The touch grounded me in a way I hadn’t realized I needed.
“I was the only one in the house who would go through his stuff. I threw out everything else. Burned all his clothes. I was angry and I didn’t think it through. He was supposed to be out of our lives for good.” I should have known his people would come after his stuff, but I hadn’t been thinking very clearly at the time. “He must have sent them after it, then realized what happened once they couldn’t find it. He probably thought having that ledger would pay his way back into their good graces. He got himselfout of whatever hole he landed in after his arrest. Probably trying to prove he’s still useful.”
“Surprised they didn’t just kill him.” Diesel growled from behind me. “It’s a liability. He took a risk admitting he’d written it down.”
“And now they think we have access to that information.” Hawk closed the loop in our conversation with a shake of his head. “Explains why they’re not giving up. No one is going to believe you don’t have that book. I wouldn’t believe it if I was in their shoes.”
I’d spent so much time convincing myself getting rid of the ledger was the right thing to do, but consequences didn’t go away. I should have found another way.
Too late.
The stillness in the room brought a chill that raced down my spine. My phone trilled from my back pocket, startling me into taking a short, sharp breath tinged with smoke. I coughed and yanked the phone from my pocket, eying the screen.
“Unknown number.” Diesel started to take the phone from me. “Don’t answer it.”
“I have to.” We all knew who was on the other end. None of this was random. I recognized the voice as soon as he said my name, and my body reacted with a shudder that released the phone.
24
HAWK
Damn this guy. I swiped the phone from the air and brought it up to my ear. Silence fell for a beat. “What do you want?” I didn’t need his name. Callie’s face said it all.
I’d never heard Wade Harlan speak, but I knew his type. He thought he was the smartest man in the room. Never understood he’d been three steps behind his entire life.
“Well.” A pause lingered, then a low, dry chuckle. “I was expecting Callie to have a man but you sound downright unpleasant. She’ll do that to you. Stupid cunt.”
He wanted a reaction. I felt one all right. My hand tightened around the phone, but I forced it to relax, forced my lips not to pull into a grimace. Years of running a club had taught me that men who used that word in the first ten seconds of a conversation were always the most predictable in the room. They wanted to see if I’d flinch. I gave him nothing. I couldn’t control my entire expression though, and the tight feeling around my eyes, along with the way Diesel narrowed his said he read my anger loud and clear.
“Doesn’t matter.” Wade’s looseness came back, the way he spoke dropping into a relaxed cadence that bordered on nonchalant. Probably wanted me to think it wasn’t that important. “You’re one of them, I take it? One of the Vultures. I heard she found her way back to you boys.” Another one of those grating chuckles. “Funny how that works.”
Yeah, not the word I’d use. Fate, maybe, if I believed in that sort of thing. All I knew was we were supposed to be together. No one else made sense, and I hadn’t even tried to fill that space once Callie came into our lives. Not even in the time she’d been gone.
I stared at the wall and counted specks of water dripping down the paint to keep from going murderous on the bastard rasping out those ridiculous chuckles like some kind of cartoon villain.
“Here’s the thing.” Wade cleared his throat. Finally, we could get down to what he really wanted. He cleared his throat again. “Callie took something that didn’t belong to her. Long time ago. I’m not interested in making trouble.”
It took all my self-restraint not to snort or roll my eyes.
“I just want what’s mine returned to me. Then everyone can go back to living their lives. Simple. Right?”
I wished. Simple was not a word I would ever apply to anything related to Callie.
“She’s been through enough, hasn’t she?” He almost sounded like he cared. I knew better, but to people outside this realm, he might sound perfectly reasonable and not like a psycho who preyed on kids. “It’s a real shame what she’s been through with the fire and all. And with a kid.”
Fire burned low in my gut and spread. This guy. If I had him in front of me right now, he’d be dead before his next breath.
“She owes me, boy. She knows what she did. Knows what she cost me. I’m just asking for what she took. Be a real shame if things got any more complicated for her.”
There it was. I’d been waiting to see if he pushed that button and made Cody a bargaining chip.
I ended the call, my attention on Callie as I tapped the red button and held the phone out to her. She stood in front of Diesel, her arms locked over her stomach. Every few seconds, a short burst of air parted her lips. Panic. Or panic attack? Diesel rubbed her back, his expression murderous.
“You didn’t threaten him.” She sounded surprised, and she rubbed her arms like she couldn’t get warm even though heat poured through the window as the night turned humid.
Fall would be here soon enough. Maybe she’d stick around long enough to go on some rides with us. She’d love the fall colors that popped across Sutter’s Pass. I caught myself building the image in my head and shut it down. One problem at a time. The man on the other end of the call needed to stay in focus, not dreams of a future that might not exist. “Threats are for actions. Not words.” I set the phone down on the table and ran both hands over my head and down the back of my neck, stopping to squeeze the tight muscles. “And you’re done hiding pieces of the truth. Every missing detail is a weapon. So I need you to tell me, right now, what happened to the ledger.”
“I burned it.” She winced, her head pulling to the side.
