CHAPTER 37
AXLE
“Meet me out front in five,” Sarah says, a strange look on her face as she walks by me.
“Okay, why?” I ask, but she doesn’t answer before slipping out the back.
Shaking my head, I take a long drag off my drink, then lean back in my chair as I watch the TV from our surveillance on Lathan’s place. Sarah already returned from her solo mission.
Lathan hasn’t appeared even once.
Scratching my jaw, I take in the scene. No cars have been in or out, but the wide doors open often. There’s nothing but cars in there. No loads of drugs stashed in the corner like the last time I was there.
This isn’t where Lathan is. But for some damn reason, he’s trying to make someone think he’s there. He has so many enemies and shady alliances that there’s no telling who he’s setting up.
I glance down, realizing it’s been exactly five minutes, and I walk toward the door. Reflexively, my gaze flicks toward the camera, and I pause.
The neon yellow pole has been moved. Why? Because that pole stays in the only blind spot on the camera. It’s bright yellow, so that it’s noticed if it’s ever moved.
Just the tip of the pole is in view of the camera where someone smooth thought they’d be smarter.
Fucking Sarah.
She’d better not let whoever this fucker is kill me.
Or even shoot at me, for that matter.
Obviously, she saw the pole first.
Cursing, I reach behind the bar and grab the trash, giving myself an excuse to go out. Plus, a bagful of mostly bottles doubles as a weapon, if necessary.
“What’s going on?” Dash asks, eyebrows arched.
I never take out the trash. That’s for prospects.
I gesture for him to hang back, and he mutters a curse before drawing his gun and moving out of sight from the door.
As I toss the bag over my shoulder and shove through the door, I force myself not to look around.
The barrel of a gun is quickly jammed into the back of my head, and I consider killing Sarah with my bare hands just as soon as I survive this.
“Six days ago, Maya Black left this club in tears,” a man says, confusing the hell out of me and stiffening my spine at the same time. “She never said why. She wouldn’t talk about it at all. I let it go, because she was safe and didn’t seem hurt in any way.”
The gun digs a little deeper into the back of my skull, and I resist the urge to fight out of this before he tells me what the hell he’s saying about Maya.
“Two days ago, she was skating in her personal, private, and very secure rink. Suddenly she’s missing, and the only thing I can figure out is this club had something to do with it,” he bites out.
My stomach lurches, and I spin hard and fast, grabbing his wrist and turning the gun on him before he can adjust. He stumbles back, about to reach for a second gun, when Sarah is suddenly there, a gun to the back of his head.
He closes his eyes before blowing out a breath, and I take in the fact he’s a beast of a man. A man who looks like he hasn’t slept in too long.
“Sorry, Smitty. Don’t go shooting Maya’s boyfriend, or she might just cut you a new asshole,” Sarah says, sounding overly enthusiastic. “And since I kind of want to get my boyfriend back, I can’t allow any of his friends to go dying.”
Her attention is solely focused on the side of his face as she walks around him, her gun inches from his skull—which is how you should hold a gun on someone instead of pressed against the skin.
But this guy is Smitty, apparently. And he’s old school.
He glares daggers at Sarah until she comes completely into focus. Then he pales.
Sarah leans sideways and stage-whispers, “Think he just realized who I am.”
Smitty swallows, and his face is a stone mask again. “You know who I am, and you know I don’t travel alone,” he tells her.
“You know who I am, and I would have noticed an entire horde of you in a city where I’m watching everything going on,” she says.
“Both of you shut the fuck up unless you’re talking about what the hell you meant about Maya missing,” I say, lifting his own gun toward him.
He narrows his eyes at me. “I haven’t slept since she went missing. My wife was talking to her one minute, and she said John had eyes on her. She went to her car and returned, only to find them both missing. She immediately called me, because Maya wouldn’t leave when she expected her back. My wife worries often for Maya, but I take each call seriously.”
“Cut the fucking story in half and tell me who took her,” I growl, moving closer.
“I thought it had to be you. No one is seen on the cameras. They were disabled minutes after my wife walked out. John was found dead in an elevator. You’re the only ones I could accuse besides Lathan. And I wanted it to be you.”
The tears teetering on his eyes and his lip wavering as he stares at us has me lowering the gun.
“I need to know everything. Now. Because I sure as fuck didn’t take her, but I am going after her. Is it just you?”
He shakes his head, and suddenly seven guys on each side turn the corners and start approaching us with guns trained on our bodies.
Sarah grabs her phone from her hip, rolling her eyes when she reads the screen, never moving her gun away from Smitty’s head.
“Well, I just got a text saying fifteen or more guys from New York just crossed Halo’s borders a few minutes ago.”
Smitty’s lips twitch when he arches an eyebrow at her.
“I sort of hate you right now,” she tells him, but I talk over them before they can say more to each other.
“Lathan isn’t at his warehouse. He’s got to be somewhere else near there, though,” I say as I dart inside.
“Drex!” I shout down through the basement entrance of the warehouse.
“What?”
“Get every fucking drug dealer or drug runner we know on the phone, and find out where Lathan is, because he’s not at the other warehouse.”
“Can it wait? We’ve kind of got a lot of other shit going on right this minute.”
I start calling numbers, not bothering to answer.
“Maya is missing. It can’t wait!” Sarah calls down for me.
I don’t even hear what’s being said after that. I barely even notice Drex as he comes topside, a flurry of motion as he starts pulling out every phone number source we have.
My heartbeat is in my ears, making it a struggle to even ask questions to the guys I actually have good rapport with. No one knows a Lathan.
No one.
Everyone has heard of him, but no one knows him.
Smitty leans over a counter, looking as though he’s trying to compose himself. The fourteen militant men all drape around the counter, waiting on us to put forth the next move.
That’s the moment I lose it.
My phone tumbles out of my hand as I charge the asshole, and he turns just as my fist collides with his face. He’s thrown to the ground as Dash and Jude tackle my arms, holding me back.
“You were supposed to protect her!” I shout at the fucking asshole on the ground, fighting like a caged animal to break free from their hold. “Two fucking days she’s been gone, and now you come to me?!”
He wipes the blood from his lip, snarling as he stands. “I’ve been looking every-fucking-where for her. That warehouse was armed to the max, and we’ve been watching it for Lathan. I only came here to find out if you’d sold her out to him, and to pry information about where he might be.”
Jude curses as he digs his feet in, and Dash yanks me back when I try to go after the son-of-a-bitch to rip his head off.
“I sent her there to be safe!” I roar. “You’re her fucking family! You have men everywhere and money to buy even more! Why was one fucking guy supposed to be guarding her on his own?”
Smitty just continues to stare at me like he wants me dead as badly as I want to kill him.
“The entire fucking building is secure. It’s her Family’s building! Only one guy was in the rink, but twenty or more were on that floor. She doesn’t like a damn audience when she’s trying to de-stress. I force her to let one man be at her side. Twenty fucking men. There’s no way they could have gotten out!”
“Unless someone trusted to be there didn’t raise suspicion and he took her out during a shift change,” Drex points out, phone still at his ear as he turns away and resumes his conversation.
“Get the fuck off me,” I growl at Jude and Dash.
“Not until you’re less murderous,” Jude snorts. “War, and all that.”
“There’s going to be a fucking war if anything happens to her because you let some half-ass loyal son-of-a-bitch that close to her,” I say to Smitty.
“Everyone on that floor was born into this world,” he defends, his face turning a furious red. “Every one of them is tied to her from birth. Either they saw her born or they grew up with her.”
I stop fighting, breathing heavily as I think back to anything and everything Maya said when she was with me. She mentioned all the names of her closest protectors. The men she trusted with her life. None of them stand out.
“No one went missing?”
His jaw grinds. “Only my son went missing, but he has a small addiction of his own. Women. He was holed up in some hotel with one of his whores. Per the usual.”
My veins run a little colder. “Where is he now?” I ask him, but Sarah plucks his phone out of his pocket before he can answer.
“What are you—”
“Where is he?” I interrupt Smitty as Sarah does something with his phone.
Smitty faces me again, his jaw set. “Troy loves her. He’d never do this. They’ve been like brother and sister their entire lives.”
“She has terrible luck with brothers,” Dash points out.
“They tend to get jealous,” Jude adds.
“Where is he?” I ask again through gritted teeth.
“He wouldn’t be that stupid if he did something like that,” Smitty goes on. “He’d know better than to disappear, too. Someone would be setting him up. He’s still in New York.”
Sarah walks back over, her creepy chipper-smile gone, and a dark expression on her face as she hands Smitty his phone. “Troy is twenty miles away,” she says tightly.
Smitty just stares at her for a minute, before he has to stagger back.
“No,” he says hollowly. “Even if he was that horrible, he wouldn’t be that stupid,” he goes on, talking more to himself than anyone else.
“I don’t care if it starts a war. If I get my hands on your son, I’m killing him,” I bite out, then turn to Sarah. “Where’s the signal from?”
“My guy is trying to pi it down, but I have a general location. He had to turn the phone on via remote access, then turn on the GPS via remote access, all from the number I got from Smitty’s phone. He did it fast. It won’t take—”
“Got him,” Drex says, jogging up to us as he pockets his phone. “Nicholas is his runner. He only told me where to find him because I told him Lathan took Axle’s old lady and explained the highlights of the situation, minus the mafia thing.”
He starts jogging out, and we all follow. Smitty’s men follow, but Smitty struggles to get up. I don’t have time to fucking wait on him to absorb it, so we leave without him.
Drex yells at Drake as he pokes his head out of the tattoo parlor, telling him to keep an eye on shit. Then we’re gone, driving like hell through the mostly quiet streets as fast as we can go.
Sarah is on the back of Dash’s bike as I pass them, racing to get beside Drex. My stomach is in knots, my heart is in my throat, and everything on me is throbbing.
If she’s dead because I sent her back…
I can’t even think about it. I just need to focus on finding her.
Alive.