1
Colt
“Lily King is missing and we’re dropping every-fuckin’-thing to help find her,” my president says as he looks around the room at everyone. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen him this on edge, this wired. “Some of us will stay here to handle the shit we’ve got on at the moment, but most of us will head down to Sydney tonight. Griff will let you know where you’re needed. We’re leaving in two hours.”
Griff stands and rattles off the plan for who will do what. When he gets to my name, he looks at me. “I need you to work closely with Zane and his team who are going through Ted Channing’s files to see if they missed anything the first time around. I’m convinced there’s something there, and I’d go through everything myself if this King stuff hadn’t come up. I want you to dedicate every second you can to this, starting tonight. We need to know who the fuck the McConaughey brothers were working for.”
I nod. “Got it.”
“Keep me updated. Zane’s at his headquarters waiting for you.” He then turns to Gunnar and carries on detailing our plan of attack for the next few days.
Gunnar, Wilder, Nash, Riggs, Griff, and me are staying in Brisbane while everyone else is heading down to Sydney.
The last month has been a shitshow of shit for our club with the break-in and vandalism at one of our restaurants, and the ambushes we’ve experienced on our protection runs for King, the Sydney Storm president. And now this. Zane Stone, who runs Stone Security and has deep ties with the club, is helping us get to the bottom of it all after his employee, Ted Channing, helped the McConaughey brothers with their surveillance of the club while they were planning the ambushes on us. The thing is, the McConaughey brothers are dead, so they can’t have had anything to do with Lily going missing, so while this all feels connected, fuck knows how.
Scott exits the room, followed closely by the club members leaving with him.
“Happy fuckin’ birthday to you,” Nash says as he heads out, his expression grim.
Birthdays don’t mean shit to me. Not anymore. Tonight was just an excuse to get everyone together and have a drink. Not that any of us need an excuse for a Friday night drink. I’m happy about the change in plans because I don’t want thoughts of my birthdays and all the memories attached to them in my head tonight.
I grab my shit and walk out to my bike, taking in the mad energy filling the clubhouse.
Fury.
Chaos.
Apprehension.
King’s old lady is fucking missing.
Not something to be taken fucking lightly.
King is the president of the mother chapter. He runs Storm. Fuck, Storm has the power it has because of him. He’s ruthless. Relentless. Fucking savage. He lives for two things: his club and his family. You fuck with either of those, you’re a dead man walking.
Whoever has her will pay, and it won’t be pretty. Hell, it’s a guaranteed grisly-as-fuck ending for anyone who hurts an old lady, but King will tear whoever did this apart, skin by skin, bone by bone, breath by breath.
We’ll all make sure the motherfucker regrets going anywhere near Lily, but King will ensure they regret even living because death won’t come easily for them.
“Colt, wait up,” Scott calls out as I near my bike. When he reaches me, he says, “Shit doesn’t feel right with this Ted Channing and McConaughey brothers stuff. My suspicion is that whoever they were working for isn’t finished with us yet. Watch your back, brother.”
“You trust Zane and his men?”
“Yeah, like I trust every club member here. That’s his core team I’m talking about, though, not his extended team. I’m not sure how Channing slipped through his strict background checks for new employees, but I trust Zane to figure that out and not allow it to happen again. Until he does, though, don’t trust anyone but Zane, Liam, Axe, Bronze, and Easton.”
“Gotcha. Anything else?”
He shakes his head. “Let Griff know of any concerns. He’ll be busy here going through intel for the King job as well as making sure all our assets are secure, but he needs to know if anything comes up. We’re scheduled for another protection run in three weeks, so I want any little thing you suspect as odd to be dealt with before then. I don’t fuckin’ want us out there on that run with our dicks flying in the fuckin’ wind.”
I nod my understanding and he leaves me to go back inside.
I make the short ride to Creek Street in the city where Zane’s firm is located and fifteen minutes later I’m walking towards the heavy steel door of his headquarters. It’s a nondescript brick building nestled in between two towers of glass. Zane’s company occupies the bottom five levels and this steel door at the side grants them private access. Stone Security isn’t visible to the public. There’s no signage, no public lift access, no record of them anywhere here.
Zane’s team uses the side door for security reasons; a record is kept of everyone in and out so that every team member is accounted for at all times, as is every visitor they have. I’ve been here quite a few times over the last year and a half since I moved back to Brisbane, so I know the drill to gain access. A special code needs to be keyed into the number pad on the door that alerts the team they have a visitor, at which point they’ll use facial recognition to confirm my identity. All up, it takes less than thirty seconds.
The chilly July wind whips through my hair as I near the door. We’re having weird fucking weather in Brisbane lately. Some days aren’t cold at all while others are freezing. I’m over the cold. Give me hot weather any day of the week.
My phone rings and I check it in case it’s Griff.
It’s not.
“Fuck,” I mutter as my gaze lands on my aunt’s name. I never ignore her calls, but she can talk anyone’s ear off, and I don’t have time for a long conversation tonight.
Stabbing at the phone, I place it to my ear and say, “I’ve got two minutes unless you’re at death’s door.”
“Well, I might be at death’s door with the tooth pain I’m in, Colton, that’s for damn sure. Your mother would wash your mouth out for issuing me with such an order. Two minutes, pfft. I’ll give you two minutes, my boy,” Aggie says, not failing to make me smile like she always does.
“I figure if I tell you two minutes, you’ll take that to mean ten.” I slow my pace as I catch sight of a woman standing in the dark shadows at the door to Zane’s building, looking shady as shit with the way she’s inspecting his security.
Watching her as Aggie rambles on about her teeth and pain and her distrust of dentists, I see the woman type shit into a laptop she’s holding before glancing up at the surveillance camera again.
“I need to know your thoughts on sleeping with one’s dentist in the hopes of getting free dental care,” Aggie says. “Do you think that’s a thing?”
With a grin and a shake of my head, I say, “Only you would come up with that plan. No, I don’t think it’s a thing, but if anyone could make it work, it’d be you.” My aunt is fifty with the body of a forty-year-old and the dirty mind of a teenager. The complete opposite to my mother, her sister, she’s never married because she believes in multiple soul mates and the freedom to always be available in case her next one comes along.