Dark Secret

by Avelyn Paige

  “You’ve got to be shitting me, Judge. No fucking way.”

  “You just gonna stand there, or you gonna check out your new ride?” Twat Knot yells out from one of the patio chairs around the fire pit that just yesterday, I power washed for my own damn party. His parting gift as my mentor. Asshat. A few of the other club guys sit around him with some of the club girls in their laps. “If you don’t want it, I’ll take it off your hands.”

  “The fuck you will,” Judge growls, clapping his large hand over my shoulder. “Go check her out, son.”

  I stalk over to the beautiful piece of machinery and run my hands over her smooth exterior.

  “You’re rubbing that bike like you’re touching a woman, dude. Get a room,” Karma ribs from the peanut gallery. “Your girl’s not going to like another woman being in your life.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “No thanks, sugar tits. My dance card’s full tonight.” He gives the perky little blonde sitting on his lap a squeeze, making her squeal. “Where’s your lady at, anyway? Figured she’d be riding your cock with all these girls around, staking her claim.”

  “She’ll be here any minute.” Shelby had called earlier to say she was going to be a little late, and that she’d meet me here at the party. She usually rides my ass about arriving early to shit like this, but maybe her dad’s giving her shit over coming out to the clubhouse again. I’ve been telling her to just let me talk to him, but she won’t allow it. I know the son of a bitch hates me, but if she says yes tonight, he’s going to have to get used to seeing me around. Normally, I’d be annoyed, but it gave me more time to get shit done in my new room.

  “She bringing that hot friend of hers? The one with the small rack and great personality?” The bastard winks at me and starts laughing. Twat Knot has an eye for the ladies, and he’s been chasing after Kasey since the first time she came to one of our parties. The one voted most likely to be Texas’s Biggest Queen Bitch. Shelby’s best friend. My adversary. Any time Shelby gets into trouble, Kasey is always by her side. She’s a bad influence on her, and that’s saying something coming from her outlaw biker boyfriend. Kasey is the last person I want around my girl, and has been the reason for several of our most recent fights.

  I shoot him the middle finger. “Fuck you, dickhead.”

  If I didn’t have to take Kasey as a package deal, I’d have put a stop to her attending the club’s parties long ago. We don’t need that kind of evil polluting the air. How Shelby can stand to be around her is lost on me, because two seconds into being in her presence, I want to gouge out my eyes.

  “I thought she’d be the first person you’d want at your party.”

  “Let me repeat myself: Fuck you, dickhead.”

  “It’s cute when you get your feathers all ruffled up like that.”

  “Have you seen my girl or not?”

  “Maybe you missed her, being holed up in your room all night. You’re missing out on all the fun, kid, seeing as your patch party only happens once. You should be out sampling the buffet.” He runs his finger down the cleavage of one of the hang-arounds.

  “Looks like that one’s been sampled enough by the looks of it.” The girl on his lap sneers at me.

  Sneering back, I peer down at my phone. She’s more than twenty minutes later than when she told me she’d be here. Definitely not like my girl. I pocket the keys to my new ride and head back inside, thinking maybe I’d passed her when Judge and I had walked out. The party has been raging for hours. She might have snuck in and not made it back to meet me in my room like we’d talked about earlier.

  I scan the clubhouse, but see no sign of her.

  Swiping my finger across the screen, I pull up my contacts and call her number. It rings twice and goes to her voicemail.

  “The fuck?” I mumble, trying again. This time, it goes straight to voicemail. I try a third time and get the same thing. Without a second thought, I bolt from the clubhouse and straight to my bike.

  “Where’s the fire, Hash?” GP yells out as I pass by, but I don’t acknowledge him, my focus solely on Shelby. She never ignores my calls, not even when she’s pissed at me. I need to find her and figure out why she’s ducking me. With a flick of the ignition, my bike roars to life between my legs.

  I check my phone one more time before taking off. Nothing. No return calls. No texts. No alerts. The cameras I have set up around the apartment the club had been letting me use hadn’t sent any notifications to my phone all afternoon. If she’s there, the chance of her not tripping the cameras is slim. The club life’s dangerous, and having eyes on her and our soon-to-be temporary home are priority to me when we’re out handling club business. Where the fuck could she be? I audibly growl when her name pops into my head.

  Fucking Kasey. Pounding in her number, she picks up on the second ring, the road noise filling the receiver.

  “Where’s Shelby?” I demand harshly. “I know she’s with you.”

  “She’s not your problem anymore, asshole.”

  “The hell she isn’t.”

  “Why would she want to be with someone like you? Lose our numbers, prick.” The line goes dead.

  Fucking bitch. She’s done something. Shelby wouldn’t run out on me like this. I have to find her.

  Popping the kickstand, I peel out of the parking lot, swerving in and out of traffic until her apartment building comes into view. I don’t even bother trying to find a parking spot, pulling straight up into a loading area near the front entrance of the building. I look around the lot and see Kasey’s piece of shit Taurus isn’t in her usual spot. Not a good sign. Taking the steps to her place two at a time, I reach the door and pound the fuck out of it.

  “Shelby?” I yell. “Darlin’, you in there?” Silence. I lean my forehead against the door as I continue to pound on it. “Come on, baby, answer the door.”

  Think. Where else could she be? Outside of Kasey and I, she doesn’t really roll in any other social circles, which is partly my fault. Her dad and stepmom hate my association with the club, and as her dad has put it more times than I can count: I’m putting his little girl in danger. Let’s just say that anytime she wants to spend time with me, she has to come up with an excuse to leave the house. It hasn’t been easy.

  “Fuck!” I scream, punching my fist against the door, leaving a dent in the gray metal. Heading back down to my bike, I fire her up and head to the one place I never wanted to cross the threshold of again—her dad’s.

  After about a fifteen-minute drive, I arrive at one of the largest homes on the block, nestled into an old money neighborhood on the city’s northeast side. Driving right through the open metal gate, I ride straight for the front entrance where her father stands staunchly on the large front porch, his arms folded across his chest. The security system I helped to install for him is doing its job a little too well for my liking.

  “Get off my property, boy! You’re trespassing!” he shouts, his thick Southern accent biting out every word.

  Dismounting my bike, I stalk toward him, every muscle in my body coiled with tension. “Where is she?”

  “She’s gone.”

  His words hit me like a freight train. “What do you mean she’s gone?”

  Charging down the steps, he stops a few feet away from me in the driveway. “My daughter is no longer your concern.”

  I snap. Lunging, I grab him by the lapels and draw him closer to me. “You’d like it that way, wouldn’t you, asshole? But she loves me. She wouldn’t just fucking leave like that. What have you done to her?” I growl. “Tell me where she went.”

  Shelby’s dad shoves me back, hard, and with one swing of his arm, he slams his fist into my jaw. Shocked, I fall back, landing on my ass in the gravel driveway.

  “My daughter wants nothing more to do with you. She’s finally going to live her life without you.” His eyes are wide and his chest heaves as he stares me down. “You stay the hell away from her.”

  “Honey, is everything okay?” Shelby’s step
mother, Lorna, calls out to us. Looking up, I see her standing at the edge of the porch, shaking. “Do I need to call the police?”

  “Everything’s fine, sweetheart. Go on inside. He was just leaving.” He smiles back at her with a wave, but she doesn’t move. Turning his attention back to me, he kneels down, close to my ear, and whispers, “You step foot on my property again, not even your club will be able to protect you from me.”

  Without another word, he rights himself, turning his back to me. He trudges back up the steps to his wife and they disappear into their house, dismissing me one final time. Dismissing the life I’d had planned for his daughter, just like she had.

  With a hole in my chest where my heart should be, I pick myself up off the ground and walk to my bike, but not without taking one last look at the house of the girl I love before riding away from the property.

  On my trip back to the clubhouse, I think about Shelby and what I could have done wrong. She’s been my everything. Even as I was getting my patch this morning, my mind was on her and the commitment I had hoped to make to her tonight. The commitment that’s burning a hole in my pocket, nestled inside its velvet box.

  Shelby

  Present Day

  I slam my fist down on the detective’s desk, sending office supplies scattering onto the floor. “She’s not late! Somebody has taken her!”

  Detective Fischer leans back in his seat, scanning the debris left from my outburst. “Miss Dawson, I’m simply trying to look at all available avenues. Most cases of a missing teen is the result of them wanting to spread their wings, stepping out on the rules put in place by their parents. They take off, have some fun, then return home with a hangover and needing to sleep it off.”

  It’s all I can do not to reach across his desk, take his smug face into my hands, and shake some sense into him. “My daughter is twelve years old. She’s not a teenager. She’s not ‘spreading her wings’.” I lean forward, getting in his face, and pin him to his seat with a glare. “I’m telling you, there’s something wrong here. Hayden always comes straight to my shop after her day at summer camp.”

  The detective sighs and removes his glasses, rubbing his eyes with the tips of his fingers. “I’ll send word to all the units on patrol, okay? But I don’t want you to get your hopes up. Your daughter will likely show up before bedtime tonight.”

  Panic claws its way up my throat. Hayden has been gone for nearly six hours now, and I’ve watched enough crime shows to know that the first twenty-four hours are the most critical if you want to find a kidnap victim. I’d come to the police when she didn’t show up at my tattoo shop after camp, and hadn’t arrived home by eight o’clock. Her friends didn’t know where she was, and the camp organizers reported she had been there all day.

  Hayden is a reliable kid. She goes to a programming and technology camp for gifted kids she affectionately refers to as “Nerd Camp.” She follows the rules. She helps out around my shop. She’s my little adult in a child’s body, and my gut is telling me everything is far from okay right now.

  “Do you have kids, Detective?”

  His eyes harden. “No, ma’am, I do not.”

  “Well, let me educate you on what it’s like to be a parent with a missing child you know is in danger, yet some know-it-all detective is telling you she doesn’t fit the criteria to take her case seriously.” He sits a little straighter as my voice grows colder, my anger rising to the surface.

  “Your entire reason for getting up every day is gone. The one person you’d lay down your life for has disappeared, and you’re the only one who seems to give a shit. And while your world is spinning out of control, and your child is getting farther and farther out of your reach, you have a detective who thinks he knows her better than you do. He lumps her in with a group of kids who have nothing in common with your child other than their age.”

  I sit back in my seat, fisting my hands. “My daughter is a computer prodigy. She’s been developing games and creating code since she was six years old. She has friends at school, but she spends most of her time doing what she loves—coding. Do you know many computer prodigies who like to party, Detective?”

  Fischer sighs. “No, ma’am, I do not.”

  I clench my teeth together. “Issue an Amber Alert. Track down her now.”

  Fischer shakes his head slowly from side to side. “I’ll have the active units keep an eye out and send her information to other precincts in the area to do the same. But I will not issue an Amber Alert, not yet, as it’s only been a few hours. And besides, we aren’t sure yet that Hayden has even been kidnapped. We have no suspect, no proof. Is it possible the child is with her father?”

  I gape at him, realizing for the first time since sitting down in his office that he’s not going to help me. He’s not being cruel, or dumb. He’s simply following a set of rules that don’t always work, and the result is more and more missing children falling through the cracks, into an abyss of mystery, rarely seen or heard from again.

  “Hayden doesn’t know her father. He has no reason to contact her.”

  “I’m going to need his name and contact information to determine that for myself.”

  A pain unrelated to Hayden’s disappearance stabs my already aching heart. “That’s not necessary, Detective. He doesn’t even know Hayden exists. We haven’t spoken since the day I found out I was pregnant with her.”

  “It’s still an avenue to look in—”

  “No, it’s not,” I snap. “He’s not the person who took her. You’re looking in all the wrong fucking places!”

  “Please, calm down, Miss Dawson.”

  I can’t sit here another second; it’s not helping find Hayden. I stand, my head held high, and grab my purse. “I don’t care what you do or where you look. Issue an APB, something! I just want you to find my daughter.”

  I stalk out of the police department, not feeling any more confident than I had when I first went in. The cops here in this little Podunk town don’t know what the hell they’re doing. Fischer will spin in circles, chasing his tail, looking into all the easy avenues before realizing he actually might have to do a little bit of police work to find my baby girl. I can’t let her slip through the cracks like so many other kids I’ve seen on missing posters.

  Is it possible the child is with her father?

  The question had been like a shock to my system—a wake-up call. There’s no way in hell that Hayden could have connected somehow with Wyatt. And even if they had, Wyatt would never have taken her from me. The man I left in the dust years ago may not even be the same person now. That club changes men in ways I’ll never be able to understand, including Wyatt.

  But maybe he needs to connect with her. Maybe it’s time. I’ve spent a lot of years trying to keep Wyatt Hayden’s face from my thoughts, but having his living, breathing, carbon copy sleeping in the sparkly pink bedroom down the hall for all of these years has made that nearly impossible. Every time she glares at me, it’s like he’s staring at me through her eyes.

  My baby is gone. Our baby is gone. And as much as I hate to admit it, he may be the only one who can find her before it’s too late.

  Hashtag

  It’s nights like this that make me appreciate not being tied down like some of these fuckers. Just watching them parade around with big ass grins on their faces is enough to make me uneasy. I tried the whole relationship thing once, and it fucking broke me. Nobody’s gonna get the chance to put me through that shit again. Settling down? Not happening. I’d rather be alone than go through the hell I’ve been through. No bitch is worth that much bullshit.

  Priest plops down next to me at the bar, ordering a drink from one of the club girls bartending for tonight’s festivities. Popping the lid, she slides the bottle over to him.

  “Great party,” he declares, taking a pull from his beer. “She’s good for him—for all of us.”

  I can only nod in response. Yeah, it worked out for him. Blair’s good people. I like her. But sitting here watc
hing the two of them celebrate their love isn’t going so well for me tonight. It’s not Blair or GP. It’s not the other people crowding the clubhouse, having a good time. It’s the date—our date. Thirteen years ago today, I was a newly patched member with a future full of plans: college, a wife—a family. Only one of those actually got checked off my list, while the other two disappeared that same night without so much as a Dear Wyatt letter to explain why I wasn’t enough for her. And the ring I bought her? The one I couldn’t force myself to hock all these years later? It stays in my dresser drawer, mocking me each and every morning. A reminder not to trust, but a memento of what it really feels like to love.

  “What’s up your ass?”

  “Nothing,” I growl. “Just trying to drink my beer without you ladies spoiling it for me.”

  Priest glances over at me and shakes his head. “You’re not happy for them, are you?”

  “Didn’t say I wasn’t.”

  Priest takes another swig before slamming down the bottle onto the bar, tossing up his fingers to order another one, while Layla, a long-time club girl, saunters over to me with her tits spilling out of her top. She presses them up against me, and I shove her off.

  “Not in the mood, sweetheart.”

  Her painted face saddens at my dismissal, and even that annoys me.

  “Layla, when are you gonna get a clue? The guys around here are gonna keep fuckin’ ya, but none of them will ever claim you.”

  Hurt and anger crease her face, and I can tell instantly that I struck a nerve. “Fuck you, Hashtag. I’d rather fuck a dead Billy goat than be claimed by a stuck-up prick like you.”

  I grab my dick through my jeans. “Bitch, you’ve been trying to get in my pants for years. Haven’t you figured out yet that I wouldn’t touch you if you were the last slut on earth? Go fuck a prospect or something.”

  Growling, she throws up her middle finger before stomping away in a huff.