Page 83 of Obsession
BythetimeIget back to the clubhouse, the edge is off. The four assholes from the south lockup are handled, two breathing because I needed answers and two dead because they made themselves inconvenient. Halo is pissed he missed the fun. Bricks laughed for half the ride back until I told him he could either shut up or join the bodies we were leaving behind. He lasted exactly forty seconds before he started humming.
I should feel steadier. I almost do. I thought I could shoot enough noise into the night that the answer would come loose inside me, simple and usable by the time I walked back through the clubhouse doors.
It hasn’t.
But I know I need to say something, and that’s new enough to piss me off. I need to find Oisín, put him somewhere quiet, and give him a sentence that doesn’t turn into strategy before it reaches him. Not love. I’m not ready to make a liar out of myself with a word that large when I don’t know what to do with it once it’s in the room. But something. I want you. I chose you too. You’re not just useful. You’re mine in ways I don’t know how to say without making it sound like a threat.
Wrong words might be better than silence.
That’s where I am when I walk into the main room with Demo half a step behind me and Halo’s replacement crew pulling into the lot outside. The clubhouse is louder than it should be for the hour, men moving between the bar and the hall, Moth’s runners crossing with files, Pike arguing with someone near the back about camera access. The air tastes like coffee, gun oil, and waiting.
I look toward the bar first. Oisín isn’t there.
Tally stands behind it with a towel in one hand and her eyes already on me, which means she knows why I’m looking before I ask. Demo stops beside me, still buzzing with leftover nerves from the lockup and too much adrenaline he didn’t get to spend. I scan the room once, slow enough not to look frantic.
“Where is he?” I ask.
Tally’s face changes. “He went outside,” she says.
“When?”
“Forty minutes. Maybe closer to an hour. I thought he was cooling off, Saint.”
I turn toward Demo. “Check the bedroom.” I point at Pike. “Cameras. Courtyard, side gate, rear lot. Now.”
Pike straightens so fast he nearly knocks into the man beside him. “On it.”
Tally sets the towel down. “Saint.”
I don’t look at her. “Did anyone go with him?”
“No. I thought he was just stepping out. I was going to give him a minute.”
That isn’t her fault. I know that somewhere under the immediate, brutal need to blame every person in this building, myself included. Oisín is my husband. My responsibility. Mine to protect, mine to answer, mine to keep from walking out into a blind pocket of night because I stood in my office with all the words in the world locked behind my teeth and let him go.
Demo comes back down the hall too quickly, face pale. “He’s not there.”
The clubhouse goes quiet, Moth appearing from the private hallway with his tablet already in hand, eyes moving over the room.
“What happened?” he asks.
“Oisín’s gone.”
“How long?”“Tally says forty.”“Less than an hour,” she says. “I’m sure of that.”
Pike calls from the back office. “VP, courtyard camera’s out.” Pike steps into view, holding up both hands like that might help. “It’s not dead, just looping. It’s showing an empty courtyard from earlier tonight.”
Shit.Everything about tonight suddenly feels like a setup rather than coincidence. “Those kids snooping around the warehouse weren’t the play,” I say.
Moth’s fingers move across the tablet. “They were the distraction.”
Demo’s voice comes out thin. “For Oisín?”
“For me.” The truth tastes like metal in my mouth. “They knew I’d take it personally if someone grabbed product under my nose. They knew Bricks would follow. They knew the room would move around me.”
Tally whispers, “Rogues.”
I’m already moving. The side door hits the wall hard enough to crack plaster when I shove through it. Cold air slams into my face. The courtyard looks normal at first glance, which makes me want to tear it apart by hand.
