Alena

 

Damn him. I couldn’t believe he’d had that effect on me. And damn me, too, for letting him. He’d kissed me, smacked my ass, and it took all my self-control not to slap his face. Who did he think he was, the pig?

 

Yet there was no denying the effect he’d had on me. My knees were shaking, my panties wet. Holy hell, how did that happen? All because he was close to me? Because he kissed me?

 

No, that wasn’t entirely it. It was knowing he could do whatever he wanted to me at that moment. I’d been half wild with terror, panic…promise. I thought I’d gotten my weakness for bad boys out of my system. That weakness was another part of the reason I couldn’t be too hard on my sister. I knew how it felt to have the darkness draw you to it. I’d been through all of that before, and now I remembered why men like Cole used to appeal to me.

 

I got my act together and pushed my way past him, storming out of the bar. I ignored the whistles that followed me, the jeers and laughter. I didn’t look back, walking straight out to my car. I waited until I was inside with the doors locked before I buried my head in my arms and cried. All the tension and anger I’d felt in the bar came out of me in gusty sobs.

 

Along with all of that was fear for my sister. She seemed farther away than ever.

 

No, that wasn’t possible. Once the storm of emotion had passed and I was sniffling instead of sobbing, I rolled down the car window and took a few deep breaths. I needed to clear my spinning head. I still felt him on me, like a layer of grime. I smelled smoke in my hair and knew I’d need another shower once I got home. I felt nasty.

 

Nasty. That was a good way to describe Cole and his entire club. They were nasty, dirty, filthy pigs. All of them. And those girls! What the hell was wrong with them? Degrading themselves like that. The image of my sister dancing on that makeshift stage flitted through my mind, and I cut it off. No way she would do that. I’d raised her to have more self-respect. Then again, I’d raised her to have more common sense than to be hooked up with those losers. There was no telling how far she’d gone—it wasn’t as though she would have told me about it, knowing how I’d freak out.

 

Cole’s face floated through my mind. He’d been so close to me, so dangerously close. My heart quickened at the thought. He stirred something in me, something primal. A need I tried to ignore. I hadn’t been with a man in a long time, not since my last breakup almost a year before. It had to be the pent-up energy. That was it. No way he had gotten to me any deeper than that.

 

So what was with that kiss, then? He’d kissed a lot of women. That was all. He was good at it…very good. I touched a fingertip to my lips, which I realized were a little swollen, thanks to the roughness of his mouth. I’d loved the roughness, hadn’t I? I’d wanted more of it. If he hadn’t pulled away, I might have wanted to take things further.

 

It had to be the anxiety. I was feeling vulnerable. That was my excuse. Nobody would blame me.

 

He knew more than he was letting on. I felt it in my bones. He’d put on a good show, playing dumb. His arrogance wasn’t enough to hide what was happening behind his eyes when he told me he hadn’t seen Sara and that I needed to stay away. Something in his voice. I told myself I wasn’t just making this up. I was certain he was holding back.

 

“Sara, Sara,” I said, feeling helpless, pounding the palm of my hand against the steering wheel. “Where are you?” I pulled out my phone, where Sara’s picture was my lock screen. I looked at her, remembering exactly when one of my friends took this picture for me. Last Christmas. We’d decorated my tree and filled the living room with gifts, and on Christmas day, we wore matching gaudy sweaters she’d found for us. We were standing in front of the tree, arms around each other’s waists. Smiling. Who knew that eight months later my world would fall apart?

 

“I promise you,” I said, staring at my sister’s smiling face, “I will find you. I will find out what happened to you, and I’ll make the person responsible pay dearly for whatever they did to you. Please hold on just a little longer. Hang in there. I’m coming.” I touched the screen, stroking the face of the image there.

 

With every day that passed, just a little bit of my hope died. The hope Sara was still alive. I refused to give up entirely, but it was becoming harder to believe. How could she survive this long, wherever she was? And she had to be in a dangerous, lonely place if she hadn’t been able to contact me. There was no way she would have gone this long without at least calling if she was, in fact, safe somewhere.

 

I couldn’t stop looking for answers, though. Even when it looked more likely every day that Sara was dead, I had to know why and how. I would stop at nothing to bring her home, in whatever condition she was by the time I found her. I didn’t care. I had to know for sure where and how she was. I prayed she was alive…but like the sheriff had informed me, I needed to get myself used to the idea that she was gone.

 

So many of my memories were tied up in my sister. Watching her grow up. Spending endless hours reading the same boring storybooks to her until she was old enough to read them to me. I’d taught her to tie her shoes and write her name. It had been a lot of responsibility for a girl in her early teens, but it hadn’t felt like a chore. I loved her so much, from the minute she was born.

 

Mom relied on me a little too much, but life as a single mother meant she had to be away from the house while she worked, picking up whatever shifts she could. So did her constant search for a man. My stomach turned at the memory of some of the winners she brought around. Men she’d met on her bar crawls. Looking back as an adult, I knew she was lonely. Dad had abandoned us when Sara was only three, and that was just the official abandonment. He’d been practically a ghost for years, only coming around when there was nothing better going on.

 

So Mom had gone out to find somebody to replace him. Maybe she was looking for a dad for us, knowing how we needed a father figure. Or she could have been looking for somebody to help support us, since it couldn’t have been easy to manage on her own. There was no way of knowing for sure, seeing as how she’d been dead for five years. I couldn’t ask her, or tell her that I now understood why she’d lived her life the way she had. She was only making the best decisions she could at the moment, with the information she had at the time. Mom wasn’t book smart, had barely finished high school. She was a limited woman living a limited life.

 

I was determined to give Sara more than that. As soon as I was old enough to get a job, and Sara was old enough to leave home alone, I made it a point to show her the world with the little money I was making. I took her to museums in the city, out to dinner, shopping. We’d plan all sorts of trips we were going to take someday, and learn about the countries we intended to visit. China. France. India. We would go to the library and take out books on those places, pouring over pictures together. I wanted her to have everything Mom couldn’t give us.

 

Look where it got me, I thought. Look where it got her. Hooked up with a motorcycle club and missing for weeks. She’s only eighteen. She hasn’t started living yet.

 

My friends had all thought I was crazy, taking so much of the responsibility of raising Sara on my shoulders. While they were out partying and getting laid, I’d been at home with my sister. Watching movies, playing board games. Practicing piano and violin—the only thing I really allowed myself, the practice of my music. Sara would sit and watch for hours on end while I practiced, or else sit with a coloring book or her dolls. She never showed interest in learning how to play, though God knew I tried to get her into it. I’d hoped musical ability would get her further ahead in life.

 

She was my biggest fan, coming to the gigs I managed to book in local coffee shops and bars. Even though she wasn’t old enough to drink, I would sneak her in with me, and she would cheer her head off after every song. She became my mascot, almost. People expected to see the pretty little blonde girl with the big blue eyes and a huge smile when they came to see me play. I was never the best, but she always cheered as though I was.

 

How could I not love her? How could I not want to bring her home safe?

 

What could have happened to her? Had she seen something she wasn’t supposed to see? Maybe the club was mixed up in something dangerous, something nobody could know about. In my mind, I saw a backroom meeting—maybe in the very room Cole had dragged me into. The door was open a crack. Sara had innocently walked up to the door, overhearing what was happening inside. She had gasped, or made some other noise, cluing the guys in on her presence. They’d needed to get rid of her before she told anybody what she’d heard. I closed my eyes, whimpering.

 

I couldn’t keep torturing myself like this. These scenarios were only breaking my heart. I’d been having them more and more often lately. Now that I’d gotten a first-hand look at the inside of that awful bar, the visions would be even more realistic. Now, when I lay awake at night imagining what had happened to Sara, I’d be able to smell the smoke and the spilled liquor. I would see the tables and chairs, the photos on the walls of different motorcycles. My torture would be that much more vivid.

 

I had to put a stop to this, either by finding Sara soon or by finding out exactly what had led to her disappearance. Then, if I found that she was dead, I could, at least, know what I was in for as I searched for her body.

 

I stared at the front door to the bar. The music and rowdiness hadn’t died down a bit in the time since I’d left—if anything, it was louder. What the hell did they have to be so happy about? If I was a criminal, possibly a murderer, would I be living it up in some seedy roadhouse? It was like they didn’t have consciences.

 

I sat back, my eyes on the door. Waiting for Cole to show his face again. Planning my next steps. I had to find some way to get through to him, to show him how important it was to me that I find my sister. If he had a shred of humanity left in him, he’d have no choice but to open up and at least give me some measure of peace.

 

This was what I told myself. I needed something to believe in.

 

He had struck me as hard, callous. Maybe that was the front he put up in front of the club members. Maybe he was a nice person in private.

 

I needed to believe that, too.