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For the first time, the brother who always answered, even after long stretches of Rusty keeping him at arm’s length and with firm instructions to stay out of his head, met his attempt at communication with silence. It filled Rusty with a sense of unease as he tried again, this time chastising Flame for being childish and pissing Cage off first thing on a Monday morning.

More silence.

Empty.

Bleak.

Not even a mental middle finger emoji.

“Something isn’t right,” Rusty remarked. “He might ignore you from time to time when he knows you’re pissed off at him, but he’s never ignored me when I’ve demanded to know where he is and what’s going on. Never.”

“Alright, if you say there’s reason for concern, then let’s round up a few of the boys and go looking,” Cage said. “But I swear to fuck, if we find him passed out drunk somewhere with the current flavor of the month…”

“I’ll fire him before you have the chance to,” Rusty declared.

“As long as we’re clear on what happens,” Cage said.

“Crystal.”

Cage stuck his fingers in his mouth and let out a piercing whistle. Someone told the smart speaker to quit playing, as work in all the bays ground to a halt.

“Has anyone heard anything from Flame since he left yesterday?” Cage asked as wolves wiped their hands on shop towels, abandoned their tools on their workbenches, and moved closer. “Anyone know where he’d planned on going after work last night?”

As Rusty glanced around at the rest of the crew, all he saw was wolves shaking their heads and shrugging.

“I asked if he was going to join me and some of the other guys at the bar after work, since Zane and the band were playing last night,” Cormac said. “He told me he’d catch the next show and went back to work on that Gladiator Wilder brought in the other day.”

“He was still working on it when I left last night. I was the last one here besides him,” Denver declared.

“When I arrived this morning to open, everything was locked up tight and put away,” Cage said, leading the procession to the office, but only after motioning for Denver, the newest member of the Howling Devils, to go ahead and close the bay doors and lock them. “Let’s see what time he signed out.”

There was a logbook just inside the door of the office on a small stand that they all used to keep track of their hours. Cage flipped back a day and dragged his finger down the list of names until he found Cage’s.

“Okay, so, he left out of here at 5:45 last night,” Cage muttered. “Didn’t go to the bar, can’t cook anything that doesn’t come out of a can, so he had to have dinner somewhere. Onyx closes at six, and we all know how pissy he gets if one of us shows up that late unless it’s a pickup. I’ll text and see if Flame picked anything up last night. The community kitchen shuts down at eight, so that’s the only other option.”

Cage’s fingers flew over the keypad on his phone. Chirping when he sent the message. Less than a minute later it chirped again and Cage shook his head.

“Nope.”

“He left clean overalls at everyone’s station, including his own, after doing laundry last night,” Cor said. “Why do that if he didn’t intend to come in today?”

“It wasn’t even his week to do the laundry,” Denver said. “It was mine, but I forgot. I didn’t think about it until I was halfway home.”

“Which is why you showed up ten minutes after me this morning,” Cage surmised.

“Yeah, I figured I could get the first batch started and hopefully in the dryer before the rest of the guys started showing up,” Denver admitted. “I didn’t ask him to do them for me. I didn’t even text to say I’d forgotten.”

“Wild’s Gladiator was outside this morning and there was a green tag on the keys,” Cage muttered. “Flame brought Octavius’ UTV in and put it in his bay, too. Everything is set up like he intended to work on it today.”

“Did you check his room?” Rusty asked.

“Naw, I just beat on the door until I was certain he wasn’t up there,” Cage said as he opened one of the desk drawers, pulled out the master key to all the rooms above the garage, and tossed them to Rusty.

“Go check it out.”

Rusty caught them and hurried from the room, needing a moment to remember which one was his brother’s. He took a right at the top of the stairs on instinct, cursing when he realized he’d headed for his old room instead. It only dawned on him, as he fit the key in the lock on his brother’s door, that he hadn’t been up to visit Flame since he and Roark moved out of the apartments. Flame’s room was in direct contrast to all the chaos he allowed to clutter up his personal life. The space, made up of a bedroom, living area, kitchenette, and bathroom, was clean and organized. Cage’s work boots rested in the boot tray, an empty space between them and his motorcycle boots.

Okay, so he must have switched them after work and put on his snow boots. In the bathroom, Rusty found a pair of jeans and a t-shirt at the bottom of the hamper, as well as clean jeans and a t-shirt waiting on the edge of the sink. Rusty shook out the t-shirt to see what was on the front. Sure enough, it was a faded cartoon duck, scowling, with his beak turned backward.