The last of the police and the ambulance finally left with an admonishment that Denise shouldn’t refuse treatment. She’d sucked on the oxygen mask enough to help with the residual cough from the fire, but she needed to finish checking on the dogs and the guy she had trussed up in the storage room next to her office.

Hopefully, he hadn’t bled out. She’d stuffed some cloth in the wound, but hadn’t had time for more extensive first aid before the fire trucks and police had shown up.

Chris sat down next to her on the steps up to her old apartment. “I think you should go to the hospital.”

And she needed to get rid of Chris.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“You’re not.”

She turned her head. “You’re right, I’m not. But unless you’re going to tell me Kaden and Kimber are there waiting for me, going to the hospital isn’t going to make me better.”

“Denise—”

Fisting her hands, she closed her eyes and exhaled through her teeth. “Find. Them.”

“We’re working on it. Our team is going through all the cameras around the school, tracking where he went after he took them. There’s a BOLO out for the vehicle and an Amber Alert for the kids.”

She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “I need to check on the dogs. I have to stay busy or I’m going to go crazy.”

“Do you want help?”

“No.” Her answer was short, even to her. She took a breath. “Please find them.”

He pressed a kiss again her temple. “I’ll keep you updated.”

Nodding, she watched him go to his truck and lifted her hand in response to his wave, then followed his progress until he turned out of the drive.

Too much time had been wasted dealing with the fire and answering questions from the police and the FBI. She doubled over, her forehead to her knees, when the sob tore through her. It was happening again. Only now was a thousand times worse. She’d promised them—promised Sarah—she’d keep them safe and that bastard had taken them.

Were they scared? Was he hurting them? Not knowing was the worst kind of torture. She needed to find out where they were.

Her rage was a palpable thing that she needed to get under control, but it seethed beneath her skin and flowed like lava through her veins. She could only hope she had enough control not to kill the guy before she could get the information she needed.

Heading into the kennel, she was assailed by barks, howls, and whines from the dogs she’d moved in after rounding them up outside. The noise would help drown out any screams that might otherwise be heard by the firefighters still working on the barn. Sprocket met her at the entrance and followed her to the storage room.

A twinge of doubt unfurled as she paused with her hand on the knob. She squatted down and buried her face in Sprocket’s nape. Should she have told Chris about the guy? Let him take this asshole for official questioning? She shook her head. No. He’d lawyer up and her chance to get answers would be gone.

Despite the inferno burning inside her and the tears she couldn’t stop pouring down her face, she was calm. She knew exactly what needed to be done.

Anything to save her kids.

Giving Sprocket one last hug, she stood and opened the door. Using her foot to keep Sprocket out, she closed the door softly behind her. The guy was awake and glaring at her. She’d give him one chance. “Where are they? Please. They’re just little kids,” Denise implored.

“Fuckin’ seriously? You think some weak-ass tears are gonna get me to talk? You ain’t never seein’ those brats again. Fuckin’ bitch.” He tried to pull off an air of superiority. He thought because she was a woman and was crying, he had nothing to worry about.

She laughed and walked to the small workbench, bending to pull out an old metal tool box she kept there. “You made a lot of mistakes today, Jeffrey.” She glanced at him and saw him flinch when she used his name.

“I pilfered your wallet while I was searching you for weapons.” She flipped open the rusty clasp locks and lifted the lid. Rummaging through the contents, she kept her tone conversational.

“Of course, information is a kind of weapon. Cute kids, by the way.”

A low growl emanated from him. She pocketed a screwdriver and a pair of pliers, then hefted a ball peen hammer in her hand before turning around.

“Lucky for you, I don’t consider kids to be a weapon.” She pointed the hammer at him and cocked her head. “Unlike some people.

“Your first mistake, Jeff, was taking my kids at all.” She walked behind him, trailing the fingers of her free hand up his arm and over his shoulder. “Then you set fire to my barn and shot one of my dogs.”

She continued around behind him, keeping her touch light, almost like a caress. “But your biggest mistake was thinking my tears are a sign of weakness.” From behind, she dug her fingers into the wound she'd half-heartedly bandaged.

He grunted and let out a low, teeth-clenched scream and his fists clenched and unclenched.

“But you see, my tears are kind of like a release valve on a pressure cooker.” She leaned forward so her mouth was close to his ear. “The rage needs somewhere to go,” she whispered. “I have to let it out somehow because you have to tell me things. Things I need to know. Things you need to be alive to tell me and if I don’t let the rage out somehow, I’m going to bash your fucking skull in before you tell me where my kids are.” She kissed his cheek before pulling back. “So don’t ever think my tears are a sign of weakness.”

Denise rounded the front of the chair, the hammer in her hand. “That was your only chance for me to ask nicely. Every time you refuse to tell me where they are, I will hurt you.”

Please just tell me where they are. She didn’t want to be back in this place. Threatening and seducing answers from a detainee. If he would just tell her they could both—

“Keep fucking crying, bitch,” Jeffrey said.

The door on getting out of there easily slammed shut and a terrible calm descended through her. She inhaled, twirled the hammer in her hand, and swung it forcefully down onto his right wrist, eliciting a shrill scream.

Denise slid the hammer into the back pocket of her jeans. She leaned down and grasped his wrists, squeezing his forearm and forcing the broken bones together. He responded with a sobbing grunt.

“Weak. Fucking. Cunt,” he said through clenched teeth.

Denise sighed and stood up. “Oh, Jeffrey. That mistake is going to be a painful one. I know how to keep you in an excruciating amount of pain. I was trained by the best. Or the worst, depending on how you want to look at it.”

“You think my club is going to let you get away with this? Doesn’t matter if you get your brats back or not, you’re dead.” He turned his head to follow her as she circled around him again.

Ignoring his threat, she rested her elbows on his shoulders. “That was your throttle hand. It’s going to be incredibly difficult to ride a motorcycle with a shattered wrist. It may never heal right.” She pressed down, putting pressure on the wound in his shoulder. “Tell me where my kids are.”

“Fuck. You.”

She gave him credit for holding out. He reeked of fear and sweat beaded on his forehead.

“Do you know where the phrase, “so scared I shit my pants” comes from? No? See, it’s tied to the body’s fight-or-flight response. Your brain will start diverting all efforts to that response and will cause your body to shut down non-essential functions. Like pissing and shitting. You’ll get to that point eventually.” She released the pressure from his shoulders. “Everyone does.”

Fucking with his head would get him to share the information as fast as the physical pain she was going to put him through. In most circumstances it was more effective than physical torture, but she didn’t have that kind of time to dedicate to getting what she needed.

Swinging the hammer from behind, she brought it down on his other wrist. That time he cried out.

“Every time you refuse to tell me where my kids are, I’m going to hurt you,” she said. “It may be something small. It may be something big. Either way, I’m going to keep you alive while maximizing the pain. Where are my kids?”

“Suck my dick,” he managed to grit out.

Sighing, she dropped the hammer and rounded the front of the chair, kneeling on the dick he’d told her to suck, pushing all her weight through her knee. “Gonna be kind of hard to do that when I rip it out by the root, Jeffrey. Bet my dogs would love it though. I wonder what it would be like to watch your own dick be chopped up into dog food. Of course, not being a guy, it’s hard for me to process that image.”

She lifted the back of her shirt and pulled out her gun, pressing it against the top of his knee. “But first, do you know what a nine millimeter bullet will do to a kneecap at point blank range? Me neither, but I’m willing to find out in three…two…”

“Alright! Alright! They’re at Eddie’s mom’s house in Fayetteville.”

“Address.”

He rattled off the address and she removed her knee and the gun. She patted him on the cheek. “Don’t go anywhere, Jeff. I’ll be back if you’re lying to me.”

Closing the door behind her, she leaned against it and sank to the floor. Sprocket was on her immediately, snout in her neck. Denise wrapped her arms around the dog and sobbed into her fur. Sprocket licked the side of her face and whined. Pulling away from the warm tongue, she wiped away her tears. Someone had to go get Kimber and Kaden.

She pulled her phone out of her back pocket and dialed Chris’s number.

He answered on the second ring. “Everything okay?”

“They’re at Eddie’s mom’s house,” she said.

“How do you know that?”

“I can’t answer that question.”

Silence for several seconds. “Do you know the address?”

She told him the address Jeffrey had given her and heard him speaking to someone else.

“Alright. We’re checking it out. I’ll call you back.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“Denise.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you need help? With how you got that information?”

This couldn’t touch him. There was no good way out of that scenario for either of them. He’d either be forced to arrest her or compromise his principles and put his job at risk.

“No.”

“You can trust me, Denise. Whatever it is.”

She squeezed her eyes closed and dropped her head against the door. “I do trust you. It isn’t about that.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s about you having a job to do and not being distracted. Get Kaden and Kimber and call me when you have them.”

Disconnecting, she switched to the keypad and dialed Graham’s number.

“Hello?”

“I need help with something,” she said.

“Fuck, Denise. I’m on it. We’re going through footage from around the school. We’ll find them.”

“I already found out where they are.”

“How did you do that?”

“That’s what I need help with.”

“Does Nolton know?”

She scratched Sprocket’s ear. “I told him where the kids are, not how I knew.”

“Where are you?”

“The rescue.”

“Give me thirty.”

“Park in the back. The fire department is still here.”

* * *

The only thing keeping her mind off Kaden and Kimber was caring for the dogs, which led to thoughts of how much they had lost, and how much it was going to cost to rebuild. Moving around prevented her from shaking with fury. Poor Sprocket finally lay down in front of the storage room door and watched her walk back and forth.

Needing to stay busy, Denise fed the dogs she’d managed to herd inside. Some of them she’d been able to double up in the larger kennels, but there were still several that had to be put into airline crates. At least they’d calmed down to the point that only a few whined every now and then.

“Denise?”

She closed the kennel door and stood. “In the back,” she called.

Graham pushed through the swinging door, followed by a woman. There was something familiar about her and she scanned her from head to toe. The bracelet tattoo caught her attention and recognition struck.

“Paige?”

“Hey,” she said with a wave.

“Holy shit. Where did you come from?” In three quick strides, Denise hugged the woman who’d been her trailer-mate at one time on deployment.

She laughed softly and returned the hug. “Savannah for about the last three years.”

“How did you end up with Graham?” Denise glanced between the two of them.

Paige shrugged. “I was getting out. He said ‘come work for me.’ He offered me an obscene amount of money and I had nothing better to do at the time.”

Denise nodded, trying to picture the nervous, inexperienced girl she’d known with the confident woman in front of her. No telling what kind of thoughts she was having about Denise.

“What’s the situation you need help with?” Graham asked.

She cocked her head toward the back of the building and led the way.

“Did you lose any dogs?” he asked.

“Not to the fire. A couple took off when we got out of the barn.”

He stopped her with a hand on her arm. “What do you mean when we got out of the barn?”

“I was in the barn when the fire was set.”

His eyes narrowed to a squinty glare she recognized. He pointed at the door. “This part of that issue as well?”

Denise pursed her lips and looked at the door.

Paige leaned close. “I think you should have saved that piece of information for later,” she said in a stage whisper. “He’s already pissed off one of our guys lost the kids.”

She snapped her head around. “What do you mean one of your guys lost the kids?”

Paige leaned back, glanced at Graham, then back at Denise. “Shit. We had a guy watching the school. He got run off by the neighborhood watch around the same time Eddie Perry showed up at the school.”

Denise closed her eyes and took a deep breath. It was no use getting angry. She couldn’t change the past, but would it be too much for life to have given her five fucking minutes? That’s all it would have taken for Graham’s guy to realize what was going on. Pressing her lips together she opened the door to the storeroom.

Graham went in and stopped, looking down at the guy slumped down in the chair. His chest rose and fell, so he’d either passed out from the pain or had simply fallen asleep.

“Hammer?” Graham asked.

“Ball peen.”

Graham reached for the guy’s collar and pulled it away from the side of his neck, revealing the top of a gray and black tattoo.

“He’s Rebel Yell, not SA,” he said as he stood.

Denise shook her head. “What’s that?”

“They’re another motorcycle club. Except for some minor infractions, they’re a bunch of good ol’ boys who like to ride and get a little rowdy. There’s a faction that wants to take a more profitable, but illegal, route. Didn’t know any of them were working with the SA’s though.”

“How do you know that if they’re local?”

“It was started by a former Army guy. There’s a few chapters around other bases, including Hunter.”

There was more to his story, but before she could ask her phone rang and she pulled it out of her pocket. Chris’s name flashed across the screen.

“Go on. We’ll take care of this.” He pointed at Jeffrey.

Denise stared at Graham, then at the guy she’d tortured. She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, then looked at her phone as it stopped ringing.

“We’re not going to kill him, Denise,” Graham said. “We don’t do that kind of clean up. Honestly if you were anyone else, we wouldn’t do this.”

“What are you going to do then?” She didn’t want his death on her hands, but at the same time she didn’t want to be constantly looking over her shoulder for another attack.

“We’ll drop him off at the local Rebel Yell chapter house with a note tying him to the Southern Anarchists. His people will take care of him. How they do that, will be up to them.”

“We’ll do our best to make sure it doesn’t come back to you,” Paige said.

Her phone rang again.

“Go,” Paige said. “I’ll send you my information. If you need anything, let me know.” She tilted her head. “I missed you."

Denise hugged Paige. “I missed you, too,” she whispered.

Paige squeezed her eyes closed and rubbed Denise’s back. “Get out of here. We’ve got this.”