Chapter Twelve

Riley took the needle from his arm and ignored the piercing pain that throbbed through his veins. He’d had enough of staying in the hospital. When he woke up in the morning, he tried asking about Tania, but the doctors didn’t know anything. He was found at the warehouse after it exploded and the ambulance brought him here.

 

He was kept under observation and treated for a wound in his leg and back. He could feel the bandages under his shoulders where he was hit by metal objects. The police questioned him, and he told them he didn’t know anything about it. He told them he’d been trying to finalize the deal, that it was finally done, but he came to inspect the property and wasn’t sure what happened to it.

 

Riley had his suspicions, but he wasn’t sure if he was right. He suspected the Devil’s Mafia Brotherhood to be behind it, but he didn’t want to be right. What would he do if his own club, the people who were supposed to be family, had done this to him? Before he sought those answers, though, he needed to find Tania. Where was she? Did she survive?

 

He refused to think something happened to her. All he recalled was diving on top of her to keep her safe right before something hit his head and he fainted. When he became conscious, he was in this place and she was nowhere to be seen.

 

A nurse rushed into the room. “What are you doing, sir?”

 

He sat, swung his legs to the side, ignored the throbbing ache that enveloped his body, and stood. For a moment, he was dizzy but he forced himself to concentrate. “I am getting out.”

 

“You can’t, sir. The doctors haven’t discharged you yet.”

 

“I’m taking a voluntary discharge,” he growled and moved towards the bathroom. Rather than making an attempt to stop him, she went out, probably to call a doctor. He didn’t care. Riley was determined to get out and find Tania. When he came back out after a shower, he’d changed into his clothes a friend had brought over in the afternoon.

 

Two doctors waited in the room. “Sir, you can’t leave.”

 

He ignored their edict. “Did you find any information about my friend who was with me at the warehouse? Where is she?”

 

The doctors glanced at each other. “Sir, we’ve checked this hospital, and I’ve talked to the ambulance driver. There was no one else on sight.”

 

“How can that be?” He ran a hand through his hair, frustrated by their consistent answer. They told him this when he woke up, when he asked again, and even after he insisted that they check. Either they were telling lies or she’d actually disappeared. Did she get up and wander off before the ambulance arrived on scene? Was she safe in her house? He’d tried to call her, but there was no response.

 

He was scared. As long as he didn’t see her, he couldn’t rest. Finding Tania was his top priority and only later would he figure out the rest of this. It was beginning to seem more complicated than he had realized.

 

“She was there,” he insisted. “I need to find her.”

 

“You were also hit on the head, sir. We need to make sure that you don’t have a concussion and we need to bandage your wounds to make sure there is no infection.”

 

They cared and although he appreciated their effort, he couldn’t abide by their rules. He had far more pressing matters to take care of. “I’ll come in daily to change the bandages.” He moved past the doctors. One of them raised his hand as if he wanted to grip Riley’s hand, but he thought better of it. “Bye, guys.”

 

“Wait, sir.” He turned, ready to do physical battle if that was necessary for him to walk out but one of the doctors held a form. “You’ll have to sign it. It’s a release form that absolves us of all responsibility should anything happen to you after you get out.”

 

Riley signed the form without a murmur of protest and walked out. Now he could go ahead with the task at hand. Making his way from the hospital, he hailed a cab and went to Tania’s house.

 

Riley rang the bell but no one answered. After ringing several more times, he understood she wasn’t in. He called her cell but it was still switched off. He went to her office. Hadn’t she said that she lost her job? Shit! He blamed himself for it. He should’ve told her that his club was doing some underhand activity to procure the warehouse, but he hadn’t been sure. He still didn’t know what happened with the deal.

 

At her office, he was told that she wasn’t working there anymore. Now the guilt was even more so. Had she disappeared for good? Did she leave town? But where would she go? What would she do now?

 

Riley called Xavier, the manager of the warehouse. “Hey, man! How are you?” said the guy.

 

“Xavier, have you heard from Tania?”

 

“Tania?” the man sounded astounded. “No. Why?”

 

“Shit! She is…I can’t find her.”

 

“I don’t know anything, man.”

 

“What about the warehouse deal?”

 

Xavier cleared his throat. “The papers were signed a week ago. Didn’t they tell you?”

 

“I found out two days ago. The warehouse blew up. What do you know about it?”

 

“I don’t know anything, man. I swear to it.”

 

Riley had the distinct idea that Xavier knew far more but he didn’t have any idea as to how he could persuade the man to tell him something. Was he in on the secret as to why the warehouse blew up? Rather than waste his time, Riley cut the call. He called Tania’s friends, the few people he’d met while they were dating but none of them knew anything.

 

Now, it was time to up the ante. He went to visit Charlie, one of the high members of the board at the biker’s club. When he rang the bell at Charlie’s house, the man opened the door and looked astonished to see Riley. “What’re you doing here?”

 

“I need to talk,” said Riley. He pushed past him and went inside his house before Charlie closed the door again. “Where the hell is Tania?”

 

“Who? What?”

 

“She was the woman who was talking to Xavier about the warehouse. We were dating. Where is she?”

 

“I don’t know, man. You were dating her?”

 

Riley grabbed Charlie’s collar and hurled him against the door. Enough was enough. Where Tania was concerned, he couldn’t afford to be patient anymore. “Where is she?” he shouted. “She was with me when the warehouse blew up, and now I can’t find her. What did you guys do with her?”

 

Someone screamed. While still holding Charlie, he looked back and saw Charlie’s wife. “I’m calling the police,” she said.

 

Riley was as calm as he could be. He was totally in control. Nothing could shake him until he found her. If he had to go to jail for her, he would do so gladly. “Go ahead. I would love to see him sweat when they tell him to answer a few questions.”

 

“Babe, go back in,” croaked Charlie. “Riley is a friend. This is just a misunderstanding. Riley, come on. We’ll talk inside.”

 

The woman appeared confused and scared but she followed his instructions. Riley glared into Charlie’s eyes. He saw fear, but he also saw something that made his blood chill. “What did you do to her?”

 

“Leave me, and we’ll talk.” He let go of the man, ready to punch him if he tried to escape but Charlie walked over to a door and opened it. “Let’s sit inside.”

 

It was Charlie’s study. After a brief moment of hesitation, Riley strode in. He wasn’t going to leave until he got to the bottom of this. Something was going on here and he was right in the center of it with Tania. What had they done with her? Now he was even surer that the biker’s club had something to do with her disappearance. Why would they do something so insane?

 

“Where is she?”

 

“Look, man!” Charlie ran a hand over the edge of his desk as he kept it between Riley and him as if he wanted to make sure that there was enough distance between them.

 

It didn’t matter, though. Riley could lunge across the desk and grab him at a moment’s notice. He wasn’t willing to take this shit anymore. If Charlie didn’t give him the answers he wanted, he would make sure he regretted it. Riley was prepared to go to the police and turn this matter over to them if he didn’t find her. She was important to him. He loved her. Now that they weren’t together, he realized that his heart was in her hands. Without her, he was nothing. She was the love of his life, and he’d already screwed up enough times. He couldn’t afford to make matters worse. When he found her, he would tell her everything he knew and beg for forgiveness.

 

He would tell her that she was his sun and moon, and he wanted to spend his life with her. But, in order to do that, he had to find out where she was. And Charlie was going to help him discover that, whether he wanted to or not.

 

“You look here now,” said Riley in a voice that brooked no argument. “If I don’t find her, I’m going straight to the police and then we’ll see what you guys know.”

 

“Don’t threaten me.”

 

Riley banged his hands on the desk. “Then don’t push me so hard. Where the fuck is she?”

 

“You are crazy. Why are you throwing away your career with the Devil’s Mafia Brotherhood over a woman?”

 

“She isn’t just a woman, Charlie. Where is she?” he yelled. “And why the hell did that warehouse blow up?”

 

“The board is happy with your work, Riley. You found that place. It was a good location…but our interests lay in it for other reasons. You don’t know it but the club had run into a lot of financial difficulties. We needed money, and we needed it fast. So someone came up with a scheme.”

 

Riley took a seat. He knew he wasn’t going to like what he heard. There was something fishy about this whole thing. He’d been feeling that way for quite some time, but it was silly of him not to trust his own feelings. If he’d asked the hard questions earlier, this might not have happened. “What’s that got to do with Tania?”

 

“Listen to me.” Charlie breathed a sigh of relief and took a seat opposite Riley. “Okay, I am going to tell you this straight out. We blew up the warehouse because of insurance. All the papers were signed and now we’re going to get a lot of cash from the insurance company because the property is legally in our name.”

 

Riley felt as if his mind shut down. He couldn’t think, couldn’t concentrate. He didn’t expect this. How could they do something so illegal? Had they gone mad? How desperate was the club to earn money? He never realized that this could be the problem. He had assumed that the explosion at the warehouse was an accident. “You guys are insane. We could’ve died.”

 

“You weren’t supposed to be there. The way we’d planned, it was empty at that time. I don’t know what you went there for, and it’s damn lucky that you both survived or else we would’ve been embroiled in a murder investigation,” said Charlie.

 

Riley was amazed that he could be so selfish at a time like this. “My bike didn’t survive.”

 

“I am sorry to hear that.” Charlie’s smile was cold. “Sometimes you have to make the hard choices. We didn’t want to let you in on the secret because you weren’t ready to deal with the implications of it.”

 

“What does this have to do with Tania?” As soon as he found her, he was going to get clean away from these people. There was no way he could hang out or work with them now that he was privy to their underhanded ways. He didn’t join the biker’s club for that reason – and he didn’t want anything to do with this. Of course, he could go to the police but it wouldn’t serve any purpose, as he didn’t have proof. Still, he wanted to bring them down. And he would do it after he found Tania. She was more important.

 

Charlie leaned back with a satisfied grin. “The guys took her. When they found you both at the warehouse, they panicked because she wasn’t supposed to be there. Even you weren’t meant to be there.”

 

“Why did they take her?”

 

“They wanted to know how much she was aware of our schemes. I tried to tell them that she wasn’t privy to anything since you also didn’t know…but you know how hard some of these men are. They didn’t want to take any chances.”

 

His heard thundered in his chest. What the hell did they do with her? Did they hurt her? Tania didn’t know anything. She would be confused as hell. “Where did they take her?”

 

“I don’t know. Someone else decided where she was going to be kept. It had nothing to do with me.”

 

“You bastard.” Lunging across the desk, Riley grabbed his collar and shook him hard. “Nothing to do with you? How the hell can you say that after kidnapping a woman? You’re knee deep in this shit and if anything happens to her, I’m going to make sure that you go down along with others.”

 

“You are also embroiled in this mess.” Charlie didn’t appear perturbed by Riley’s rage. He glanced down at Riley’s hand that gripped his shirt. The smirk that lifted his lips was annoying. “If something happens to us, you’ll be thrown in jail, too. After all, you’re the one who started the negotiations with Xavier. Your name is there on all the papers, and even though you didn’t sign them, you are as involved as we all are.”

 

Riley couldn’t believe what he heard. He had to be kidding, right? No, he wasn’t. Sure, his name was there. After all, he was the one who contacted Xavier and sent in all the papers. If this matter went to the police, he would be thrown in jail along with the rest of them. It wasn’t fair – but it was his fault. He should’ve trusted his instincts and not listened to them when they all assured him that nothing untoward was going on. Now Tania was in their hands and God only knew what they were doing to her.

 

Letting go of Charlie’s shirt, he slipped back into his seat. Riley had played these games and was well versed with the rules. They wanted him to do something. What was it? “What do you guys want? I’m willing to do anything as long as you let her go.”

 

Charlie’s smile was cold and didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Unfortunately, that is no longer an option. Tania is no longer with us. She escaped.”

 

Riley blinked his eyes. Good for her! She wasn’t a pushover. No wonder they couldn’t hold her for long. She must be out there somewhere, plotting their end – and he was going to help her achieve her goals. “Escaped?”

 

“Yes, she…vanished from that place. I just got the news an hour ago. We don’t know where she is, and I want you to find her and bring her back.”

 

He laughed at the audacious request. “Why the hell would I do that?”

 

“If you don’t, we’ll tell the police that it was all your idea. Your fingerprints are all over this shit. Your name is on the papers that were sent to Xavier and you were the point man. We’ll sacrifice you to save our ass.”

 

Riley shook his head. What the fuck? “If you do that, you won’t get the insurance money.”

 

“We’ll take that risk if we have to. Right now, everyone is more concerned with that woman. If she remains on the loose, we’re all in danger and, frankly, I have no intention of going to jail. If I have to let go of that money to avoid jail then we’ll do it, and you’ll be the one who to get arrested.”

 

Shit! Shit! What the hell was he supposed to do now?