“Where is she?” Duke demanded.
Killian’s gaze was blank as it always was. Duke had known him for years, known that he’d had that blank, deadly look since the moment they’d met. It was unnerving, even for someone like Duke, to see that on someone so young. It wasn’t a farce either. The fucker was deadly.
To everyone but his wife, children, and people he considered family.
Despite that, Duke wanted to wipe that fucking look off his face with his fists.
“We got word on the location,” Killian said. “Boys rode out less than ten minutes ago. She was taken from a bathroom of the bar downtown. Rosie raised the alarm immediately. She’d slipped a tracker into a pair of shoes Anastasia was wearing. Sons rode out within twenty to thirty minutes after she was taken. Kitsch has had her less than an hour.”
None of this did shit for Duke, not a fucking thing. Acid still ate away at his tissue, his bone. He wouldn’t be able to move right, wouldn’t be able to breathe right if he found Anastasia in the state they’d found Polly, in the state Lance had found Caroline, nor if he was like fucking Keltan, who’d had Lucy bleed out in his arms. Same with Killian. He’d fucking watched his woman be shot and heard doctors tell him she wouldn’t make it.
They’d all defied the odds and gotten their women back. Whatever was controlling this world was looking out for it. But they were well overdue for their luck to run out, for Duke to find a corpse of the woman he’d been too much of a fucking asshole to tell her he loved.
“We both know you need less than a fuckin’ minute to kill someone, Killian,” Duke bit out.
Killian didn’t respond, because he knew that all too well. He’d never technically ever been with Greenstone, but he’d been protecting Lexie ever since she’d been targeted by a murderous stalker. He was part of the Sons of Templar but his wife came first. He was with her every moment she was on tour, because he knew that all he needed was a second of absence to lose her.
Something clicked in Duke’s mind. “Rosie put a tracker in her shoe?”
And then he saw it. Killian had been waiting for Duke to ask that.
Fuck.
“She knew that they were going to take her?” Duke’s mind went still. Dead. He met Killian’s eyes. “Give me the fucking location. Now.”
16
There was a gunshot.
It was deafening and vibrated my very bones.
What it didn’t do, was kill me.
I hadn’t realized that my eyes were closed until I blinked them open. The goon was lying dead at my feet. A pool of blood was slowly creeping toward my feet. I watched it with disinterest.
Rosie was standing in front of Coleson, a gun in her hand, pointed at his head. His arms were up in surrender and he looked scared. I found comfort in that.
Rosie glanced to me. “I know you might think you want to do this, but trust me, honey, you don’t want this on your soul.”
“Please—” Coleson started but was cut off with another gunshot. This one wasn’t as deafening thanks to the silencer on the end of Rosie’s gun.
He hit the floor with a thud.
Rosie pushed his body to the side with her foot and turned to me. Nothing in her face looked like she’d just killed a man. There was a hardness, a menace in her eyes that was quickly retreating, one that scared the crap out of me and reminded me never to get on her bad side.
“Sorry we took so long,” she said. “I really thought he was enough of a narcissist to drag the evil villain speech out a little longer.”
I blinked at Rosie as a click resounded behind me. My arms fell like the deadweights that they were. It was a struggle to move them into my lap and inspect the damage.
It could’ve been worse, much worse. They were still attached, so there was that. But it had felt worse than it was. There were raised red welts around my wrists, some cuts and dried blood, but nothing that wouldn’t heal.
Someone kneeled down in front of me. Someone who still had the scary thing going on, but there was concern in his eyes.
Cade.
His gray eyes flickered over me. “You good?”
I swallowed roughly, doing an internal assessment as if I could’ve missed the fact that I’d somehow been shot or stabbed in the chaos.
My cheek ached like hell. My wrists burned. My heart was either in my throat or at my feet, I couldn’t be sure. I’d just watched two men be killed, bringing the total of people I’d seen die in the past two months to three. My head pounded with the reminder. I was also slightly hungover.
I wanted to throw up the contents of my stomach right over Cade’s expensive and bad ass biker boots.
I wanted to burst into tears.
“I’m good,” I said.
Cade regarded me still, as if he were weighing my words, trying to figure out if I was going to do the girl thing and go into shock due to the kidnapping thing and with the dead body in front of me.
To be fair, I was trying to figure that out too.
Cade nodded once and stood, obviously giving me the badass seal of approval.
Although I felt the need to stay seated for a second longer, just to make sure I didn’t vomit in front of the bikers slowly filling the room, I got up. I didn’t want the goon’s blood staining my shoes.
Rosie hugged me when I stood. She leaned back to inspect my cheek. She winced. “Fuck. I didn’t think he’d have time to hit you. I’m sorry, babe.”
“It’s okay,” I said, almost as a reflex. Then her words sunk in.
“Wait, you used me as bait?” I clarified.
Rosie gaped at me. “Duh, how the fuck else were we going to get that asshole here?” She paused. “You got a problem with that?”
I thought about the man Rosie used me as bait to catch. Ruthless, cold-blooded killer. About the point-blank murder of the lover I hadn’t mourned. A memory. And then I considered the man who was killed due to his loyalty to me. True, devastating loss. My wounds will heal. A malevolent monster was dead. “No, I don’t have a problem with that.”
“Dude, you know that you could totally sell the movie rights to this whole thing and you’d like, win the Oscars,” Rosie said, waving her hand around the room.
I grinned. “I don’t doubt it. But then I’d be implicating myself in murder and all of the stuff that goes with it.”
Rosie furrowed her brows. “Bummer.”
We didn’t get to discuss this further, since the energy of the entire room changed with a new arrival.
I didn’t need to turn to know who it was. Of course he’d come for me. He’d be pissed he didn’t get to be the knight in shining armor; passing that task off to a bunch of bikers surely was a blow to his ego.
He’d also be pissed I’d slipped out in the middle of the night.
I was too afraid to even turn and look at him. I’d managed to meet the eyes of a man who’d murdered the man I’d been sleeping with and had been planning to murder me, but I couldn’t meet the gaze of the man I loved.
“I wish I’d brought tequila,” Rosie muttered, eyeing the area above my head.
I smelled him first. Then he was in front of me, taking up all of my senses. My body relaxed entirely, despite the fury rippling off him.