“Why can’t we just put a bullet in Bates and be done with it?” Butch demanded, his face red with anger. “That sonofabitch is responsible for Tanner being handed over to fucking Fontana. And now he tries to kill my daughter? My grandson could be an orphan right now if the sheriff had his way. The bastard needs to meet the Angel of Death.”
I grunted an agreement.
“Brother, I would be happy to end that motherfucker, but we have to be smart about this,” Hawk told him. “With Tanner coming back from the dead, we suddenly have all eyes on us. The election is Tuesday. If we wait until then, the attention will be on Jenks and Campbell.”
“Bates isn’t the only issue at hand,” Bash announced. “Fontana is still out there somewhere. I want all eyes open for anything even remotely suspicious. That fucker could be anywhere, biding his time to take one or all of us out.”
“We got other problems right now too,” Matt said, bringing all eyes to him. “Who the fuck put something in the goddamn water and now all the females are getting pregnant?”
The room erupted in laughter, and I suddenly wondered what the women had been drinking. Because whatever it was, maybe I wanted to give Jos some of it too.
Chapter 22
Raven
With Max on my hip, I walked with Lexa into the exam room. She was still whining, and every time I saw her tears, the desire to eviscerate Fontana came back all over again. I hoped I’d killed whoever had shot my baby girl.
Maybe he had been one of the two I’d taken out that night.
But in my mind, Fontana was the cause of Lexa’s tears. He was why she was in so much pain. Without him, she wouldn’t have to go through any of this.
I held out my hand to her, and she trustingly placed the one that wasn’t connected to her aching arm in it to steady herself as she climbed onto the exam table. I sat her brother down beside her, then tossed the diaper bag in one of the chairs against the opposite wall.
“Poor little lamb,” Mable, Doc Robertson’s oldest and sweetest nurse, said soothingly as she took Lexa’s temperature and placed a blood pressure cuff on her good arm.
I rubbed Lexa’s back while the cuff squeezed her arm, and she whined again. Max didn’t like that his sister was so unhappy and tried to climb on top of her. Flick was just next door in the pharmacy getting me a few supplies for later and had offered to take him with her, but for some reason, I felt uneasy letting either of my babies out of my sight today. Call it mother’s intuition, or paranoia after what happened to Jos and Hawk the night before, but I couldn’t shake this feeling of unease.
I knew my best friend and soon-to-be sister-in-law would have protected my son with her life, but it freaked me out just thinking of not having him with me.
Fuck, I needed to calm down. My nerves were getting the better of me, and if I wasn’t careful, I was going to have a full-on meltdown.
Mable finally finished up just as a knock came at the door, and Doc walked in. He smiled warmly at Lexa and produced two suckers as he approached the table. Max snatched his before I could even say a word, expertly ripping off the paper and stuffing it into his mouth, while Lexa was more hesitant.
Good girl.
Her allergies scared us all half to death, but now that she was getting older and questioning everyone who offered her food, I was able to relax a little more about her eating while I wasn’t around. Still, I kept a supply of EpiPens everywhere.
Doc’s smile increased. “No worries here, Lexa. I make sure that all the treats I get are made in a nut-free environment just for you.”
Her smile was pitiful as she finally accepted the sucker and carefully unwrapped it before putting it in her mouth.
Doc’s attention went straight to me. “Still hurting?”
I nodded. “It seems to be getting worse each day. I’ve been giving her anti-inflammatory pain relievers, but they don’t even seem to put a dent in her pain.”
“Lexa, honey, can I see your arm?” He crouched down so he was at an even level with her arm. She pulled up her sleeve, and I had to grit my teeth at the sight of the angry red scar from where the stitches had closed up the through and through. He shifted her arm, making her whimper, and I had to remind myself Doc was only trying to examine her, so I shouldn’t punch him in the back of the head.
“Does it hurt more here…” He lightly touched the front of the wound, then the back. “…or here, sweetheart?”
“There,” she sobbed when he pressed a little more firmly on the underside of her arm. “It hurts so bad, Mommy!”
I pulled her close to my chest, kissing the top of her head. “I know, baby. I’m so sorry.”
After a few more seconds of feeling around, Doc straightened. “You know what I’m going to have to do, Raven.”
I nodded, my gut twisting. Lexa was going to need an MRI to check to see if there was any damage caused by the bullet. She was going to have to be placed in some tiny-ass machine, and lie still for however long it took to get the pictures needed. That was a nightmare of epic proportions. I didn’t want to have to put her through it, but we had to have answers as to why she was in so much pain.
“How soon can we get it done?” I asked.
“I’ll get the order, and you can take it straight over to the hospital. I don’t want to wait in case we need to go in there and repair something. This might be nothing but some growing pains and tender muscles, but it could also be something more.”
“Yeah, okay,” I said, outwardly calm. On the inside, I was praying this was just growing pains. Lexa had already been through so much. I didn’t want her to have to go through surgery on top of everything else.
Ten minutes later, I exited the doctor’s office. Jet and Flick were sitting in the waiting room and stood as soon as we came out. Max squirmed, wanting Flick, and I gladly handed him over. “Can you take him back to the clubhouse?” I asked her. “Lexa needs to go over to the hospital for the MRI.”
“What’s an MRI?” my daughter asked, her brow puckered in confusion and worry.
“A machine that’s going to take pictures of your arm, baby,” I explained patiently. “So we can see what’s wrong and why you’re in so much pain.”
“Will it hurt?”
“No. It’s just going to take a while to get all the pictures we need. Do you think you can lie on the little table really still for me?”
She nodded, but the anxiety didn’t leave her face.
“Raider’s outside,” Flick said, taking the diaper bag from me. “I’ll have him take me and this little monster home. Jet can go with you to the hospital.”
My own anxiety skyrocketed at the idea of Max leaving my side, but I nodded. I guess I had to have Flick take him back, after all. He didn’t need to be exposed to the germs of the hospital if he didn’t need to. Hell, I didn’t want to expose Lexa, but there was no getting around it.
Jet held his arms out to Lexa, and she let him pick her up, laying her head on his shoulder as we all walked outside together. Raider was waiting beside Quinn’s car, but it didn’t have a car seat yet, so Jet gave him the keys to my SUV while I grabbed Lexa’s booster from the back seat.
Ten minutes later, we were in the radiology waiting room. It wasn’t busy considering it was a Saturday, but that also meant less staff. Jet sat down with Lexa on his lap, her head once again cradled on his shoulder, while he rubbed her back.
I stood there watching them as I waited for the receptionist to appear so I could hand over the MRI order. Jet was so good with kids. I wanted him and Flick to be able to have babies of their own, but even if they couldn’t, I knew he would be okay. They could adopt, and he would love them just the same.
As soon as the tech appeared, she took the order and waved us back. “You can’t be in there with her during the procedure,” the woman said. “But you can go in and help her get comfortable before the MRI starts. It will help calm her to know you’re with her at first.”
Lexa had to
put on a hospital gown, which she didn’t like, but the tech gave her a teddy bear to hold on to with her good arm while I helped her lie down on the narrow table and wrapped her in a blanket.
“I’m scared,” Lexa whispered when she saw where she was going to be during the test.
I bent over her, kissing her brow. “Let’s pretend you’re in a cave with your teddy,” I suggested. “Close your eyes and imagine you’re on an adventure, but hold really, really still, okay? The less you move, the quicker it will be over.”
The tech pushed the button to move the table back into the machine, and at first, Lexa whimpered in fright, but she quickly calmed down when I reminded her to close her eyes. Reluctantly, I followed the tech out when she directed me to.
“It shouldn’t be too long,” the woman said with a kind smile. “I’ll bring her out as soon as we’re done.”
“Can’t I wait here?”
She shook her head. “Kids tend to perform better when their parents aren’t around. Just relax. I’ll take good care of your little one.”
My feeling of unease returned, but I walked through the door, back into the waiting room with Jet. For the first ten minutes, I tried to sit still, but it was agony. For the next ten, I paced the length of the waiting room, glancing at the door every thirty seconds. When another ten minutes passed, I was starting to feel sick.
“It’s taking too long,” I told my brother. “They should be done by now.”
“Maybe she was moving around a lot. Just give it a little longer.”
Ten, then fifteen minutes passed, and as each of those minutes ticked my, my stomach filled with dread.
“I can’t take this anymore,” I snapped and pushed open the door that led back to the MRI room.
The sound of Jet’s booted feet echoed behind me, and I didn’t understand why they were so loud. The machine was in a soundproof room, and the only way to speak to the person inside the MRI was through a microphone from the control room. But it still felt alien to me that there was zero sound coming from back there.
Then I rounded the corner and fought back a scream. Not because the tech was slumped over the control panel where she’d been sitting, a bullet between her lifeless eyes.
But because Lexa was gone.
The teddy bear was lying on the floor, and Lexa’s clothes weren’t where I’d folded them after helping her into the hospital gown.
“Motherfuck!” Jet roared as my knees gave out and I began to fall.
Chapter 23
Bash
One minute I was sitting with Trigger in Gracie’s office, the next, my entire world seemed to be crashing down.
I still held the phone to my ear, could hear Raven’s sobs in the background, each of them full of tortured rage that made my heart rate spike. Jet repeated himself again. “Lexa was taken during her MRI. The tech is dead. We have to figure this out. Now.”
I still wasn’t able to process it. My wife, the love of my life, sounded like she was being flayed alive.
My baby girl was gone.
Gracie snatched the phone out of my hand. “Hey, what’s going on? Bash looks like he’s turned into a statue.” I met her gaze, silently begging her to tell me I heard it wrong. But as the seconds ticked by and she listened to the man on the other end, her face turned stony, and I knew it wasn’t a mistake.
The woman was the sweetest person I’d ever met. If she looked like she was about to murder someone, then I knew it was real.
Finally snapping out of it, I jumped to my feet and grabbed my phone back. “Pull the camera footage from security. Get everyone moving. We have to find her.”
“Security is here now. The place is going on lockdown, but I think the bastard is long gone by now. The cops will be here any minute, brother. Bates—”
“Bates is goddamn dead,” I roared.
“I didn’t hear that,” Gracie said from behind me. “Nope. I’m pretending I didn’t hear that so I can defend you later if I have to.” She pushed on my back, and I turned to glare at her. “If I have to,” she repeated, lowering her voice. “Don’t make me have to, okay? Hide that fucking body really, really good.”
“Raven!” Jet’s yell pulled me back to the man on the other end of my phone. “Where the fuck are you going?”
I strained to listen, heard my brother-in-law curse and then his heavy breathing, as if he were running.
“Jet?”
“Bash, man, Raven just took off. She’s already at the car!”
My stomach bottomed out. That damn woman. I had a million things to worry about right then, and she was taking off.
But I already knew where she was going.
Bates.
“Trigger, let’s go,” I called over my shoulder, but the retired army vet was already behind me. “Get your rifles,” I told him once we were on the street. It was better to be prepared for anything and everything than not. “We might need a sniper.”
My motorcycle was parked right out front of the law office, the street fairly deserted since it was Saturday morning. Trigger threw his leg over his own, going back to his house, while I headed for the first place I could think to look for Bates. His house.
Bates lived outside of town but within the county lines. It was a good twenty-minute drive to his place, but I was there in half that. Still, Raven had beaten me there, and I found her climbing through one of the windows, not seeming to care that his neighbors could see her if any of them so much as looked out their window.
A crash from inside had me barreling up the driveway from my motorcycle, and I quickly kicked open the front door just as I found Raven with a gun pointed in Bates’s face. “Where is he?” she seethed, a mother bear desperate for her cub.
“Wh-What are you talking about?” he stuttered, eyeballing first the gun aimed right at his nose, then me.
“Answer her!” I roared. “Where the fuck is Fontana?”
“Wh-Who?”
Raven grabbed his shirt, pulling him in closer and pressing the gun flush against his forehead. She was slender, and the sheriff outweighed her by a good hundred and twenty pounds, but she was so enraged, she seemed to be even stronger than me all of a sudden. “Enzo Fontana took my baby. I know you work for him, you sick sonofabitch. You have five seconds to tell me where he is, or your brains are going to be all over your motherfucking couch!”
“I-I don’t know anything about—”
“Raven!” I yelled when her finger started to squeeze the trigger, and I eased toward her. “He does know. Don’t fucking kill him yet.” When I could reach her, I wrapped an arm around her waist, not pulling her away, but letting her know I was there with her. We would figure this out.
We would find our daughter.
Her hand stayed steady, but I felt the rest of her body tremble. “She’s probably so scared,” Raven whispered. “And this bastard knows where she is. He has to.”
“I-If you kill me, you’ll never see her again,” Bates warned. “They’ll give you the needle for killing a cop.”
She leaned in closer. “I don’t see a cop around here. Just a spineless little pussy who is about to piss his pants. Tell me where Fontana is.”
“I really don’t know!” he screamed, sounding terrified, his bulldog-like face deathly pale.
“But you know something. You’re his little bitch, right? You took him Tanner. You have to be able to contact him. Give me his number.”
When he just kept his mouth shut, she lifted her knee, hitting him direct center in the balls. He wheezed out a whimper and fell to his knees. Grabbing him by the hair, she tilted his head up. Tears leaked from his eyes, his face almost purple from the pain. The gun moved from his temple to just under his chin. “Do you know what my husband will do to you?” He gulped, and she grinned so fucking evilly that it brought goose bumps to my skin. “That is nothing compared to what I will do to you, you motherfucker. I will skin you a-fucking-live.”
“My phone,” h
e gasped out. “The contact number is all I have, I swear. I didn’t know he would take the kid. I wouldn’t have let him do that.”
“Sure, you wouldn’t.” She took the phone he offered up with shaking hands and tossed it to me.
I pulled up all his contacts, but it wasn’t like he had it so obviously listed under Enzo Fontana. “What’s the name?” I bit out, flipping down the list.
“Erick Frank,” he said with a curse.
I found the name and hit connect. Two seconds later, a heavy laugh filled my ear. “Meet me at the spot, Bates. This is going to be fun.” Then he hung up.
“Where’s the spot?” I demanded.
“What spot?”
“Stop wasting my time!” I roared. “Fontana just thought I was you. He expects you to be at ‘the spot.’ Tell me where the fuck that is, or Raven is going to blow your brains out.”
“Okay, okay,” he cried when she pressed the metal up under his chin harder. “It’s some ancient house out in the boonies. A good hour and a half from here. I’ve met him there a few times.”
“Let’s go,” I ordered, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt and lifting him to his feet. “I don’t have time to play games with you.”
I marched him out to Quinn’s car and tossed him in the back seat. Raven handed over the gun, and I got in beside the sheriff while she climbed behind the wheel. “Where am I going?”
“South.”
Chapter 24
Tanner
The sound of my kid’s giggles was the most heart-soothing thing I’d ever heard. That I was the cause of them only made it that much better.
I was in my room, resting so Jos wouldn’t worry, but I wasn’t sleepy, so I was taking advantage of the moment to get to know my son better. He was a good kid, not a whiner, and I’d seen him sharing his toys earlier with the other kids. I also learned that he didn’t like having Max taken away when they were playing, but Raven needed to take Lexa to the doctor, and for some reason, she wouldn’t let the boy out of her sight.
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