CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Fuck ‘em.”
“ARE YOU SURE ABOUT this?”
“Positive.”
I sign my signature across the dotted line, then slide the contract across the table to my twin.
Clarke, our lawyer, in a display of paid patience, folds his hands and looks between us.
True picks up his pen to sign, then pauses. He tap-tap-taps the pen on the table as he looks at me under his brows. “You’re sure sure, though? I mean, it’s a lot of—”
“For shit’s sake, True. Just sign the damn thing so we can get out of here.”
He shrugs and mumbles something inaudible under his breath before he scrawls out his signature.
Clarke gathers the papers.
“All good?” I ask him.
“Yes. I will have the new papers drafted by Monday.”
I knock my knuckles on the table and stand. “Great.”
As I’m picking up my phone from the table, it rings.
Magnolia Glades.
Hmm. Hellcat calling me back after belligerently telling me off earlier? With a suppressed smile, I answer, “Yeah?”
“Trent?”
Huh. Not Hellcat calling me from Maggie’s phone. Just Maggie.
Should’ve known. No one holds a grudge like Lexi Flores. There’s no way she’d call me while mad at me.
“Sup, Mags?”
“Trent, I think something is wrong.”
The fear in her usually chipper voice makes me stop dead. “What do you mean?”
“The cops just called. I’m needed at the station.”
“The station?” I make eye contact with True. “Why?
“They said they found my car at the gas station. But they won’t tell me anything else over the phone.”
“What do you mean, Maggie? How did it get there?”
“Lexi...she b-borrowed my car to go pick up booze for the party tonight...”
The blood in my veins turns to ice.
“I had tried calling her earlier because I wanted her to pick something up for me on the way back, but her phone kept going to voicemail, so I figured her battery was dead. Now I’m getting a call from the cops and...”—her voice catches— “…now I don’t know what to think. What if something h-happened to her?”
“What is it?” True demands, shoving to his feet. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.
“Where are you now, Mags?” I ask, calm and steady, though I feel anything but.
“In an Uber, on the way to the station.”
“Okay. I’ll see you there. In the meantime, just relax. I’m sure everything’s fine.”
“O-okay, I will.”
I hang up and stare unseeing at the table.
“You’re doing that thing again where you’re forcing yourself to be calm and rational on the outside while stepping on land mines and blowing yourself up on the inside,” True says as he walks around the table to me. He drops a hand on my shoulder. “What’s wrong, brother? What happened?”
His touch of support is all I need to jolt me into action. I turn and all but sprint out of Clarke’s office. “Something’s happened to Lexi.”
~
“AND WHAT THE fuck are you doing about this?” I growl through gritted teeth.
Walter rests his hand on his badge next to his gun on his waist, as if to remind me who’s in charge.
We’re at the station. Maggie’s in the corner trembling and in tears, and I’m all out of patience at this point, barely containing my rage.
We’ve seen the video footage from the gas station. Watched her fight and claw for her life before being thrown into the back of a vehicle and taken away.
Abducted. Lexi’s been abducted in broad daylight and these uniformed clowns are just shuffling around with coffee mugs and wasting time like a bunch of fucking monkeys.
“As I said,” Walter drawls, “we’re working on it. There are protocols, procedures. Witnesses are still being interviewed—”
“The same witnesses who stood by and did nothing?”
He sighs. “Trenton, Red Cage and the LX-PD have a good, long relationship and I want us to keep it that way. You are aware of how things are done when—”
“That’s my woman we’re talking about, Walter!” I roar in his face. “Fuck your protocols.”
Officers stop and glance over at us.
Walter moves back a step and sighs. “Don’t know what you want me to tell you, Trenton.”
Stepping into his space, I drop my voice. “We’ve always come through for you when you needed us. Without fail or delay. So here’s what I’m going to do, I’m going after my woman and I’m gonna do whatever the fuck I have to do to get her back. So what I want you to tell me is that you’re gonna stay the fuck out of my way.”
Walter is already shaking his head. “No. I’m gonna need Red Cage to stand down on this one. Don’t—”
I walk off, signaling Maggie to come along. We walk right out of the station.
True is leaned against the jeep in the parking lot talking on his phone. He ends the call as we approach and straightens from the jeep. “Let me guess,” he drags, “useless as usual?”
“Fuck ‘em.” I jerk open the door to the jeep. “We’re getting her back Red Cage style.”