Page 82 of Single Mom's Biker Brigade
Nope. And I didn’t care except that I really, really hoped it was a bug in his ass every single day after everything he put me through.
“You know what’s really funny?” I smirked at him. “That ledger’s not even real. The pictures were, but not that.”
His brows furrowed, and he tore at the pages, flipping through them at faster speeds. “No. This is real. I remember this.” He kept going, muttering over the pages. He confirmed two moreentries and turned the page. “This route through the eastern corridor is the one Vex prefers.”
Vex Calder, Hellhound enforcer and all around bad motherfucker.
I’d heard his name spoken in whispers, always with shifty gazes as though whoever said his name worried they’d conjure him into existence.
“You’re out of time, Wade.” I spoke with all the calm I could muster. “I want my son.”
He didn’t even look up, too busy drooling all over the ‘information’ in the ledger. “Soon. Just need to verify the drop for Henry the day after I got arrested. Yep. There it is.”
And there we were, with the proof of a drop point, a time window, and a name. He reached the end of the ledger and snapped it shut, finally raising his head.
Diesel gripped my elbow, his eyes flicking to the roofline up and to our right.
I followed his line of sight, but I didn’t know what to look for.
Wade glanced over.
“Like I said. You’re out of time. The real ledger is gone and whoever sent you here just figured out you’re a liability. You brought law enforcement attention to their operation and you used a child as leverage.” I held his gaze. “Men like them don’t leave loose ends.”
The smile faded, and he took a step back. “You stupid cunt. You don–”
He dropped mid-breath, a bloom of red spreading across his chest.
Diesel’s hand went to my shoulder. He pushed me down behind the hood of our car. My knees hit the asphalt, and Diesel covered me with his body.
I pressed my spine to the car and tried to breathe.
Wade lay on the ground, not moving. I tried not to look, but some broken part of me needed to see, to know that he was out of my life once and for all.
Tires squealed, the sound distant but ominous.
Diesel took out his phone and sent the text he’d pretyped and had ready to go with a touch. His shoulder pressed into mine, pinning me in place as he peered over the hood.
Shadows moved at the edge of the lot. Diesel cursed and dropped closer to me. “They’re looping.”
The engines I’d heard leaving revved and screamed higher, the sound coming hard and fast. Seconds later, headlights flared toward us, careening closer.
Shit. If they hit the car, we were both dead.
30
HAWK
Colt and I tracked every bit of evidence and it led us to a gas station attendant who remembered the SUV in Diesel’s footage because the man driving had paid cash for fuel and a juice box and asked for directions to the nearest motel. The attendant had pointed him north, which lined up with everything else we’d gathered.
Colt kept too still and quiet in the passenger seat. Strangely enough, the only sign he was keeping it together was the way his right knee bounded against the dash every few seconds. I’d be worried about him if I had the capacity to hold a single ounce more emotion than the pit growing in my gut with every second.
I pulled up the motel layout on my phone after we parked on the backside of the lot.
“This is fucking unbelievable.” Colt punched his fist into his open palm. “How the fuck did the school let this asshole take Cody? We’ve tracked him thanks to Diesel’s ability to hack cameras and that hit on the partial plate. Now a gas station worker and we end up at a cheap ass motel with too much foottraffic for anything good.” He snarled as a couple of hookers walked past arm in arm, heading straight for the walkway in front of the room where Cody should be.
“Get your shit together.” I grabbed his arm when he reached for the doorhandle. “I get it, man. I really do. I’d love nothing more than for all this to be a bad dream, but we do this my way. You’re not barging in there with guns blazing.”
“I don’t even have a gun.” His jaw sawed side to side. “You don’t trust me with one.”
