Oakes struggles against my hold, but I’m hanging on to his collar with a vise grip, leaving him pinned against the wall like a fly caught in a web. I shove the gun even harder against his sweaty skin. Bennett casually moves to the end of the bar, leaning against it and folding his arms like he doesn’t have a care in the world. But I know that if I looked at him, I’d see the intense scrutiny in his eyes as he assessed the situation.

“Say it again.” My teeth grind together as I stare into Mick Oakes’s dark eyes. My insides tremble like jelly, but my hand is steady as my finger inches toward the trigger.

He swallows. “I said, dead girls don’t talk. It’s my uncle’s motto. He doesn’t trust women, never has. Not since his wife tried to take what she knew about his business to the cops. He ended up killing the cop she confided in right before he killed her.”

My grip tightens, and he winces as the muzzle digs into his flesh. I suck in breaths like I’m running out of oxygen, because it feels like I am. I stare at Oakes for a second longer, then I release him and pace away.

Bennett, still behind the bar, keeps pace with me. “Talk to me, Shaw.”

I holster my gun. Lifting my hands, they rake through my hair over and over again. The only way Oakes could know that line, was if…if his uncle was the one responsible for Elle’s murder. Whether he killed her himself or had someone else do it…it doesn’t matter.

I watched Mick while he spoke. The rage simmering in my stomach wasn’t enough to kill every instinct I ever learned as a trained interrogator. The man didn’t have a single tell that would have signaled he was lying. He’s tense, and he’s scared because he’s a coward piece of shit, but he’s telling the fucking truth.

Finally. I know who murdered Elle.

Turning to Bennett, I look him directly in the eye. “His uncle killed my wife.”

Bennett’s eyes go wide, and then he drops his head back to stare at the ceiling. “Jesus fuck.”

“Hey.” Oakes’s voice is sharp. “What the hell are you talking about?”

I turn slowly to face him. “About seven years ago, did you know a woman by the name of Elle Shaw?”

Oakes’s face goes pale.

I take a step closer, the rage inside me boiling to a dangerous level. “Tell me what you know.”

Oakes sinks onto a barstool. “She…I was introduced to her through a friend of a friend. Apparently, she’d racked up a shitload of debt that she didn’t want her husband to find out about.”

I close my eyes briefly. “What kind of debt?”

Mick Oakes looked at me warily. “Credit cards. She said it was bad. I offered her a job with one of our family businesses, told her she could work for us to help pay the debt. She worked on the books, in addition to her regular bookkeeping job. But she came across some numbers she shouldn’t have seen and got it in her head that she could pay off her debt in one fell swoop if she received a big payout from my uncle.”

I close my eyes. God, Elle…why? Why would you get yourself into that shit? You should have come to me. “She demanded a payoff.”

Mick nodded. “Yeah. My uncle…he didn’t play games like that. She paid for it.”

Stopping, I turn and slam my hands down on the bar. “You motherfucking bastard! You should have told her to go to her husband!”

My long strides eat up the distance so that I can look Oakes in the eye. “Did you sleep with her?”

He shakes his head immediately. “No. No, I didn’t. She wasn’t down for that, and I was all wrapped up in Olive at the time. Still am.”

Was I supposed to believe him? Like he was some stand-up guy who wouldn’t emotionally abuse his girlfriend? I can’t even process all of this right now. I knew Elle had debt. So he seems to be telling the truth about that at least. I found out about the extent of her debt after she died but I never knew why. Was she lonely while I was gone? She was apparently afraid to talk to me about it and decided to get another job behind my back.

Goddammit. What kind of husband must I have been? The kind whose wife couldn’t trust him with her own financial stress? And now she’s gone. I’m never going to be able to ask her about it, never going to be able to reconcile with the fact that I wasn’t there for her when she needed me. I wasn’t there to stop her from getting involved with the fucking Margiano family.

What am I supposed to do with this?

My cell phone buzzes in my pocket, and I think about ignoring it until I remember that my team is listening in on this conversation. Yanking it out of my pocket, my answer is clipped. “Yeah.”

“Swagger.” Grisham’s voice is a mixture of sympathy and urgency. “Olive just pulled up in Rayne’s SUV. Want us to grab her, or do you want—” He’s interrupted by the sound of squealing tires, which I can hear over the phone and coming from directly outside the bar. “What the fuck?”

Grisham’s curse ends in a shout, and I end the phone call and sprint to the front door, gesturing for Bennett to stay with Oakes. My heart thumping wildly, I throw open the door of the bar and burst into the night. Just in time to see a black SUV nearly tip on two wheels as it peels out of the parking lot.

Grisham is out of the truck, weapon drawn, staring at the vehicle as it speeds off into the night.

Glancing around the otherwise empty lot, I spot Sayward sitting in the passenger seat of the NES vehicle she and Ghost rode here in, and I see Rayne’s SUV parked a few feet away. But I don’t see Olive anywhere.

Grisham turns, and his face says everything I don’t want to know.

“What the hell just happened, Ghost?” I bite out the words, silently pleading with him to tell me something other than what I’m thinking.

God, no. No. Please, no.

Grisham’s response is grim. “Had to have been Margiano’s guys. They took her. We can follow, but they’ve got a pretty good head start. Might not find them.”

Shaking my head, I glance toward the bar. “No. I have a better idea. Meet me back at NES.”

When I storm back into the bar, I go straight for Oakes and this time, I grab him by the throat. Squeezing until his eyes bulge, I make sure each word is said slowly enough for him to understand.

“Where. Did. They. Take. Her?”

I can’t tell if his eyes are wide from fear, or if it’s because I’m slowly squeezing the life out of him. But I won’t get an answer if I don’t loosen my grip, so I let go and throw him backward. He stumbles back and then reaches for his gun.

“I wouldn’t do that.”

When I glance at Bennett, he’s already holding his pistol, aimed at Oakes’s head. “Keep it holstered, Mick. I’ve wanted to shoot you for too long…don’t give me a reason.”

Mick swallows, fury flashing in his eyes. Then he turns to me. “What are you talking about?”

His phone buzzes. He ignores it, focusing on me, but I dip my head toward his pocket. “Take that.”

Eyeing me with suspicion, he pulls it out and reads the text. Then he curses and shoves the phone back in his pocket. “I gotta go.”

I run through all the scenarios in my head but I know I have to let him go. It will be our best bet to find Olive. But letting him walk out of this bar is going to be one of the hardest things I’ve done in a long time.

Turning on his heel Mick is out, gone through the back exit, before I glance up at Bennett.

“Start talking,” he says.

When I tell him what happened in the parking lot, and the plan I have for letting Mick go, his eyes burn with rage. “I’ll close this bar down. And then I’m coming with you.”

I nod.

When Bennett goes to the office in the back of the bar and returns with a heavy-looking duffle bag slung on his shoulder, I glance at him, impatience bleeding out of me. “You leaving town?”

He shrugs, heading for the front door. “We might need this. Trust me.”

Not sure what that means, I let it go. Bennett could be carrying a dead body in that bag and it wouldn’t mean shit to me right now. All I want is to find my girl and bring her home.

I need to get to her. Now.

Bennett and I run out to the parking lot and we ride in silence as we speed to the NES offices.

I have so many thoughts running through my head. I’ve just learned the identity of the man responsible for my wife’s death. And at some point, I’m going to have to deal with that. I’m going to have to grieve for Elle all over again, and I’m going to have to come to terms with the fact that the one thing I’ve been searching for the last seven years of my life has been found. I never thought far enough ahead to say what I’d possibly do when the investigation was finally closed.

But now? Now I have something real and true to live for. Something I never thought I’d find again. And maybe I haven’t found it again. Maybe I’ve found it for the first time, because, what I’m finally accepting, is that what I have with Olive is completely different from what I had with Elle.

Once we pull up to the NES offices Bennett’s quiet as I use my hand to open the front door, and he mutely takes in the surroundings of the office as we head straight for the conference room.

When we walk in, everyone is already assembled. I look to Grisham. “You get it?”

“I did. Tracker is on Oakes’s car, and as soon as he stops driving we’ll have a location.”

Jeremy speaks up. “I’m sorry, man. As soon as we realized she’d left, I went after her. I called the guys, and they told me what had happened.”

I shake my head. “Not your fault. She’s stubborn as hell. Now I just want to bring her stubborn ass back home safe and sound. I need you all to help me do that.”

Jacob speaks up. “You know we will. Almost every man at this table has been where you are right now, and it’s always come out in our favor. That won’t change tonight.”

I nod, thankful and ready to go after her. “Thanks.”

Jeremy points to the screen situated in front of Sayward. “See this blip on Viper’s screen?”

Sayward stiffens at the nickname, but then she relaxes and a tiny smile curves her lips upward. Then her eyes stray to Bennett, and they stay there.

“Oh, shit. Sorry, man. Everyone, this is Bennett Blacke. The guy I told you about. Bennett, this is the team. Can we do intros later?”

Bennett gives the room a lift of his chin, pulling his bag up higher on his shoulder.

Jeremy glances at it. “What you got in there?”

Bennett’s lips twitch. “Tools.”

I lean in, looking more closely at Sayward’s laptop. “That the tracker?”

Jeremy nods. “Yeah. Real tiny, I just got them in last week. Ghost stuck it to the bottom of his muffler, the asshole will never be the wiser.”

Sayward speaks up, finally bringing her eyes back to the screen. “He keeps making all of these roundabout turns, going in circles sometimes. I think he thinks you’re following him.” She snorts.

“Then he thinks I’m a fucking amateur.” I watch the blip on the screen.

“What’s the plan when he stops?” Dare asks seriously. He looks to Grisham and Jacob, but I speak up.

“Then Viper tells me the location, and I go get her.” The decision has already been made in my head, the plan already final.

Both Ghost and Boss Man shake their heads simultaneously.

“Hell, no,” Grisham says. “This is Olive, and her life is on the line. Do you really want to just run in there half-cocked?”

“Ronin.” Jacob’s voice is commanding, and I’d usually listen when he speaks, but this isn’t the woman he loves. She’s mine, and I know what I’m capable of. I go to refute Jacob but he says, “There will be a plan. You will follow it. Now listen to what Grisham has to say.”

Every eye in the room turns to Grisham. Bennett relaxes against a wall, watching this all go down. Deep down, I know that when it comes down to it, he’ll have my back. He’s not a member of this team, and his loyalty lies with me.

“Talk. But when that beeping stops, I’m out.”

Jeremy puts a hand on my shoulder, trying to calm me. But I can’t be calmed. Not until Olive is beside me again.

“When he finally gets to wherever he’s going, Sayward will find all the information on the location that she can. We’ll scout from the outside, figure out the best way to enter. We’re also going to need to assess how many people are inside, both innocent and enemy.”

I’m already shaking my head. “You don’t understand. These people, they’re the worst kind. Didn’t you hear what I found out tonight?”

Jacob gives me a look that’s somehow empathetic and scathing. “Why didn’t we know that you’d been investigating your wife’s murder?”

I fold my arms across my chest. “Why did you think I was investigating anything?”

His lip quirks. “Because I know you, son. We all do. Sayward looked up that line that tipped you off, ‘Dead Girls Don’t Talk.’ She connected it to the other case that the police are currently investigating. They told you about the new case, didn’t they?”

Jeremy stiffens beside me. “How long?”

I push away from the table and stand. “None of you can possibly understand this.” I look at each one of them in turn. “Have any of you ever been married, and then that person was murdered while you were too far away to do anything about it? Have you?”

Dare’s voice is quiet. “No. But we’re your brothers, Swagger. We have your back no matter what. We’d be there, for whatever you needed.”

I turn to look at Jeremy, because I know he’s probably the most hurt by my omission. “I didn’t want to drag you into it. I needed to see this through on my own.”

He stares me down for a minute, and then he lets out a heavy sigh. “I can’t fault you, Swagger. I don’t know what you went through. When I thought I might lose Rayne and Deck, I about lost my shit. You actually did lose someone. Can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same thing if I’d been given the opportunity to find a killer.”

The rest of the room murmurs their agreement, and finally, Jacob nods.

I take a deep breath.

“Oh,” mutters Sayward. “Here we go.”

The blipping dot on her screen has stopped moving. Her fingers fly over the keys as she searches for the location.

I slam a palm down on the table. My patience has run out. Olive is out there…alone with these bastards. “These people are basically the goddamn mob. Organized crime, keeping it in the family. The patriarch? He murders women who he thinks are screwing with his business. You heard that, right? It happened to Elle. There’s no fucking way I’ll let it happen to Olive.”

“I’ve got explosives.”

Everyone in the room turns toward the sound of Bennett’s voice.

He lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “In my bag. It’s kind of what I do…blowing shit up is my specialty. So it’s a way in, and it gives us the element of surprise. I should be able to get you in there, and Ronin can make sure he gets Olive out.”

Grisham steps forward, his face contorted into amused disgust. “So, let me get this straight. You want us to blast our way into a cold location, without knowing what’s waiting on the other side?”

Bennett meets his gaze head-on. “Yep.”

Grisham turns to Jacob. “This dude is crazy.”

I stand up beside Bennett, hope and determination mixing inside of me. “Crazy might be what saves Olive’s life.”