane road, slowing to glance down side streets as I went.
I didn’t see them. My phone buzzed in my pocket. I ignored it. I had to keep looking for her. I had to keep tracking her.
They couldn’t have gone far, right?
Where are you? Where are you?
A bike pulled up alongside me, and Bear gave me a signal to pull over. Grimacing, I stopped and ripped off my helmet.
“What?”
“Castor hacked her phone weeks ago, man,” he said. “After you said you had a tail. We’re tracking her.”
“How do you know she has it with her?”
“It’s moving. Come back to the clubhouse.” Bear grabbed my shoulders, looking me in the eye. “Crow’s regrouping, and everyone’s heading out to follow it.”
Rage swelled up inside me. If that motherfucker hurt so much as a hair on her head, I’d rip his insides out through his mouth.
“KC.” Bear clapped the side of my face, almost a slap to bring me back to reality. “We’re gonna get her, okay? I swear it to you.”
I went with him, hating myself the whole time. Besides, what the fuck did I think I was going to do if I caught up to the van? If there were enough of them to get the drop on Trojan and the guys at the house, then there were enough to take my dumb ass out with little effort.
When we got back to the club, I was so pissed that I couldn’t fucking see straight. I marched inside, my boots echoing off the walls like doldrums.
“Crow!” I found him in the back, leaning over our meeting table, the sigil of a metal rose with a blade through it gleaming at me. “Where is she? Where’d they take her?”
“Calm down.” Crow stood. “It’s not just her. They took Ru, too.”
“Trojan’s on the way to the hospital,” Slip added. “It’s not looking good. He was barely alive when they got there.”
My heart dropped into my stomach, and I glanced at Aris, who paced the back of the room with his hands on his head. Likewise, Saint sat on the couch, bouncing his good knee and chain-smoking cigarettes. I didn’t know him to be a smoker, but he and Ru had started a secret romance last Christmas, and he looked just as twitchy as me or Aris. Worse because he couldn’t tell anyone about it.
Switch and Castor sat over by the computers, while Slip, Picasso, and Doc talked around the table. Bear sat next to Saint, leaning over an iPad while he planned our next steps. Wheels, Hollister, and a few others mingled by the bar. I looked for Hollywood, but I figured he was in the hospital with his brother and Marissa, Trojan’s old lady.
“Fuck.” My heart raced in my chest and I balled my hands into fists. I didn’t know what I’d do if I lost her. It was the first real taste of fear I’d had in ages, since I was a child. “What’s the plan? What are we doing?”
“Switch is tracking her.” Thor pointed to the corner where a group of brothers stood around the computer monitors. “We’re calling everyone in. We’re storming the castle.”
“We can’t wait that long,” I said. “Every second we waste, that motherfucker has a chance to hurt her.”
“She’s his granddaughter,” Thor said.
“If he cared about that, he wouldn’t have taken her.”
“This is about me,” Aris cut in, dropping his hands to his sides in defeat. “The fucker wants me. Just give me to him.”
“Not happening, brother,” Crow said.
“You knew she was in danger.” I struggled to keep my cool, venom racing in my veins like acid. I burned with my fury for her. “You promised she wouldn’t get hurt.”
“They hacked our security setup,” Switch cut in. “I didn’t see this coming. It’s impossible.”
“What do you mean?” Thor stood up and turned to face our IT guru.
“It’s like they got in from here.” Switch looked around, flipped pages over on his desk, and bent under the thing to look around.
“What do you mean?” Crow said.
Switch turned back to face us, putting a finger over his mouth like he meant we should be quiet.
“Bug,” he mouthed, standing to walk around.
“Jesus Christ.” Thor rubbed his hands over his face.
How could this have happened?
How could we have been so fucking blind?
We scoured the place, coming up with two. We dumped them in water and cranked the music, rendering any other bug useless.
“The software they used to hack us was installed here.” Switch pointed around. “As in, right here.”
Someone, maybe even someone in this very room, had planted two bugs and installed malware on our servers that granted the enemy access to everything. And because of that, my girl had been taken.
I glanced around, meeting everyone’s eyes and wondering who wasn’t here.
These were the first responders, right? The first into a crisis. My trusted inner circle.
Could one of them be the villain? I didn’t fucking know, but when I found out who it was, I planned to kill him slowly. Over days. Weeks.
“Get to work figuring out who did this,” Crow said. Then he looked at me. “We’ll get her back, kid. I swear it to you.”
I wanted to believe him. I wanted to think he wouldn’t fucking disappoint me. He was my uncle, after all.
One of the prospects walked into the room. “The PD is ringing the gate. What do you want me to do?”
“Shit!” Crow stormed over to the window, looking out and running his hands through his hair. “What the fuck do they want?” Slip and Picasso walked out front, Crow following close behind them.
Aris shook his head and kept pacing, muttering, “We don’t have time for this shit.”
But I went with them out front, crossing my arms over my chest and determined not to let these assholes stop us from going to get my girl. Crow put his hand up halfway there to stall me.
“Wait here,” he said. “If shit goes south, get as many of them out as you can.”
I nodded, and Bear stood beside me to put a hand on my shoulder. “I’ve got your back, brother.”
“Every fucking second we wait is another—” I started, but Crow’s booming voice stopped me.
“To what do I owe this fucking pleasure on a Friday afternoon?” Crow crossed his arms over his chest. Slip and Picasso flanked him. Picasso stood like he was apathetic about the whole thing, probably because he was, and Slip leaned against the gate in case shit got shady.
Two officers stood on the other side of the barred metal enclosure, one a petite black woman with sunshine-yellow eyes, the other a tall white guy with brown hair. “Randall Montgomery?”
Crow snorted out a laugh. “I haven’t gone by that name in a long time.”
“I’m Detective Jordan,” the woman said. “This is Detective Green. We need to ask you a few questions.”
“About?”
Green shook his head and rolled his eyes, but Jordan remained unfazed. “Two weeks ago, there was a shootout on the Holabird Docks. Three members of the Caputi family were killed. One of their vehicles was set on fire. You know anything about that?”
Crow shrugged and shook his head. “Why would I?”
Green laughed. “Don’t play fucking stupid, Montgomery. We know the Roses and the Caputi family have a history.”
Jordan held up a finger, and Green closed his mouth. “Would you be willing to come down to the station to put that on record?”
“You got an arrest warrant?” Picasso said.
Jordan looked at him but didn’t say anything, which meant no. They didn’t have fucking shit.
“Oh, c’mon, detective.” Crow threw his head back and laughed, clapping jovially. “You know better than that. You don’t have a warrant? It’s been nice talking to you.” Crow turned to head back inside, but Jordan put her hands on her hips.
“You make this hard on me, I’ll make it hard on you.”
Crow paused, his spine stiffening before he turned back around on his heels, his eyes narrowed. “Is that a threat or an invitation, detective?”
She shrugged and pursed her lips, moving her eyes behind us to the bodies spilling out of the clubhouse. All forty or fifty of them. “Got a full house today, huh?” She shifted her attention back to Crow. “Planning something fun?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “A cookout to celebrate National Fuck the Police Day. Want a hotdog?”
Her lip twitched like she wanted to smile but couldn’t without losing face. “Don’t go anywhere, Montgomery. I’ll be back.”
“Can’t wait.”
The two pigs went back to their shitty patrol car and climbed inside, but Jordan’s eyes never left Crow. My uncle and brothers walked back to the clubhouse, the gate closing behind them, but he turned to the crowd and shook his head. “You go on without me.”
“If they got eyes on you, they got eyes on all of us,” Picasso said.
“Fuck.” Slip ran his hands over his head and took a deep breath. “If we ride in heavy, we go packing heat.”
“How are we going to do this?” Wheels asked.
“I’ve got an idea.” Thor took a deep breath and looked between us. He’d been a Navy SEAL once upon a time, so if anyone had any experience with covert ops, it was this motherfucker. “Give me five guys. I’ll go get them tonight.”
Crow took a deep breath and put a hand on his shoulder. “Okay, brother. Let’s hear your plan.”