Page 62 of Cassie
“Boy, you stand down, now.” Garrett shook his head even though his father couldn’t see him. “Now we know, we can make a play. They haven’t called again, Gar-boy, we don’t know she’s there.”
“Yeah, I do. It’s the address the asshat gave her to lure her here.” He hurried to reassure Hoss, because he knew the man would be ripping his hair out. “Uncle Hoss, she didn’t know. I swear. She made plans to go to the mall, not this.”
“How do you know this, Garrett?” Myron was closer to the phone again and Garrett heard keys tapping. “Oh, hell. You got into her computer? I see what you found now. I was just looking at what I’d pulled, and it was days old.Fuck.”
“Garrett, stand down.” The command in his father’s voice was hard to ignore and Garrett’s muscles trembled. “You stand the fuck down right now.”
“Dad, I can’t. I’m here now, and if they’re hurting her—” He stopped when he heard an anguished yell, knowing his words had ripped that sound from Hoss’ throat.
***
Mason
He stared at his friend, his brother, seeing how pain and grief were stripping him of control. It had been hard enough to keep Hoss here when they didn’t know anything, and Mason knew if he didn’t gain control of this damned situation with Garrett now, they’d lose Hoss.
“Garrett?” Every question he could ever ask was in that one word. Was his boy sure of himself? Did he have the means to take her by force if needed? Did he need her like he seemed to? Was Hoss’ girl the one for his boy?
“Yes, Dad.God, yes.” Relief in his boy’s voice. Relief and a sense of self that’d been lacking lately. Relief and knowledge that he had his father’s trust.Something I never had. Something he’d wanted to give his boy so badly it kept him up at night.
Mason looked around the room at the men gathered there. Hoss, Myron, Tug, Deke, Brute, and Gunny stood in a tight group around the counter where the phone connecting them to his boy rested. These men, some of the ones he trusted most in the world, were waiting on his word. Myron’s fingers rested on the keyboard of Faith’s computer he’d retrieved from her room, but an expectant silence filled the room, surrounding the men in a way that Mason knew no matter how things went today, they’d all remember this moment as one that changed everything.
“Okay.” Hardest word he’d ever had to say, and it ripped from his throat like sandpaper. “Okay.” He lifted his chin and closed his eyes for a moment, remembering the welcome weight of his infant son on his chest as they slept on the couch together. Inseparable, he’d built a strong foundation with his boy through the years, and this was the moment it mattered most. “Son, you tell us what you need.” Myron looked at him like he’d lost his mind and Mason shook his head, shutting him down before he could utter a single word. “No, brother. Don’t argue with me. Just do, yeah? See what you can find out. Give my boy a fighting chance to bring our girl home.”
Hoss sucked in a breath, and another, control leaving him until Gunny and Deke bracketed him, hands on his shoulders helping him hold it together. Myron nodded slowly and then looked down, verifying something on the screen in front of him before moving back to his machine.
“Okay.” He tapped a key, then thumped his thumb against the mousepad. “It’s a standard farmhouse, circa 1990s, but satellite imagery shows the ground around the house hasn’t settled like you’d expect it to. Not for a good distance on every side of the structure. That tells me they’ve reinforced the basement. We’ve seen this before, in Chicago, when Diamante took over a prepper’s house. I expect that’s what happened here, even if I can’t find a record of that particular owner. That means, Garrett, that getting into the house is only part of the job. You’ve got to get to the basement, and then find where they have her.” Myron paused, and Mason nodded, telling him to pull back the curtain on the things that happened in club business. “Almost all clubhouses have interrogation rooms in the lowest level, where it’s easier to put in drains and water for cleanup. That’s where they’ll have her, I can almost guarantee it.” He tapped again and spun the computer to Mason, pointing at something on the screen. “The last known roster tells me they’ve got a lot of new blood in there, only a couple of OG, and that’s probably going to work in your favor.”
Mason stared at the screen, reading through the names, his gaze pausing on one. “Are you sure of this, Myron?” He angled his gaze up in time to see Myron’s solemn nod. “Garrett, there’s one guy there you’ll have to steer clear of. His club name is Bedlam, and he’s been in this area a long time. He’s crazy, so crazy we won’t even think of putting a patch on him. He’s earned some seriously bad blood with a few Rebels over it through the years. Steer clear.” He lifted his chin at Myron. “Send him a picture of Bedlam.”
“Bedlam got papers yesterday severing his parental rights over Blackie’s oldest girl.” Hoss tossed this bomb out like he didn’t see how that changed everything. “Blackie talked to me while we were in Texas, and we—” He gestured towards Myron who nodded. “—hooked him up with a fast track. I got a text from Blackie earlier that they hadn’t heard anything from the man yet, made him nervous. You thinkin’ this is about that?”
Mason shook his head. “History on the contact with your girl predates our trip. It ain’t that.”
Myron retrieved the computer and worked for a moment, then looked up, lips pressed into a bloodless line. “Remember that guy we wanted to talk to from Estavez’ village?” Mason nodded, muscles in his belly tightening in advance of the blow he knew was coming. “The one who owned the place Spider was taken to and worked over? Enzo Estavez?” Another nod, and he held his head steady at the end, waiting. “He’s there, too.”
***
Cassie
Fingers trembling on the clutch, Cassie angled the bike around the final corner and pulled off the road to stop at the end of the long, gravel driveway. She hadn’t intended to be here, hadn’t intended to be anywhere except at Hoss’ house, waiting for word. Or maybe in her own home with the doors locked, under the covers in her own bed.
That was before the call.
Leaving Tug’s house, she’d gotten Hoss’ address from him and assured Tug she’d be right over. After abandoning her house so ill-prepared, she’d wanted to change from her pajama top and at least put socks on her feet. Bike parked, she’d been in the house when her phone rang with an unfamiliar number. With so much up in the air right now, she’d answered immediately, expecting to get an update from someone. Even if Tug couldn’t call her, he’d promised to keep her updated.
“Hello?” Zippers loosened on her boots, Cassie grunted as she pried them off her sweaty feet.
“This Hoss’ woman?” The question took her off-guard, and Cassie paused before she responded. “This his old lady?”
“Yes?” Her response was as much a question as her initial hello had been, and she shook her head, hating this tentative side of herself.I was getting better. Still, she’d fought her way free from the clutches of a full-blown attack today, forcing it away to make sure the right people knew what was happening with Faith.
“Listen to this.” A beat of silence, then a girl’s scream, sounding tinny and far away. “Don’t please. Oh, God. Please.” Cassie’s chest seized, no air moving through her lungs as she listened to what had to be Hoss’ little girl being tortured. “Please.” Silence again, then the man’s voice, rich with an unfamiliar accent, asked her, “You want her to die?”
“No! Please, no.” Cassie gripped the edge of the kitchen counter, holding herself up when her knees threatened to give way.
“Come here then.” He rattled off an address, demanding she repeated it back. When he was convinced she had it, he told her, “Ride the bike. And bitch?” Cassie couldn’t answer him with words, but whatever noise she made must have sufficed, because he finished with a terrifying directive. “Hurry.”
That was two hours ago. She’d taken two minutes to finish dressing appropriately, texted Hoss’ phone, and then roared out of her garage for the second time that day. All the way to here, where she sat staring at a house placed away from the road, she’d tried to stay on autopilot. Riding aggressively but carefully, she’d pushed her bike’s small fuel tank to the limit, not stopping for anything. The phone in her pocket rumbled for the first time since she’d left, and she toed the bike’s transmission into Neutral to dig the device from the front pocket of her jeans. The same unfamiliar number had texted her. No response to the one she’d sent Hoss, and she refused to let that hurt her.No time for this now.
