Page 28 of Roughstock
Comet was back serving drinks behind the bar, and I gave Warhol a look as I handed my cue to someone and stalked across the room. Warhol and Jagger followed me as I made my way to the bar. Two girls were in front of me, and I gently pushed past them to step to the front. They started to say something but saw my patch and thought twice about it.
“Where’s Cheyenne?” I asked Comet, and he looked at me confused.
“She said she was going to grab her coat from your bike, then she was gonna join you.”
“How long ago was that?” I asked, my voice growing in volume, which drew attention from some of the brothers close by.
My anger had them approaching, wanting to see what the problem was. Comet shrugged and pulled his phone out. “I hung up with my sister twenty-one minutes ago, and she walked outside shortly after that.”
Something was wrong, and on instinct, I turned and stormed down the hallway to the back door. I was followed outside by Jagger, Phantom, Animal, Comet, and Warhol. Swinging my head around, I didn’t see her as I walked over to my bike. Her jacket was on the ground at the rear of my bike, and when I picked it up, I saw blood near the zipper. Not a lot, but any amount was too much.
“Someone took her,” I yelled, and everyone froze in their tracks. Running back inside, I pointed to the bar, and Comet jumped over the top, flickering the lights and stopping all conversations immediately. The jukebox continued to belt out some tune and I saw someone lean over to unplug it, then the music stopped.
All eyes turned to me as I yelled with more rage than I’d ever felt. “Someone took my ol’ lady, and I want to know if anyone saw anything.” Everyone looked back and forth at each other, but no one spoke. “Answer me,” I bellowed.
A small woman with blonde hair and bright green eyes stepped forward and spoke with a tiny voice. I couldn’t understand her, so I screamed, “Speak the fuck up!”
Jagger walked up and said something to her. She cleared her throat and said again, “I saw the pretty woman from behind the bar get something from a bike while I was outside smoking. Then, a black van pulled up behind her, and she spoke with whoever was inside before she got inside too.”
I stalked up to her, and she visibly shivered as I looked down at her. “Did you see who was driving?”
She shook her head with tears in her eyes as she said, “No, sir.”
The cameras outside worked, but they wouldn’t give me enough detail to see who took her. All I knew was someone had the love of my life, and if I didn’t find her or if she was hurt in any way, I didn’t know if I would survive.
Looking at the room filled with civilians and Royal Bastards, I simply said, “If you’re not patched, get the fuck out.” They didn’t seem to move, so I yelled loudly. “NOW!”
Phantom approached and placed a hand on my shoulder as he said, “We’ll find her and make whoever touched her pay.”
The one question that kept repeating in my mind was one that about killed me to ask out loud. “What if we don’t find her?”
That thought was killing me inside, and I knew, no matter what, I was going to bring her home and spend the rest of my life making her forget about all this madness.
Or I would die trying.
Chapter 17
Cheyenne
It seemed that the one place I should have been safe was where I was most vulnerable. I’d just stepped outside the clubhouse to grab my jacket from Trent’s bike when a black van pulled up behind me. I turned to see who it was, and when I heard a woman’s voice from inside, I turned to see what was going on. I never expected someone to reach out and physically drag me into the van.
I tried to fight, but then I turned to see a girl, who was probably not more than nineteen, sitting with her hands and feet tied, and someone in the darkened van was holding a gun to her. When I heard the sound of a gun slide, I knew I needed to remain calm or we’d both end up dead.
The one thought that kept running through my head was that Trent wouldn’t know where to find me. We’d been looking for clues for almost three years about who was responsible for Nitro’s death, and I had a feeling whoever was on the other end of that gun was the one who killed him.
The farther away from the club we got, the more scared I became. The driver was wearing a black ski mask, concealing his identity, and the person holding the gun was leaning back behind the driver’s seat with a black hoodie on, so his face was completely obscured.
The driver spoke in a gravelly voice that I didn’t recognize. “If you cause us any issues, he’ll put a bullet in your head and we’ll toss you out for the coyotes.”
I nodded and glanced at the girl, who had tears flowing down her face. Looking past the man in the corner of the van, I asked the driver, “Where are you taking us?”
He didn’t respond, and I didn’t know what was worse—not knowing what our fate could be, or hearing the details of what could happen to us. Slowly, I reached my hand out and placed it on the girl’s ankle before giving it a gentle squeeze. The tremble in her body was tremendous, but once I touched her, she seemed to settle some.
I wanted to reassure her that she wasn’t alone in whatever this was, but I couldn’t give her that promise. Whoever these men were, they’d been doing this for a few years at least, and if no one’s connected the pattern or stumbled onto them before now, she and I were going to have to depend on each other to survive this. She shuffled her leg slightly closer to me, and I gave her another squeeze.
Leaning against a box in the back of the van, I tilted my head back and closed my eyes, leaving a small slit in my lids. I needed to try to find out where we were going, but I was afraid they would blindfold me if they saw me trying to track where we were. Not that the dark sky and occasional streetlight was going to tell me anything.
I’m not sure how long we drove, but it couldn’t have been more than half an hour, so I believed we were still in Rapid City, or at least close to it. The van turned down a street with large potholes and the three of us in the back were jostled from side to side as the driver seemed to hit every bump in the road.
