I was still rather caught up on the image that got conjured at the phrase garroted in some alley somewhere to pay them much attention.
"Why do they want her so bad? She didn't fuck them over with the cops."
"She had a copy of the files she gave to the cops."
"I'm assuming you have those copies."
"Yeah. But only until I find some cops I trust to hand it all off to to bring them down. The Russians are always a brutal lot though. They'll kill someone just for stepping on their shoes. So her trying to stab them in the back? They aren't going to let that go. And then a coupla days ago, they closed shop. Their offices are gone. Their legit businesses are still operating but they aren't present. So I don't know what the fuck is going on at this point. And I don't like that one fucking bit."
"Alright," Reign said, uncrossing his arms. "I sent Maze to go food shopping a couple of hours ago. When I noticed she still wasn't back, I started to ask around. Then Cash said he saw my truck at the train station. We went. The trunk was full of festering groceries. She paid for fucking parking for hours and she locked the keys inside. That's all we got."
K nodded then looked to me, brow raised. "You're sleeping with her. You got anything to add?"
I could feel everyone's eyes fall on me. Reign was just looking. Cash was grinning. Renny didn't look surprised. Duke had his brows drawn together, but I had fuck-all any idea why. "I got nothing, man. You trained her well. She didn't let any of that shit slip. All I really know about her is the ex with the chop shop thing and the mom thing and that she has trust issues. Guess now I know why."
"She told you about Thato and her mom?" K asked, looking surprised.
"Thato?" I repeated, almost laughing. Fucking bitch-ass name for a bitch-ass man. "If that's the ex's name, yeah. Why?"
"Because she knew better. She wasn't supposed to tell anyone anything about her past."
"Yeah well, she's human. She screwed up," I growled, shoving away from the rest of them and making my way toward the door. Where I found my arm snagged in a strong grip. I turned, looking over at K. "Get your fucking hand off me, man."
"Where are you going?"
"We aren't doing any good standing around here bullshitting. I'm heading to Philly."
"Repo..." Reign said in a warning voice that I knew him well enough to read into. He was telling me I didn't have permission to go. And yeah, well, fuck him.
"Be smart," K cut in before I could really fuck myself by tearing into Reign. "We can't go to Philly until we're sure she's not still around here. What the fuck were you gonna do? Walk every street? Talk to every person? Focus."
He was right.
"Janie and Alex," I said, turning back to the group. "Get them on the cameras at the train station."
"Repo..." Reign said in that voice again.
"Don't you fucking dare try to tell me this is any God damn different than what you did with Summer and Cash with Lo and Wolf with Janie. You all broke rules when your women were in trouble and I don't want to hear a fucking word about this," I said, I think momentarily shocking them all silent before Reign nodded slightly.
"She's yours?" he asked.
"Hell fucking yeah, she's mine." It didn't matter that she'd kept so much from me. It didn't matter that there was so much to her that I was in the dark about. What mattered was the connection we had despite all the secrecy. She melted against me when I reached for her. She sparked when I touched her. She smiled and laughed and bitched and joked with me. She couldn't fake those things. That was real. What we had, however little it was, was real.
"Alright, Cash see if you can get in touch with Breaker and get Alex on this. I'll call Wolf and see if Janie is at the cabin or Hailstorm. Duke, Renny..." he trailed off for a minute. "I dunno. Make yourselves useful. Go ask around in town or something."
"What? Am I supposed to sit on my fucking hands?" I asked, my hands clenching up into fists at my sides.
"You and K can have a talk until we have a direction we can point you in."
With that, the room cleared out, leaving just me and K and the weight of worry between us. It wasn't lost on me that the two people who genuinely gave a shit about Maze were the ones left twiddling their damn thumbs.
"Don't know much about you," K said, breaking the tense silence, "but I doubt you deserve her."
"Why? Because I'm a biker?"
"Because after what she's had to deal with, I don't think anyone does."
"I respect what you've done to get and keep her safe, but fuck off. Just because some asshole lied to her and her mom was a deadbeat and her bosses were dickheads doesn't mean everyone she crosses paths with plans to screw her over. I've had nothing but good intentions with regard to Maze."
"Except to make her life hell to get her out of the MC."
"You think I'd have done that if I knew fuck-all about her situation?"
"You think she'd have gotten in if she was upfront from the jump?"
"No, but maybe..."
"Hey, man. Don't go on an ego trip. Just 'cause you made her come a couple of times doesn't mean shit. Your dick ain't some magic remedy for her trust issues."
"You didn't exactly help those issues by..."
"Listen, she can trust me. I was the one who was there for her when no one else was. I kept her safe. I trained her. I got her strong. If, by doing that, I helped enforce her distrust of everyone, well, it was fucking necessary. But it didn't matter because she knew she always had me."
"That's a little short-sighted, don't you think? Maze is young. She's fucking beautiful. She's a combination of sweet and sour that anyone with a cock would want to get a taste of. Did you really think she was going to be a fucking nun? Especially here?" I paused, shaking my head. "Maybe you should have taught her how to spot a decent man instead."
To that, K's lips quirked up on the side slightly. "Didn't I though?"
"What?"
K shrugged. "All these men here... a couple of other probates she was around all the time, was on the same level with, could have more easily connected with without risking her position here. But she chose you. And, judging by your reaction to all this, I'd say she did spot a decent man."
"Janie is pulling up the cameras now," Reign declared as he walked back in. "She's on her way in. Alex is working on seeing if she can find any records for the Kozlov brothers in Navesink Bank or Jersey in general."
"Alright," I said, taking a deep breath. I turned to K again. "How long you been doing this?"
"Ten years. Give or take."
"How many women have you worked with?"
"Dozens. At least fifty."
"How many have you lost?"
"You mean while permanently on my watch, not going rogue?"
"Would Maze go rogue?"
"No."
"Then yeah."
"One," he said, his tone an odd mix of sad and almost... determined. There was a long pause as we listened to a car door slam. "I'm not losing Maze," he added with the same determination.
"Alright," Janie said, bursting through the door with an open laptop on her hand, Wolf walking in behind her. "I got her pulling into the train station. Well, fucking barreling in is probably more accurate. She pulled in, sat there for a couple of seconds then walked up to the machine and paid for parking. She locked the keys in the car. She went and bought a ticket to somewhere..."
"Philly," K supplied.
"If you say so."
"No train out of here goes straight to Philly," Reign supplied. "She'd have had to switch trains somewhere."
"Regardless," Janie rushed on, "that's what she did. She went to the platform and waited. She actually kinda doubled over for a second at one point," she supplied, hitting a button then turning the screen toward us to show the moment she was talking about. The angle was from the front and a little grainy but I swore I could see genuine anguish there. "Then that's it here obviously. I'm working on finding where that train led. We
can get footage from there. I doubt anything happened to her from here to there... seeing as she would have been on the train. No way could someone pull her off of that without a major scene."
I nodded, silently agreeing, but finding no comfort in the words.
For the next ten minutes, there was nothing. Janie worked, metal blaring from her speakers and she barked out an order for coffee which I fetched just to have something to do. When I came back with it and sat down beside Janie, one of her hands landed on my knee and squeezed. "Haven't heard from you after midnight in weeks, Repo," she said, the words cryptic to anyone else in the room except maybe Wolf. But it meant a lot to us. When she was in a good spell sleep-wise, sweet-dreams-wise, I didn't hear from her after midnight. I knew that had something to do with Wolf. So when I didn't call her for weeks on end, she knew it had something to do with Maze. While, I generally hadn't been actually sleeping any better than usual, I had other things to focus on so I didn't have to call Janie.
I had Maze.
Janie knew how much that helped.
She felt the same way about Wolf.
I was choosing not to analyze what that might possibly mean.
There would be time for that when I knew Maze was safe.
The door flew open and Renny stormed in, his face closed down, his fists clenched. I had already stood and so had K, sensing something off. And then in walked Duke, his hand wrapped around the back of Moose's neck.
"Guess who made friends with a couple of fucking Russians?" Duke asked, tossing Moose a couple of feet into the room where he crashed into the new coffee table we replaced after Duke and Renny had ruined the first one with their fight the night before the BBQ.
Moose went to push himself up, but found his palm pinned to the table by one of Janie's massive combat boots. "Oh, I don't think so mother fucker," she said, smiling as Wolf reached out and hauled him up.
"Get the fuck off me. It's none of your business who the fuck I talk to. I don't belong to you."
"Forget one thing," Reign said, moving across the room. "Maze does still belong to this MC. At least until I decide otherwise. So you fuck with her and her safety and you fuck with us and our safety. So it's in your best God damn interest to spill what you know or I'll let those two," he said, waving a hand toward me and K, "take your ass downstairs where no one will hear you scream and rip you to fucking shreds. We clear?"
"Oh, you can talk all big and bad. I was here for six fucking months. You ain't did shit that was the least bit fucking intimidating."
Oh, fuck.
That was the wrong God damn thing to say to Reign.
See, Reign didn't need to use his fists often. He wasn't his father. He didn't need to command respect with violence, he did it with fear. Because those of us who had ever seen him in action, with a gun, with a knife, with his bare hands, yeah, we knew he was not someone you tested. And Moose was testing him.
Reign was going to pass.
And Moose would be lucky to be eating through a straw.
I wasn't gonna lie. I was itching to see that mother fucker bleed.
He'd sold out Maze.
He was why she had to run away.
He was why she was currently fucking missing.
"But this isn't my fight," Reign surprised me by saying, waving a hand toward me. "You remember Repo, right? See what you fucks don't know about Repo is he kind of gets a little... psychotic when something threatens his ideas on loyalty. You and your brother, you made an agreement when you prospected that club business was club business and you were never to speak of it. See, now you've spoken of it. To the fucking Russians no less. I think that might make Repo a little angry. But, see, what's got him over there with that muscle ticking in his jaw and his hands clenched down by his sides... yeah, that's the fact that Maze is his woman. And you might have just gotten her killed."
If I hadn't been so livid and so bone-deep terrified that something had, indeed, happened to Maze, I might have found the look on his face comical. His eyes went a little wide; his lips parted; his hands went up in front of him in a defensive gesture.
"I didn't know she was yours," he objected immediately.
"Well it's too fucking bad for you that I don't give a fuck about what you knew."
And with that, a darkness I hadn't known in the better part of ten years overtook me, bubbled up inside until it was a bigger part of me than my common sense, my need for self-preservation, my desire to not have any more nightmares to keep me awake at night.
Wolf released Moose.
I released whatever it was inside that kept me sane.
And Moose got to see just how intimi-fucking-dating members of The Henchmen MC could really be.
"We need him capable of speech," K's voice boomed behind me, grabbing me at both my arms and dragging me away from a beaten, bloody, awful version of Moose.
I let myself be pulled backward, looking down at my hands, knuckles broken open from Moose's teeth. I sighed, flexing my fingers to make sure none were broken.
"Get him up," Reign demanded to Duke who had moved to block the door. He reached down, hauling a hissing, spitting Moose off the ground. "Now you're going to tell us exactly what fucking happened with the Russians or you'll be another in Repo's body count."
"They had a fucking picture," Moose almost yelled, wiping blood from his upper lip. "She was blond, but there was no mistaking her. They'd asked if anyone had seen someone around like her. Said they knew she had been staying at the motel nearby."
"And?" K asked as if sensing he was holding back.
"And then I told him she was here but he got a call."
"Saying?"
"He didn't say much, okay?" Moose exploded, shrinking away from K who had advanced threateningly. "Something about Trenton."
Reign's head nod caught my attention. "Trains don't go to Philly from here," he said, reiterating what he'd said earlier. "She'd have had a transfer. Likely in Trenton."
"On it," Janie said, already sounding distracted as she grabbed her laptop. "Hey, Al," she said to her computer, presumably some kind of video chat with Alex. "Trenton."
"On it," Alex repeated.
"Was it Viktor or Ruslan you talked to?"
"Fuck... I don't know, man..."
"Suit or casual?" K asked.
"Suit."
K nodded and looked at me. "Viktor."
"Is that a good or bad thing?" I asked.
"They're both killers," K said, not comforting me in the least. "But Viktor is a cold son of a bitch. Ruslan is a bit more laid back. And they aren't going to suspect she's as trained as she is. They'll expect her to be the meek office mouse she was before who had a little crush on Ruslan. It might work to her advantage if he's the one who is closer to finding her, if that is the case."
"So we're heading to Philly after all," I concluded, annoyed that we had wasted time.
"Alex found her in Trenton. She got off the train from here and then was stranded there forever. There was some kind of fucking track issue. She's on the camera here, looking a little paranoid, but not super freaked. She got on the train to, I presume, Philly from there."
"She must not have thought she was followed," K concluded. "Maybe she saw Viktor when she was driving back from the food store and put the plan into motion like she knew she was supposed to. She didn't check in because she was trapped and didn't have her burner. Did you girls pick her up in Philly yet?"
"Working on it, but don't get your hopes up. Thirtieth Street Station gets crazy busy. She could easily get lost in the crowd."
"Did you have a plan for where she was supposed to go when she got there?"
"Yeah, she's supposed to go to her locker to get her bag to call me. Then I was supposed to point her in a direction. I wasn't going to keep her in Philly for more than a night and only a night if she was too tired to hop another train."
"The fuck you guys still here for?" Reign asked suddenly, making me start. "Go
get your woman, make sure she's safe. We'll talk when you figure shit out. Here," he said, going behind the bar and grabbing a couple of guns.
K hesitated, shaking his head. "I prefer..."
"Take the fucking guns," Reign demanded and K reached for one. I reached for the other two. Then we took off toward the door.
"I'll keep you updated," Janie called. "Keep your phone charged."
We jumped into K's giant SUV and hit the road, K checking his phone as soon as he turned the car around and blinked to turn out onto the main drag. "What the fuck..."
"What?" I asked, stiffening. We really couldn't afford any more bad news.
"My fucking phone is fried..."
"Fried?" I repeated, reaching for it as he tried to fuck around with it and drive at the same time.
"Left it on the fucking charger in the fucking car in this fucking heat," he growled, slamming his palm down on the wheel.
Fuck.
"She can still contact your office though," I said, reaching for my cell. "Call them and tell them to give her this number."
Then, plan in motion, we drove to Philly.
It wasn't a long drive. It took us somewhere around two hours, having to abide traffic laws lest we be pulled over with a bunch of illegal guns on us.
"Where the fuck do we even start?" I asked, looking around as we climbed out of the SUV on the street by the station.
"First, I'm making sure she got her bag. Then... fuck if I know. I know what her alias is here, but hotels won't give out information on guests. She's not familiar with this area so it's not like she'd have known where to go from experience."
Turns out, she had gotten her bag.
And when Janie called with an update later that night, she'd caught sight of Maze leaving the station and getting in a cab. She got the plates then sent us toward the cab company headquarters which was locked for the night. Of fucking course. Without anything else to do, we got food and coffee and waited until fucking nine A.M when they'd reopened. Then we had to wait another hour for the boss to show up, leaving us with a skittish secretary who looked at us like we were constantly on the verge of jumping her. When he eventually arrived we'd tried to bribe the information out of the owner, who refused. Then, well, I got to witness K's considerable boxing skills for the next half hour before we finally got the name of the driver. Then we'd had to wait a-fucking-gain for the driver to be called in from his job. He was much more forthcoming with information, likely due to the punching bag that was his boss' face.
Repo (The Henchmen MC Book 4) Page 18
