Judge (Shady Valley Henchmen 1)

I couldn’t help but wonder what the fuck had happened in his past to make him like that.

And how long it would be before any of them trusted me enough to tell me.

I probably wasn’t going to gain any brownie points with my club if I continued to fuck around with an Irish mafia princess after I’d been expressly told to stay the fuck away from her.

Fuck.

My head slammed back on the SUV, making Slash look over at me.

And for a split second, I could have sworn it was understanding I saw there before he banked it down and schooled his face into indifference.

“So, where are we going tonight?” Sway asked, hopeful.

I knew where I was going.

Right to Delaney’s room.

And I had a feeling I might run into Slash on my way out.

We’d barely made it through the front doors before Nyx was rushing toward us.

At my side, Slash stiffened.

“Have you guys seen Dell?” she asked, voice high-pitched. Her eyes were huge, worried.

My stomach immediately dropped.

“She’s not in her room?” I asked.

“No. I checked. We exchanged extra keys,” she explained. “And it looks like she slept there. A towel was wet in the bathroom too. But she’s not there now. And she’s not answering her phone. I have been looking for like two hours.”

“She’s probably out having fun,” Sway said, shrugging.

“No,” Nyx countered immediately.

“You can’t know—“

“Actually, I do. One, because she’s a woman, and women are out in strange cities, they make sure someone close to them knows where they are at all times. Just in case. Second, because this is Delaney. She never goes anywhere. She would never wander out without me.”

“You searched the hotel?” Slash asked.

“Every inch I have access to,” Nyx said.

“Okay,” Slash said, voice calm, but likely more for Nyx’s nerves than anything else. “We will fan out,” he said, looking toward the rest of us.

But I was already several feet away.

Granted, I didn’t know Dell as well as Nyx did, but I one-hundred-percent agreed that she was not the kind of girl to walk off on her own in a strange town.

At least not far.

My chest felt constricted as I made my way out the front doors of the hotel, taking a second to scan down the street, trying to recall the shops and restaurants nearby, gauging the possibility of Dell feeling comfortable enough heading to any of them herself.

I went toward the coffee shop first. It seemed like the most likely location for a woman to go. She might have even headed there to get coffee for her and Nyx to start their day.

But she wouldn’t be gone for hours.

Shaking that thought away, deciding there was no good that could come from it, I headed in that direction anyway.

Unsurprisingly, she wasn’t inside. And the duo working hadn’t seen her.

Each of the shops afterward were the same story.

I was about to turn around and walk away when something in the space between two buildings caught my eye.

A body.

With blood-stained blonde hair.

Delaney.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Delaney

I knocked on Nyx’s door like twenty times before I finally used her spare keycard to enter from the hallway.

I guess a part of me was paranoid that I might walk in on her with a random guy, even if I hadn’t heard anything coming from her room the rest of the night.

“Nyx, you sleep like the… oh,” I said, walking in to find the room empty.

Either she hadn’t been in her room the night before, or housekeeping had been around already, because the bed was made.

I immediately nixed the latter of the two. For housekeeping to have come, she would have had to have been up early, dressed, and out of there without me having heard her.

And, well, that just wasn’t the Nyx I knew.

She slept late because she was accustomed to working night shifts. Then her makeup routine alone took at least forty minutes.

There was just no way.

Besides, she’d made it clear that she would be happy to find a hot guy and have some fun with him.

Maybe she met her guy with a yacht.

Deciding to leave her in peace until she texted me first, I went ahead and went downstairs, grabbing a bagel from the continental breakfast.

But the coffee they served was criminal.

So, I decided to go check out a couple shops on the strip, maybe grab myself some ridiculous, overpriced concoction while I waited for Nyx who would probably be ready for her day around lunch time.

We had our hearts set on this awesome Mexican restaurant.

“What the hell, Nyx?” I grumbled to myself when I pulled out my phone to check it for the fifth time only to find no new texts.

But before I could tuck it back into my pocket, something hit my hand, sending my phone flying into the space between buildings.

I watched as it bounced then flipped onto its face, making my stomach clench hard.