Grant
The miles trickled by, far slower than I would’ve liked. Why couldn’t we be there already? While I hoped Trenton wasn’t doing anything stupid, I was growing sick with worry.
Damn traffic. There was an accident, and we were at a crawl. It had been more than four hours now since Trenton had called, and I couldn’t handle it. We had to get the fuck out of this fucking traffic, and we had to do it the fuck right now.
“Drive along the shoulder.”
“There’s a cop not far back,” Bob protested.
“So?”
“We can’t afford to be pulled over.”
“So don’t pull over.”
Bob glanced over at me, raised his eyebrows, and gave me a hell of a devilish grin. He would have to find a way to merge over to reach the shoulder, but it would be worth it.
While he worked on that, I checked my gun over. Everything appeared in working order. The fuck was Trenton thinking, pulling this shit. Obviously the punk wasn’t thinking.
A part of me absolutely hated that we were doing this—that we were readying to take up arms against one of our own. But, honestly, a lot of the guys had always viewed Trenton as more of a comrade than as a full-fledged member. Some of that was because of his age, but some of it was also because of the stunts he pulled. Trenton had always been a little immature, and he didn’t understand that you couldn’t just take, take, take. Everything should be give and take, and the ones who abused others were not tolerated for long, not in my world.
Victoria was a taker, too, but there was a difference. She took and built on it and made something of herself. She didn’t step on others to do it. Her restaurant was a testament to what a working woman could accomplish.
And in the bedroom—there she was give and take. Damn, could she give and take. The things we did to each other was amazing, and the things I wanted to do to her yet…
But more than just sex, I wanted to take Victoria away from all of this hell. Sweep her off her feet. Maybe go on a long vacation. A cruise somewhere. Just the two of us. Hell if she wanted to bring Sage along, too, that would be fine with me.
And then once we came back, then what? I wanted to go to her restaurant. I wanted to talk with her all hours of the night. I wanted to spend time with her horizontal. I wanted it all.
And I wanted it now.
I had never been this obsessed with a woman before, and in such a short amount of time, too. Would we have staying power as a couple? I didn’t know. I sure as hell hoped we did, but only time would tell.
And if we didn’t get the fuck to that motel soon, there might not be enough time for us to find out.
“Damn it, Bob! Do you need me to—”
“Sit back,” Bob snapped. “If I can’t see, I sure as hell can’t merge. Come on, asshole.”
I glowered at him. “Who you callin’ an asshole?”
Bob honked and then jerked the wheel. “That dipshit I just cut in front of.” He glanced in his rearview mirror. “You really want me to?”
“Yes!” I growled.
He nodded. “Looks like the cop’s pointed the other way. Hold on. We’re gonna fly!”
The tires squealed, and we peeled out, flying down the thin shoulder. A few cars honked, and I saw a lot of mouths flapping and middle fingers flashing, but I didn’t care.
We took the next exit, and we had to figure out a new route, but at least we were moving again. And even better, that cop didn’t tail us. We were in the clear!
But who knew if our luck would hold.
Especially since the other van hadn’t gotten over when we had.
“Bob, pull over,” I dictated. We would wait for a few minutes, and if the other van didn’t appear by then, we would just continue on without them. I wasn’t gonna wait forever.
Serious honking sounded behind us. The van flew up, and Bob gunned it, and we were back to caravanning it. Good. Although I didn’t want it to come down to a shootout, I felt much better having both numbers of men and guns on my side.
Especially because… oh, fuck…what if we weren’t the first ones to reach Trenton? Yeah, I had talked to that stupid, pompous drug lord, and threatened him even, but what if he decided he didn’t want to wait to collect his money? If I could track down Trenton, and especially since my main lead had been from regulars at the fucker’s bar, then he could track down Trenton, too, and once you had the town, it wouldn’t be that hard to figure out where exactly Trenton was staying…
Trenton really was a dipshit. Maybe I had failed him, but at some point, he had to be held accountable for his actions, and his actions had led him to this point, where his own friends, his own family, had turned against him.
He had no one.
And when he realized he was truly alone—because I had to believe Sage saw the light by now, I mean, come on, Trenton was holding her mother for ransom!—he’d be incredibly desperate.
Caged animals tended to attack, even if they knew they couldn’t win.
And there was no way in hell Trenton was gonna win.
“How much farther?” I all but growled.
“Ten minutes, give or take.”
“Make it five,” I ordered.
Bob flashed me a quick grin and floored it. I checked my side mirror. The other van was keeping close to our tail. Good. Power in numbers. Power in gunfire.
But I sure hoped and prayed that we wouldn’t have to fire a single shot. What if one of us missed and hit Victoria or Sage? And, despite everything, I didn’t want to shoot Trenton either. Messed up kid might not be able to turn his life around. I’d tried. Maybe jail could straight him out. Or maybe he just needed a final out. I didn’t want to be the one to end his life, but if it came down to him or one of the women, it killed me to say it, but I would pick the women.
Never ever did I think I would ever think such a thing. My men were my family, and I would bend over backward for them. I would give them the shirt off my back, given the housing, pay their rent if they were between jobs…anything and everything. What was mine was theirs.
For so many years, I had taken that adage “bros before hoes” to heart. Maybe that was why I had so many one-night stands and short relationships. Maybe I hadn’t met the right woman yet. I mean, I cared for Victoria despite us not knowing her for a long time. I could easily see myself falling in love with her. I desperately wanted to give us a chance at something huge. We might work, we might not, but I wanted that chance. Trenton would not take that away from us.
And I had a feeling Victoria wouldn’t turn into one of those clingy women who would want me to ditch the Devil’s Horns. That would be the only deal breaker for me. I would not turn my back on my men, on my family.
One might argue that that was exactly what I was doing with Trenton, but that wasn’t the case. If anything, he had turned his back on us. He’d chosen drugs over us. He’d chosen to not ask for help.
My stomach twisted. I should’ve realized he needed help, though. How had I missed the signs? There had been one other time that I’d noticed that he seemed to be slipping into bad habits. He’d just lost his part time job, and he might’ve been on a break from Sage or another girl at the time. I’d caught him lying, and he hadn’t been at events he’d said he would go to, and I’d pulled him aside and asked him if he needed anything.
“Nothing,” he had said without looking at me.
“Nothing, huh?” I poured some whiskey from my personal stash and handed it to him. This had been a few months after he turned twenty-one. In two months, he’d be twenty-three.
He’d stared at it and then gulped it down, draining all of the amber liquid.
I had shaken my head. “Whiskey is meant to be savored.”
He’d eyed the bottle, and I poured him more but then held the glass away.
“Can you handle this?” I had asked him.
“Yeah.”
I lowered the glass onto the table but didn’t slid it over to him. “Can you handle whatever it is that makes you want to drink?”
Trenton drummed his fingers onto the table. Then he reached over and clutched the glass, taking it out of my hands, but he didn’t drink it. “I don’t know,” he admitted.
“You know you can always come to me, right?”
“I hate living with Steven. He snores. He never cleans up after himself and makes me wash his dishes. His taste in music is terrible—”
“What’s wrong with ‘80s music?” I demanded with a smile.
Turned rolled his eyes.
“If you want to move in with me,” I started to offer.
He shook his head. “I don’t wanna live with you or one of the other Devil’s Horns guys.”
“So find your own place,” I suggested.
“I need a job first,” he muttered.
So I had helped him with résumés and helped him go job hunting, and he found a new job, and he started to laugh and smile more. He had seemed happy. He seemed to be doing well. Or maybe I just hadn’t seen the signs, or he got better at hiding them. Maybe he hadn’t started using and only sold the drugs. That would’ve made it easier for me to be duped. Considering how much he’d hated his father for using drugs and his attempts to stay clean, I never would’ve thought Trenton would be the kind to sell drugs, to get others hooked on it.
I was disappointed, but who was I more disappointed in—him or me? I wasn’t sure.
The tires squealed, and the van jerked to a halt. “We’re here,” Bob said unnecessarily.
The other van was still parking as I jumped out. With little patience, I waited for everyone to get out. Moonshine Motel. We were parked around back. Good. Hopefully Trenton hadn’t seen us pull up.
The place was a fucking dump. A place a rat would hide in and grow to be the size of a tiger. There were probably roaches and other bugs. Just thinking about it made my skin crawl.
You wanted a place of your own, Trenton, but I didn’t think you would want a place like this.
Damn it. He hadn’t wanted me as a father figure, and I never laid out any demands on him, but maybe I should’ve insisted he moved in with me. It would’ve cramped my style, but I had offered him to crash at my place. I hadn’t forced him to. He could make his own decision. He wasn’t a kid.
The guys hovered around me, and I held up a finger. “Listen to me,” I said quietly. “We’re gonna surround the room, but first, we have to figure out which room they’re in.”
I pulled out my cell and was about to call Hank, when the guy strolled over to us. He’d been waiting for us to arrive.
“Have you seen signs of any of them? Trenton or Victoria or Sage?”
“I saw Trenton. He came out a few times. He was on the phone, and he also left to get them some food.”
So at least he wasn’t starving the women. Small favor?
“What room number?” I demanded. Time to get this done and over with.
Hank pointed. “Right over…What the hell?”
I jerked around in the direction he was pointing. A young woman was racing out of an apartment.
Damn it all, if it wasn’t Sage.