The crews hit every one of Eddie’s clubs, offices, and known hangouts, with no sign of him and no help from anyone they talked to. They roughed up more than a few of the guys at the clubs who worked for him, and still no one was talking. It was getting dark and Gunner was getting more anxious by the minute. He knew Eddie and the freaks that worked for him. He didn’t want to imagine what Tamara was going through, if she was still alive.

The men all met at a bar in downtown San Antonio that evening. They discussed who they spoke to and what they’d found out, which was nothing. Every lead they had so far had come up empty. They were throwing around ideas when Randall’s phone rang. He looked at it, and Gunner could see the sadness in his eyes when he realized it wasn’t Tamara. Whatever else could be said about the man, he loved his daughter.

“Yeah, Swinger…how did things go in the Hill Country?” There was a pause while he listened to what his prez had to say and then he said, “We’ve been busting heads all day and none of these assholes are talking. This is my baby girl we’re talking about, Prez. If he hurt her…” His voice cracked and Gunner realized it was a lot harder to see a man like Randall in emotional pain than someone that wouldn’t have any qualms about showing it. He composed himself and then said, “Okay, thank you. I’ll keep you posted.” He ended the call and looked around the big table at the men that were all just as discouraged as he was. “Is the clubhouse okay?” he asked Miser, who had just spoken to one of the men there.

Miser nodded. “They’re keeping it on tight lockdown. There hasn’t been any sign of trouble.”

“Fucker thinks he can stay hidden, he’s got another thing coming.” Tommy grumbled as he pounded back a shot. “If he’s got any balls he won’t have them for long. I’m going to cut them off and…”

“We know what you want to do to him,” Randall said. “We all feel the same. Right now, what we need to do is keep a cool head.”

“How the fuck am I supposed to do that, Dad? She’s a part of me! How the fuck am I supposed to keep a cool head knowing that she’s somewhere out there being…”

“Don’t say it! She’s a part of me too. We’re going to find her and she’s going to be back to sassing us both by tomorrow.”

“How are we going to find her? Everyone we talk to is so fucking afraid of this piece of shit that even if they knew where he was, they wouldn’t tell us. They’d rather face our fucking wrath than his. What does that say for Tammy’s chances?” Tommy slammed another shot as Dax’s phone made a chirping noise. He pulled it out and looked at it and then up at Randall.

“We have a GPS location on Eddie’s phone.”

Randall was on his feet. “Where is he?”

“The phone is at a home in Alamo Heights.”

“Fuck! That’s like two miles from here! We’ve been running around looking for her all day and she was two miles away. Let’s ride!”

Everyone stood up, and Dax put his hand on Randall’s shoulder and said, “Wait a second, Randall. That house belongs to a retired city official. It’s alarmed to the teeth. If we go over there busting down doors…”

Randall shrugged Dax’s hand off his shoulder. “So what the fuck do you expect us to do? We should go over and ring the fucking doorbell and ask them if they might have my daughter tied up, beaten and…fuck! I’m going to get her!”

“My brother-in-law is sending over the floor plans to the house right now. Let’s at least have a look at them and get a plan in place before we bust in there, Randall, that’s all I’m saying. I get how emotional you are. If it was my family in there I don’t know what I’d do, but I know you don’t want to make things worse for your daughter.”

Gunner could feel the rage and anxiety bubbling up in his chest. It had been there all day, but every second that ticked by made it worse. Dax knew what he was doing, but Gunner knew Eddie. Eddie didn’t take people for ransom or blackmail. Eddie took people to prove one point only, and that was that he was the only one in control. He didn’t want the money back that the Head Hunters had taken the night of the fight. That was probably pocket change to him. What he wanted was to prove that nobody stole from Eddie Martini and got away with it. He planned to kill Tamara. Gunner knew that and it was eating away at his insides like a cancer.

“You okay, kid?” Dax asked him.

“Yeah,” Gunner lied. He didn’t want to do or say anything that would make Dax think he wasn’t up for this. When they found Eddie, he wanted to be there. If Randall and Tommy left any piece of him whole, Gunner wanted it.

Dax’s phone chirped again. He looked at it and said, “Okay, I’ve got the plans. It’s your call, Randall. Do you want to take a look at them or not?” Randall nodded. Tommy looked like he was about to explode, but one look from his father kept him from saying whatever he had opened his mouth to say.

“Hey, darlin’,” Dax called out to the cute little cocktail waitress. She put the tray of dirty glasses she was carrying down and hurried over. “I don’t suppose you have a laptop and a printer there in the back that we could borrow for a few minutes?”

“Um…” She looked over her shoulder at the bartender and back at Dax. “We’re not really supposed to let anyone other than employees in the back.”

“Well, you see, darlin’,” Dax said, making direct eye contact with her as he spoke. She seemed mesmerized by him, but Gunner had seen him have that effect on almost every woman since they’d met. “We’re from out of town and we are looking at buying a house for this man’s daughter. It’s a surprise, a wedding present.” The waitress looked at Randall, who was scowling, and quickly returned her attention to Dax. “Anyways, a friend of mine sent over the plans to one that I think she’d really like. All I need is to have those printed off. You could do it for me if you have a minute.” Dax pulled a roll of cash out of his pocket and said, “I guarantee you I’ll leave the best tip you’ve gotten all day.”

“Well I guess it would be okay for me to do it,” she said, eyeing the money in Dax’s hand. The bar was a dive, and it was doubtful she could match what he had in his hand in her tips for the last month.

“Thank you, darlin’,” Dax said before handing her the cash. She stuffed it in the pocket of her apron, and then she and Dax worked out the details of the email address he would send the plans to on the office laptop and how many copies he needed of it. Once she left to go into the back Randall said:

“I’ll make sure you’re compensated for the money you’re spending on all this.”

Dax shook his head. “Your boys saved Gunner’s life the night of the fight, and his friend’s. Then for over a week your girl opened her house to us and nursed him back to health. I’m still working on compensating you for all of that.”

Randall cleared his throat and mumbled a thank you. It was apparent to Gunner he wasn’t used to being indebted to anyone, and that was the part that probably bothered him the worst.

The cocktail waitress was quick. In less than ten minutes Dax had printouts of the layout of the house for everyone, and they all gathered around the table to look at them. “Okay, so it looks like the house has a state of the art security system that’s going to alert the police as soon as it’s breached,” he said. He looked up at Cody and after studying the plans for a few seconds Cody simply nodded. “We’re going to talk the waitress into letting us use that laptop. Anyone have any more cash?”

* * *

“I didn’t think you were going to wake up. That would have made this a lot less fun.” Tamara had opened her eyes to the sight of Eddie Martini at her bedside. At least the big perverted freak was gone.

“Fun?” she said in a weak, raspy voice. Her lips hurt and she could tell they were swollen when she tried to speak. “Is that what we’re doing here, having fun?”

Eddie smiled. Tamara thought it made him look even more evil. “Well, I haven’t had the opportunity to have much fun yet.”

“Me neither,” she said, “but now I at least know I have something to look forward to.”

He chuckled and sat down next to her on the bed. She was still tied down securely so she couldn’t even flinch away as her skin began to crawl. He ran a long finger down the side of her face and she felt bile rise in the back of her throat. “I have to say, I was surprised at how pretty you are. Your mother must have been one hell of a looker.” Tamara didn’t respond to that. Even if she’d wanted to, it was taking every ounce of self-control in her body not to spit on him or try to bite the finger that was touching her. He continued to run his finger down the side of her neck and across her collarbone. “You know, I’ve spent years trying to co-exist with that motorcycle club. They did their business and I did mine, and I left them alone. I was a big enough man to share my territory with them as long as they minded their own business and stayed out of mine.” Tamara knew why he’d left them alone and it had nothing to do with his being “a big man,” and everything to do with knowing that starting a war with the Head Hunters would not only mean the end of his business, but maybe his life. She wasn’t sure what he thought he was doing now. He had to know that her father and the rest of the club would rain down vengeance on him until he and all his associates were burning in hell. His finger made its way down the front of her blouse and now he was running it up and down between her breasts. She sucked in a shaky breath and he smiled wider. A surge of venomous anger flooded her veins. The fucker wanted to see some sign that she was afraid, and that did it for him. He probably had a hard-on, she thought. He let his finger run across the swell of one of her breasts slowly, and then the other. “Nice tits,” he said. “Your daddy could have made a fortune off you.”

Tamara finally couldn’t take it any longer. “If he was a sick pig like you, maybe.”

That only made him smile broader. “Let me tell you something that your daddy should have taught you. Women are good for one thing, and the earlier in life they realize that, the happier they will be.” He brought his hand out of her blouse and she almost breathed a sigh of relief, but then he took the front of it into one of his hands and ripped it wide open, sending the buttons scattering to the four corners of the bedroom. He looked down at her in just her bra and licked his lips. He grabbed one of her lace-covered breasts in his hand and that was when she tipped over the edge. She spat at him, hitting him dead in the face.

Eddie didn’t flinch. Tamara didn’t doubt that she wasn’t the first person who’d ever spat in his face. He did let go of her breast as he reached into his pocket for a handkerchief. He used it to wipe away the spit. The only change in his facial expression when he looked at her again was a dark angry fire in his eyes as he said, “You’ll regret that.”

“Not as much as you’re going to regret touching me. My father is going to hunt you down like a wild animal and chop you up into pieces. You can’t hide forever.”

“Oh, I won’t need to. You see, I have friends in high places, and the scumbag bikers that my men don’t kill in the inevitable shoot-out will be quickly arrested for their role in your death.”

Tamara snorted. “Nobody will believe that my father or brother had anything to do with killing me.”

“Maybe not, but you should be more careful about who you let into your home. You’ve had that fighter staying in your house, a kid that was raised by a prostitute and lived most of his life on the streets. Now it seems he has some connection to a club out of Massachusetts, a club with a pretty nasty history. Tsk, tsk—you really should screen people just a little better before you let them into your life, or your pussy. It would be terrible if he raped you and then strangled you in your own bed.”

“You’re an idiot…” she started to protest, and that was when he pulled out a condom, still in its wrapper, and a Ziploc baggie with another condom inside. It looked used, and she didn’t doubt that it came from the trash in her bathroom. It had Gunner’s DNA in it and so did her bed…The fucker is evil, and smart. He had this planned.

“Tony!” he yelled out, startling her. The big pervert with the split lip walked in the door. Eddie tossed him the unopened condom and said, “I have some business to take care of. I’ll be back in an hour. Make sure none of your DNA gets on her, and when you’re finished have Gus help you get the body back to her house and into her bed.” He held up the Ziploc bag. “I’ll give him this on my way out and make sure he knows what to do with it.” He stood up and looked down at Tamara. Her heart was hammering in her chest and she was sweating. He smiled and said, “Have fun.”