Page 55 of Rider Daddies
“What the hell is this?” Ash asks.
“I don’t know. Why don’t you open it up and find out?” He walks away, leaving us confused.
“What the fuck?” I break the silence. “We never get mail.”
Ash gives me a stern look. “Strange, isn’t it? Lucia gets taken by Manual and three days later, a letter arrives on our doorstep. This will have something to do with Tristan.” Ash watches the letter like he’s waiting for a ticking time bomb to explode. “We shouldn’t open it.”
“What do you mean? We have to.” I reach for it.
“Ugh, give me that.” Saint grabs the letter and tears open the envelope like you would a bag of chips. “I’m done with Tristan and his molester posse thinking they can torment us.” He tosses away the envelope and rolls his eyes, surveying the card. He flips it to show us. “Happy fucking birthday. What is this? An invite to our own funerals?” Then he opens the greeting card and freezes. “Shit.”
“What is it?”
Saint dismisses my question, eyes scanning the text.
“Fucking give it to me.” I tear it from his hands and read the inside myself.
Now I understand his cause for alarm.
Inside is a set of coordinates.
“Get out your phone,” I say to Ash. “I need you to type in these coordinates.”
“It’s a burner. What is this?” He takes the card from my grasp since I’m now only holding it with the tip of my finger. “Best wishes, L.”
“The card is from Lucia,” Saint says. “We have to get to her.”
“Hold your horses,” Ash says. “How can we be so sure it’s Lucia who sent the card? What if it’s Manual and Tristan messing with us? Trying to lure us toward them so they can get the court case against us up and running. We can’t jump into this.”
“It’s Lucia,” Saint insists.
“Come on. Aside from the Italian heritage, what’s different about that woman? Really? She might put on a good smile and have a rocking body, but she’s a female. We have lots of those already.”
I stare at Ash. I see what he’s doing. He’s trying to talk himself out of this. I wish him the best with that—I see in his eyes that Lucia has been on his mind twenty-four-fucking-seven.
He’s a man who likes to stare into space even on the best of days, but the vacant episodes he’s been having recently are different. He’s not thinking of our parents. How do I know? Because whenhe’s dwelling on the past, his cheeks aren’t flushed and he’s not wiping his brow to contain the hot sweats.
He misses her.
We all do.
Saint takes off from the bar stool before we even have chance to order him back. He returns several minutes later with a stolen computer balanced in his hands.
“Is your goal today to piss off our only tech genius?”
“My goal today”—he raises the lid—“is to get Lucia back into our lives.” He takes the card from Ash and types the coordinates into the search engine. “You can thank me later.”
“I won’t be thanking you even if we’re all buried six feet under, still able to talk,” Ash grunts. “This is too dangerous. Don’t even get me started on what Grizzly will think about all of this.”
“Grizzly doesn’t need to know,” Saint fires back. He stares at the screen like his life depends on it, waiting for the coordinates to pick up. “Score.” He looks closer. “She’s on the outskirts of Vegas, being kept in what looks like—” He pinches the keypad, zooming in. “A motel.”
“See,” Ash says. “Nothing to be concerned about.”
“A motel that hasn’t been open since the eighties.”
That shuts him up.
I waggle my brows at Ash, noting the sudden shift in his expression. “Why the long face?”
