Atonement (The Protectors 6)

“Aleks?” he said into the phone, but then fell silent. He was sitting close enough to me that I could hear the person on the other end and it definitely wasn’t Aleks.

Dante hung up the phone without even responding to the caller, who I was guessing had been Pedro. “Aleks is gone,” he said as he hurriedly got out of bed and began looking for his clothes.

I did the same. “What happened?”

Dante shook his head. “I don’t know. He said Aleks went to bed an hour ago and when they went in just now to check on him, he was gone.”

“Pedro called you from his phone?” I asked.

Dante nodded. Which meant we couldn’t use the phone to track Aleks. “Where would he go?” I asked.

“Here?” Dante asked. “But I don’t think he knows the address. And he didn’t have any money.”

I could hear the panic rising in Dante’s voice. I hurried around the bed and grabbed hold of him. “We’ll find him, Dante. We did it once, we’ll do it again.”

“I shouldn’t have let them take him,” he whispered.

My own phone rang before I could respond and I hurried around to my side of the bed to grab it. I recognized the caller as the woman who ran the barn where I kept Ace. Fuck, I couldn’t deal with something being wrong with my horse right now.

“Hey Nina, everything okay?” I asked as I continued to get dressed.

“Um, yeah…no…I’m not sure,” Nina said. “That young man you’ve been bringing to see Ace…”

I froze and then snapped my fingers at Dante before putting the phone on speaker. “Is he there?” I asked Nina before she could even continue.

“Yes, he is. I was in the house and the dogs started barking. There was a cab down by the barn so I went down there to check it out and the driver told me his fare hadn’t paid for the ride and had gone into the barn. He was getting ready to call the cops.”

Dante and I hurried towards the kitchen. He snatched the car keys off the counter.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I went into the barn and saw your friend. He was in Ace’s stall. He…he wouldn’t talk to me. He seemed pretty upset so I left him there and paid the cab driver. Then called you.”

Thank fuck.

“Nina, we’re on our way. Can you just keep an eye on him and call me if he tries to leave?”

“Yeah, sure, no problem.”

“Thank you, Nina. Really, thank you.” With that, I hung up and cast a glance at a very tense Dante as he got behind the wheel. “He’s okay,” I reminded him.

But in reality, I doubted that was actually true and I knew Dante knew it too.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Dante

The sight of my brother huddled on the floor of Ace’s stall had my frantic heart clenching painfully in my chest. I’d died a thousand agonizing deaths in the few seconds it had taken to hear the three words I’d never wanted to hear in my lifetime ever again.

Aleks is gone.

I was grateful that Nina had turned on one row of the overhead lights on Ace’s side of the barn because it made it easier to see that Aleks appeared to be unharmed. At least from what I could see, because Ace was gently nudging Aleks’s hands where they were resting on the horse’s muzzle. I maneuvered my way beneath Ace’s neck, keeping an eye on Aleks as I approached. He lifted his eyes to mine for the briefest of moments as I lowered myself to sit next to him on the floor. Then his gaze was back on Ace who continued to snuffle at Aleks’s clothes. The big horse’s massive hooves were just inches from our folded legs, but I wasn’t worried he’d inadvertently step on us.

I wasn’t sure where to start so I decided not to. If all Aleks wanted to do was sit here all night, I was more than okay with that. Hell, I’d move into Ace’s stall if that was what Aleks needed.

Several minutes passed before Aleks said, “I couldn’t remember where you lived.”

“That’s okay,” I responded. “I’m glad you knew to come here.”

“The man driving the car…he had to use his phone to look up this place. I only remembered the word ‘Free’ from the sign.”

I nodded in understanding. The farm was called Flying Free Ranch and there was a big sign at the end of the driveway proclaiming the name.

“I didn’t know I had to pay the man to drive me here. Is he still mad?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “We took care of it.” The fact that my brother knew nothing about cabs and how they worked was a brutal reminder of how sheltered he’d been, despite the ugly cruelties he’d had to face.

“What happened, Aleks?” I asked when he didn’t continue on his own.