Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 42128 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 211(@200wpm)___ 169(@250wpm)___ 140(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 42128 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 211(@200wpm)___ 169(@250wpm)___ 140(@300wpm)
“Do we need a safehouse?” Kane asked.
My jaw flexed. “She stays with me. If she needs moved, I will go with her.”
Kane nodded, solid and steady as always. “Let’s go inside and talk.”
Only then did it fully register that I’d just exploded into the middle of Tyre and Cecily’s wedding reception looking like I’d crawled out of a fucking war zone.
My eyes flicked briefly toward Tyre. “Sorry for interrupting your wedding party, brother.”
He waved my apology off without hesitation, understanding flickered instantly between us. “Go take care of your woman.”
Kane turned toward the clubhouse first, Edge falling into step beside him while I followed, every instinct already dragging me mentally back toward Delaney before we’d even made it inside.
When we reached Kane’s office, he shut the door behind us before moving around the massive walnut desk that dominated the room. Edge stayed leaning against the wall near the conference table and watched me pace across the rug because sitting still wasn’t fucking happening right now.
The office was quiet compared to the reception outside, although the muffled bass from the music still carried faintly through the walls beneath the low rumble of voices and laughter drifting across the compound. The contrast scraped at my nerves after the past hour. One minute, I’d been riding through the dark backroads outside Crossbend with nothing on my mind except getting home after a long day. The next, a terrified woman had stumbled out of the woods and thrown herself into my arms like I was the only thing standing between her and hell.
We’d stood with our brothers in this room for every kind of problem imaginable over the years—territory disputes, threats against the club, dirty politicians, and dangerous racers. But something about tonight felt different. More personal.
Kane studied me for a long moment before commanding, “Start from the beginning.”
I dragged a hand through my hair, still gritty from the dirt on the road when I’d laid my bike down to avoid hitting Delaney. I paced once more across the rug because too much restless energy clawed beneath my skin to stand still for long. “She came out of nowhere. The road was clear, and then she was stumbling out of the tree line directly into my headlights, looking terrified enough I thought she’d collapse before she even reached me.”
Edge’s expression darkened. “She say anything useful?”
“She begged me not to let somebody take her back.” The echo of her voice in my head ignited the fury in my chest all over again. “That wasn’t panic talking either. She was fucking desperate. Like she’d already convinced herself she was dead if whoever had her got their hands on her again.”
Edge pulled his favorite knife from his pocket and twirled it absentmindedly through his fingers. His voice was dangerously lethal when he asked, “You think she was being chased?”
“Yeah.” The answer came fast because every instinct I had was already screaming it. Delaney’s voice had been drenched with fear when she begged me not to leave her there. And I could still feel the way her body had trembled against mine while she clung to me like I was the only solid thing left in her world.
Kane stayed quiet while I continued talking, letting me work through the details in my own order, the way he always did.
“Fresh rope burns around her wrists, cuts all over her legs and feet from running barefoot through brush, and she wore some weird old-fashioned dress that looked completely outta place. Cage checked her over, and somebody definitely restrained her recently.”
Nobody in this club reacted kindly to women being hurt, but the mention of restraints changed the atmosphere completely. The Redline Kings had never pretended to be good men. We belonged to asphalt and the shadows most people feared to tread. Violence ran through our veins as surely as loyalty was inked onto our skin. Some people saw us as criminals, others painted us as heroes. In reality, the truth lay somewhere between the two extremes, depending on who was spinning the story.
The written laws of society didn’t matter much to us. Our rules were internalized—fierce loyalty, earned respect, and ruthless protection of what was ours. Some brothers walked closer to darkness than others, and Kings handled plenty of ugly business, but none of us would let someone cross certain lines. If someone stepped over one—like men who abducted women and tied them up—they fell squarely into the category of people we buried.
“You think abduction?” Kane asked.
“Yeah.” I nodded grimly. “I don’t know exactly what kind yet because she’s in no shape to give us a real statement, but every instinct I have says she escaped captivity. Which means whoever took her is probably already looking for her.”
Edge pushed away from the wall a little. “You think this is local?”
“I don’t know yet.” Frustration roughened my voice because I hated not having answers. “Could be some psycho holding women out in the woods for all I fucking know. Or trafficking. Maybe just somebody keeping her locked up privately. Until she can tell us what happened, we’re working blind.”