-Zach’s secret thoughts
ZACH
“Hello?”
Laric didn’t waste time getting straight to the topic at hand.
“Fuck, man.” Laric blew out a breath. “I’ve been trying to reach you for a couple of hours.”
My stomach sank. “I’ve been out riding dirt bikes with my friend. What’s up?”
Laric blew out a breath. “All fuckin’ hell broke loose in the neighborhood. You need to come home.”
My stomach sank. “What are you talking about?”
“Just come home, then we’ll talk,” Laric rumbled.
He didn’t sound good at all.
“Okay.” I paused. “We can be there in a couple of hours.”
“I’ll be here.” He hung up, and left me with a phone to my ear, and fear in my heart.
There was so much that ‘all hell broke loose in the neighborhood’ could be.
It could be Crockett’s family.
It could be Zakelina.
It could be that weirdo stalker that couldn’t take a hint.
“Something wrong?”
I looked up at Ford and nodded quickly once. “Gotta go, man. I’m sorry to hold him and run.”
“It’s fine.” Ford reached for his son and pulled him expertly into his arms. “Get whatever is making you look haunted taken care of.”
Two hours and twenty-three minutes later, we arrived in the neighborhood to find it in complete and utter chaos.
There were people everywhere.
First, there was a line to get down the street, but a police officer was blocking thru-traffic from entering because of whatever was going on behind him, including an ambulance that was just sitting there waiting.
I parked the bike and caught Crockett’s hand, jerking my head to the side and saying, “Let’s walk.”
She fell into step beside me, and we followed a few people as they walked in on foot to find the entire area barricaded a few houses in.
I led her around that barrier, too.
“Sir,” the officer holding the blockade said. “You can’t…”
“It’s fine,” another officer said. “He’s with Lynn.”
The cut on my back seemed to stall him as he finally drew his eyes down the length of my torso, then he nodded.
Together, Crockett and I made our way farther down the road, and that’s when Laric spotted us.
Laric immediately came over to us, his eyes haunted. The dog at his side looked beaten, but that had nothing to do with the situation—whatever that might be—in the neighborhood. The dog looked like that before we’d left.
Laric had gotten two new rescues in, both fresh from the desert. The one at his side was skittish as a newborn colt.
It was Laric’s look of utter horror that had me spinning my wheels.
I didn’t like the feeling already.
Once we were both standing beside him, helmets in hand so we could hear clearly, Laric began.
He turned his face, and that was when I saw the nasty cut on the side of his forehead.
It looked bad.
Really bad.
Bad enough that I knew it’d take at least eight stitches.
First things first, I needed to get to the club.
“Let’s go to the clubhouse, get you into the office, and get you cleaned up,” I proposed.
Laric waved his hand. “That cute little home health nurse over there already helped clean it up. It can hold for a couple of hours while we deal with this.” Laric paused. “But, just sayin’, Trick and Trouper have a couple of bumps and bruises that you’re going to need to look at, too. We had a few things happen last night.”
I pressed a finger to my pounding temple.
“Okay, well tell me what needs to be talked about first,” I suggested. “Start with the police cars, why are they here?”
I felt Crockett move in close to my side, and instinctively I put my arm around her shoulders and pulled her in close.
She pressed her head against my shoulder and waited right along with me.
“Well, I’ll start with what happened first. Though, we didn’t know this was what happened initially. I only learned this the moment that I called.” He let his eyes trail toward Crockett with a look of worry. “Your sister decided to sneak out and go meet up with someone she met online.”
I didn’t have a good feeling about this, especially when it started with one of the few innocent people on this street, even if she had an attitude that could contend with a rabid badger.
“Oh, shit,” Crockett whispered, tensing beside me. “What happened?”
“The ‘boy’ she was intending to meet wasn’t actually a boy. Your stepmother found that out by going through a couple of her messages on her Snapchat or something. Not sure how. So she called the cops.” Laric looked sick to his stomach then. “No news on your sister, by the way.”
“What’s that look for?” Crockett looked worried. Sounded it, too.
“Well, when the cops showed, the couple across the street had started to fight. Had been fighting all night. That little girl was outside on the porch. I’d been watching her for forever. Way before anything went down. Upon seeing the police lights outside, the dad thought that shit had been called on him. By his wife.”