Page 16 of Kade

I was jealous.

He read my text and frowned before hitting a button and lifting the phone to his ear.

“You tried calling Maddy, right?” I asked Sam.

She harrumphed, hitting me in the arm.

The others snickered around the table.

“Of course I did. I haven’t seen her for a while, actually. She turned her phone off.”

Logan snorted before raising his hand. “We do know a hacker in town.” His eyes went to mine. “Just saying.”

I scowled. “No fucking way. I’m not inviting that stalker into my inner circle.”

Logan cracked up. Nate snickered too.

Matteo glanced around. “What am I missing?”

“Nothing.” I gave them a warning look.

Logan kept snickering. “Just what he said. Mason’s had a certain stalker from Fallen Crest for a good while. It’s cute how worked up he gets about him.”

I shot him another look, but Channing came over at that moment. His two giant crew members were behind him. One was Goliath. The other was mini-Goliath, but just as wide. Their crew names were Moose and Congo. They looked like they atebricks for breakfast with a side of eggs. And their weapons and bulletproof vests were usually out and proud when I saw them. Tonight, if they were wearing them, they were hidden.

Each gave Logan and me a nod, extending their condolences.

“Heather can’t get ahold of Max?” Channing asked Sam.

She hesitated before shaking her head.

I reached over, pulling her into my lap. She melted into me. If none of us could find our kids, that meant we’d be going on a hunt. That also meant we’d have a long night ahead. When we found her, we’d deliver a lecture, and when she got home, she’d get another lecture from her mom. I knew my kid. She loathed the lectures from her mom the most. We all adored Sam, and it was hard when you looked in her eyes and saw disappointment there.

But Maddy took after me. She needed to get into trouble.

Sam and I had made sure she grew up without the sort of shit that haunted us. She didn’t have a lot of trauma, that we knew of, so I figured her need to get into trouble was genetic. Sometimes it made me wonder if I’d wrongly blamed my father as the reason I did half the shit I did growing up. But no, I just had to take a moment and remember being in the house with him and our mom, taking care of Logan back in the day. They’d been horrific parents.

Sometimes I watched our kids with amazement because they didn’t have the deep-seated anger that Logan and I had, or the demons Sam had, and I was always perplexed. How did those kids come from me? They were normal, or sort of normal.

I took my phone out and tried calling Maddy myself. I didn’t figure she’d answer, but it was worth a try. It went straight to voicemail. She’d turned the phone off, which meant she hadn’t figured out how to disable the tracker I’d put on her phone. She’d bitched and moaned about it, but I didn’t care. She was mykid. If someone took her, Iwascoming for her, and Iwouldbe leaving with their head on a plate.

Brett and his wife got up from their table not far from us, looking like they were leaving, but he stopped by our table.

“Hey, man.”

We’d already said hello at the wake. I was surprised they were still here. Billie was a little skittish around the rest of us. She lived hiding from attention, and our group was the opposite. Attention just came our way.

He inclined his head to the rest of the table, holding his wife’s hand, but he frowned when he saw Sam’s face. “What is it?”

Sam stiffened in my lap. “We can’t find a couple of our kids.”

He glanced at his wife. “Stevie mentioned seeing Maddy take off with a couple guys from her school.”

My eyebrows shot up, and a rumble started in my gut. “What guys?”

He turned away a moment, remembering. “Stevie only mentioned it because Billie asked if she wanted to go find Maddy and Max. She said that was a flat no because she didn’t like the guys she saw take off with Maddy.”

Suddenly we were all sitting up straighter. Every single one of us.

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