“If it makes you feel better, I will call in Junior too.”
“Junior?” I repeated. I didn’t know Junior personally, but he was the son of a guy who’d done odd enforcing jobs and a woman who worked as a hacker who once exposed cheating husbands, but then graduated to more vigilante-style justice.
“He’s good with computers now,” Fallon said. “And phones.”
“You can’t be fucking serious right now. We need to be out there, talking to people, trying to track him down.”
“Babe, it’s been, what, an hour or two? He’s hardly even late, let alone missing. We can look into this, but give him the chance to show up. If we don’t hear about him before the morning, we can start worrying.”
“Start worrying,” I repeated, jaw getting tight.
“Babe, the fuck are you going to do if you head out right now? Knock on doors? You need a direction to go in. Chris and Junior could give some guidance. I know patience isn’t your forte, but you got to give them a chance to help us out.”
“He’s got a point,” Voss grumbled, voice low enough that only I could hear it.
Hearing it from him, someone who care about Valen almost as much as I did, made some of my rage slip away.
“Besides, you can’t go fucking anywhere with your breath smelling like liquor,” Fallon reasoned.
“Fine,” I hissed, turning away and heading back to the prospect room.
“What are you doing?” Voss asked, coming in behind me.
“Calling some of my contacts,” I told him as I pulled out my phone. “I don’t have a lot of them in the States, but I am going to do what I can do. I can’t just sit here and do nothing.”
“Can do that too,” Voss agreed, seeming—like me—to be happy to have some task to do, even if we didn’t truly believe we were going to be of much use.
And with Valen’s phone taken by Chris and Junior and their varied skills, we had nothing else to go on.
Morning felt like it was forever away.
Voss and I kept bringing each other cup after cup of coffee, despite being wide awake.
And the two of us jumped each time we heard footsteps. I nearly jumped out of my skin when someone opened the door to the prospect room.
“Damnit,” I hissed, seeing Nave walking in.
“Nice greeting, baby,” he said, giving me a tired, lazy smile. “What’s going on?
“Valen is missing.”
“Missing?” Nave repeated, dubious.
“Apparently, someone has been threatening him for a long time. But he never told us. And now he’s gone. Left his phone here and everything.”
“Okay,” Nave said. “Where’s your mind at?”
“Florida. Maybe. Florida crew that may have moved up this way? But, then again, it might be any crew on the east coast. Or, you know, Voss and I are completely off and it is someone in the midwest, for all we know.”
“Hence Junior sitting in the living room, tapping away.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Does he seem like he’s found anything?”
“Figure, if he did, he would be done with all the typing. How’s someone threatening him?”
“Text.”
To that, Nave’s brow lifted.
“Text,” he repeated. “And you haven’t acted on that yet?”
“Acted on it how?” I asked, shaking my head.
To that, Nave sighed as he reached in his pocket for his phone. Not, I will say, his fancy, brand new smartphone. Oh, no. This was a cheap-ass burner. I had no idea why he would even need to have one of those. But it wasn’t the time to ask.
“Remember the number?” he asked, glancing up at me from under those appealing thick lashes of his.
I came up blank.
But it was Voss who came in for the save, rattling off the number easily.
“Hey, baby,” Valen said as he was typing. “I have you saved in my phone as the best fuck of my life. Care to give me a name so I can change that? Winky face. Kissy face. And send.”
“How the fuck did we not think of that?” I asked, looking over at Voss who looked equally as dumbfounded.
“Your hearts are in it. Clouds your judgment,” Nave said, shrugging. “Shit. That fucker is horny, huh?” he asked when his phone dinged just a minute later. “Curtis, babe. Now why don’t you send me a picture to refresh my memory?” he read. “Alright. Muss up your hair and give the camera a pout,” Nave said.
“What? No way. What if he’s been keeping an eye on the club?”
“That’s a good point. Alright. Let’s see what I got…” he said, pulling out his normal phone and scrolling through his camera files. “Curtis. Does that sound like someone who likes blondes? Brunettes? What about a redhead.”
“Everyone likes a redhead,” Voss piped in.
“Fair enough,” Nave said, sending the picture to his other phone, then shooting it off to Curtis. “When can we have a repeat? Water splashes. Eggplant. Too much?” he asked, genuinely waiting for an answer for us.
“Don’t ask me,” I said, shaking my head.
“Take off the eggplant,” Voss suggested.
“Yeah, sounds about right. Okay. So, we have a name. Curtis. Not an uncommon one, but how many crew leaders could possibly have that name?”
I didn’t even pause as I rushed into the living room.
There was Junior, an absolute giant of a guy with blond hair and icy blue eyes, looking a lot like his father Brian who went by the name “Breaker.”
I don’t know what I expected from him. I guess to be an enforcer like his dad. Not to take after his mom with the computer thing.
“Curtis,” I said, voice louder than I intended, making everyone in the room jolt.
“What?” Fallon asked, rubbing his tired eyes.
“Curtis. That’s the name. Nave texted him, playing a former hook-up.”
“Smart,” Fallon said as Junior’s typing got faster.
“I have my moments,” Nave agreed.
“Curtis. Curtis Carver,” Junior said.
“Doesn’t ring a bell,” Fallon said, brows pinching. Because he made it his business to know all the major players.
“Yeah. That makes sense. Not a big player. From this little nowhere town in the corner of Florida by the Alabama border. The fuck was Valen doing in that area?” Junior asked, mostly to himself as he continued typing.
“Probably heading into Alabama. He was just traveling through the country,” I reminded them.
“Shit,” Junior said, letting out a hiss, making my heart drop.
“What? Shit, what?” I asked, voice sounding choked.
“He and his crew have rap sheets as long as my arm,” Junior said. “But that’s not the shit part.”
“What’s the shit part then?” Fallon asked, straightening.
I didn’t know Junior well, but it seemed as though Fallon did. And if Fallon was alarmed about what Junior was saying, it was time for my own panic to trip into overdrive.
“The rumors about the shit that this crew hasn’t gotten locked up for. Lot of bodies missing. A lot of unsolved rapes. It’s ugly. These fuckers are some of the worst of the worst, it seems.”