Lucky: The Irish MC (43 page)

Chapter Twenty Seven

Chase

“Damnit, pick up!” I growled into the phone as I dialed Peyton for the third time. He still hadn’t gotten back to me, and I had some crucial information that I was dying to tell him. It wasn’t like him to be completely out of touch like this, and I had to ask him about what I’d learned. Turns out I’d been completely wrong the whole time. All this time I thought I’d been searching for the boss of The Machetes. Then I’d talked to some junkies and a bar owner and realized that the killer wasn’t the leader of The Machetes at all. Instead, it was The Manticore, a gang member who had supposedly disappeared a few years ago. My blood boiled as I thought about how stupid I’d been to waste so much energy on the wrong person.

The phone cut to voicemail and I threw it to the wall angrily. I watched with dull eyes as the screen cracked down the middle. Peyton never iced me out like this. In frustration, I clenched my hands into fists and drove them into the wall.

“Damnit, Peyton,” I cursed under my breath in a low growl. I steeled my resolve, putting my shattered phone in my pocket and hiking out to the parking lot. My car was sitting alone, looking eerily out of place. Yanking open the driver’s side door, I slid in and jammed the key in the ignition. I didn’t think he was ignoring on purpose but there was always the chance that he was passed out in some haze of junk-induced stupor.

The drive out to his shitty hideaway seemed to take longer than usual. There was a knot in my stomach forming the whole time. Something didn’t seem right to me. It wasn’t exactly that I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t have my usual sense of security. Even though I’d been on edge for the past few weeks, I’d still felt confident about keeping Lacey—and myself—safe. Now, though, I wasn’t sure; somehow it felt like a completely different ball game.

As usual, the parking lot by the hideaway was empty. The only activity was coming from the shitty Chinese food restaurant on the corner and I could already feel the grease soaking into my pores. I shuddered as I remembered the look on Lacey’s face when I’d first brought her here. I thought she was going to resist and fight me, but she just looked sad and alone. I’d felt bad about hurting her.

Damnit, Chase!
This is no time to be thinking about Lacey!

Peyton didn’t answer when I pounded on the door. The rusty hinges bounced against the frame with the effort. Taking a deep breath, I lowered my shoulders and thrust against the door hard. It resisted and I felt my shoulder slam into the cheap wood. Lowering my head, I crouched and butted the door open with all of my strength. It slammed against the back wall of the apartment, sending wood splinters flying across the room.

The place was a sty. It looked even worse than it had when I’d first shown up with Lacey. At least then there had been some semblance of normalcy, even if it was just the normalcy of a man living in stupor. But now it looked like it had been torn apart by multiple people. The mattress was flipped on its side and a jagged cut showed from one corner to the opposite. The stuffing was falling out and some rusty springs were poking through the stained fabric. There had been a cheap plastic nightstand which was now broken into pieces and scattered around the room. There were empty little baggies everywhere and I shook my head. It was hard to believe that of all people, Peyton would choose to lose his mind and go on a junk binge strong enough to tear the room apart. If he needed money or more smack, he could have always come to me. That was our agreement; it was part of him helping me out.

But this was just ridiculous. I rubbed a hand over the stubble growing on my chin and growled. Slowly, I started to realize the lack of personal effects. There wasn’t even a rusty can of shaving cream in the bathroom, much less a wallet. I picked through the piles of shredded paper and trash all over the broken kitchen table; there was nothing at all that could have been used to identify Peyton.

Sniffing the air, I smelled both stale smoke and that faint mildew odor. Oddly, there was no rotten food. Throwing open the fridge, I was surprised to see that it was completely empty. There wasn’t any food, not even empty takeout containers from next door. Frowning, I glanced around behind me. It seemed weird that Peyton would trash the place, then meticulously clean the fridge and decide to bounce. It wasn’t like him, and it definitely didn’t fit the state of the rest of the apartment. I groaned and started digging through the kitchen trash. Again, it was more of the same: shredded and ripped papers, destroyed notes that just looked like gibberish when held up to the light…

A cold shiver of fear ran down my spine for the first time since entering Peyton’s hideaway. My gut felt cold and I shook my head in an attempt to clear the feeling. Suddenly I knew Peyton wouldn’t be coming back here. It was cleaned and trashed of any attempt possible to identify who the owner had been. My hands started to shake as I looked down and realized that now, my fingerprints were everywhere. Now it was me they were going to be looking for.

“Chase,” Lacey said in her grating, perky voice. “Chase, listen, I think you might want to listen to me! Some of the information I have is important!”

“I’m busy,” I growled. Lacey pouted and reached forward to tug at my sleeve. “Chase, I really think you’ll want to hear this,” she said quietly. “Don’t you want to listen to me? I think I can help you.”

“Sorry, Lacey, I don’t have to get any help from library books,” I said dismissively. I watched as she angrily balled one of her hands into a delicate fist and punched me on the arm. It barely registered as a sensation and I had a hard time trying not to laugh it off.

“Chase,” Lacey squealed. “This is important! I saw Peyton had this kind of creepy-looking knife with a handle that looked like a carved animal!”

I shook my head again. “Lacey, don’t,” I growled without listening to her. She’d kept droning on and on until I finalize roared at her to be quiet. After that, she’d shut up
.

A wave of nausea passed over me as I remembered Lacey’s exact words: “creepy-looking knife with a handle that looked like a carved animal.”

The air whooshed out of my chest and suddenly I felt incredibly lightheaded. The stuffiness in Peyton’s hideaway was too much and I made my way to the door, clutching the walls. This couldn’t be right, I couldn’t possibly be right. Something was very, very wrong.

Closing my eyes, I tried to remember exactly everything that Lacey had told me. Fucking hell, I wish I’d listened to her. With shaky fingers I tried to dial her number. The sweat from my hands made my phone slippery and I dropped it on the ground, cursing out loud. My heart was pounding faster and faster and I groped on the sticky floor for my phone, feeling years of grime and muck under my fingers. 

Grabbing my phone, I staggered towards the exit and threw open the door. The air outside stunk of the grease from the fast food place. I knew I had to find Lacey now; she was the only chance I had left.

The drive to Lacey’s house was mercifully free of traffic but it seemed to take twice as long. I kept calling her—the phone would ring and ring with no answer. I knew in the pit of my stomach that she wouldn’t be there, but I had to try. When I pulled into the parking lot of her apartment complex, I didn’t see her car anywhere.

Shit
,
she’s not going to be here
, I realized as I was jogging up the stairs and towards her front door. I yelled her name loudly but there was no answer. Pounding on the door, I screamed her name until my throat cracked.

I knew it then with absolute certainty: Peyton wasn’t my friend. Peyton was The Manticore. It had been him all along.

Chapter Twenty Eight

My body went numb as the phone in my hands started to ring. It wasn’t Lacey calling me back, it was from an unknown number. My heart was in my throat as I held the receiver up to my ear.

“Hello?”

There was a familiar laugh, but this time it sounded…evil. I shuddered. “Hello, Chase,” Peyton’s voice growled. “Figure things out yet?”

“Fuck you,” I spat. “I hate you. I’m going to fucking tear you apart, you asshole. Do you realize that?”

Peyton laughed again, a growling, menacing sound. I shuddered and instinctively reached for the knife at my waistband, forgetting that we weren’t in the same room. “You can do whatever you want, Chasey,” he said in a sing-song voice. “As long as you come to me by midnight, I don’t give a fuck what you do, you got that?”

“Where’s Lacey?” I growled. “You better fucking tell me, asshole.”

“She’s here,” Peyton said with a low chuckle. “She and her sweet little ass are right next to me in this room. You wanna say hi? She’s gonna meet a nice little end if you can’t come by midnight, big boy. Just like your sweet sister, Rose.”

The mention of Rose made my blood boil and I stamped my foot on the ground in rage. “You don’t fucking have her,” I retorted. “She’s probably not even with you.”

“You wanna hear her say hi?” Peyton asked. There was a rustling sound and a muffled thump and I heard a female scream. The sound chilled me to the bone and the hair on the back of my neck stood up.

“Lacey?” I asked in disbelief. “Is that you?”

“Chase!” I heard her scream my name and the sound made me shiver. “Help me!”

“Fuck,” I muttered. “Peyton, where the fuck are you? Where the fuck is she?”

“She’s with me, baby,” Peyton said. “Sounds like she misses you a whole lot, you think I should give her something to help her out a little bit?”

“Fuck you. Don’t lay a fucking finger on her or you’re dead!”

“But I’m gonna be dead anyway,” Peyton said. “Why don’t I have myself a little fun in the process?”

Angrily I threw the phone to the concrete below me. It shattered into tiny pieces and I grunted, sprinting back to the parking lot and hopping inside my car. There was only one place they could be: The Machetes’ warehouse on the outskirts of town.

I sat in the car for a moment, thinking. I didn’t think they could have grabbed Lacey out from under my nose; when had they found the time? My heart sank as I realized she was scheduled to work at the daycare center today. They must have gotten her when she was on her way to her car. For a moment I wondered if any of the kids she loved so much had seen her get attacked, and I silently hoped they hadn’t. Then, when I realized what I was dwelling on, I shook my head angrily. Now was not the right time to be feeling bad for a bunch of little snot-nosed brats.

Peyton said that I had until midnight. Knowing him, he was going to fuck with me until I turned myself in. I hated knowing that he and the gang had Lacey, but if they already had her, there wasn’t a lot I could do at the moment. I thought about all of the supplies I’d need before I went out there to fight him. Peyton was a strong guy, taller than me, more muscular, and with a hell of a lot of weapons. I shuddered thinking about his “weird creepy knife”—his machete. I felt like the world’s biggest idiot for not listening to Lacey sooner, but how could I have known?

I would need at least one gun and a lot of ammo. There were some dealers that I knew, but no one I’d be able to meet with on such short notice. Every time I tried to concentrate, it felt like my brain was short-circuiting. I was going to have to find some deadly shit—fast.

Driving downtown, I walked into the bar frequented by The Manticore. The old man behind the bar recognized me and shivered. I shook my head; I didn’t want to spend the whole time convincing him that I wasn’t here to kill him.

“Relax,” I said loudly, holding my hands out in front of me. “I’m not going to hurt you again.”

The man shook his head and backed away. “What do you want?” he asked me in this odd, stilted voice. “What can I possibly tell you now?”

“I know where he is,” I said. “He called me. It wasn’t who I thought, old man, not at all.”

The old man squinted at me. “You can’t have come to me for help,” he said in disbelief. “I’m powerless. I’m just an old man with a bar.”

“I need a gun,” I hissed. “And a few rounds. The Manticore and his thugs stole my friend, and I need to make sure she gets out alive.”