We weaved through street after street until Toes pulled up behind a run-down looking block of flats. Before any of us could move, I heard the familiar sound of a gun being drawn and cocked, I looked over my shoulder to see that Holes had a gun pointed at his head, he had already removed his helmet. He held his hands up in front of him as a sign of surrender.
“There’s no need for any of that. We just want to talk to your boss,” Prez said as he climbed off his bike and removed his helmet. “Helmets off, boys.” We all followed suit and climbed off our bikes.
“What do you want with our boss?” a large guy with hair down to his shoulders and a matching beard asked.
“We have a question we want to ask. Now, are we going to stand here all night or are you going to get moving?” Prez crossed his arms over his chest and the guys looked between each other.
“Leave your weapons in that bin.” He nodded to a rusty bin with no lid. “And I’ll keep hold of this guy.” He pushed the gun further into Holes’ head and I could see the tension that filled his face; his jaw was clenched tight together.
“Dean, check him for weapons.” The large guy moved over to Holes and removed his gun from the waistband of his jeans. “Any trouble and I won’t hesitate to take this guy out, got it?”
We all agreed to behave and the large guy led us into the building. It smelt of damp and was freezing cold, most of the windows had been boarded up and no lights filled the hallway.
“You can wait in here,” Dean said as he opened a door at the end of the hall. I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. Was this a trap? At least we were still on the ground floor, if we needed to we could just kick in a boarded up window to escape. “He comes with us.” He kept Holes close to him and shut us in the small, dark room. There was no escaping now, we couldn’t get away without taking our VP with us.
“I’m not liking this,” I mumbled, expressing my dislike for the situation.
“If he comes back with Holes alone I could clock him over the head with my cast and knock him out?” Iron suggested.
“He could still pull the trigger. I don’t fancy going back and explaining to Cammie why she no longer has a husband, do you?” Prez said, looking around at us all.
“This Martin guy will come and meet us, he’ll be intrigued as to why we’re here,” Tat added.
Just as I was about to respond, the noise of feet on the steps above us made it clear that someone was coming.
“Does anyone have any hidden weapons?” Prez asked. He looked around us all as Iron pulled a small knife out from his cast and Toes grabbed a small gun from his boot. “It’s not much but it’s better than nothing.”
The creak of the door had us all gazing at the doorway, the same guy walked in with Holes still at gun point and behind him walked in an older guy in a sharp looking suit; he looked really out of place in this building.
“Well, imagine my surprise when my guys come in with Mason here at gun point and then tells me we have a room full of the Cornish Crusaders brothers. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“All we want is some info,” I stated.
“And that couldn’t have been done over the phone? What do I get in payment for this information? You ready to hand me over my daughter, VP?” He spat the last bit at Holes.
“Never. I’d never let her anywhere near you,” he roared, fighting against the guy with the gun against his head.
“I think it’s time to let him go, don’t you?” Prez said, calmly.
“And why would I do that?” The guy spat at him.
“Calm down, Pete,” Martin said to him. “Release him.”
“Boss?” Pete questioned, like he wasn’t hearing him right.
“I said release him!” he shouted. Once Pete had loosened his grip on Holes, he turned around and head butted him in the face, causing his nose to break.
“What the fuck!” Pete yelled, dropping his gun to cup his face. VP kicked the gun out of his reach whilst he yelled and screamed in pain.
“That’s for all the sick words you droned on about in my ear, you sick fucker,” Holes spat at him.
“VP,” Prez said, Holes looked up at him and then stood by his side.
“Let’s get this over with. What do you want to know?” Martin asked, looking bored. Prez nodded at me.
“I’m looking for a child…”
“Ah, don’t your swimmers work? Tell me what you’re looking for and I may be able to help you out.” Rage took over my body and I ran full force at him and pinned him against the wall by his throat. Tat had already picked up the gun that Holes had kicked over to him and had it aimed at Pete. Dean didn’t come back into the room, it was only them two.
“We are looking for a little boy, four-years-old that was kidnapped a week ago from Cornwall, along with three other boys and two girls all from the same area. You know anything about it?” I growled at him, my face close to his.
“No!” he defended. “I don’t do the child trafficking anymore, not after what happened with Emily. When you warned me off with the info you have on me. I couldn’t risk that info getting in the wrong hands. I moved on from that.”
“We want to look around,” Holes demanded. Martin nodded his head and I patted him down and removed his two guns before I released him. I pushed him towards Tat who pointed the gun against his back.
“Walk,” Tat demanded. We all followed them out of the room and a body falling to the floor had me looking over my shoulder. Holes was shaking his hand and flexing his fingers after he knocked Pete out.
“We only have this floor and the next one. The top four floors have been deemed unsafe to even walk around. It’s been blocked off for years.”
“How many men do you have here?” Prez asked.
“Six. All upstairs.”
I looked around and saw four doors down here on the ground floor. I marched over to one and kicked it open. It was dark and damp inside, I couldn’t see anything.
“Hey, Solar, here.” I looked over to Tat and he threw me a torch that he found on Martin. I swept it around the room to confirm that it was empty and we did this to the other three remaining rooms.
“What are we likely to find upstairs?” Prez asked before we started climbing the stairs.
“A room full of drugs and money, we ship them out here. Suppliers come to us.”
“What else?” I asked.
“Another room full of whores. We’re men, we have needs.” He shrugged his shoulders, smirking. “They are crack addicts, they fuck us and we give them what they crave. They can walk away anytime they want to.”
“What else? What aren’t you telling us?” Iron demanded.
“That’s it, man.” Tat shoved him with the gun to get him to start walking. We came to the first room.
“Open the door,” Tat growled. “Walk inside and tell them to lower their weapons.”
“They won’t be armed, not in this room.” We all walked through the door to see a large man pounding into an older woman. I didn’t see the appeal in fucking someone that was just a bag of bones. There were also three other women in the room, they were either sleeping or high.
“Next room,” Prez demanded. We walked down the hallway and passed by a door. “Hold up, what’s in here?” I asked.
“Empty,” Martin said. He waved his hand telling me to have a look and I opened it and shone the torch inside to see that it was empty. “This door down here is where we bag the drugs and that one is also empty.” I checked out the empty room and it was much like the others. Cold, smelly and damp and the others went into the drugs room. I can’t believe what a waste of a journey this was. At the beginning of the day, we had hope of finding Nate, now we were back to square one. How was I going to tell Jasmine?
“Fuck!” I swore as I punched my hand into the wall. What surprised me was the scream that followed it. “What the hell was that?” I looked through the hole that I had made and came face to face with two small girls. Where was the door to this room? I followed
the wall along and came to one of the empty rooms.
“What have you found?” Iron asked from behind me.
“There’s two girls in that wall. I punched it out of frustration and they screamed. In here.” I stormed into the empty room and there were no more doors, just a wardrobe.
“Is that wardrobe on the same wall that the girls would be in?” Iron asked as he pulled open the doors, moved the clothes aside to see a fake back. He slid it across and two young girls came into view. They were huddled together, crying. They couldn’t have been any older than ten.
“Get the Prez,” I demanded as I tore the wardrobe off the wall. “It’s ok, you can come out. I’m not going to hurt you. Are you girls from Cornwall?” They looked at each other and then nodded. “I’m from Cornwall too. I’m looking for my friend Nathan, he’s four. Have you seen him here? Brown hair? Spiderman pyjamas?”
They looked at each other as if they didn’t know whether to tell me. I needed a different angle, somehow prove that they could trust me.
“Do you girls go to Whirlwind primary school?” They both nodded. “My friend Miss. Bolt works there, do you know her?” They both nodded again. Yes, I was getting somewhere. “Her son, Nathan, was taken. Have you seen him?” They nodded again. “Is he here?” They both shook their heads. Fuck.
“Solar?” Prez asked. The girls shrank further back into the wall. I pointed to them and the Prez swore under his breath, I knew this would anger him, he was a family man, with a wife and three kids of his own.
“Tat, bring that lowlife in here!” Prez shouted. “Toes and Jono, you keep an eye on the rest of his men.”
A few seconds later, Tat pushed Martin through the door and his face paled.
“You lied to us,” Prez accused.
“No, I don’t know anything about this, about them,” he stuttered. I lowered myself back onto the floor so I was closer to the girls. They still hadn’t come out from the wall yet.
“Do you know this man?” I asked them.
“Yeah, he was the one who hit Natalie on the face,” the blonde girl said.
“Are you Natalie?” I asked the red headed girl. She nodded. “And what’s your name?” I asked the braver girl out of the two.
“Sophie.”
“Hi, my name is Solar. How old are you?”
“I’m seven, Natalie is six.”
“We’re here to help you. Can you come out now? I won’t let anyone hurt you. I promise.” I held out my hand for her and she gripped it as she stood forward. Natalie grabbed hold of Sophie’s hand and shook her head furiously. “It’s ok, I promise. I’m going to take you back to your mum and dad.”
“They are going to help us,” Sophie told Natalie.
“Don’t leave me.” Natalie sobbed.
“I won’t,” Sophie told her. She seemed much older than seven but I guess that’s what happens when you have someone else to look after.
“Now where is Nate?” I growled at Martin.
“He was one of the first to sell.” Martin shrugged.
“Who did you sell him too?”
“Parker Haines.”
“I know that name,” Holes said. “His name was mentioned when I was at the Devon Destroyers.” At least we had another lead.
“Tat, get him in the room with the rest of them. Solar, get the girls to the car.” I nodded and held my hand out for Sophie. She gripped hold of me tight as she pulled Natalie along with her. Once I had them settled into the car, I turned the engine on and put the heat on full blast to warm them up. I turned the radio up loud too, I knew what was about to happen in that building and I didn’t want the girls to hear the gunshots.
Chapter 6
Solar
We decided to take the girls straight to the clubhouse, to see if Jasmine knew who their parents were. We couldn’t have turned up at the police station with them, that wouldn’t look good and somehow we would have been accused of taking them. I drove home in the car as the girls felt safe with me and I trusted Jono with the number one lady in my life; my black and red Harley.
Once we arrived back to the clubhouse, the girls were fast asleep and I hesitated by the clubhouse doors.
“You not going to get Jasmine?” Iron asked.
“How the hell do I go in there empty handed, man? Knowing the information that I do but can’t tell her?”
“We have another lead, focus on that.” He squeezed my shoulder before waltzing in through the doors.
“If you help me with the girls, I’ll get Cammie to watch over them while you talk to Jasmine,” Holes said, opening up the back door of the car.
We drove straight back from London so it was now nearing midnight. I was exhausted but had a load of pent up aggression hurtling through my body and nowhere to sleep as there was a gorgeous woman in my bed. Looked like it was another night on the sofa for me.
We got the girls settled into the spare room next to Holes and Cammie’s room and headed down the hallway to my bedroom, praying that Jasmine hadn’t locked the door. I knocked gently and then tried opening it, it wasn’t locked so I headed inside. I was surprised to see a light on.
“Solar?” she asked as she sat up in bed, letting the duvet fall to her waist. I was happy to see that she was wearing one of my t-shirts. “What are you doing back so soon?” She looked behind me and when she saw that the space was empty, her shoulders fell. “You didn’t find him?”
“No, I’m sorry. But we do have a new lead that we will explore tomorrow morning, first thing.” She nodded as she pulled her knees up to her chest and laid her head on top of them. I could hear her sniffles, it broke my heart to see her so upset. I sat on the bed beside her.
“I need to ask you something.” She rolled her head on her knees so she could look at me. “We did find a couple of little girls and they said they know you from school.”
“Oh my god, where are they?” She almost screamed as she flung her legs to the side to crawl over the top of me. I stopped her by placing my hand on her very naked thigh. Not only was she wearing my t-shirt, she was only wearing my t-shirt and I had to stop myself from pushing it further up her body to see if she had underwear on.
“They’re asleep at the moment. They’re called Natalie and Sophie.”
She gasped. “Sophie is in my class. I teach her. I didn’t even know she was missing. How did I not know about this? I want to see them.” She crawled over my body and headed for the door.
“Um… flower?” She stopped to look at me and I let my eyes trail over her gorgeous, toned legs. “Although you look sexy as fuck in my t-shirt, please put something on underneath it.”
She nodded as a blush crept over her cheeks and she grabbed a pair of leggings and slipped them on, followed by her trainers.
“Solar, let’s go.” I snapped out of the fantasy of me bending her over the edge of the bed and taking her, to look up into her frustrated face. “Come on, I may be able to get those girls home to their families tonight.”
“Ok, flower. They’re two doors down.” She flung the door open and hurried down the hall and into the room I told her. Cammie was sitting on the edge of the bed and quickly moved out of the way as Jasmine flew to the bed.
“Oh my god, Sophie,” she cried. “Is she ok? Are they both ok?” she asked Cammie.
“Yeah, just shaken up.”
“Miss Bolt?” Sophie croaked as she began waking up.
“Hi, sweet girl. Are you ok?” She nodded as her bottom lip trembled and she burst into tears. Jasmine gathered her into her arms and held her close.
“Do you know Natalie?” I asked as I stepped into the room. Jasmine had tears running down her face as she shook her head.
“I don’t recognise her,” she told me. “Sophie, do you know Natalie’s parents? Do you know where they live?”
“They live just down the street from my house.”
“Let’s get these girls home,” I announced.
***
Jasmine
Solar pulled up
outside of Sophie’s house and seeing that it was gone midnight all the lights were out. I held Natalie in my arms and Sophie had hold of my hand. Solar rang the doorbell and there was no answer so he began banging loudly on the front door instead. A couple of minutes later, the porch light came on and the front door opened up slowly.
“Miss Bolt?” Sophie’s mum said, sounding confused. “Oh my god, Sophie.”
“Mummy, Daddy.” She cried out in happiness and went running to them. After they had kissed and cuddled her as much as they could, they invited us in.
“How? Why do you have her?” Sophie’s mum asked. “Sorry, I’m Carol and this is Derek.”
“I know you want answers and we will give them to you, but do you know Natalie’s parents?”
“Yes, it’s just her mum. I’ll call her, she lives down the road. I’ll call her now.”
“Please, have a seat,” Derek offered and Solar and I sat down on the two seater sofa with Natalie settled on my lap. “Can I get you anything to drink?” he asked over his daughters head, who he hadn’t let go of yet.
“No, we’re fine thank you,” Solar answered for both of us.
“She’s on the way,” Carol said as she came back into the living room. “She can’t quite believe it. The police told us there were no leads into finding them.”
Outside we heard the squeal of tyres and a slam of the door before Natalie’s mum was flying into the house. I stood up quickly, getting ready to hand her back.
“Natalie.” She sobbed as I handed her over. Natalie cried for her mum and they both held onto each other. “I can’t believe it, I can’t believe you’re here. Thank you.” She sobbed as she looked up to me. Solar stood up and steered her to where he was sitting on the sofa. Once everyone was back in the room he began explaining everything, including how my son was missing and still not found yet. He explained how I went to him for help, all about his club and club brothers and how they found them and what the outcome was. He said over here in the car that normally they wouldn’t disclose club business but he would on this occasion with the permission from Prez as the families would need closure.
Unexpected Love (South Coast Brothers Book 5) Page 4
