Chapter 16

People say that love is the best feeling, but I think finding a toilet when you have diarrhea is better.

-E-card

Wolf

My heart was in my throat.

As I made my way to the last room in my house, I knew it was futile. She was gone.

I looked down at Mark accusingly.

“You let her leave you?” I asked.

Mark showed me his teeth, and I growled.

“Fuck!” I yelled,

Then a thought occurred to me.

Although I’d sent her a text message to ride with Griffin to my place, maybe she missed the memo.

Maybe they were still there.

Maybe.

The drive to the office was one of blinding worry, and it only multiplied when I got to the office and found it empty as well.

“Fuck!” I yelled.

“She’s gone,” Alison said from behind me.

I whirled around and stared at her.

“What?” I asked, the calm in my voice deceptive.

I was about as far from calm as I could get.

“Gone.”

“What?” I asked, my belly tightening into a painful knot.

“I’m sorry,” Alison said. “But it had to be done.”

“What do you mean it had to be done?” I barked. “She has a fucking man out there trying his best to make my life, and hers, a living hell. And after what happened today, I wouldn’t put it past Agent Fry to start stooping to lower levels. Such as `killing her` lower levels. She can’t survive out there on her own!”

Alison’s head turned.

“She left her dog here. A dog that she loves with all her heart,” Alison started.

I blinked. That was news.

“You had her work for you,” Alison said, reading my surprise.

I nodded, still not comprehending where exactly she was going with this.

“You had her file in your files,” she said with more emphasis.

I shook my head.

“Just tell him, Dove,” Peek said walking up behind Alison. His Irish lilt was back in his voice, full force. “It’s not like you to let him squirm like this.”

Alison smiled at her husband and then turned back to me.

“The file you had on her, Wolf,” Alison finally said. “You made a file on her and then left it on your desk for her to file. Which, might I add, is pretty stupid of you if you wanted her to stay.”

My brows furrowed. “What are you talking about?”

“Awwww, fuck,” Griffin said, sounding downright contrite. “That was me.”

“What was you?” I asked, turning slightly so I could keep him and Alison in my sight.

“That was me who put the file there. However, in my defense, I didn’t know what was in the file. I just put it there along with about ten other files that came from the interoffice mail,” Griffin replied. “Got a shipment in last Tuesday, and I was in a hurry and put them on your desk instead of mine because yours was closer. That was the day Lenore had some perv in her store jacking off in the middle of the aisle.”

I closed my eyes and thought back to that night, remembering it vividly because I’d had to come back into town with Nathan and taken Griffin to the hospital because he needed a tetanus shot and a few stitches since the creep had bit him before Griffin had taken him down with a right hook to his face.

“Why’d we get a file in on Raven?” I asked, starting to pace our small office.

“I can answer that,” a deep voice that I didn’t recognize said from the door that led to Mig’s part of the office.

My head snapped around and a gun was suddenly in my hand, pointing at the chest of the stranger who I’d seen standing at Agent Josh Fry’s side earlier in the day.

A man I’d just gotten a dossier on from Travis.

“What the fuck?” Griffin barked.

I chanced a glance over at him to see that he too had his firearm out and pointed at the newcomer.

The newcomer, however, wasn’t fazed by having five guns pointed at him.

Hell, even Alison had hers out.

“I had the file sent over to you, but I had no clue that it was going to work against my favor, rather than with it,” the man said dryly. “I was hoping to give you her information and entice you back to her, not cause her to run away from you.”

My brows rose.

“What do you happen to know about all of this, Raphael?” I asked, showing him a little bit of my hand, letting him know I wasn’t completely clueless.

Raphael’s grin flashed before he walked further into the room.

“I have a vested interest in the well-being of my sister.” Raphael took a seat at my desk and waited.

It didn’t take long.

Alison and I both exploded at once.

But it was Griffin’s outburst that surprised me the most.

“What the fuck do you mean, sister?” Griffin asked. “From what I’ve seen, Raven was alone. She didn’t have one single person at her back other than this fucking club. So, where have you been, motherfucker?”

My sentiments exactly.

“I’m too far undercover – and have been since I found out about her – that I could only do so much. Basically, just watch and try to take care of her from afar,” Raphael said, sounding strained and a little bit sad.

I shook my head.

“Well, right now I’m worried about finding Raven before she gets hurt,” I said, my hands fisting.

“She’s fine,” Alison and Raphael said at the same time.

My brows rose.

“How?” I asked.

“I have Core on her,” Alison said at the same time that Raphael said, “I have a man on her.”

“And what exactly is your role in all this?” I asked, stopping at the corner of the room to lean one shoulder on the wall.

My stance said ‘calm’ but I was feeling anything but. I was feeling all kinds of things right then.

Anger that Raven left. Disappointment that she didn’t talk to me before she left.

I thought I’d shared my feelings with her. I thought she understood the connection.

Now I come to find out that the connection we were feeling wasn’t as tight as I thought it was.

The final emotion I was feeling was fear.

Fear that this whole thing was going to blow up in my face. Fear that something would happen to Raven. Fear that my son would lose a father for the second time in his tiny life.

“My role is to investigate Agent Fry,” Raphael said immediately. “I learned that he seems to have a little unhealthy obsession with my sister, and I don’t really like it.”

“So you wormed yourself into this investigation?” Griffin challenged him.

Peek snorted.

“Precisely.”

I sighed.

“How about you tell us what the fuck is going on, and why Agent Fry has a hard on for us, and we’ll figure something out from there,” I offered through clenched teeth, already fucking tired of all of the bullshit.

Raphael leaned his shoulder against the door and scrubbed a hand down his face.

“I started this internal investigation into Fry about eight months ago when there were only hunches on my bosses’ parts that there was something more going on than what was on the surface,” he explained. “Eight fucking months later, and I’m still stuck in this hellhole trying to drag myself out. Every time I get close to getting out and nailing the bastard, he miraculously shrugs off all possible charges or evidence is lost, and I’m pulled back in. Of course, learning that they had my sister didn’t help; there was no way I was getting out while she was still in. Found out they had her in the first place by accident. They didn’t know that I was undercover or her brother, but they knew I didn’t like that whole kidnapping situation and what was going on with July and Raven. To put the cherry on the cake, they had her under Jensen mother fucking Gordon’s thumb. Pretty much forcing my hand and making me work alone on trying to free them both.”

“I found out what he was doing to her and was only hours from getting her out myself. Y’all found her faster than I could,” he paused. “Been watching you ever since. Took leave from my job when they told me that the budget for this investigation had been depleted and wasn’t being replenished, to drop the investigation.”

“So now what?” I asked. “You’re a vigilante?”

“You could say that,” he said. “I’m on medical leave for a gunshot injury that’s being persnickety.” He grinned devilishly. “I have a feeling it’s about to heal up nicely within the next couple of weeks. I’ll be back on the job within the next month.”

“Goddammit,” I growled. “This is so fucked up. I’m still not sure what the fuck I did to warrant him going out of his way to fuck with me.”

“He goes to a lot of trouble to make sure the guys he has working for him won’t leave. Blackmail, finding exactly what it takes to keep them where he wants to be, and he’s got them for good until he no longer needs them,” he grinned. “And you single-handedly took down two out of three of them and with them went the entire Southern half of his merchandise acquisition operation.

I crossed my arms.

“That was his own fucking fault.”

Raphael grinned, but that grin quickly disappeared moments later.

“He was just playing with you,” he said. “He’s been too busy trying to get his operation back up and running. You were a toy for him to play with, but one he definitely planned on taking care of at some point. However, after what you did to him today, as well as what you did to the man we found in the river—luckily alive—it means he’ll be pulling you off the back burner.”

He stood up and stared at me, giving me the full effect of his eyes.

“And I’m here to make sure you have every fucking tool in my arsenal to make sure this fucker pays.” His eyes went to the dog at my feet. “Why isn’t Marky Mark with my sister?”

I raised an eyebrow at him.

“You.”

“Me?”

I nodded in confirmation. “You.”

He sighed.

“He’s fully trained,” Raphael said. “Trained him myself.”

I nodded again. “I figured that. He’s fucking phenomenal.”

Raphael grinned. “I know that.”

“Wait,” Alison asked. “There are so many misunderstandings here. Raven told me you kept giving the dog looks as if you knew the dog’s potential.”

“I did know his potential,” I said. “It’s not hard to understand what he does when I walk into the room and see him clock me the moment I step foot inside. He moves with her, too. She moves left, he moves left with her, positioning himself so that he’s between her and any potential harm.”

Alison’s eyes widened.

“That’s so cool,” she looked down at the dog. “He looks so normal.”

Raphael snorted and whistled.

The dog looked up at him but didn’t move from my feet.

Although Raphael raised him and trained him, he wasn’t his dog anymore. He was Raven’s. Raven had his loyalty and his heart, and by extension through her, so did I. He had more of a connection to me than he did to Raphael anymore.

I grinned and gave a raised eyebrow to the surprised look on Raphael’s face.

“I like that,” he said, knowing instantly what was going on.

“I do too,” I agreed.

“So, where is she?” Griffin asked. “My wife is asking for cheesecake. Fucking pregnancy hormones are practically ripping my money from my wallet as fast as it gets there.”

“You need to give her time to straighten her head out. She’ll come back when she cools down,” Raphael offered his two cents. “I know exactly where she is. She’s safe.”

“Uhh, I hate to say this, but I don’t agree with him,” Alison said. “I agreed that she needed to leave, but I didn’t agree that you shouldn’t follow. She deserves to be chased. She needs someone to go after her, no matter how many times she leaves. She’s never had someone do that for her before.”

Pain flashed across Raphael’s face—there and gone within a few milliseconds.

I decided to ignore him.

I had things to do, and he wasn’t one of them.

Heading to my desk, I pocketed my phone, keys, and wallet.

“Griffin, will you get one of the boys to watch over my kid while I’m gone? And someone watch Mark?” I asked. “I should be back by midafternoon tomorrow.”

Griffin nodded, saluting me half-assed before picking up his phone and making a call, I assumed to the cops that were in the district where Nathan was with his grandmother.

I started across the room but stopped.

Before I left to find my wayward woman, I needed to address something first, which was why I stopped in front of Peek.

“We’re going to have a talk about this,” I hissed.

Peek nodded in understanding.

“It was me…” Peek held his hand up and stopped Alison’s apology.

“You came between one of our members and his woman, Alison. I know you meant well, but this isn’t the time to defend yourself,” Peek said, his Irish brogue thick and brooking no room for argument.

Alison’s lips tightened. “Fine.”

With that, I left, heading straight to my bike, stopping only for a few minutes to give Core a call to make sure I knew where she was headed.

I was right. The woman was too sentimental.