“Hey!” I started, and Ax held out his hand for me to stop.
“Don’t even wanna hear it, woman. I know you’re gonna defend your man and all that shit,” Ax threw back.
I got defensive. “He’s not my man.”
Raid’s eye quirked. “Really? So, you’re available then?”
Austyn began laughing once again. One day I was going to keep track of how many times she laughed in one day. I’d bet it was tons. It seemed Ryker was good for her even if my cousin was a bit crazy.
“Sorry, but no. You have to mature before that would even be a possibility,” I retaliated.
Raid clutched his hand to his heart. “You wound me. I could show ya a good time.”
I looked up to the sky for a moment, then back to him. “I’m not into the ‘good time’ crap. I have a kid and won’t parade anyone in front of her for a quick lay.”
Austyn jumped in. “You just want her because she’s Micah’s. Don’t you have somethin’ you should be doin’ right now? Like, I don’t know, finding out who the fuck bombed my damn house!”
“As you wish, my queen,” Ax joked, taking an overexaggerated bow, turning on his booted foot and making his way into the clubhouse.
“The offer stands,” Raid smiled at me, then followed his brother.
“Ignore them. They have more testosterone than the defensive line of the Baltimore Ravens. They are young and full of come, spreading it around to any woman who will take it.”
“Lord. We’re gonna have more kids running around here then.”
Austyn burst out laughing.
Her smile died as an older man came walking up to us. He had on round glasses and had a long gray beard. I hadn’t seen him before here, but that didn’t mean he didn’t belong here.
“He called you, didn’t he?” she asked the man.
“Let me check you out, and I’ll be on my way.” His voice was deep and had a bit of wisdom behind it.
“Doc, I’m okay. Promise.”
“You were thrown against a wall and cracked your back and head. Then you had to go through the fire to get out. Checkin’ you will only take a minute, young lady,” he retorted.
“How did you know that?”
“Ryker told me when he called. Now let’s get inside, little missy.”
Austyn groaned but hopped down from the table. “You do realize I’m not a little kid anymore, right?”
Doc smiled. “You listen about as good as you did then.” He brushed his arm out for Austyn to go in front of him.
A chuckle escaped me as Austyn turned. “Ryker is gonna get it.” And then she was gone.
Personally, I was happy she was getting looked at.
I was just hoping that Micah was okay.
What was taking so long?
3
Micah
“There,” I said, pointing to the screen. The figure was blurry, almost as if they had on clothes that would distort the image on the screen. Add in they wore black, hoodie, mask and glasses—this wasn’t going to be an easy find. They were giving us nothing to go on.
Was I angry? Fuck yeah. My little girl and her mom were in that house not an hour before the blasts. Just the thought of losing them made something inside me crack. Now that I had them, I’d protect them until my dying day.
“Fuck, I can’t tell shit,” Ryker groused over my shoulder as I tried blowing it up only to have it pixelate and distort more.
“Me either. Let me go back and see if I can freshen it up a bit. Buzz, can you go to here,” I gave him the number to the location I was at on the tape and kept going. “See if you can get any images from the outside.”
“On it.” Buzz started his task.
There were a ton of people still here even hours after the explosions had happened. The fire inspector and police chief were in attendance, mostly to see what we were doing in my opinion as they were watching us more than the rubble. I was all for authority, but this was different. This needed to be figured out by us first.
I scaled the image to as perfect as I could get it. Moving the damn mouse sent a twinge of pain through my arm. That just wouldn’t do. “I’ll run this through facial recognition and see if there’s a match, but it’s highly unlikely with all this shit on their face.”
“You have facial recognition software?” Cooper asked from behind me.
“Of course. It’s the state-of-the-art newest model out there. But you didn’t hear that from me.” Sure, I could get into a shit load of trouble for having it, but it was a good tool to have in my box.
“Right…” my father said, putting his hand on my shoulder.
“I’m headin’ back to the clubhouse to check on everyone. Meet ya there?” His tone was a little hopeful.
“Yeah. Remy and Ensley are there. Once we figure out if any of this’ll help, I’ll be on my way.”
He gave me a squeeze, a soft smile, and then he was gone. It felt good to be able to help, but it felt better to have my father’s approval and see that glint in his eye. It had been a long damn time since I’d seen it.
The scan was over on the face in the picture and it came up with nothing. “Nothin’. Too much shit on his face. You got anything?” I asked Buzz who gave me two different location numbers.
I went to them and tried to pull photos and plates from the car. A cough escaped me, and I could feel my lungs not happy about the smoke. The pain in my body was present, but I turned my mind off to it and pressed on. Finding who did this was more important.
Running the plates, the car was reported stolen about a week ago and was found yesterday abandoned on the side of the road. Who knew when exactly it was ditched, so that was a clusterfuck. The only thing we could do with that was try to get fingerprints, but that didn’t mean that we’d get anything. Who knew who was in that car, but it might be the only option to start the process of elimination.
One of the photos, though, gave me promise. It was a male, I could tell by the hard jawline since his mask had fallen down just on one side.
“This.” I pointed, showing those around me. “Half a face. If I duplicate it and flip it over, that should give us an idea of the lower half of the face. That might get some hits.”
“Try it,” Cruz responded, coming to stand next to me. Had to hand it to the man, he was big as fuck for his age. One would never guess he was up there. He could tear my head off right now if he wanted to. How did I know this? Because I could do it too. It was part of our training and something we had in common.
“We’re goin’ on lockdown. Get your families to the clubhouse if you haven’t already. Prepare to stay for a while ’til we figure this shit out.” He looked directly at me. “You too, Ensley, the baby, and the sister.”
I really couldn’t explain the emotion coming through me at that moment in time. They were all over the place, and the fact that Cruz was giving me a shot, even as small as it was, I was going to grab on to it with two hands. This was my life, and I wanted it.
“Yes, sir.” Came from my lips automatically. No one around us said anything, though, which surprised me.