Page 38 of Blood Revealed

“If you can connect to I-40, you can follow it to Lupton—figure out where to go from there. Keep it together, man,” Tommy warns.

Right. Keep it together when my friend’s woman is in the hands of a sex trader. Easy for him to say—no, it ain’t. He and Boss have been tight their whole lives.

“I’m good now. Hero, find a way to get us out of here.”

I take the loop he found and head back up to the lane with the End of the Road Stop. We find our connection to I-40 and haul ass. We’re a good four hours behind, but they have the van, which means he either ditched it for another or is walking.

I can’t take any chances. Our old van rattles something terrible as I speed down the interstate. I manage to shave off an hour of time. When we reach Lupton, he’s nowhere to be seen. Hero and I set out into the desert a bit to follow a lead someone working at a bank had for us. Apparently when he was heading into work inside the bank, the witness saw a woman coming out of an outside restroom at a gas station next door. A man waited for her, grabbing her by the arm. The two looked to argue and the woman took the man off-guard kneeing him in the balls hard enough to bring him to his knees. Then she took off running. The witness thought it was a lovers’ spat and didn’t want to be late clocking in so he didn’t think twice about it until we came in asking questions.

We’re an hour in when I see something on the ground. It’s lying there, not moving, a body. The question is: whose? When I pull over for us to check it out, we see the asshole beaten to a pulp with a bullet between his brows. No Elise anywhere.

Hero and I quickly dial 911 and wait for the police to show up. They’ve been in contact with Tommy and know we’ve been trailing. Because we’re so far out, we’re losing valuable time waiting, but the cops are on it too. We have the other brothers from the different Lords chapters and our allies out looking too.

In the distance I hear the sirens and see the flashers. When they pull up next to our van, I greet the officer in charge. Typical suit. Not intimidated by a couple of bikers in the least.

“Found him. Didn’t touch a thing,” I say, my hands to my hips as I survey the scene. “I’m guessing with the lack of blood, this was the dumpsite, not the kill site.”

“Thanks, detective,” the actual detective says and we both laugh, even though now I think he’s an asshole. “I got that too.”

“What do you need from us?” I ask.

“If you let Officer Johnson fingerprint you, we should be good to go. We need more, DNA sample or whatever, we’ll be in touch.”

“You know we live in Kentucky?” Hero asks.

“Thornbriar. Sgt. Tommy Doyle informed us of everything. So long as I can trust his word, and as a fellow officer, I trust his word—I’ll find you if I need you.”

“Good show. Now we need to get back on the road.”

As we’re walking to the car, Hero’s phone rings. It’s a number we don’t recognize. He answers on speaker so he doesn’t have to repeat the call. “You got Hero.”

“Thank god,” the voice says. “My fingers were shaking so bad; I didn’t know if I dialed the right number.”

Elise.

9.

Hannah

We had a couple of near misses when we were traveling south, forcing us to lie low, which cut into our travel time, but these were Lords from some other chapter and Lords from any chapter aren’t real happy to see a Horde. Especially a Horde without his brothers for protection. And I had no idea if any of them would recognize Caity as our president’s wife. It was better not to take a chance.

We’ve been following a Riot for close to an hour now. Seeing as there aren’t any Riot compounds close by, we feel as if we’re on the right track. He takes an exit, turning to head for a small town just off the highway. Even bastard bad guys need to pee.

The problem is, once we get into town, we can’t find him, like at all. Where did he go? Vlad waves us over. Both trucks pull to the side of the road and we get out. He approaches our group.

“I don’t like this,” he says. “Something’s wrong. I feel it.” Coming from a Horde, that means something.

“What are you thinking?” I ask.

“Don’t know, but keep your guard up. Let’s turn back for the highway and keep south,” he orders.

I’d be lying if I said that stretching my legs doesn’t feel damn good, but we’ve got a job to do. I climb back in the truck and our little caravan pulls a U-turn, going off the shoulder almost into the treeline and swooping around back in the opposite treeline before straightening out and heading back in the direction we came from. We only get a quarter mile down the road when a black SUV pulls out of a hidden drive or break in the trees and speeds up until it clips the tail end of Frankie’s truck. She begins to lose control as it fishtails, but she regains it and speeds up.

The black SUV speeds up too, crashing into the back harder this time. When she fishtails again, she loses control, skidding off onto the shoulder and coming to rest by hitting a tree. The SUV speeds up, clipping the back of Caitlin’s truck.

“Grab the Glock!” she shouts at me and I immediately open the glovebox to grab it out.

“Open your window and shoot.”

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