But he’d already hung up.
I started rewinding camera footage from this moment back to an hour before I’d made my dinner. I turned the volume all the wayup. Suddenly, I heard faint voices. They were just close enough that I could barely make out what they were saying if I listened closely enough.
It sounded something about watching the gate for the girl and grabbing her when she comes out. I kept running it back and re-listening. It didn’t make sense. They said they’d drop her back at the gate after two hours to give Bronc and his boys time to come get them. And she’d be back at the clubhouse for the ‘big boom.’
“Big boom, big boom.” I looked at Rocket. “Why would they take her and bring her back?” He just tilted his head. I grabbed my keys as I jammed my feet into my tennis shoes, heading for the door. “You stay here, boy. I’ll be back.”
I dialed Wrecker as I headed for my car. I was out the door while Wrecker’s phone went to voicemail.
It dawned on me as soon as I put my car in drive. I understood what ‘big boom’ meant. They were going to blow up the clubhouse, and they wanted Maddie to blow up with it. FUCK! I called Wrecker again. Again, voicemail. “Wrecker, call me! They have Maddie, but they are bringing her back to the Iron Valor gate! They are going to blow up the clubhouse. Don’t go near it!” I was trying to drive and look up phone numbers at the same time. I had very few saved in my phone.
I tried Juliet. Voicemail.
Pearl. Voicemail.
Bronc. Voicemail.
“WHY THE FUCK WON’T ANYONE ANSWER THEIR PHONES?”
Chapter 18
Wrecker
Bronc’s truck hit the brakes hard, the belt biting into my collarbone as we skidded to a halt at the back of the Dairyville Dollar King. I was out before he finished shifting to park. The parking lot was mostly empty, sun bleaching the paint from the few cars left for the evening shift. Maddie’s Ford pickup sat by the dumpster, lights off, driver’s side window cracked.
I didn’t want to approach the vehicle. The wolf in me already knew what it meant: prey taken, trail gone cold.
I checked the driver’s seat anyway, hands flat on the door, nose pressed to the glass. The keys dangled from the ignition. Her purse was on the floor. Cupholder: Big Gulp, lipstick smudge, quarter-melted ice. Back seat: Christmas wrapping paper, Target bags, a stuffed unicorn with the tag still on. The door wasn’t even locked.
“She wouldn’t leave it like this,” I said, and the words were a stone in my mouth. Bronc hovered a step behind, scanning the lot, eyes narrowed to slits.
“Anything?” he asked.
“No sign of struggle,” I said, forcing calm. “No blood, no glass, no noise. She either went with them or they took her clean.”
Bronc’s hands were fists. “This is Greenbriar.”
It wasn’t a question. It was what you said when you found a friend’s boots in the yard, but no trace of him anywhere. It was the old, ugly feeling from four years back—Emma’s hair, caught in a door hinge; Emma’s shoes, found at a truck stop in the panhandle; Emma’s scent, fading off the highway like it had never existed at all.
I slammed the door shut and stalked a slow circle around the truck, head low, letting the wolf take over my senses. There: a faint, sour note, unfamiliar. Someone male. Recent. They’d waited until she was alone, then snatched her quick, silent.
Bronc was already calling the war room. His voice was glass: “They have her. It’s the same as last time. Get everyone in.”
I wanted to punch her truck until the doors fell off.
Instead, I followed him back, heart shaking, fingers burning with the urge to kill.
We drove the back roads to the Iron Valor clubhouse in near silence. My mind replayed the Emma tape on a loop: the way we played it by the book. We took it to the Council, knowing that Greenbriar Alpha fuck had taken her after Bronc told him she wasn’t interested in becoming his mate. The fucking Council “investigation” that turned up nothing. Then our own investigation that found sweet Emma bound in silver, half starved to death. She wasn’t the same after. And died three months later.
Greenbriar paid with the death of their Alpha that time. Clearly, that hadn’t been enough. My wolf rattled my ribs, insistent, a thousand-yard snarl inside my chest.
When we turned onto the compound drive, the entire war council was already waiting: Doc, Gunner, Arsenal, Papa, even Pearl’s old sedan at the end of the row. Half a dozen bikes gleamed under the yellow porch lights. The clubhouse itself was dark except for the meeting room, where windows glowed like fever eyes.
We filed in. I’d grabbed my club laptop from my office. The table was crowded: maps, coffee mugs, the shotgun always keptwithin arm’s reach. The air smelled of sweat and gun oil and the faint sweetness of Bronc’s aftershave.
Arsenal spoke first. “Confirmed?”
“Confirmed,” Bronc said. “Wrecker smelled them.”
