I released the pressure on his throat, enough so he could suck in a breath of air and hopefully speak.
“The sheet was… it was over the…” he stuttered, wheezing between words. “I didn’t see any move—”
I shoved him to the side, his skinny body hitting the wall with a hard thump.
“Come on, brother,” Myth advised, pointing back the way we came, urgency now in his eyes.
“Wait!” We both spun on the kid, his eyes not focused on us. Instead, he stared at the wall like it had the answers to the universe. “There was!”
His head bobbled unsteadily. “There was a breath of air.”
I stood taller like my lungs had been filled again. “Say what?” I demanded, taking an urgent step back toward him.
His whole body jerked, hitting the wall again. He was clumsy and nervous, and everything I imagined someone who liked to spend their days down here with the dead would be. “When he pushed the body past, I thought I caught the sheet puff up over the mouth like someone was breathing out.”
“And you’re sure?” Myth questioned, getting right in the guy’s face.
“Yeah, yeah,” he nodded. “I called out to him, but he ignored me. I thought maybe he was playing a joke on someone. Like he had a buddy under the sheet, and he was gonna jump out and surprise someone.”
“And you couldn’t have fucking told us that before?” I roared, just the volume of my voice sending him stumbling further back even though there was nowhere to go.
“I didn’t know he was stealing people!”
Myth and I turned and headed back through the morgue and up the stairs, leaving our buddy down there to probably have a mental breakdown.
“Call Auron,” I ordered as we stomped through the hospital, finding Meyah and Kennedy with the kids waiting by her car. “Tell him to cruise by any place he followed Garrett to while he was watching him. Let me know if he sees the bastard or anything suspicious.”
Myth nodded, his phone already pressed to his ear.
“We’ll find her.” Kennedy tried to ease my thoughts as she buckled Gage into the back of the car. She stepped back, and I ducked my head in, swiping my hand over his head, his soft baby hairs like silk under my rough fingertips.
I clenched my jaw.
We had to find her.
I couldn’t do this shit on my own.
It’s because of her that Gage was in my life now. Who knows what fucking choice I would have made that day they showed up with him if it hadn’t been for her? For her big mouth, for the way she wasn’t afraid to tell me to wake my fucking shit up and remind me that having a toxic parent wouldn’t make me one.
Because of her, I chose to be the father mine never was. And I wasn’t about to walk this path without her in it.
She was made to be by my side.
Wearing my colors.
Raising my son.
Our son.
We sped back to the clubhouse, my intention to call church, bring my brothers in, and let them know what the fuck was going on and to see if we could come up with something. Fucking anything that could help us find her.
Though, when I pulled in through the gates, I caught sight of someone sitting at one of the barbecue tables out the front, and a wave of fucking anger rushed through me. It was so hot I swerved my bike, pulling it to a sharp stop beside them and climbing off.
“Shotgun…” Shake warned, stepping out of the building and falling in behind me as I stormed toward her. She leaped to her feet when she saw me coming like she was preparing to run if she had to. Shake stayed hot on my heels, but the rest of my men I could feel settling into the background, keeping their distance, not wanting to crowd her in case she freaked out.
Her hands came up, her palms flat like she was surrendering or trying to let me know she was unarmed.
“The fuck are you doing here?”
She swallowed hard but didn’t answer.
“I don’t have time to deal with your issues right now, Holly. I’ve got bigger fucking prob—”
“I know where she is.”
It was like a punch straight in the gut. Her voice was different, her posture different, the air swirling around her calm. So fucking eerie.
The fact Holly knew she was fucking missing told me something. She wasn’t just in the shit with Beta Beta, she was somehow twisted up with Garrett Drake. I tried not to lose my shit. She knew where Avery was, so I needed to breathe and listen. “How do you know where she is, Holly.”
“Because I’m a cop.”
Or not.
AVERY
A groan vibrated in the bottom of my throat. My mouth was dry, and the taste on my tongue was bitter. I blinked and blinked again, trying to fight past the darkness to see where the hell I was, but as it turned out, no matter how hard I tried to clear my vision, the room stayed pitch black, the single sliver of light coming from what looked like the bottom of a door.
My body was sore, aching, and it wasn’t just the muscles, but all over.
I yanked hard at my hands which were tied to the side of the bed I was on. My body turned on my right side. I pulled again, the pain shooting through them and up my arms forcing a painful whimper from my mouth.
“Don’t pull. They just get tighter.”
It was like ice moving through my veins, the voice coming from the darkness.
The effects of Garrett’s drugs were still sitting under my skin and fogging my brain, but I knew instantly who I was with. “Thayleah?”
Silence.
Our breathing growing heavier.
“How do you know my name?”
“We’ve been looking for you,” I told her. “My name’s Avery. Emma put my boyfriend’s name down as Gage’s dad. He’s been with us since...” I held my tongue, knowing right now wasn’t the best time to discuss her sister’s murder.
More silence and shuffling sheets.
They sounded like plastic, definitely not Egyptian cotton.
“Shotgun?”
“You’ve heard of him?”
“Emma talked about him sometimes,” she explained. I even thought I could hear a smile in her voice. “She told me he was the club president, that he was in charge of protecting everyone, and that if anything ever happened, I should try to find him.”
Emma knew.
She knew at some point something was going to happen, so she made contingency plans. She made sure Gage would be given to Shotgun, and she made sure that if Thayleah hadn’t gotten tangled up in this mess, she would have found him eventually too.
Emma wanted them to be together. She wanted them to be safe. Protected. And I was going to get the both of us out of here, so Thayleah could finally feel that safety and move on from this horrible fucking torture Garrett was putting her through.
Tied to a bed in a dark room.
And for what? That I still had no idea.
But I was praying it wasn’t the obvious.
“Shotgun will find us,” I promised her, wishing I could see her face, or touch her, somehow reassure her that things would be okay. “But for now, we need to fight for ourselves and try to get the hell away from this place, to somewhere safe.”
Her soft sniffles caught my heart. “I don’t know how long I’ve been here. The only time they turn the lights on is to cut my hands and feet free and take me down to the bathroom then to tie me back up again.”