Page 118 of Redemption

Ryder hustled and threw himself into the passenger seat of the idling SUV. Javier, Colin, and Luke took the back seats, bringing artillery with them. Mayhem’s van and their escort of motorcycles were out of sight. Even with the windows down, they couldn’t hear the throttle of Harley engines, and Grayson had been hauling ass to catch up as Parker directed them to the van he’d tagged.

“One hundred fifty feet ahead, hard right.”

Ryder’s eyes narrowed. There was no hard right. There was nothing.

“That’s a negative,” Grayson said. “No road.”

The SUV slowed, and they pulled on to the shoulder as the occasional car passed in no man’s land. There was nothing out here. Thick forest. A guardrail. That was it.

“Right ahead of you,” Parker said.

Grayson and Ryder looked out both windows, shaking their heads, silently exchanging looks.

“That’s impossible.” Grayson parked. “There’s no road. No nothing.”

“I’m telling you…” Parker’s annoyed voice bled through the overhead speaker. “I’ve got a tracker pinging. Now, not more than thirty-five feet.”

“Screw this.” Ryder pushed out the door. “If there’s a fucking road, I’ll find it.”

“What the fuck’s going on out there?” Brock snapped.

“Hard to explain,” Colin mumbled. “Might be better if you pull us up on the satellite imagery.”

That was the last thing Ryder heard from the SUV—nothing but lots of damn trees and a barrier rail. No access road. No place to turn. He hopped over the railing and stared into the thick forest. “Fuck!”

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Exhaustion had wiped all sense of time from Victoria. Still, she had her survival instincts. After the initial shock, she’d gone into search-and-seize mode and mostly come up empty, except for the prize that she almost couldn’t believe: a half-charged burner phone. Quickly, Victoria dialed Ryder’s cell number from memory, and he picked up on the first ring.

“Ryder? Ryder? It’s me,” Victoria whispered into the phone that she had found, with her hand over her mouth, curled into the corner of the room at the Mayhem compound.

“Victoria.”

The surprise and terror in his voice sliced through her heart. “I don’t know where am. I found this phone.”

“You found a phone?” He tried to hide his suspicion, but she shared it.Too convenient. Too easy.

“I don’t care,” she whispered. “I had to talk to you.”

“That’s fine. I’ll have Titan start running a trace. Are you okay? Have they touched you?”

She shook her head, thinking about the disinterest that they had shown in her since the moment they dropped her in a corner. After a round of questioning and a discussion with a man she assumed was their club president, she had been unceremoniously dropped in this bedroom that smelled like sweat, sex, and dirty laundry. “It’s not like that at all. They couldn’t be any more disinterested in me. A bargaining chip for a rainy day maybe? But not right now.” She squeezed her eyes tighter, wishing she done a thousand things differently. “I messed up. It took two life-altering screw-ups for me to learn a really hard lesson. I need to ask for help, and I don’t know why I couldn’t realize that beforehand.” A sob caught in her voice. “I’m sorry.”

“Easy,” he hushed her. “You’re talking to a lone wolf.”

She hadn’t thought of herself as a lone wolf, always surrounded by her community, always helping and trying to establish herself and her reputation, but he was right, just as Seven had been before. She liked that he understood. “I miss you.”

“I miss you too, love.”

She hung onto those words like they were his arms around her in bed back in Virginia when she’d needed him to feel safe and to forget about what happened in Russia. Now she knew them so well that she could imagine the contour of his chest and the slope of his chin as he tucked her safe into his embrace.

“Can I tell you a secret?” she whispered, gripping the phone like he might feel her handhold.

“We don’t know much about this phone.”

“Okay,” she bit her lip nervously. “I wish you were here.”

“I have a secret. It’ll make you laugh. Want to hear it?”

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