Page 31 of Rise By Sin

“You and Colt are dating,” I said as it all seemed to make sense suddenly. I had never know my brother to ever have a date, or ever seen him bring a girl home. I had always just thought he was trying to shelter me, but maybe…

“Yeah,” Ky nodded as he seemed to slump deeper in his chair. “He was supposed to tell you everything when he saw you, but I’m guessing…”

“I haven’t seen him. He was never coming to see me in Chicago. Something’s happened and he’s missing,” I explained.

“Missing? For how long?” Ky jumped up from his chair and leaned over the desk closer to me.

“Over a week now. He left Jack and Mason voice mails too, telling them he was coming to see me, but he never called me or turned up. You haven’t heard from him?” I asked with desperate hope.

“No,” Ky shook his head. “But I didn’t expect to. He told me he wanted to tell you everything so we could be open about our relationship, but he’s been hiding who he is for so long, I assumed he’d struggle to tell you. I didn’t think he’d risk calling me and being found out.”

“He’s in some kind of trouble. Some men have come after me looking for Colt. One came to my apartment in Chicago, then the other night there was another near Colt’s club. Do you have any idea why anyone would be looking for him?”

“Were you hurt?” he asked with alarm.

“I’m good. I was a cop. I can handle myself,” I told him with a confidence I didn’t feel even a little.

“Colt was looking into something,” Ky said almost reluctantly. “But I…if he’s missing, he wouldn’t want me to get you mixed up in it all too,” he went on as he looked to me with concern.

“I’m already mixed up in it. Whoever Colt has pissed off is coming for me too now. The only way to stop this is for me to know what the hell he got himself into and stop it.”

“Mason. Colt said I should talk to Mason if anything happened to him. I…I told him not to get involved!” he cried as his distress rose. He collapsed back into his chair and buried his face in his hands. “I told him to just hand it over to the cops and stay out of it. Why couldn’t he damn well listen to me for once?” There were tears as he looked to me pleadingly. “Please tell me he isn’t dead.”

“I hope not,” I pushed out past the lump in my throat. “But finding him fast is the best chance he has, and I can’t do that without knowing everything.”

“Mason is working with us to find Colt. He’ll know whatever you can tell us,” Deacon asked.

“Colt lost an employee just a few weeks before we got together. Helen. She worked behind the bar atTemple. She left workone night, then just disappeared. The cops looked into it and launched a search for her, but they found nothing except an email she sent to her sister saying she was heading off on holiday for a few weeks, sent the day after she disappeared.”

“I remember. They found Helen’s body at the side of the highway two weeks after she disappeared. She was naked and unrecognizable. Colt stepped up security straight away, making sure all his employees left in pairs at all times after that. They never found whoever had killed her.”

“That’s right. Colt was so cut up about it. He’d known Helen well, and she’d been so young. Then a month after we got together another of his employees quit with just a text to him. Lee. He was one of the club monitors. Colt tried to contact him to see if there was anything he could do to change his mind and he couldn’t find him. Lee had just disappeared from the face of the earth. That didn’t sit right with Colt so he started looking into other disappearances.”

“Why? Why didn’t he just talk to the police?” I asked.

“He said they wouldn’t do anything without some evidence. Anyway, he found more disappearances all across the city, and every single one of them either worked or frequented a kink club. There were several others fromTemple, mainly customers who Colt had simply not known, or thought moved on to another club. He found over fifteen disappearances and Helen was the only body that ever turned up,” Ky explained.

“Fuck!” I whispered as I took in everything he’d said. It was just like my brother dive into something thinking he was helping, only to end up in way too deep.

“Colt thought it was sex trafficking. He started looking into this Irish family that he said were involved in the skin trade. He never told me any names. He said he wanted to keep me out of it, but he had this huge file with everything he found so far. Did you find it?” Ky asked.

“No, but we need to. Any idea where he kept it?” I asked.

“I only saw it once, at his apartment. My guess is he kept it there somewhere.”

“Someone broke into his place. That’s probably what they were looking for,” Deak suggested and I nodded my agreement.

“You have to find him,” Ky sniffled as he reached across the table and grabbed my hand. “We’re engaged. He proposed to me a few weeks ago. That’s why he wanted to tell you. He said he could never get married without you standing beside him.”

“He’s such an idiot!” I uttered. “He could have told me anytime. Like I care if he’s gay! He’s my brother. I’d love him no matter what.”

“He knows that too. It’s just his dad…your dad too…he was an asshole -as I’m sure you know- and he had Colt terrified to admit who he really was, even years after the old bastard died.”

“I’m going to do everything I can to find him,” I promised as I turned my hand under Ky’s and gave his a squeeze. “And when I do I’m going to kick his ass for being so fucking stupid,” I added with an emotional smile.

We exchanged numbers with Ky and I had to promise several times that I’d let him know if I found anything about Colt, but by the time we left I could see how hard Ky was fighting to holdback tears. He seemed as terrified as me that he had lost Colt, and I knew in that moment how much this stranger had to mean to my brother, and how much my brother meant to him. Colt had finally found true happiness for himself and I’d be damned if I was going to allow him to lose out on that. Not if there was one single thing I could do to stop it. There wasn’t a single person I knew on Earth who deserved happiness as much as my brother did.

“You’re tired,” Deacon said as we neared the parking lot where he’d parked his truck. It wasn’t a question. That would have been pointless since the fact I was stumbling with every step, out of breath, and visibly shaking was a dead giveaway that I was running on empty.

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