After holding Sadie and letting her cry on my shoulder, I leave her with Lia and the girls to go and speak with JJ. There’s shit we need to sort out, and even though Sadie is going to be here as a part of my life, I can’t shirk my responsibilities, nor would she want me to.

“Is she okay?” JJ asks, looking up from the desk in his office as I walk in.

“Yeah, she’s okay.”

“Fuck, I would have loved to have put a couple of bullets in that man’s skull. What a fucking asshole,” he hisses through his teeth, shaking his head. “I was ready to cut the fucker’s throat if he had put his hand on her one more time. I don’t fucking like him.”

“You and me both.” I clench my jaw, tension radiating through me at the mere thought of him.

“Who the fuck is he anyway? What do you know about him?”

“Not enough. She said he’s a businessman. Mergers and acquisitions or some shit.”

“And he has a bodyguard for that?”

“Apparently.” I raise my brows.

“I don’t buy it, Ram.”

“Me either.” I drop into the seat opposite his desk. “But I don’t know if we should be digging deeper or leaving well alone. We’ve got enough shit to deal with at the moment. Ruck, Dev…”

“He came here, Ram. How the fuck did he know where to find her—where to find us?”

“Maybe Sadie told him before?”

“We took a hit this weekend. Dev and Ruck are out of action, and if he knows where to find us, where to find her, I want to know everything about him and if he’s a threat to us or not.”

“Fine, I’ll do a little digging …”

“Okay.” He nods.

“I’m gonna dig up the fucker’s office in his mansion in the hills. There’s a reason he keeps the door locked, and I wanna know what it is.”

“You know your way around his house?”

“Yeah, pretty much. He was cagey as fuck when he found me trying to get into his office when I was there with Sadie. Had his bodyguard pull his fucking gun on me.”

“I’m in.” He stands from behind his desk and grins. “Send Fuzz up there to watch the joint. When he leaves, we’ll go and see what we can find. She got a key?”

“No. Fucking asshole literally left her with nothing.”

“Not a problem. There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” He grins wickedly, and I get a ball of excitement in my belly at the thought of fucking around with his place when he’s not there.

We pull up the gravel drive, right next to the Bentley with the flat tire.

“You sure he’s not here?” Tex asks, jumping out of the truck.

I laugh, glancing at the tire and feeling smug. “Yeah,” I point.

“Know anything about that?” JJ asks with a knowing grin.

“Might do, might not.” I wink, and stride up to the front door, banging as hard as I can. If Fuzz got it wrong, not only will his balls be on a plate later today, but Vaughn will be receiving unwanted visitors. I listen closely for any noise that might indicate there’s someone inside, but there’s nothing. Fuzz was sure Vaughn had left with, in his own words, a stocky, bald, inked gorilla, and I knew that immediately meant Nate. As far as I knew, there was no one else that lived here. Sadie never mentioned any other names in conversation, and I would have remembered any man that she named. Jealousy bit me right in the jugular each time she affectionately referred to any man that was, or had been in her life.

“Any cameras around here?” JJ glances up to the corners of the house and garage.

“Not that I know of. There may be surveillance in the house, but Sadie never turned off an alarm or mentioned it when we were here last.”

“Is there an easy way in?” JJ asks.

“Yeah,” Tex booms from behind us, carrying a heavy battering ram. “My trusty Betty. She’ll get us in anywhere.” He steps up to the door, swings the battering ram back, and punches the door with a smack. The wood splinters, but it doesn’t give way on the first attempt. Two more assaults and it swings open with a bang.

Tex opens his palm and gestures to the doorway. “After you, ladies.” He smirks.

“Thanks, Tex, my man.” I clap a hand on his shoulder as I lead the way into the house.

“Fuck me, what an ostentatious asshole,” JJ says, shaking his head.

“You know big words like that, Prez?”

“I’ll show you a big fucking word in a minute—watch your mouth,” he warns playfully.

Tex and I exchange a childish giggle, forgetting where we are for a minute. It’s not very often we do this kind of thing without Ruck, and it feels like we’re missing a corner. But I’m buzzing. The anticipation works through every inch of my nerves, and it makes me realize how heavy the last few weeks have been. I don’t know what we expect to find. Part of me hopes we find nothing. We don’t need any more shit at the moment. But I’d love to find some dirt on this guy. Some kind of blackmail material to keep him off our backs, or even something that would give me good reason to put him in the ground. I don’t care what it takes to keep Sadie safe and happy. I’ll do it.

“What are we looking for?” Tex asks.

“I don’t know, Tex. Anything that doesn’t sit right with you. I had a pretty good look around last time I was here, but I didn’t get into his bedroom or the office, so we might as well start there. You still got Betty?”

“Yeah, bro.” He holds the damn piece of metal in his arms, tapping her affectionately.

“What’s in here?” JJ rattles a door underneath the stairs, but it doesn’t open.

“Dunno. Coat closet or something?” I shrug. “Office is this way.”

I lead them upstairs. “There’s his office. His bedroom is down the hall, I think, and Sadie’s is opposite his, just up the half flight of stairs.”

“Let’s check his bedroom, then come back to the office,” JJ says, and Tex and I follow. “Fuzz still covering the road watch?”

“Yep,” says Tex. “Roads in and out are both covered. No one is coming past this way undetected.”

“You guys check in there. I won’t be a minute.” I leave them at the door to Vaughn’s bedroom. It’s unlocked and wide open, so I can’t see us finding anything of importance in there. I take the steps up to Sadie’s room two at a time and push open the door. It’s the same as when we left it last time. I move quickly over to the dresser, glancing out of the window as I go, checking our safety as a matter of habit. When you live a life like we do, caution and awareness come as second nature.

“What’s that?” JJ asks as I pick up the silver picture frame on the dresser.

“It’s—”

“Annie,” he says quietly over my shoulder, reaching forward and taking the frame from my fingers. “She looks just as I remember her. Who’s the kid?” He studies the picture intently, stroking his thumb back and forth over the smooth edge.

“Sadie’s brother.”

“She has a bro—”

“Look, man. Now’s not the time or the place.” I gesture around the room, reminding him where we are. “I know this is the only thing Sadie would really like to have with her.” I take it from his hands, and he nods as I tuck it into the inside pocket of my cut. “Anything in the bedroom?”

“No,” he snaps, pulling himself back together and finding his focus. “Tex is just having a little fun in there.”

“Really?” I laugh.

“You know Tex, he’s like a kid in a candy store when you give him shit to wreck.”

“Tex,” I call out as we stride back down the stairs. “You and Betty are needed.” I jerk my head in the direction of the office, and he nods in acknowledgment, before pulling one more drawer out and throwing the contents around the room. Then he grabs Betty up off the floor and strides past us with a huge grin plastered across his face.

The office door isn’t as easy to bust open as the front door. It has several deadbolts, but despite being a deterrent for most petty criminals or thieves that might break in, it’s no match for someone like Tex, who, once he gets the bit between his teeth, doesn’t give up.

With one final huge smash, the door gives way, and Tex stumbles over the threshold with the sheer force he had put behind it.

“Well, fuck me,” JJ muses as he walks right in.

The room is floor to ceiling with books. Shelves line every wall. Every spare space in the room is filled with books of every size, color, and description. There is an old mahogany desk in the center of the room, and a large, red leather wingback chair.

I run my finger over the shelves. “Not a speck of dust,” I murmur to myself. “Not a thing out of place.” I slide the letter opener along the shiny wooden surface and spin it so that it’s no longer perpendicular to everything else on his desk. The letter tray, the blank, crisp white notepad, the three black Mont Blanc pens all lined neatly in a row. “This guy is a neat freak.”

“He’s a freak, alright. Who lives like this? No woman, no dust, no life.” Tex laughs, flicking through one of the books and putting it back upside down. “What are we looking for?”

“Anything that doesn’t seem right,” JJ muses, pulling one of the drawers open at the desk.

“None of this feels right.” I move around the room, looking for something to jump out at me. “I’m half expecting Tex to pull a book off the shelf and a secret passageway to open in the wall.”

“Hey.” Tex’s eyes light up. “Don’t knock it.” He starts to flip books off the shelf with his finger, letting them drop to the floor. I let him continue, not fooled by this clean, straight appearance one little bit. There may not be a secret passageway hidden behind all these books, but that fucker is hiding behind something.

“You got anything there?” I ask JJ, before pulling on the handle of a drawer JJ hasn’t tried yet. We spend a couple of minutes flicking through papers and finding nothing at all.

“You still with us Tex,” JJ calls out, laughing to himself.

“Yeah.” He sighs. “I don’t think we’re gonna find Narnia here, boys.”

“Wait,” I say, pulling up the wastepaper bin from under the desk. There’s one small crumpled paper ball.

“What is it?” JJ asks, looking over my shoulder.

“Salinas 5.27 9.04. What the fuck does that even mean?”

“I don’t know, man.” JJ frowns, and his lips pull together in a hard line. “But whatever is going down in Salinas, we need to figure it out and be there.”

“There has to be more in here.” I pull out all the desk drawers, dumping them and the contents on the deep pile carpet and scattering papers everywhere while I scan them for something, anything that would tell me what the fuck is up with this asshole. “He does mergers for fuck’s sake. He should have filing cabinets and paperwork coming out of every wall, but he has first edition classics and encyclopedias. I don’t fucking get it!” I yell.

“Maybe he has another office?” Tex offers.

“Yeah, maybe. Check all the rooms, all the doors. Any that are locked, smash the fuckers in. I want this place torn apart.”

“No.” JJ stops me with a hand on my chest. “If he’s up to something, we’ll find out about it, okay? We need some small details from Sadie, and I can get people working around the clock. We have contacts, Ramsey. Let’s use them, yeah?”

“But—”

“There’s nothing here but this.” He snatches the screwed up paper from my hands and holds it up between us. “This could mean anything or nothing at all. I hate the thought of this man being in Sadie’s life as much as you do, but I’m not wasting much more time and energy on him when we have other, more important things to concentrate on closer to home, hear me?” He pats my chest, and I nod. He’s right. I wanted to find something badly. I wanted to find a reason to end him and push him out of Sadie’s life for good. But that could end up hurting her, and that’s not something I want to do. We do have far more important things going on. Ruck. Dev. And The Wolves to concentrate on.

“Okay?” he asks, searching my eyes.

“Okay.” I nod.

“Time, Ram. We just need to give it time. If he’s wearing a disguise, he can’t hide behind it forever.”