I blinked at him, dumbstruck. Then I rotated Caorthannach so I could hit him with the wooden stock.
“Don’t get the face,” he said quickly.
I nodded. And swung the shotgun at the side of his head. He crumpled and I caught him and lowered him to the floor. Then I dug in his pocket, pulled out the key and unlocked the holding cell’s door.
No one moved. Mac and the others just stared at me, eyes narrowed.
“I didn’t rat out the MC,” I told him. And I filled him in on Trent and the deal I did make, and how Volos had tricked me. When I reached the part about him planting the coke, I saw Mac’s hands tighten into fists.
“He has Annabelle,” I told them, looking from face to face. “I don’t know where. I don’t even know where to start looking. I need your help.” I drew in a long breath. I needed them to go into this with their eyes open. “But you walk out of that cell, you’re all increasing your sentences. Everyone’s going to be after us: cops, feds. We’ll be fugitives. They’ll shoot first.”#p#分页标题#e#
The MC all looked at one another. Then Mac spoke. “We do this,” he said, “you’re with us. No more lone wolf shit. No more keeping things from us. Family.”
I nodded again. Quickly, because I could feel a fucking lump in my throat.
Mac stepped out of the cell and pulled me into a hug. “I missed you, brother,” he told me.
Back at the clubhouse, we picked up our bikes and then got the hell out of town. We didn’t know how long it would be until Harris woke up, or the next shift arrived and raised the alarm. We headed up along the mountain road until we could look down on the town, then pulled over to discuss our next move. As soon as we cut the engines, the night was almost silent. The stars were out and there was so little wind the lake below was like a second sky.
Everyone looked at me. “I don’t know,” I said helplessly. “He took her off in an SUV. They could be anywhere. For all I know, he’s taken her out of the state. Out of the country.” I thought about Annabelle drugged unconscious and loaded onto a jet and I nearly threw up.
Mac put his hand on my shoulder. “Easy, brother. We’ll get the bastard.”
Hunter had climbed off his bike and was staring off into the distance. He knew the land the way Annabelle knew machines. And he had years of experience tracking down psychos as a bounty hunter. “He does this a lot, right?” he asked. “I mean...he buys a lot of girls.”
I felt sick to my stomach. Mac squeezed my shoulder. “Yeah. Everyone says he’s a big timer.” I frowned, trying to remember. “He sells them to some European guy.”
“So he’s a middleman,” said Hunter, still not looking at me. He was going into full-blown detective mode, now, off in his own little world. “Probably goes all over Northern Cali, buying from people like the Blood Spiders. He’d need somewhere to keep the girls until he shipped them to Europe. And not all that far away. When you called him to set up the deal, how long did he need to get here?”
“An hour or two,” I said. The more I thought about Volos’s sick business, the angrier I got. He must have done this to tens of women, maybe hundreds. And he has Annabelle.
“He’d want it to be remote,” said Hunter, still thinking aloud. “Not in a town. It’d only take someone to hear one scream—”
“Hunter,” said Mac in a warning tone.
Hunter glanced at Mac and then me. I realized I was glaring at him as if ready to throw him off the mountain.
“Sorry,” muttered Hunter.
“It’s okay,” I said in a strangled voice. “Do your thing.” I didn’t care how angry it made me, if it worked.
“Somewhere remote,” said Hunter. “A big place, out in the country. What else do we know? Did you get anything out of her step-dad?”
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
“Anything,” Hunter pressed. “Even if it seems like it’s useless.”
I sighed. “Nothing! He overhead Volos’s goons talking but they were just bitching about the women they’d bought. Said the standing stock was a pain in the ass.” My face twisted. “That’s how they talk about women. Stock. Fucking inventory.”
“You sure that’s what he said?” asked Viking. “Standing stock?”
We all turned to him. “Yeah,” I said.
He shook his head. “Standing stock isn’t anything to do with inventory. It’s a machine. It’s what they have on ranches, to trap cows in while the vet’s working on them. I worked at a place like that, for a while.”#p#分页标题#e#