Page 61 of Hawk's Cry

She didn’t know.

I’m hurt, raw, as though cut open and bleeding. But now’s not the time to retreat to my safe place. What Liv didn’t know didn’t save her, it hurt her.

With red-rimmed eyes, I stare around the table, then, raise the fingers on my right hand. A familiar gesture, attracting attention, conveying I want to speak. Prez nods his head.

“Stable door, horse gone and all that. But I propose a fuckin’ change.” My voice sounds, feels stronger than it has for ages. “We keep old ladies out of club business for good fuckin’ reason. But when we’ve got an enemy coming for the club, old ladies ought to be warned, ought to know what to look out for. Olivia hadn’t a clue who she was fuckin’ sitting down with. If she had, she’d have run a mile from this Gabe.”

“Seconded,” Wraith says.

“Agreed,” Peg says.

“Happy with letting them see a picture of someone, but with no information attached. Just a watch out for and beware,” Prez agrees. He stares at me. “Amy works off compound. She could have been fooled just like Olivia.”

“Now we’ve bolted the fuckin’ stable door, how are we going to get Hawk’s old lady back?”

Marvel’s referred to me as Hawk. I shrug. It’s just habit.

“It’s my fault,” I admit, sending an apology to Wraith. I’d been blaming him for letting her go out alone, but hadn’t that been what she’d been doing for weeks? It all comes down to one thing. “I took her off compound.” Should have known I’d fuck up.

“Not your fault!” the new VP snarls. “You left the club, Eli. We even helped you out. To us you weren’t fuckin’ club anymore. Problem is, Archangel didn’t get the memo.”

“He knew better than us.” Wizard stares at me. “You were still ours, always would be. You’re club. Our reaction to him taking Olivia proves that. He couldn’t have fuckin’ hurt us more if he’d taken my old lady.”

Heart growls, presumably at the thought his daughter, Amy, could have been taken.

I stare at them as an idea starts to take shape. With a rise and lowering of my shoulders, I shrug off all the excuses. It’s moving forward I’ve got to concentrate on. And that starts by, “I’m going back to the house,” I announce. My words are immediately misunderstood.

“Fuck!” Peg snarls. “You can’t do this by yourself, Eli, and we’re not asking you to. You need the club and you’ve got us, Brother. We just invited you to sit around this table, now you’re throwing that in our fuckin’ faces?”

I grin, evilly. An expression I know look’s eerily like my dad’s, and my eyes become cold as steel as the plan in my head begins to take shape. The mist parts as I begin to think clearer. “Not throwing anything back, Peg. I know I need your help and appreciate it, and can assure you, I’ll be fuckin’ using it. But as you said, we’ve left the club. It’s only Archangel who thinks there’s still a connection. What if we show him there’s not? What if I go it alone, trying to find Liv?”

Most of the brothers are looking confused. Throttle, though, he’s on my wavelength. He barks a laugh. “I can see where you’re coming from. We don’t give a damn about Eli and Liv,” he states. “Club goes on as normal. As far as anyone outside of this room knows, they’ve made their bed, they lie in it. Archangel wants to hit us where it hurts, well, we show this way doesn’t work.”

Wizard isn’t slow to catch up. “So we look like we’re going on as normal—”

“And like the proverbial swan, paddle as fuckin’ fast as we can under the water,” Dad finishes for him, also having caught up.

Blade sticks his knife into the tabletop, hard enough to make Wizard wince and glare. Undeterred, the ex-enforcer starts talking. “Could buy us some time if we don’t react the way Archangel expects us to. Problem. Archangel knew Olivia had gone out today. He must have had eyes on her. What if he’s been watching the house? If he has, he’ll have seen Devils going in and out of Eli’s house, and what’s more, Eli’s here now. How are we going to explain that?”

Wizard has a comeback immediately. “Eli is Drummer’s son, Olivia, Wraith’s daughter. Just because Eli’s out of the club, his parents will still likely be concerned. As for Eli being here now, well, he’s come to ask the club for help, and we’ll send him away with his tail between his legs.”

“No.” Dad’s eyes gleam. “If Eli’s going where I think he is, Archangel’s got to believe we’ve circled the wagons leaving both Eli and Liv on the outside.”

“What about Hound and Throttle?” Wraith asks. “They went to the house. Fuck, if he’s been watching, he’ll know he’s being played.”

I get back into the game. “Let’s think about what Archangel knows and doesn’t know. Two men today turned up in a cage, they weren’t on bikes wearing colours. Even if he’s got eyes on our house, Satan’s Devils don’t have a who’s who on any website so he’s unlikely to know Throttle and Hound are part of the club. They’ve never met face-to-face.”

“Unlikely, but it is not impossible.”

The door opens and Mouse steps in. I swivel around in my chair. Mouse nods at Prez, then holds up Liv’s phone. “He’s installed a tracking app. That’s how he knew where she was.”

“How?” I say, fast.

“Invisible code in a text he sent to her.” Mouse goes to his normal chair. “Very sophisticated and took me a moment to find.”

“When? When they first met?”

Mouse shakes his head. “No. That’s the sophistication, long before she listed him as a contact. He must have found her number somehow and sent a text telling her she’d have the chance to win a few thousand dollars for completing a survey. You know the sort of scamming shit that gets sent through. She opened the text, deleted it, but the damage was done. After that he could trace wherever her phone went, and would have rightly assumed she’d take it everywhere with her.”

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