“Where is she, man?” I asked Optimus, my body and mind feeling absolutely defeated. She’d been gone longer than twenty-four hours and I was about to lose my shit.

I hadn’t slept last night, I was currently running on fucking adrenaline, and I had my computer set up running facial recognition software that Judge had sent me late last night throughout the web.

Morris and Chapman had tried to stall as long as possible, but as it turned out, Peter had been on their surveillance list for a couple of weeks now, with him being the creator of this so-called drug they were looking to eradicate.

It hadn’t taken long for them to pull up the pictures of his house from the day before his murder and realize that I was, in fact, telling the truth, the doorknobs had been switched out.

The rest of the evidence pointed toward Eric Deanwell, and with Sugar now missing, I could see just how stupid they felt, obviously having interviewed him already.

Good, I hope they spent time chasing their tails or hiding their heads with embarrassment. Because if I got ahold of him first, I was gonna kill him.

It was now just after midday, and I still had nothing. Sugar’s cell had been tossed just outside of Athens, and since then, we had no fucking idea where Eric had taken her. At this stage, she could be halfway around the fucking world, and we would have no goddamn clue.

“Calm down,” Optimus said sternly. “We’ll fucking find her, I promise you. We’ve got brothers spread out across the state, Kit has done the same with his boys. If she’s close by, we’ll be able to get someone to her within half an hour.”

I clenched my teeth.

Both Op and Kit had stretched a handful of brothers out across the state and into any major cities or towns. It was a risk we had to take, my gut telling me that she was still close by, that he wouldn’t have tried to fly with her. That, and during church last night, we’d managed to put together some of the pieces of the puzzle. Eric has been on the club’s ass for too long, his vendetta against us becoming quite obvious. He wanted us destroyed and torn to shreds, but the more he came at us, the stronger we fucking got. He tried to take down the entire club, but we wouldn’t let him, each of our members was willing to step up every damn time and take one for the team just so the club would survive.

He underestimated us.

Unfortunately, we’d underestimated him too.

There was a reason he wanted to take the club down, and it had to be simply because he needed free reign of where we held strong.

I was gonna kill the mother-fucker.

I shook my head. “She’s everything, man.”

Optimus looked me directly in the eye. “I get it.”

Thank God Harlyn wasn’t around, because if I saw that kid right now, I might just fucking break, knowing that I hadn’t done what I should have and protected her mom. She’d stayed with my sister last night, and she was going to pick her up after school too. Optimus worried about her asking questions, wondering where Sugar was since she’d been staying at the club recently.

I picked up my hat and scratched at my head. I needed to go have a shower or some shit, try and wake my body up, make sure I was alert. The thought of food made me feel physically ill, so I hadn’t eaten. I wanted my fucking woman back, I knew she’d be freaking out, possibly having an attack and I couldn’t fucking be there for her.

My heart ached, and I palmed my chest. “I never fucking thought I could find someone who I felt…” I struggled to find the words. “…who I just fucking felt. Who understood me, my life, who I was? Never thought I’d find someone who I was this scared of fucking losing. That I felt like I was missing something.”

The last few months had been everything but smooth sailing for us, but we fought through and no matter fucking what happened, we always came back together. Like two damn magnets that couldn’t be kept apart.

“When you finally realize, it hits you like a ton of fucking bricks, I’ll tell you that,” Blizzard agreed.

He and Rose had their own issues. She’d hurt the club, hurt everyone that Blizzard had cared for, but essentially that wasn’t her. She’d been lied to and manipulated. It still took Blizzard a long time to trust her, though. And when she was in danger, he realized just what it was that he could lose.

“Wrench!” Hadley called from the top of the staircase with Macy on her hip. I jogged over and looked up at her. “Your computer is making crazy sounds!”

I raced up the stairs, Hadley just managing to leap out of the way as I plowed past her, Macy giggling loudly.

I could hear the dinging as I reached my doorway and flung my computer chair out of the way as I bent over the desk, examining the screen.

“What’s that mean?” Optimus asked, jogging in after me with Blizzard hot on his tail.

I stared at it with my eyes wide, looking at a picture of her, splayed across a bed, her eyes closed. She was clearly positioned provocatively, but I couldn’t tell if she was awake or just refusing to look at the camera.

The one thing I knew for sure.

She was still alive, and she was still in the state.

“Please don’t tell me that’s the website I think it is,” Optimus said, his voice heavy with dread.

My head hung. “Yup. And she was sold thirty minutes ago.”

It was a trafficking site. I couldn’t even fucking believe that these things were still around, but I knew that the FBI monitored them every day, looking for missing girls and hoping to find clues. Ones where exchanges would go down. Unfortunately, they were often just up for a few weeks until they were taken down, and new ones started and circulated through the community trying to throw police off.

“Birmingham,” I read aloud, before turning to Op. “Do we have a man in Birmingham?”

“That’s where Leo is,” Hadley said, poking her head in the door.

Op nodded and pulled out his cell phone, ready to make as many calls as possible to get every man to that city.

“How the fuck do we figure out where she is? That city is huge,” Blizzard groaned, pacing the room.

My brain was running wild. The image of Sugar lying across the bed in her underwear, staring at me from the computer screen, with the large red letters screaming SOLD in my face.

“Image search hotel rooms in the city. See if you can find one that looks like that room she’s in,” Hadley said, speaking up again.

Her words lit a fire under my ass, and I looked over my shoulder at her. “If you weren’t my brother’s woman, I would kiss the shit out of you right now,” I told her with a grin.

She rolled her eyes. “You forget, I lived with FBI agents for years. I know all their tricks.” She gave me a wink and walked off down the hallway.

I quickly brought up an image search of hotels in Birmingham, Alabama. Blizzard and I scanned through them, while Optimus was in the background, ordering as many brothers as humanly possible to get there now.

“There,” Blizzard yelled in my ear, pointing at the screen. I pulled up the picture of Sugar and put them side by side. They were identical. I clicked on the image.

“Grand Regency Hotel,” I read aloud, then looked over at Optimus who was instantly typing out a message on his phone. When he looked up, he narrowed his eyes at me.

“I’ve got Leo heading there now. What the fuck are you waiting for?”

I needed to hear the words, but as soon as someone had validated it, I was racing out the fucking door and heading for my bike with my brothers right behind me.

Like they always were.

 

 

“You want to play with me, my little addict?”

I couldn’t move, I couldn’t escape him. I felt his hand brushing my hair back from my face, his touch cool against my hot skin. I almost enjoyed it.

No! He’s the enemy. He did this to you.

That voice was back, screaming at me from somewhere in my head. All I knew was that I felt good. The comedowns, they were worse than before. I thought I was strong enough to fight them, to get through, but as soon as the withdrawals came, he slipped another pill through my lips. And I stopped fighting.

“Did I ever tell you that ‘Manic’ never actually cured your symptoms? When you would come down it would intensify them, make you feel like you needed more pills.”

He laughed. It sounded far away, but I could sense him next to me. See his outline as he looked over me, feel his lips brush my forehead.

His words really meant nothing, I was numb, in a state of indifference and peace.

I knew they were important, but I just couldn’t figure out why.

“I got a call from your new owner,” he murmured in my ear. “He’ll be here soon to see you.”

I heard what he said.

But I didn’t care.

I couldn’t feel anything.

I didn’t want to feel anything.

“If you see my wife, tell her I said hi.”

I want to be numb.