Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 75592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Only to find it locked.
My heart clenched at her lock screen—the picture of us at our wedding, my forehead pressed to hers.
“Locked?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Can you… hack in?”
To that, I snorted.
“No. Not even cops with all their software can hack into a password or code-protected phone.”
“You’ve seen her unlock it, though, right?”
“Yeah.” Only about a hundred times.
“Then focus. Remember.”
“Dude, who the fuck can—”
“You can,” he cut me off. “It’s all in here,” he went on, tapping my temple with two fingers. “Focus and unlock the memory.”
“This isn’t the fucking time for meditation or whatever-the-fuck—”
“It is if you want in her phone. So, if you want your girl back, clear your goddamn mind, and let the memory come back.”
My brows shot up, surprised at the fierceness in his voice. Coach, almost as a rule, was a calm voice of reason. He was the yoga-loving, meditating, woodworking member of the club.
But, I reminded myself, those were only some of his layers.
Coach was also the guy who went out of his way to fuck up the lives of the corrections officers who made his life miserable while he was locked up.
He was a guy who went away for a brutal assault against a man who’d hurt his sister.
I wondered for the first time if maybe all of the yoga and meditation was his way of keeping that darker, violent side of himself in check.
I took a deep breath and let my eyes slide closed as I held Tessa’s phone. I drifted back to the night before as we sat close together.
The TV was playing a particularly brutal scene in a show we had both been watching, and she reached for her phone to fiddle with one of her silly little matching games until the ugliness was over.
I’d been distracted by the rings on her finger at first. But I caught the last four numbers.
The year.
“I think it’s a date,” I told Coach. “From this year.”
“That’s a good start. You’re probably only missing two or four numbers.”
My mind went to the date when she’d finally run away from her old life. But I had no idea when that was. And there were too many dates to guess before getting locked out.
“What about your wedding day?” Coach asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not… like that. She’s not like that.”
“She’s got your wedding picture on her lock screen.”
“To convince Nancy.”
“Tell me you’re not actually this dense,” Coach said, shaking his head at me. “Whether or not she’s at a place yet where she can admit it, that woman is crazy about you. She looks at you like you’re a slice of that cake Detroit and Everleigh made. But to be clear—you are exactly equal with that cake,” he said with a little smile.
“She loved that cake.”
“And she loves your dumb ass too. Now try the damn date. You’re wasting time.”
I had nothing to lose.
I typed it in.
And the fucking thing unlocked.
“This is where a less evolved man might say I told you so.”
I might have snorted at that.
But the phone unlocked right to the delivery app.
With a big warning page popped up.
Your delivery is extremely late.
So she had been lured.
Then picked up.
And maybe someone drove her car out here so no one could look for her.
That meant… she was probably still in Shady Valley.
I clicked the little Got it button to bring me back to the main screen.
And there it was.
A Shady Valley address.
“No,” Coach said when I turned and rushed toward my bike without a word. “We gotta take the car,” he said, grabbing my arm. “They’ll hear the bikes coming.”
“Right,” I said, handing him the phone as I jumped in the driver’s seat of Tessa’s car. The keys were still in the ignition, so I turned it as Coach called the others.
“You have weapons?” I asked as I floored it past the apartment buildings.
“Got two. Gonna have to wait for backup.”
“I’m not waiting for shit if she’s in there.”
Who the fuck knew what might be happening to her?
Given that she didn’t want to talk about it, I had to imagine it was worse than her mother trying to sell her to a club president when she was a teen. And there was no goddamn way I was going to make her wait even a second for rescue if she was enduring more of that just when she was supposed to be safe.
I was just about to turn into the mobile home park when a car raced up on my fender.
”The fuck—” I started, but when I glanced in the rearview, it was Sway’s girl Murphy behind the wheel.
Murphy, the weapons designer.
Murphy, who likely had a trunk full of shit we could use to get Tessa free.
Without thinking, I pulled to a stop and flew out.
“What do you have?” I asked as she got out and rushed toward her trunk.