Page 99 of Monk

And straight toward whatever fresh hell was waiting for me at the clubhouse.

The church room smelled like stale smoke, old whiskey, and the kind of tension that turned the air heavy. It pressed down on everything. On the scarred wood table. On the patched men gathered around it. On the silence waiting underneath every word.

Kansas sat at the head of the table, hands folded in front of him so tight the knuckles had gone pale. His jaw was locked, a hard line of strain cutting through his face. He looked like a man holding himself together by sheer force.

Blackjack sat on his right, arms crossed over his chest, broad and unmoving, his expression dark as a storm front. Whisper sat on Kansas’ left, leaning back in his chair with that same unreadable stillness he wore whenever something bad was coming. Widow sat near the far end, his fingers tapping out a slow, steady rhythm against the table, each sound sharp in the silence. Shadow stood near the door, arms folded, silver-gray eyes moving across the room like he was already assessing angles, exits, contingencies.

I took my seat at Kansas’ right hand—the VP chair—and waited.

No one spoke.

No one needed to.

The room already felt like it knew blood was in the water.

Kansas didn’t waste time.

“Shadow,” he said, his voice flat and stripped clean of anything human. “Update.”

Shadow straightened, but only barely. Even that small movement seemed grim.

“Ruby’s missing,” he said.

The words dropped into the room like a body hitting deep water.

Everything went still.

“Missing?” Blackjack repeated, his voice sharp enough to cut skin. “What the fuck do you mean, missing?”

Shadow didn’t flinch. “I mean the bitch is gone.”

He pushed away from the wall and stepped closer to the table, every word measured, controlled.

“After she left the hospital, I had Trigger and Bongo check out her trailer on F Street. When they got there, it was empty. They asked around but the neighbors haven’t seen her.” His jaw tightened.

“The trailer?” Widow asked.

Shadow gave a single nod. “Empty. No sign of a struggle. No overturned furniture. No blood. No note. Just gone.”

Kansas’ face darkened. “You got people looking?”

“Yeah,” Shadow said. Then, after a beat, “But I’m not expecting to find her.”

That landed harder than the first bomb as silence rolled over the room, thick and ugly.Not expecting to find her.

That meant one of two things.

Dead or disappeared for good. And neither option left us with anything but problems. I leaned forward, my elbows settling onto the table, my stomach twisting harder by the second. “There’s more,” I said.

Kansas’ eyes snapped to mine instantly. “What?”

I held his gaze, even though I already knew he wasn’t going to like the answer.

“Roberts knows we disposed of a body.”

The room detonated.

“What the fuck?!” Blackjack roared, his hand slamming down on the table so hard the sound cracked through the room.