Cash (The Henchmen MC Book 2) (22 page)

Just as I suspected... nothing.

“God damn it!” I yelled as I tore through the front and back rooms, looking for something, anything.

There was nothing. No doors, nothing but a few dusty shelving units and wall stands for the carpets. Fucking empty.

“There's fucking nothing here,” I growled into the phone, cutting off Malcolm's greeting.

“What do you mean there's nothing there?”

“I mean it's just a fucking empty carpet store. There's nothing and no one inside, Malc. She's not here.”

“She has to be there,” he insisted and I heard an edge of desperation in his tone.

“You're welcome to fucking come here and look, man, but there ain't shit.” I kicked the side of the service desk, enjoying the stab of pain up my foot. “What the fuck are we going to do now? Where else can we look?”

There was a long pause before, “I don't know.”

“What do you mean you don't know? You have to know. You guys know fucking everything.”

“He's a ghost, man. He even pays his bills in cash. There's nothing to go on. I tried.”

I tore out of the busted window, going to my bike and sitting on it for a long minute. I was in no shape to drive. I needed a direction to go in. I needed skulls to crack together. I needed some fucking... hope.

She couldn't just be... gone.

But the fact of the matter was- she could. She could very well be long gone. This Damian fuck obviously kept a lot of cash on hand. He could easily get out of town. He could take Lo and disappear and no one would ever see her again. The Henchmen tried to keep their noses out of everyone else's business, but that didn't mean we didn't know things, that we didn't know just how the other low lives handled certain situations, how they managed to up and completely fall off the face of the Earth when trouble caught up with them. And this Damian guy had years to do nothing but plan on what he was going to do when he got his hands on his wife again.

“Mother fucker,” I growled into the phone, not even realizing I still had it pressed to my ear.

“We're going to find her,” Malcolm's voice said, holding an authoritative edge that only managed to make me snort.

“You don't know that, man.”

“Cash, I fucking know it. Because this is, from this moment on, the fucking only case Hailstorm is working. Every man and woman will be putting their time and skills into locating her. We will find her. We never fail.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“I wish fucking Jstorm was around...”

“Jstorm?” I repeated, looking up at the store with a churning in my stomach.

“Janie,” he corrected.

“Janie?” I repeated. “Why?”

“Because she's the best at this. She can find anyone's trail online. She's some kind of internet prodigy. It's incredible.”

I didn't even bother to respond or say goodbye. I shoved the phone in my pocket and drove off toward Wolf's. It was about damn time I found a way to contribute. I had felt like a useless bystander all day.

“Not now,” Wolf growled at me, blocking the door.

It wasn't even a conscious thought that had me reaching behind my back, grabbing the gun, and raising it at him, at my brother, at a man I trusted my life to, a man who I loved as much as my own blood.

“Seriously?” Wolf asked, not even flinching. His brow rose slowly as he watched me with those freaky honey-colored eyes of his.

“I need Janie's help.”

“No.”

I pulled off the safety. “This is not a discussion. Lo is in the hands of some fucking psychopath and no one, not even those freaks at that camp of hers can find her. So I need
Janie's fucking help.
”

Before Wolf could open his mouth to object again, for whatever the fuck reason he had to do such a thing, the door behind him was wrenched fully open to reveal Janie standing there, yet again in one of Wolf's tees.

“Who has her?”

“Damian Crane,” I answered immediately. “Her husband.”

“Ex,” Janie answered automatically.

“What?”

“Ex-husband. She had a contested divorce that finalized a decade ago. He's her ex-husband.”

“How do you know this shit?”

Janie looked away over my shoulder for a minute, biting into her bottom lip, looking almost... guilty. “When I can't sleep, which is often,” she started, “I go online. I look into stuff. When I was first at Hailstorm, I looked into the people. So... I know her name is Willow Swift. When she was eighteen, she married Damian Crane. They were married until she was twenty-seven though, obviously, she was not with him that whole time because she was building up Hailstorm at the time and no one there had ever so much as heard his name. I don't know why she wasn't...”

“He beat her,” I supplied and Janie's whole body jerked backward as if I had struck her. Her blue eyes, already big, got rounder and her mouth fell open.

“What?” she asked on a horrified whisper.

“I found a picture. There were bruises on her arm. That, coupled with the article that said he was stabbed twelve times in his apartment...”

“Oh my god...”

“Enough,” Wolf said, giving me a hard look before turning his focus on Janie, his entire face softening.

“He has her, Janie...” I said, my voice of plea.

“I need a computer,” she said, her head jerking up. “Right now,” she said, her voice more firm, but still shaking slightly as she focused her attention on Wolf.

“'Kay,” he said on a shrug and moved inside.

Janie and I both followed. “How long?”

“Hours. I don't know. I was at Hailstorm trying to get their help in locating him before he found her again.”

“Again?”

“That's why she was begging asylum at my place, kid. He got to her and he busted her up. Her face... her ribs... it was bad. He did a number. She went to The Henchmen. I just so happened to be there so I took her home. I took care of her. And then...”

Janie was watching me with an odd look on her face, her eyes sharp, like she could see right through me. “And then?” she prompted as we heard Wolf rustling around in a closet.

“And then when I got home, my place was trashed. Her blood was on the walls. My neighbor gave me a make and plate of his truck. I called Malcolm and got him on it.”

“They got nothing?” she asked, looking almost... offended at that.

“Nothing useful. He said every other case is closed until you guys find her.”

“Well... duh,” Janie said, straightening as Wolf walked back toward us, a laptop box in his hands. As in... he had never taken it out of said box. A smile teased up the sides of Janie's lips. “You're ridiculous,” she said to him, but it was almost... warm. She took the box and made short work of getting the unused laptop up and running.

“She's your woman,” Wolf said, leaning against the counter in the kitchen, pinning me with his eyes.

It was then that it finally hit me, with the kind of clarity that made me feel dumb as hell for not realizing it earlier. He was right. She was. It didn't matter that it didn't make sense, that I spent so much time disliking her and her practices, that she didn't always show me her full self. She never showed Malcolm and Janie and the rest of her people her full self either, and she was still theirs, they still loved her.

Loved?

What the fuck?

I didn't
love
her.

That wasn't me. I didn't do that shit. I didn't fall in love.

But that didn't change the fact that he was right, that she was mine. She had been mine since the second I walked into Reign's house and caught sight of her again. She was mine every time she pushed me away, every time she showed me glimpses of what was underneath, every time she laughed and smiled at me, every time she moaned out my name. She was fucking
mine.
And I was going to kill the mother fucker who dared think he could put his hands on what belonged to me.

“Yeah,” I agreed, nodding.

Wolf nodded back. “I get that.”

My brows drew together as I turned to look at him and found his gaze fixed on Janie. So that was the way it was. She was his. Damn. How the fuck did something like that happen?

“You'll get him,” Wolf said, clamping a hand down on my shoulder and squeezing.

“Yeah,” I agreed, a little spirit returning to my voice.

“Carpet store?” Janie called out and I almost laughed because it had taken Malcolm hours to find that information out and Janie/Jstorm had managed it in minutes.

“Been there. Nothing.”

Janie made some kind of growling noise and then all I heard was her fingers viciously stabbing the buttons on the keypad.

“Reign?” Wolf asked a few minutes later.

Here's the thing about knowing someone as weird as Wolf for as long as I had known him- you get to understand their oddities. Like the way Wolf never seemed to manage a full sentence, yet I totally understood his meaning. Had I filled in my brother on all the shit that was going on?

“No. But... Repo knows some of it and I'm sure that shit will trickle back sooner rather than later.”

“Loyal.”

“Yeah.” That would be the word to describe Repo alright. Meanwhile me and Wolf, the two highest up in rank aside from Reign were running around getting into all kinds of shit without even filling him in and hauling up with women and not checking in like we were supposed to when fucking bombs were going off for no damn good reason.

“As much as I
love
to sit here listening to you two hens clucking like a couple chicks,” Janie said, the furious tapping not so much as hesitating as she spoke. “I am going to need some coffee and silence.”

Wolf grunted and turned to make the coffee while very loud, very piercing metal music came screaming from the laptop speakers. Apparently, Janie's kind of silence was different than a normal person's.

I moved toward a chair propped up against the wall in the back of the room and sat down, trying to not let my mind race over the worse-case scenarios and failing until, despite me thinking it was in no way possible, I fell asleep.

I woke up to Janie yelling out, “What about the basement?”

I jolted up in the chair, blinking at the light that was suddenly streaming in through the windows, wondering absentmindedly how much time had passed, and how the fuck I had managed to fall asleep when I was so worried.

“What?” I asked, rubbing at my eyes as I sat forward, spotting Wolf sitting across from Janie at the table, holding a steaming coffee cup between his hands.

“The basement,” she said again, sounding exasperated.

“What basement?”

“The one at the carpet store.”

What?

“Kid, there wasn't a basement. No doors to a staircase. Nothing.”

“Then what is this?” she asked, swinging the laptop around and stabbing her finger at the screen.

I bolted off my chair and knelt down beside her, looking at what was the city plans for the building. And, holy fuck, there was a basement. “No...”

“Yeah. There's a basement. He must have hidden the...”

I didn't hear the rest of that conversation as I flew out of the house, cursing Wolf seven ways to Sunday for living out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere.

“Yo,” Wolf called, but I didn't slow down. He would catch up and I couldn't afford to lose a second. “Here,” he said, slamming my cell into my hand. I took it, looking over at him with drawn-together brows. “Charged it,” he shrugged.

“Tell Janie to call Malcolm and get them all to...”

“Already is,” he said, and he suddenly wasn't by my side anymore.

I glanced back to see him turning back to his house... and his woman.

I turned forward again and flew down the rest of the hill and got on my bike... to go get my woman.

And kill the mother fucker who took her from me.

Twenty-one

Lo

I woke up slowly, lulled by a warm swirling feeling inside that I couldn't quite name, but it made me feel safe and comfortable and... happy. I kept my eyes closed, trying to hold on to the last dregs of my dreams, wanting to forever feel that sweetness.

I felt my lips curl upward just a second before I heard a voice that reminded me that nothing in my life was sweet dreams, that it was always bitter nightmares.

“Calling out another man's name in my house?” Damian growled and I felt a heaviness settle in my belly. Dread, it was dread. Because I knew that tone. “Such a disappointing wife. Always fucking complaining, always nagging...” I never complained. I certainly never nagged. “Always lying there like a dead fucking fish when I was inside you.”

“Maybe because you had no fucking idea how to please a woman, Damian,” I said, shrugging a shoulder.

“Not my fault you can't come.”