Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 70566 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70566 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Only when everything was finished did I send Holly inside Baron’s home to call the cops.
She came back a couple of minutes later looking grim. “I couldn’t call. He has no house phone.”
“He has to have a way to make phone calls up here,” Thumper pointed out.
Holly flinched at the sound of Thumper’s voice.
I chalked it up to her being scared, which she obviously had been and should still be, and dismissed it for now.
“Try his pockets for a cell phone,” I suggested.
Thumper did, coming up with a cell phone that was password-protected.
“Can’t get into it,” Thumper grumbled. “It’s a face ID, but he has to have his eyes open, and the blood on his face isn’t helping.”
“You can still make emergency phone calls on it,” Holly said. “Just hold down the side button and slide to call 911.”
Thumper grunted, then grinned. “It worked.”
He placed the phone to his ear and placed the call.
I looked over at Holly. “What happened?”
She moved so close to me that I could tell that she was holding on by a thread.
I had three girls.
I knew when a woman wanted a hug.
So in between her explaining her arriving and waking up in a cage, I pulled her into my arms and held her tight with the hand that wasn’t holding my gun.
Anger surged in my belly as I listened to her speak.
That anger took on nuclear levels when she whispered, “One of your men were here. One of them knew where I was, because they talked about me and what they were going to do with me. He was the one that moved my truck.”
That explained the flinch from earlier when she saw Thumper.
My thoughts immediately went to him.
But as Thumper turned and gave us his back, Holly wilted.
“What?”
“It’s not him,” she said softly. “That man doesn’t have all the patches on his back like the rest of you do.”
I frowned. “You’re saying it’s a fully patched member then.”
Which fucking terrified me.
If one of the men I considered a brother did this, what else was he willing to do?
“Did you see him fully?” I asked. “If I bring you to the club, can you identify him?”
She shook her head. “All I heard was his voice. He was wearing head to toe black. Even had his hoodie pulled up over his head and a beanie on underneath it. I couldn’t see anything besides the cut on his back.”
I tried to replay everything that everyone was wearing tonight, and came up blank.
All of them had been on their bikes, so every last one of them had been bundled up. It may not be snowing out anymore, but it was freezing when you were on the back of a bike.
Every one of us, even me, had a version of what she’d described on tonight.
Everyone but Thumper who never seemed to feel the cold.
He was wearing nothing but a t-shirt and jeans.
The first signs of a siren started filling the air around us, and Holly made a move toward the injured dogs.
“Nope.” I shook my head. “They’re all high on aggression. You can’t go over there by yourself. When Boone gets here, because I’m sure that Thumper told the cops who he called to get him, then we’ll get started on the dogs.”
Her shoulders slumped. “Tonight’s going to be really, really bad, Denver.”
Hours later, I came up to Holly and Boone’s side to hear them talking to Black.
“Forty-seven dogs were on site. Eight of them were already deceased when I arrived,” Boone was saying to Black. “Eight more we think won’t make it due to aggression issues. But we’ll wait to see until we get back to the clinic and can reassess there. Once they’re out of this environment. There are nine that are critical. Might or might not make it. Six of them, we euthanized on site. They had injuries incompatible with life.”
Boone went on, and the more Boone spoke, the lower Holly’s head hung.
I caught her by the ponytail and gently tugged.
She looked over at me. “Let’s go.”
“I can’t leave. I have to go back to…”
“We’ll go back,” I said. “But first we’re going to go get a shower and some food in you. A hot drink that Reyelle will have waiting. Come on. The sooner we get out of here, the sooner you can get there to help. They have to wait on transport down the mountain anyway.”
While we’d been milling about, checking out the scene, Gentry had headed to where I’d parked my bike and brought it back up to me.
Holly walked toward my bike like her shoes were filled with concrete.
When we got to my bike, I lifted my helmet off the seat and fitted it onto Holly’s head.
Once it was cinched tight, I mounted my bike and held my hand out for her.
She took it, and all but fell into me before wrapping her arms around my torso.