This can’t be happening.
Aaron heads for the door, boots echoing off concrete. His hand finds the light switch.
“Get comfortable, sweetheart. You’re gonna be here a while.”
The lights go out.
Darkness swallows everything—absolute, suffocating, complete. I can’t see my own hands, can’t see the chair I’m tied to, can’t see anything except the thin line of light bleeding under what must be a door somewhere ahead of me.
The sound of a lock engaging echoes through the space.
Then footsteps. Fading. Growing distant.
Then nothing.
Just me and the dark and the rope cutting into my wrists and the taste of blood still coating my tongue.
FORTY-TWO
MASON
I paceback and forth across the storage room floor. To the point that there’s probably going to be path worn in the linoleum before the night is over.
Cursing myself for not making sure that Phoenix had her phone on her when she went outside. Hating that I let her go by herself in the first place.
Wondering how long I can go without losing my mind completely before we get her back.
Dom continues to click through the camera feeds, his expression cold and forbidding.
“We need to call the police,” I say for the third time.
His reply is flat. “No.”
I stop mid-stride. “What the hell do you mean,no?”
“I mean no cops. Not yet.”
Heat floods my chest, part terror, part rage. “Phoenix has been kidnapped and you want to just—what? Wait around and see what happens?”
“Not precisely, no.”
“She could be anywhere by now!” My voice climbs without my permission, cracking at the edges. “She could be hurt. She could be?—”
“I know.” Dom’s jaw tightens, muscle jumping beneath the stubble. “You think I don’t know that? But the second we involve the police, Aaron is going to hear about it.”
“So what?”
“So…the Sinners only took Phoenix an hour ago. As far as Aaron knows we haven’t even figured out she’s missing yet.”
My fists clench and unclench. Am I going to hit him? Maybe. “Explain.”
“The Sinners have contacts in the sheriff’s department. They’ll know we reported it before the officers even leave the station. The cops will make a decent show of going to the clubhouse and doing a few interviews that won’t actually result in anything. And if Aaron thinks the police are sniffing too close, he’ll just move Phoenix somewhere we’ll never find her and Aaron will get exactly what he wants.”
“And what do you think that is exactly? Ransom? Revenge? What?”
Dom shuts down the camera feed and pushes to his feet. “I’m not going to wait to figure that out.”
“Wait, what are you going to do?”
