The longer I stayed at the house of Parrish, the more I risked getting involved in something I had no business getting involved in. Ally had issues, fuck, she had the whole subscription, and I was not the type of guy who ignored that shit. Yes, she was a pain in my ass, a thorn in my fucking side—she was trouble plain and simple—and like a magnet, I was easily drawn to her. Give me a broken girl and I’ll move Heaven and Hell to fix her. Well, at least until one of us dies while I’m trying.

Yeah, I needed to get the fuck out of here.

Stat.

Right after the cup of coffee and the chunk of pie.

Taking the first sip of caffeine, the coffee sputters from my lips as Jack slaps me on the back.

“Take it to go, we gotta move,” he orders, shoving a travel mug in front of me. Wiping the coffee from my shirt, I glare at the bastard as he shrugs on his leather cut.

“Where are we going?” I ask as I pour whatever is left in my cup into the thermos.

“The garage,” he says, throwing my jacket at me. “Rick called a meeting.”

“Rick, the bounty hunter?”

“You know another Rick?” he retorts, pushing me out of the kitchen.

“Did I miss the memo? Are we patching him in?”

“No, you smartass, but he’s the only guy with half a fucking clue on how Yankovich operates. We need him at our table. Now, you got any other questions or you think we can get the fuck out of here?”

Deciding he’s a fucking lunatic, I keep my questions to myself and watch him kiss his wife goodbye before grabbing the keys to his truck.

“Before you ask, I’m driving, but don’t get fucking used to this chauffeur service. You got another twenty-four hours to heal those ribs then you’re riding.”

“I can ride now,” I argue, opening the passenger door. Gritting my teeth, I climb into the truck and curse Rush to hell and back for fucking me up.

“Sure you can,” he mutters as my nostrils flare in aggravation. “Buckle up, princess. Safety first.”

President or not, friend or fucking foe, Jack Parrish is a dickhead.

The ride to Pipe’s garage is relatively quiet until we hit a red light a couple of blocks away and I take another sip of my coffee.

“What’s with the matches?” Jack asks, deciding to fuck with me some more.

Realizing coffee and I aren’t going to make love today, I set the mug down in the console and shrug my shoulders.

Don’t engage in the crazy, Deuce.

“The matches,” he probes. “You gave Ally a book of matches before she left with Blackie and Lacey. Not a parting gift you usually give an addict.”

“If you’re asking me if I gave them to her so could light her crack pipe, I didn’t,” I sneer. “I told you, I flushed the drugs.”

“I was simply wondering if she smoked,” he replies, shrugging his shoulders. “I was going to pick her up a carton of cigarettes.”

Flicking my gaze toward him, I notice the devious smile he’s trying to hide.

“Just how fucking crazy are you, man?”

Giving into the insanity, he lets out a chuckle.

“Oh, Cowboy, you have no fucking idea,” he says as he pulls into Pipe’s garage. “Satan broke the mold when he made me.”

Yeah, he did.

“Come on, we ain’t got time to waste,” he orders, throwing the car into park and killing the engine. As we head toward the garage, I look around the lot, spotting only a few bikes.

“Where is everyone?” I question, tipping my chin to the two Harleys parked in front of the building.

“Blackie’s with Lacey and Ally and Wolf is at the hospital, splitting his time between Linc and Cobra.”

“Any word on either of them?”

“Linc had his last surgery, something minor from what I gather that will help him mobilize. He’s due to start rehab today so Wolf wanted to be there to make sure those pieces of shit doctors don’t throw our boy on his ass before his legs are moving.”

“And Cobra?”

“Survived surgery. Now he needs to wake the fuck up.”

“Christ, we’re fucked,” I hiss.

“Yeah, we are,” he replies.

Before we can enter the garage, we hear engines closing in on us and we both turn around as Bas and Needles pull into the lot.

“What could they want?” I ask, keeping my eyes pinned on the two men who wore Albany’s patch on their vests.

“What do you think they want? They want to come on over to the other side,” he mutters, crossing his arms against his chest.

“They want to break bread with us?”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

No, nobody in their right fucking mind would sign up to sit at our table as bullets fly at our heads and shit gets blown to bits. I don’t tell him that though and instead I let the poor guy dream.

Bas and Needles dismount and stride toward us, offering Jack their hands. I watch him take their peace offering and follow them when he invites them inside. Riggs, Stryker, and Rick are already seated around the table when we pull up a couple of oil drums and Jack and I take our respective seats.

“Aren’t you going to take a seat?” Jack questions, pulling the meat mallet from his leather cut. Before he can slam the silver kitchen utensil against the wood, Jack’s hand freezes as Needles and Bas slowly remove their cuts and toss them onto the table.

“Respect,” Bas says, breaking the silence.

Leaning back, Jack drops the mallet onto the table and stares at them for a moment. Needles drops an envelope on the table and meets our leader's skeptical gaze.

“There’s three hundred thousand dollars in that envelope and the insurance policy to the clubhouse in Albany,” Needles reveals. “Rush left us in a mess. There’s nothing to salvage, nothing to mend. Albany is done.”

“What does that have to do with me and my club?” Jack questions.

“The money is yours. Do what you want with it,” Bas declares. “Rebuild your clubhouse, get Ally into a program…fuck, throw it off the Brooklyn Bridge for all I care.”

“That’s awfully generous of you,” Jack retorts, shoving aside the envelope as he reaches for their cuts. “And what am I supposed to do with these?”

“Burn them.”

Considering Bas’ words, Jack reaches for his knife and hands it to Riggs, silently commanding him to cut the Albany patch from the worn leather. As Riggs goes to work stripping their chapter from their vests, Jack nods for them to sit.

“We’ll have to take a vote when our men are able to sit at our table, but I like to think you two would be an asset to our chapter,” Jack says.

“Appreciate it,” Bas replies. “But whether or not we get that vote we want to help you and yours get this motherfucker. If Rush was just the tip of the iceberg then this thing you’re fighting, Parrish, it’s bigger than any regular run of the mill MC political bullshit. I’m going to assume whoever he was working with is big time and the fact that we don’t know what we’re up against doesn’t help. My gut is telling me this is bigger than everyone sitting around this table. It’s the shit you can’t ignore, the shit that’s been dumped into your lap because a higher power knows you’re destined to deliver justice.”

No one says a word, mainly because everything Bas is saying is the truth we feel down in our bones. Finally, Jack nods and points across the table toward Rick.

“This here is Rick Grayson. Cobra’s family hired him five years after their daughter went missing. He’s the only one who was able to tie Yankovich to her disappearance.”

“I’m Bas and this is Needles,” Bas introduces himself to Rick. “We don’t know much about him or his involvement with Rush.”

“A Russian guy would show his face every now and then but Rush never let us in on anything,” Needles adds, pausing to reach behind him. Bringing his hand back around, he produces another envelope and hands it to Rick. “That’s all the clippings from the cabin, but other than that, we’ve got nothing.”

“Join the club,” Riggs says.

“Okay, well let’s start with what we know. There were four girls that went missing around the same time as Alexandria, all of which fit the same description,” Rick begins, rubbing his temples as he tries to piece together all the information he’s accumulated over the years. “I’ve got their missing person’s photographs back at my office, but like Alexandria, they were all kids and each of them became a cold case.”

“Rush had a projection drawing of what Ally would look like as an adult. Is there any way we can get one done for each of the others?” Stryker asks.

Whoa.

My gaze snaps across the table at him. He couldn’t seriously be suggesting we dig into that can of worms.

“Hold the phone,” I say, turning to Jack. “What exactly is the plan here? Are we going after Yankovich or are we signing up to be the biker gang that rescues all the missing children of America?”

“Can you lay your head on your pillow knowing there are possibly three other women suffering like Ally?” Stryker fires back.

I should point out that since this whole fucking mess started my head hasn’t hit a pillow for more than an hour, but I don’t want to sound too much like a bitch so I give him another fact to chew on.

“We don’t even know if these girls are alive,” I point out.

“The goal is to get Yankovich,” Jack interjects. “For whatever reason, this cocksucker wants our attention. It’s why he blew up our clubhouse and has been playing mind games with us ever since. Now, I don’t know what his motive is. Part of me thinks he’s looking to control Rocco’s organization and thinks I’m a threat because of my past connections with his uncle.”

“For fuck’s sake. Victor’s dead, and you made it clear our alliance with his organization died the day he was buried. How does this fall into our laps?” Riggs asks.

“I don’t know,” Jack says, with a shake of the head. “But that’s the only lead we got. Rocco was onto this guy before we even knew his name.”

“That’s not true,” I argue. “Cobra knew Yankovich took his sister. The guy has been chasing him for years. What if this has something to do with Cobra being our brother?”

“It could be a number of things,” Rick interrupts. “Maybe Yankovich has been planning to make a play for Rocco’s territory but then he found out about the club’s alliance with Victor and did some digging. He learns Cobra is part of the mix and decides to blow up the clubhouse because he knows Cobra is the only one who can ruin his chance at intercepting the mobster.”

“Clearly, we have to go after this guy,” I say, glancing around the table. “Even if he didn’t blow up the clubhouse, we need to end this prick for Cobra.”

And for Ally.

But I leave that part out.

“What about Alexandria? Doesn’t she deserve revenge?” Rick asks all of us.

“Of course she does,” I answer automatically.

“Which brings us back to the other three girls,” Stryker says, pinning his cold eyes onto me. “You’re right, I walked away from Albany and never gave Ally a second thought. Fast forward three years later, the woman I fall in love with is raped by men hired by the same cocksucker who terrorized Ally. I don’t know if its karma or not, but I can’t ignore this shit anymore. If there are three other women out there, alive and suffering, I won’t turn my back on them.”

I hadn’t thought about that. I momentarily forgot that Gina was a victim in all this shit too, and as Stryker’s words sink in, the choice to go all in became clear as day.

“How do we find out if these girls are alive?” Jack asks Rick.

“We establish a pattern through Alexandria. We need to know everything. Most importantly, we need to know how she wound up with Rush,” Rick instructs.

“That’s going to be a problem considering the douchebag is fertilizer now,” I point out.

“I’ll try to talk to Rush’s old lady, see if she’d be willing to meet with us. I bet she knows more than she’s willing to tell,” Bas offers.

“What about Ally?” Riggs asks. “Who knows better than her?”

“She’s not ready to talk,” Jack says.

“In the meantime, I’ll try to get a hit on where Yankovich is now. But you might want to get Rocco on the horn considering he’s the one who got the intel on the first shipment,” Rick suggests.

“Fuck me,” Jack mutters. “So much for not getting in bed with the mob.”

A few more orders are tossed around the table before Jack adjourns the meeting and we all rise. Halfway to the car, his phone rings, and as I climb into the truck processing all this shit, he takes the call. Wondering if now is a good time to tell him to drop me off at the motel, he slides in beside me and punches the steering wheel.

I’m guessing not.

“Fucking pigs,” he growls, turning the key in the ignition. “I’m on my way,” he says before disconnecting the call and flinging the phone into the console.

“What is it?” I ask, knowing the moment the question leaves my lips I’m setting myself up for more fucking chaos.

“The cops are at the house.”

“Of course they are,” I retort. “What’s it this time? Unpaid parking tickets?”

“No, they want to talk Ally.”

In a flash, everything changes. I no longer care about my lack of sleep or the shit storm swirling around the club. I forget about Yankovich, about the plan to uncover what happened to the three missing girls…I forget it all as anger boils in my veins. The need to protect, to fix and to serve washes over me just as I expected it would. I tell myself it’s not about Ally, that I’d be pissed if they were sniffing around any other helpless girl.

Facts are facts.

I may not want to admit it, but it’s a hundred percent about Ally.

It’s been about her since I saw those articles, since I pieced together who she was.

The cops failed her and now they want to cover their asses. They want to take charge and bring the glory of her rescue to the newspapers. To them she isn’t a girl who lost years of her life, she’s a fucking headline, a ticket to a promotion.

A fucking medal they don’t deserve.

Fuck that.

As Jack pulls up to his house, I reach for the door and glare at the blue and whites sitting on his stoop. Taking long strides up the walkway, I tune out Reina as she explains Ally isn’t there, and she’s in no condition to be questioned.

“Hey fuckers,” I greet, drawing their attention away from Jack’s wife.

“Deuce,” Jack warns.

Ignoring him, I step toward the cops and cross my arms against my chest as I glare at them.

“You got questions?”

“What’s it to you?” one cop asks.

“Nothing at all, but if you need something to put down on paper, I’m all you got because you’re not going near her.”

“You’re interfering with police business,” his partner warns.

“She wasn’t police business when you bastards gave up on her and she ain’t your business now. You got ten seconds to take me down to the station and ask me whatever you want, after that, you’re fucked.”

“You’re the guy that was taken with the baby, right?”

“Yep, that’s me. I’m also the guy who discovered the girl you gave up on. So, what’s it going to be, officer? You going to go back to your captain holding your dicks in your hands or are you going to bring me in?”

The wind changes and the devil whispers in my ear, warning me I’m treading into dangerous waters. Never one to yield to caution, I follow the cops to their patrol car and seal my fate, choosing to sink and allowing Ally a chance to swim.

Drown baby, drown.