Page 91 of King
Chapter 27
King/Dante
I was worried, frustrated, pissed off, and disgusted with myself. I also felt guilty as hell.
The first three emotions I could blame on Pic. The last two though, well, the blame for that shit was squarely on me.
Hours later, I still felt sick to my stomach when I thought about what I had done, and my best friend for more than half my life still looked ready to kick my ass. I couldn’t blame him.
“Skid called. He and Linc just got to the cousin’s place. Camille’s convertible is there, along with the cousin’s car. Are you sure you don’t want him to make contact and at least find out why the hell she hasn’t answered her phone all damned day?”
I shook my head at Cowboy. “No. I don’t want her to know they’re there. I’m sure she just doesn’t even realize her ringer is off or something, because she and Camille have been too busy talking.” I cracked a smile as I remembered the one and only time I’d met Camille, when she’d joined us for lunch at the diner. I hadn’t been able to get more than a few words in, because the two of them had gabbed for an hour without stopping.
“As long as she’s there, Pic won’t be able to find her. Hell,wecould barely find her, and we knew where she was going,” Igrumbled. “Tell them to trade off shifts. I want eyes on her at all times, but they need to stay in the shadows. There’s no sense in upsetting her.”
I frowned as I ran my fingers through my hair for probably the three-hundredth time today. “I want her to enjoy her weekend, and if for some reason we haven’t tracked that fucker down by the time she’s ready to come home, I’ll go up there myself and tell her, then bring her home.”
“Are you forgettin’ about the first message you left for her, when you told her there was a fuckin’ threat and she need to come here? What are you gonna do when she hears that and freaks the fuck out?”
“I left another one a little while ago, once we knew she’d gotten out of town safely. I told her she was safe in Chicago and not to worry. Told her to call me and I’d explain as much as I could.”
“She’s still gonna freak the fuck out, you know.”
I leaned back in my chair and sighed. “Yeah. I know.”
Neither of us said a word for a while, and I reflected on what had been probably the longest afternoon of my life.
Trick and Linc had pulled up to Camille’s condo not even fifteen minutes after she and Ella had left, according to a neighbor who had been out washing his car.
I’d ordered Skid to come back and grab the club’s van and a change of clothes for himself and Linc, then sent them to Chicago, telling them we’d have an address for them to go to by the time they hit the Illinois state line.
When Bull had told me that he’d finally been able to ping Camille’s phone, and we had proof that they were already halfway to Chicago, I’d finally been able to breathe a little easier.It didn’t even matter at this point that Ella wasn’t answering her damned phone. Now that I knew she was safe from Pic for the moment, I could fully focus my energy on finding that sonofabitch and putting him in the ground.
A quiet knock on the door was followed by a woman calling for me. I cursed under my breath as I recognized DD’s voice.
Cowboy just scowled at me and shook his head angrily as I got up to answer the door.
“Hey, Prez, we’re ordering dinner soon, and I thought maybe we could eat up in your room, since we got interrupted earlier.” Yeah, the interruption had been a fake emergency text that I’d claimed to have gotten from Viking about a hazardous fluid spill in the garage. The bunny rooms were over the garage, so that excuse also worked to keep the women in the common room where we could keep an eye on them without telling them why.
DD had been in the process of shimmying out of her tiny excuse for a skirt in the middle of my room by the time I’d pulled my phone out of my cut and pretended I’d heard it go off. I had hauled her half-naked ass out of my room and locked the door behind me before she could even utter a single protest.
“Sorry, that’s not gonna happen tonight. Cowboy and I are trying to get some work done.”
She pouted, and I wanted to kick my own ass for starting this shit in the first place.
“OK, but it’s just so quiet around here tonight. The girls and I want to party.”
“You’ll have to party by yourselves then, because the brothers aren’t gonna be around. Now get going, I’ve got shit to do.”
Cowboy waited a minute or two before pointing out that I was a fucking idiot.
“Goddammit, don’t you think I know that?” I said, as I paced back and forth in my office. “I hated saying that shit about Ella, but I panicked. We had no idea where she was, and no way to reach her to even warn her, and I was fuckin’ desperate to keep Pic from going after her. That was the only thing I could think of, and I had to make it believable.” I sank down in my chair and shook my head in self-disgust.
“Look, I’ll deal with DD once this is over, and make it clear it was an act. Now, where the fuck are we on tracking down Pic or Star?”
His update wasn’t good. Star still hadn’t responded to Bodhi’s text to let her know she was fired. She also hadn’t shown up to collect her things from her locker. We’d done a few drive-bys at her place, but there’d been no sign of her car, and no lights on in her apartment.
Ace, predictably, was pissed off that I’d“gone over his head”and fired one of his employees. Since I still didn’t trust him, he’d only been told she was fired for missing her shift. He’d confronted me shortly after the fake scene in the kitchen, and I’d been in no mood for his fucking bullshit. I’d reminded him that my position as club president was“way the fuck over his head”, and that if he didn’t like it, he knew where to find the goddamned door. He’d stormed out, and I hadn’t seen him since.
