Chapter 3
Big
Cotton charged into the room, but stopped cold when he found me holding Josie protectively in my arms. “What the fuck is going on?”
“Big Mike got into her computer.”
“And?”
“She’s not the threat we thought she was.” Stitch looked over to Josie with his eyes filled with regret, and I could see that he was struggling. He’d let us know from the start that he didn’t like the thought of hurting a woman. He assured us that he’d get the information we needed, but he made it clear there were boundaries he wasn’t willing to cross. In the end, he did what had to be done, but knowing he’d tortured Josie unnecessarily was fucking with his head. “She’s Tristen’s sister.”
While Stitch caught Cotton up on everything I’d found on her computer and the virus she’d used to crash our system, I turned my attention back to Josie. A spark of anger flickered in her eye as she pushed against my chest and demanded, “Put me down.”
She winced with pain as I eased her down onto the counter. I had no idea what Stitch had done to her over the past four hours, but she looked like hell. Her body shivered and twitched as she gripped onto the edge of the counter. “Are you okay?”
“No. I’m not.”
“Can I get you anything?”
“You can get me the hell out of here.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Then how about an aspirin and a stiff drink?”
“Aspirin I can do.” I walked over to the cabinet, grabbed the pain relievers and a bottle of water from the minifridge, then brought them back over to her. Her hand trembled as she reached for the water. “Stiff drink later.”
“Make it two.”
Her eyes skirted over to Cotton as she watched him walk over to us. After placing a timer down beside her, he pulled up a stool and sat down in front of her. “You’ve got ten minutes. Either you convince me that what you’re saying is true or you go back on the hook.”
“What exactly do you want from me?”
“I want the truth. I want to know how you got it in your head that we killed Tristen.”
“I know what kind of men you are… the things you do in this so-called club.”
“And what is that exactly?”
“I know that 1%er patch on your jacket means you aren’t out there passing out bibles.”
Cotton raised his eyebrow as he looked over at the timer. “The clock’s ticking, kid. You’re just digging a deeper hole.”
“You got a young girl in your club, seeing things, hearing things, and you didn’t like the fact that she’d had enough of all the bullshit and decided to move on. You were afraid she might run her mouth about things she’d seen and heard while she was here, so you made sure there was no way she could talk.”
Cotton looked over at me. “Kid’s got one hell of an imagination.”
“When did she tell you she was leaving?” Stitch asked her.
“She was on her way to Mexico. Something was bugging her, but she wouldn’t tell me what it was. I kept pushing, and that’s when she said she’d decided to quit her job at the club.”
I looked at Stitch. “Probably had something to do with Smokey.”
“What about Smokey?”
Maverick answered, “She tried to be cool about it, but anyone could see she had a thing for him.”
“So?” she pushed.
“So… he got himself an old lady.”
“Of course, he did,” she huffed. “She was never going to find the right guy in a motorcycle club. She was crazy to think she would. She thought of you as her family.”
“We feel the same about her.”
“That’s not true and you know it. Tristen isn’t your family. She’s just some chick that would pick up your trash and put food on your table during the day, and a warm body to crawl in bed with at night. Do you even know about her past? The hell she’s been through? Do you have any idea how hard she had it? She was just looking for a place where she could feel safe… where no one would hurt her again.”
“We’ve been good to her,” Cotton growled. “She’s happy here.”
“If she was so happy, why would she want to leave?” Josie sighed with frustration.
“That’s something you’d have to ask her.”
“I would if I knew where she was,” Josie snapped.
“So, what makes you think she never made it to Mexico?” Cotton asked.
“I’ve called the hotel, and she never checked in. I’ve been calling her cell phone over and over, but she hasn’t answered. Since the night at the airport, I haven’t been able to reach her.”
“Tell me about that phone call,” Cotton ordered.
“I thought she was just tired. She mentioned she’d been feeling dizzy, so I told her to splash some water on her face. As soon as she stepped into the bathroom, the line went dead.” Her eyes were filled with worry as she continued, “At first, I thought the call had just dropped or something. Thought it was just bad reception, but then I tried calling back and couldn’t get her to answer. By the next morning, I knew something was wrong.”
“And you’ve had no contact with her since that phone call?”
“No. And since you’re denying that you had anything to do with her disappearance, have any of you talked to her?”
The room fell silent. As far as we all knew, Tristen was living it up at the beach with one of her friends. None of us had reason to be concerned, so we left her alone. Cotton finally answered, “No.”
“She’s been gone for days, and none of you… her so-called family… even took the time to check up on her?”
“Tristen needed some time away. Besides, she’s always had a mind of her own. As her sister, you should know that.”
“She’s young and naïve. I’ll give her that, but this is extreme, even for her.”
“It’s late.” Cotton stopped the timer and stood up. “Get her down to Tristen’s room. Let her get a shower and a change of clothes. See what you can do to get our computers up and running again.”
She shook her head frantically. “No. I want to go home.”
“You should’ve thought about that before you hacked into my club and crashed our fucking hard drive,” Cotton barked at her.
“It’s an easy fix. I can give you the code, and you can have things back running in a matter of minutes. Just let me go home.”
He handed her a sheet of paper. “Write it down.”
Once she was done, she handed it back to him. “Now, just let me go home.”
“That’s not gonna happen. You’re staying here until we get this thing sorted.” He looked over at me. “Big, keep an eye on her.”
“Well, shit,” Josie grumbled under her breath.
I walked over and helped Josie down from the counter. I took her arm, supporting her as she took her first steps, and we were just about to walk out of the room when Stitch stepped in our path. Her body tensed as he spoke. “You should’ve said something… anything to stop me from doing…”
“I was just biding my time, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. You had a job to do.”
“No. If you had just explained… told us what was going on…”
“It was my decision to make. Can’t go back, so there’s no point in trying to change things now.”
She quietly held onto my arm as I led her into the clubhouse and down the hall to Tristen’s room. When I opened the door, she released her hold on my arm and stepped inside. I watched as she walked around the room, studying all of her sister’s pictures and knickknacks.
Tears filled her eyes as she turned to me. “Where could she be?”
Damn. She wasn’t making it easy. Seeing her look so beautiful, but so broken, tore at me. I wanted to reach for her, pull her close to me and whisper promises in her ear, but reality kept me from moving towards her. Even though she thought she had reason, she’d done a real number on us. It was going to take me hours to get our computers back up, and we still had no concrete evidence that proved she was telling us the truth about who she was. Until I uncovered everything, every last detail about her and her past, Josie would remain a threat and had to be treated as such.
“I don’t know, but I’ll find her,” I assured her. “It’s what I do.”
“I can help.”
“No.”
“At least let me get the power back on for you.”
“And how are you going to do that?”
“Just need your phone for a minute.” I reluctantly pulled it out of my back pocket and handed it over to her.
“You got something other than a burner?”
I grabbed my other cell and offered it to her. Seconds later, the lights flickered, letting us both know that everything was back up and running. She handed me back my phone as her lips curled into a prideful smile. I didn’t bother asking how she’d done it. It was clear that she had her own connections to the utility department. “I can help with other stuff, too.”
“Like Cotton said, it’s late. You need to get some rest.”
She crossed her arms and glared at me with determination. “It’s not like I’m going to sleep… not when she could be out there needing me.”
I took a step towards her and placed my hand on her shoulder. “You’re no good to her like this. You’re exhausted, beaten all to hell, and on top of all that, you’re soaked to the bone. Now take a damn shower and get yourself some sleep.”
I walked out and closed the door behind me. When I got back to my room, Cotton was sitting at my desk waiting for me. It had been a day from hell, and from the look on my president’s face, I knew it was far from over. “We need to know if she’s really Tristen’s sister.”
I walked over to my desk and reached for the file that had everything I’d found on her laptop. “I looked through their emails. They’ve been talking since the day Tristen moved in.”
“Okay, but how do we know this is the same girl? The truth is, she could be anyone. She crashed our entire fucking system, Big. There’s no doubt she’s seen the same damn emails and could’ve used them to come up with that harebrained story of hers.”
In my gut, I believed she was telling us the truth, but he had a point. We had no photographs of Tristen’s sister, or any real means of proving Josie was actually who she said she was. “Agreed.”
“You need to start digging. We have to know everything there is to know about Tristen and her sister.”
“What exactly do we know about Tristen?”
“Not a lot. Her parents died in a car crash when she was sixteen. She ended up living with some aunt here in Washington. Tristen rebelled like teenagers do. Drinking. Partying. Got herself into some trouble. She hadn’t been living with the aunt long when she ran away. Bounced around from place-to-place until I gave her a job here.”
“And the sister?”
He ran his hand through his salt and pepper hair as he sighed. “There are two kinds of people in the world: those who thrive under adversity, and those who crumble beneath it. Tristen was lost, couldn’t get her shit together after the death of her parents, while her sister went on to college and managed to make something of herself. It caused a rift between them, and I just assumed they never got back on track.”
“Any idea where they grew up?”
“Massachusetts. Her dad was a professor at MIT.”
“That explains her background with computers. I’ll see what else I can find.”
“While you’re at it, check Tristen’s flight. See how far she made it, and then call the hotel. See if she or her friend ever checked in. For all we know, all this mess with Josie is just some kind of diversion. We can’t take any chances here. There is too much at stake.”
“And what if she’s telling the truth? What if Tristen really is missing?”
He started for the door as he said, “Then we find her and do whatever it takes to bring her home.”