Royal paced back and forth in the clubhouse. April arrived at work at eight, and it was now 8:15, and he still hadn’t received the email from her. This was by far the worst part of a stalk, the waiting.
He’d spent Saturday night at Connie’s house, sleeping on the couch, then taken Katrina to the zoo on Sunday after all, just to take his mind off Stella. He’d tried to remain upbeat and act like he didn’t have a care in the world, but Katrina was a perceptive little girl and had asked him why he was sad as they walked back to Connie’s car. He’d thought about his answer a moment then decided to tell her the truth.
“I miss your Mommy.”
“You said you were going to go get her.”
“That’s right, I did. And I will. Tomorrow.”
“Will I see her tomorrow, too?”
“I hope so, squirt. I hope so.”
He’d expected to hear a ransom demand the entire day, but no call ever came, and that worried him most of all. He’d spent another night on Connie’s couch. With no ransom demand, he was probably being overly cautious, but he was taking no chances.
When Hot Rod arrived he’d belted out of there to meet with his brothers. The recovery team was locked and loaded. All they needed now was a location.
“You don’t suppose she went with him on her own, do you?” Goon asked.
“No way in hell,” Royal said firmly. “She might dump me, but she wouldn’t leave Katrina.”
Hammer nodded. “When do you expect the email from the phone company?”
“I expected to have it already.”
“Do you suppose something went wrong?” Goon asked.
“How the fuck should I know?” Royal snarled, then took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Sorry, brother. It’s not your fault.”
Hammer rose and put a hand on Royal’s shoulder. “You need to hold it together, for Stella. You need to be frosty, okay? I know you’re upset. Hell, I’m pissed off and it’s not even my old lady. But you need to bury that shit deep for now. You’re the best tracker in the business. We’ll get her back, but only if think with,” he said, tapping Royal on the temple, “and not with,” he continued, tapping him on the chest.
“I know,” Royal sighed, trying to let go of his fear, anger and frustrations. “But if he hurts her—”
“Then I’ll hold him while you gut him,” Hammer said, finishing his sentence.
Royal’s phone chirred out the arrival of the email. He pulled his phone and opened the email from April. He quickly scrolled through the addresses. “High Point, North Carolina. I’ll figure out exactly where once we get there.”
The brothers mounted up, the four Harley’s rumbling to life before roaring out of the clubhouse parking lot on a wave of thunder.
***
They stopped in Thomasville for gas, the bikes running on fumes. As Royal fueled his thirsty hog, he checked his phone. “Tony called,” he said, looking at his brothers. “We need to find a quiet place.”
“How about that Denny’s on the other side of the interstate?” Blade suggested. “They shouldn’t be busy now.”
“Let’s do it.”
They motored to the Denny’s, parking in the far back of the lot, well away from prying ears. Royal touched his phone to dial the missed call, placing it on speaker so Blade, Goon and Hammer could hear.
“Stella for the combination,” Tony said.
“Let me speak to her.”
“Gabriel!” Stella’s voice came over the connection.
“Are you okay? Has he hurt you?”
“I’m okay. All he wants is the combination to the safe and for you to let him leave.”
“Where are you?”
“That’s enough,” Tony’s voice said. “So you heard the deal. Give me the combination to the safe and I’ll tell you where you can find her.”
“Okay,” Royal said. “Tell me where you are. I’ll meet you, give you the combination, and I’ll take Stella.”
Tony chuckled. “You must be insane! You could give me any set of numbers. How would I know until I tried them?”
“Fine. We’ll meet at the safe. Once it’s open, I’ll take Stella.”
“Right. Once you know where the money is, you’ll just let me leave? This is the way it’s going to go down. You’re going to tell me right now what the combination is. If the door opens, I’ll call you back and tell you where I left her. Simple as that.”
“How do I know you can trust you?”
“I don’t see that you have any choice.”
Royal thought a moment. He was boxed in. “I’ll give you the combination, but it has to be in person or not at all.”
“No. Give me the—”
Royal ended the call with a stab of the button. He was risking Stella’s life on the bet Tony wouldn’t throw away his only bargain chip. “We need to use the Denny’s Wi-Fi. I want you three to get on the phones and call every rental place in central North Carolina and reserve every engine hoist you can find. All of them, for the next week. Let’s tie him to this place. Since he came back here, I’m guessing the safe is here, somewhere. While you do that, I’ll narrow down the area.”
“I don’t understand why he hasn’t cut the damn thing open,” Goon said as they walked toward the restaurant.
“Because it’s not that easy,” Hammer explained. “When we bought the new safe I remember they told us it takes days to cut into a modern safe. It has material inside the shell to destroy a saw blade in seconds, and a layer of stuff that fills a room with smoke if you use a torch. I bet the old safe does, too. If it were easy to break into, they wouldn’t call it a safe.”
***
“I told you he wouldn’t just give you the combination!” Stella snapped. “He’s not as stupid as you think.”
“Shut up and let me think!”
She glared at him. She’d gotten over her initial fright when he hadn’t hurt, or threatened to hurt, her. “Let me go, Tony. Tell me where the safe is and let me go. I’ll convince them to not hunt you down. It’s your only option.”
“I’m not giving up the money! I’ve come too far for that.”
“I keep telling you, there isn’t that much money in there. Gabriel told me. I don’t care what you thought you saw, there’s only a hundred thousand in the safe, not a million!”
“Maybe it isn’t a million, but it was a lot of cash. More than a hundred thousand, for sure.”
She glared at him again. They had been around and around this topic. Tony couldn’t give up the idea there was close to a million dollars available for the taking.
“You’re being stupid!”
“And you’re being a bitch!” He glared at her a moment then held out his phone to her. “You better convince him to give me the combination or I’m going to start taking it out of your ass.”
“So you’re a rapist in addition to being a thief and a kidnapper?”
Tony smiled at her but it didn’t touch his eyes, and her blood ran cold. “I’m not talking about rape, Stella. If he won’t give me the combination to the safe, you’re no good to me. I’d be better off on my own, and I won’t have to share the money with anyone.”
She swallowed hard. “You said you loved me.”
“I did, until you knifed me in the back over that fucking Gabriel. Now you’re nothing to me except a bargaining chip.” She took his phone and dialed Gabriel’s number. “Put it on speaker,” Tony ordered.
“Change your mind?” Gabriel said.
“Gabriel, it’s Stella. I’m here with Tony. He thinks there’s a million dollars in the safe, and he said if you don’t give him the combination he was going to start hurting me.”
“A million dollars? He’s crazy! I told you how much money was in there, didn’t you tell him?”
“I told him, but he doesn’t believe me.”
“Then he’s stupid and crazy! You hear that Tony? Stupid and crazy! That’s a bad combination, hoss. You better cut your losses now, while you still can. Let Stella go, tell me where the safe is, and I’ll guarantee your safe passage out of South Carolina.”
Stella saw Tony smile and her heart sank. They didn’t know where they were. “No deal,” Tony said.
“If you touch her, I’ll kill you. If you kill her, I’ll still kill you, but I’ll make you suffer. I’ll keep you alive for days, until you’re begging for me to kill you. Do you hear me, Tony? I’ll track you down and I…will…kill…you.”
Tony pulled his gun and pointed it at her head. “Get the combination.”
“Gabriel? He’s got a gun pointed at me. Please, just give him the combination.”
There was a long pause. “I’m not giving you the combination except in person,” he said then ended the call.
She stared at the phone for a moment, then handed it back to Tony as tears began to crawl down her cheeks. She meant nothing to him. All those times he said I love you and I’ll be there for you obviously didn’t amount to shit! Just like before, he chose himself over her and she was on her own.
She looked up at Tony and met his eyes. The thing she regretted most was not being able to tell Katrina goodbye and how much she loved her. “Please don’t kill me,” she begged. “I tried. You heard me. I really tried.”
He watched her a moment then lowered the weapon. If he killed her, he would have nothing. At least now he still had a chit he could play by dumping her somewhere and sending them after her while he made his escape. But first he had to get that fucking safe back in the truck.
He took his phone from her and called the rental lot he’d used before.
***
Royal sat, staring at his phone, the knuckles on his hand white as he tried to crush the phone in his grip.
“It was the only call,” Hammer said softly. “If you gave him the combination, there’s no guarantee he wouldn’t kill her anyway.”
“I promised her I wouldn’t hurt him, but I’m going to kill him. Slow.”
Hammer put his hand on Royal’s shoulder. “Get frosty.” He pointed at the laptop open on table. “Find him.”
Royal pulled the laptop in front of him and began to work. After ten minutes he pointed to the screen. “He’s here. There are one, three, five, six, motels together, and another one at the next exit. He’s here, in one of these, I would bet on it.”
“How far is that from here?” Blade asked.
Royal zoomed the map out and blinked in disbelief. “Ten minutes. Maybe less.”
Hammer started sliding out of the booth. “Let’s go, brothers. We’ve got some ass kicking to do.”
***
“Damnit!” Tony spat. That was the sixth place he’d tried without luck. The one place he knew where he could rent an engine hoist didn’t have one available, another location also had already rented theirs, and the other four didn’t even have one to rent.
Stella smiled to herself, delighting in the fact he was being frustrated. “Let it go, Tony. Tell me where you hid the safe, leave me my phone, and run. Because you haven’t hurt me I’ll try to convince them to let you go.”
“Fuck that. I’m not leaving without the money,” he said as he flipped through his phone, looking for another rental lot nearby.
She settled back into the chair and glared at him, trying again to develop a plan of escape. He wasn’t stupid and hadn’t given her even one opportunity.
He’d checked them in late Saturday night after he’d zip-tied her hands to the steering wheel and taken the keys to his truck. In their room, he’d unplugged the phone and kept the cord, and both Saturday and Sunday night, he’d dragged the mattress from his bed onto the floor front of the door so she couldn’t leave without waking him. Sunday he’d wanted to call Gabriel but her phone was dead and she claimed she couldn’t remember his number. After a half-dozen attempts that were either non-working or wrong, he’d given up trying. He’d dragged her all over hells half-acre Sunday, but they hadn’t been able to locate a charger for her phone until today.
She’d thought Gabriel would be tearing the state apart looking for her, but he wasn’t even in the right state, and it appeared he valued his club and the money more than her. She swallowed hard. Just when she thought she was ready to give him another chance, he pulled the rug from under her again. A tear began to run down her face and she wiped it away before Tony saw it. She wanted to believe Gabriel’s crass attitude was a ploy, but try as she might, she couldn’t figure out how not telling Tony the combination then hanging up was anything other than signing her death sentence.