“Get off me.” Harrison shoved him back, but Magnus held tight, ignoring the burly bastards in suits who were quickly moving in his direction. He figured the private security, or whatever the fuck they were, would be drawing on him any second.
“What did you do to her?” Magnus demanded to know.
“Magnus!”
The sharp bark of his name barely registered, and he ignored Brantley, his rage having found a target.
“Did you kill her?” he growled.
Harrison’s expression gave nothing away, but he held up a hand to hold back his dogs coming to his rescue.
Magnus could see it in the man’s eyes. There was evil in there, pure evil.
“Ah, fuck,” he groaned, pain consuming him at the thought of this bastard having killed her. The sorrow that filled him at that revelation nearly took him out at the knees, but he forced it back, allowing the rage to take over.
When Harrison tried to shove his hands off, Magnus let go, but he redirected them around the man’s skinny neck, gripping tightly, choking. He wanted to see the bastard’s eyes bulge out of his head, see the fear that came with knowing he was going to die. It would be so fucking easy to squeeze the life out of him right here and now. The man deserved it. Hell, he deserved a death worse than that.
“Magnus, let him go,” Trey demanded from behind him.
He didn’t, continuing to squeeze as he held Harrison’s gaze. “You will go down for this, you bastard. I swear to you.”
The evil Magnus had seen before glinted in Harrison’s eyes then. “Not if you go down first,” he choked out.
Hard hands gripped his arm, pulling him back. Forced to release Harrison, he stumbled away, never taking his eyes off the man.
“Get in the goddamn truck,” Brantley barked, shoving him so he stumbled again, this time farther away from Harrison. “Before they do fucking arrest you.”
“Come on.” Trey’s tone was calmer, smoother. “Let’s grab some coffee and talk.”
“I don’t fucking want coffee. And I damn sure don’t want to talk. I want to know where Ava is.”
“And that’s the question we have to find the answer to,” Trey explained. “To do that, we need to know everything you know.”
Magnus sighed, resigning himself to talking as fear consumed him once more.
After all, Trey was right. They had to get answers to find Ava.
He prayed to God she was still alive.
Because if she weren’t, Magnus would be back here soon enough. However, the next time they’d be questioning him about murder, because he was going to kill that son of a bitch.
Chapter Eight
BRANTLEY HAD NO FUCKING CLUE WHAT SETMagnus off, but for a minute there, he’d thought the usually laid-back dog trainer was going to kill the other man. There were only a few times in his life when Brantley had seen that sort of rage on a man’s face, and it always reflected a deep-seated hatred. Whatever the situation was between Magnus and Ava’s husband, it was based on a dislike of astronomical proportions.
He waited until they’d made it to the main road, then glanced in the rearview, caught sight of Magnus. Before he could ask a question, though, Magnus spoke up.
“They wouldn’t tell me anything,” Magnus explained, his tone one of a defeated man. “Just that Ava’s missing but nothing else.”
“Right now, that’s all we know,” Brantley assured him. “When’s the last time you saw her?”
Magnus blew out a breath. “Shit. I don’t know. It’s been a few weeks.”
“Not last night?” Trey asked, turning to look back at him.
Brantley caught Magnus’s frown in the rearview. “No. You both know where I was last night.”
He remembered seeing Magnus at Moonshiners, but he’d been so preoccupied watching Reese that he hadn’t paid attention to what time he’d arrived. Nor had he kept up with the man throughout the evening.
