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“Deal.”
Scowling, he stares down at the table, deep in thought, and I watch him for a second before clearing my throat.
“Uh, Travis?”
He shakes his head. “Sorry… it’s just hard to know where to even start.”
“The beginning sounds like a good place,” I offer, half sarcastically, and he scoffs, shaking his head.
“This is going to sound stupid but I’m not really sure when it all really began. It’s hard to keep track of everything now and remember when shit went down. Plus, each time I learn something new, I’ve got to figure out how it fits into everything.”
“Have you ever watched those true crime shows or CSI?” I ask and he shakes his head as he leans back in his seat and takes a sip of coffee.
“No. I don’t watch a lot of TV.”
“Okay, well, in those shows, you always see a big fucking board with all the evidence laid out in a timeline and I think maybe that’s what you need. Besides, if you can see it in front of you, all at once, maybe you’ll notice something you didn’t notice before.”
He studies me for a second. “Huh… I can’t believe I never thought of that before.”
“So, I only did like two semesters in college before I dropped out but I was super interested in psychology and took a class on it where we learned that when people are too close to a problem, like you are, it’s like being in the middle of a thick forest. You can see what’s right in front of you but you can’t see very far into the distance or anticipate what is up ahead.”
His scowl is etched into his face as he crosses his arms over his chest and I can practically see the wheels in his head turning. “I need to step back, then?”
“Or just get an outside perspective,” I reply, motioning to myself and he laughs, staring at me for a second before he nods.
“Okay, I’ll give it a shot.”
I smile. “For now, just give me the CliffsNotes.”
“Has your brother told you anything? Or Tate?” he asks and I shake my head, my mind drifting back to the party last night. They mentioned talking to me about it later but I don’t know if they meant it or if they were just stalling in the hope that I would forget about it. If that’s the case, I’m sure they think they’re protecting me by not telling me but I fully believe what I said to Travis. There is no way I could possibly make the right decisions and keep myself safe without knowing the facts. He sighs. “Right, okay… For the last two or so years, someone has been targeting the club but at first, we didn’t know anything was going on…”
“What do you mean?”
He runs a hand through his hair. “Well, in the work we do, sometimes the women we rescue go back to their abusers so when the first girl was killed, that’s what we thought happened.”
“Oh,” I whisper, staring at him with wide eyes. When people kept mentioning this threat, never in my wildest dreams did I think that people had died and that things were this serious. Now it makes perfect sense why Lincoln wanted me at the clubhouse instead of at his cabin.
“I’m sorry,” he says, reaching across the table and grabbing my hand. “You said you wanted to know.”
I nod. “I do… I just never…”
“It’s bad, Rowan. Really, really bad and that’s why we’re all so fucking stressed and at each other’s throats.”
Squeezing his hand, I nod. “Keep going.”
“The first girl that was killed, her name was Dina and we all assumed her piece of shit ex had been the one to kill her.”
I nod. It makes sense with the work the club does and it probably would have been my first assumption as well. “So what changed?”
“For a long time, nothing. We lost another girl but the case was so different that we didn’t even connect them until later and then we lost someone that made us all wake up.”
“In what way?” I ask, my food abandoned as I soak up every word he says.
“The man we rescued her from was dead so he couldn’t have come back to kill her and when someone found her, our business card was right on top of her body like someone placed it there.”
I blink as my mind races. “Jesus.”
“Yeah,” he breathes with a nod. “And then just a few weeks ago, this girl walked into the club. The thing was, though, it was a girl that had been missing for close to a year and we had been investigating her case.”
