My body is shaking, but I don’t know why. I’m not crying, and I’m not cold. The shaking isn’t violent, but it is annoying. The only thing I can even think of is the fact I’m vibrating with fury, and I can’t stop.
He’s just venting and ranting and not spilling his diabolical plan the way the bad guys do in the movies.
“Shhh,” Ben coos when he sees me shaking, and the asshole runs his hand along the side of my cheek. “It’s just the adrenaline wearing off. It’ll pass.”
I jerk my head to the side, happy to have that one part of my body to move, and his gaze turns murderous.
“You let him touch you but not me. I’ll remember that, Eve. Remember I’m still trying not to break you right now because I actually fucking care about you. Piss me off, and life for you will really suck.”
He cares about me… Psycho. This isn’t caring about someone. This is insanity. This is obsession—and not the good kind, either.
“She probably doesn’t know anything,” Baldy says. I never even saw him come back in. “She’s just some whore Drex played with. He wouldn’t have let her go if she had anything worth knowing.”
Ben turns to face Baldy. “She knows more than you think. Drex has guys hanging out at Drake’s, and she’s been working with Drake. It’s obvious to anyone with a pulse that she knows something, or he wouldn’t kept her close to the club and had his guys around her at all times. Hence the drastic fucking measures we had to take to catch her in between guards.”
Ben walks over and jerks my shirt collar down until it better shows my shoulder and the tattoo. How did he find out about it?
“He put his name on her. That says he was making a statement. He put Jessie Gavara in the hospital for touching her. The guy is in a coma, and he’s one of Drex’s men. Even if he’s done with her now, he still considers her his possession, and we took her. Imagine how this is going to work out in our favor. Drex doesn’t think before he pulls the trigger. He’s going directly after Dad. Problem solved for us there. While the war breaks out, we’ll sit back and wait until they kill the numbers off, then we finally have the in we’ve been waiting for. I expected Drex to attack him after our guys shot up his house, but Eve has apparently made him softer. She’s our ticket to pulling the bastard’s strings like a puppet.”
I’m starting to think my theory was spot on and Ben was the mastermind instead of Benny. Ben has always been incredibly smart. He got it from his mother. Not his father. That woman was smart enough to get away from both psychos four years ago.
Or so I thought. After what Ben just said, now I’m not so sure.
Ben talks about my starvation and dehydration schedule with Baldy like he’s leaving directions for a house sitter. I struggle in vain with my stupid bindings that cut into me painfully as they walk out, and I scream into the gag as the light goes off and music starts playing.
Loud, jarring, eardrum-bruising music roars through the muggy basement. I’m still soaked from the rain. I’m tempted to suck the water from the part of my shirt that I can reach with my mouth while I have the chance, but the gag prevents it. As bad as I want to cry, I don’t want to help them dehydrate me even quicker.
Ben doesn’t realize something very important. A person can change a lot in two months, especially when their life depends on it. He’s going to have one hell of a time breaking me.
Chapter 18
DREX
The table hits the ground as I flip it over, and I throw a chair across the room that Axle narrowly dodges.
“Fucking find her! They had to have passed store cameras. Fucking traffic cameras. Something, damn it! They didn’t just disappear!”
Rush walks in with bloody hands and he shakes his head at my silent question. It’s all I can do to keep from going downstairs and blowing the Hell Breather’s head off.
“He’s Benny’s right hand man and he doesn’t know shit about this. If he knew, he would have talked,” Rush tells me. “What do you want me to do with him? I can’t just let him go back to Benny like that until we know for sure what’s going on. It’s just going to stir shit.”
“We shouldn’t have snatched him up. It was rash and fucking stupid,” Axle growls.
“Rash and fucking stupid is taking Eve! She’s been missing for three days, Axle. Three fucking days. Imagine what those sick bastards are doing to her and tell me I’m being rash and stupid.”
His jaw tightens and he looks over at Rush.
“Let me have some time with him.”
“You think you’re going to get more out of him than I did?” Rush asks, lifting an eyebrow.
“You’re not as motivated as I am. I don’t want her going through what I think she’s going through,” he says quietly.
No one speaks as he walks out, but the second he’s gone, I smash my fist into the wall, feeling my knuckles split on impact.
“I’ll fucking get him to talk,” I growl, turning toward the door, but Dash, Snake, and Rush all block me.
“Hell nah,” Rush says, shaking his head. “We already discussed this, D. You’ll kill him. We need him alive. There’s going to be enough hell to pay for this. Dad is doing all he can to keep this shit from Herrin.”
“Fuck Pop,” I snap.
“You can say that now, but when Herrin locks you up and lets his boys take turns whipping you back into line, you’ll regret it. Let’s keep this shit quiet for now,” Dash interjects. “Eve needs you to keep your fucking head on right now.”
Eve needs me.
I sent her out there to be safe from all this shit. I did everything I possibly could to keep her safe. And somehow that fucking weasel still got his hands on her.
The door blows open, and I turn just as Sarah walks in. The fuck is she doing here?
“Find anything?” Snake asks her as she pulls out a laptop from her backpack.
My eyes cut to him but he doesn’t meet my gaze.
“It was raining too hard to find anything on traffic cams or surveillance footage, since we don’t know what vehicle took her or which direction they went. We don’t even have an exact timeframe of the crash, since Drake is in and out of consciousness right now and unable to say much more than ‘that fucker’ when he is awake. Blame the painkillers and surgeries. But I think I found something.”
I move behind her, having no fucking clue how she even knows what’s going on, but right now I don’t give a damn.
“Someone had to have scoped her out and learned her routine to know she was going to and from the shop with Drake. After the attack on Drex’s house, Drake severed all ties to the Hell Breathers.”
She pulls up a picture of a familiar face on the screen. “This is Larry Monroe a.k.a. The Dragon. He was nearly beat to death by Benny after he allegedly stole drugs from—”
“We know,” Snake, Rush, and I all say in unison, even though mine is more of a growl.
“Sheesh. Sorry. Anyway, he was hanging out outside of Fuck Me Ink for the past three days. I spotted him on film, but he hasn’t been on any of the appointment lists I’ve gone through.”
“Why the hell didn’t someone notice him?” I snap.
“He never pulled up when someone was outside. He only sat out there when he saw the security was inside. You can see right through the windows when Drake has the blinds up,” Sarah explains. “And it’s not like he was obvious about it. Drake’s place is right next door to a few other businesses. He just sat at the corner and made it look like he was waiting for someone. And he drove a different vehicle every day.”
She pulls up another picture, and my stomach tilts.
“This is the truck that slammed into Drake’s car. The first day Larry scoped the place out, he was driving it.”
She pulls up another picture that clearly has the same truck and places the plate numbers side by side. Fuck.
“This truck was registered to Auto Legends and Disasters. It’s the same company he was fired from two months ago, but I’m guessing he never turned in his keys, and he could have easily borrowed one of the trucks after hours. This particular shot is after four, which is when the Auto shop closes. Obviously the wreck happened after that—”
“Why the hell would The Dragon want Eve?” Rush asks, interrupting Sarah’s much too long explanation.
Sarah frowns as she starts clicking keys again. I thought she was a stripper when Snake hooked up with her. Right now, she’s the only one who has fucking found anything close to finding Eve.
“Anything?” I ask her, hoping she has an answer to that question.
“No, but I have all of his friends addresses and family’s addresses. You can start sending people to scope the places out and see if Eve is there.”
“Each of us takes a team. If anyone finds her, get her the fuck out immediately,” I tell them as our phones start chiming.
“Sent the addresses. I’ll search for anything else,” Sarah says.
Snake kisses the top of her head, and I walk out with him, reading over the first address then motioning for Drew and Isaac to follow me.
“Load up. We have a ride to take,” I tell them, then I turn toward Snake. “After I find Eve, we’re going to have a talk about Sarah.”