“Dad says that you weren’t hurt in the attack tonight. Physically, anyway.”
“No, it was just some drunk asshole.”
“I’m glad.”
A moment passed and we both said, “I’m sorry” at the same time.
“You? Why are you sorry?” my mom asked.
“Because of what happened to you. I had no idea, Mom. None. You have been carrying this secret around for seventeen years.” As I looked at her, so many things made sense. Her overprotectiveness. Her trying so hard to keep Bailey and me from making mistakes.
“I guess I should have told you, but the time never seemed right. And, Bailey…I didn’t want to upset her. Being conceived from rape is a pretty awful thing.”
“As far as I’m concerned,” my dad added, “Bailey is my daughter. She is. I was there during the whole pregnancy and I was the one to cut the cord when she was born. I’ve been to every daddy daughter dance, and…” his voice caught. “We need to find her, Paige. What time does the police station open? We can’t just be sitting around here doing nothing.”
Now it was my turn to be truthful. “Actually, I have some friends who are helping look for her.”
“Friends? What kind of friends?” my mom asked.
“Well…the girl that Bailey went to the concert with… she is missing too. It’s her older brother.”
“What kind of help can another teenager do?” my dad asked. “This is a job for law enforcement.”
“Her brother is the vice president of a motorcycle club and they were doing security for the concert.”
“Amotorcycle gang?” my mother said, a horrified expression on her face.
“Not a gang. A club. And, anyway, he is trying to track down what happened to his sister Lily and Bailey. They are well connected in La Playa and if there’s information to find, I trust him to find it.”
“How did you meet this man? Are you in the motorcycle club, too?” My mom was so clueless sometimes.
“I met him at work. As a customer.”
“I don’t understand how Bailey met him and his sister?”
“It’s kind of a long story. Why don’t we head back home and get some rest and I’ll tell you in the car?”
“I thought we were going to the police?” my mom asked.
“Why don’t we let Ryder work on things a bit longer. It’s still been less than 12 hours. What if we say that if we don’t have news by noon, we file a missing persons report then. Okay? We can feed Betty White and let her out and wait for news there.”
I sounded a lot more confident than I felt. But after the night we’d all had, I figured Ryder was right. Being at home in Verde Hills would feel a whole lot better than sitting in this apartment.
Thirty-Three
Ryder
I wanted to hear what Hawk had to say, but I really didn’t want to talk about it in front of Scorpion so I said, “Why don’t you go take a leak? The bathrooms are right back there.”
He nodded and got up and I wondered how such a skinny kid was prospecting with a violent MC like Las Balas. I also wondered what the hell Lily saw in him, because it sure wasn’t his appearance. As soon as he walked away, Hawk leaned over to me and said, “You’ve got balls bringing a Las Balas recruit in here.”
“It was the best of the worst options, trust me. So what’s up?
“Okay, so I went to Frog Park, where Viper and his guys do business. I asked if he knew anything about the explosion, the scare at the convention center, and anything about Lily’s disappearance.”
I didn’t know what Hawk had to do to get that kind of information from one of our rivals and I didn’t want to ask. The less I knew, the better. “What did he say?”
“He said that they didn’t have anything to do with the warehouse fire, and none of the other MCs in town were claiming it. Everyone thinks it was us.”
