And what was he doing during them?
Who had he associated himself with?
“I have no fucking idea. But he never talked about anything before that.”
“Where was that? The Christmas tree stand?” I clarified.
“California. He said how fucking weird it was to not be freezing his ass off on Christmas.”
California. That was… far. And fast. If he was traveling to kind of soak in life and the country, why had he skipped through the rest of it so fast?
“What are you thinking?”
“That is seems like California is a good place to get lost. That it’s really fucking far from this coast.”
“Where he might have gotten himself into trouble,” Voss said, catching on.
But… where?
I mean it could have been anywhere up the east coast. Or even inland a bit.
“Did he talk about anywhere?” Voss asked, snapping me out of my thoughts that were running a hundred miles a minute, but getting nowhere.
“What?”
“When you were together? Did he talk about traveling?”
“We both did,” I agreed. “We… we were going to travel with each other.”
“Did he name any places he wanted to see the most?”
“He wanted to see everything,” I said. It was one of the things I’d always found appealing about him. He had the same sort of wanderlust I’d been afflicted with at that age.
“Narrow it down. East coast. Where was he going?”
“Maine,” I said. “And Florida. He wanted to drive to the tip of each border.”
“Figure he left with a lot of hard feelings here,” Voss said, choosing his words uncharacteristically carefully.
“You could say he knew I wanted blood if he stepped foot in Jersey again.”
“And to come back from Maine, he’d probably pass through.”
“So you think he went south.”
“Seems to make sense.”
So that gave us, what? Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, both Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida.
“Think we can cross out Delaware and Maryland.”
“There’s a lot of crime in Maryland.”
“In Baltimore, yeah,” Voss said. “Don’t figure he wanted to fuck around there. Lot of established crews. Too hard to operate there at all.”
“But he wasn’t… operating at that point.”
“Wasn’t he? How else did he get caught up in shit with guys like this?” Voss asked, waving the phone.
That was a good question, I guess.
We had a lot of those.
Questions.
But no answers.
“Louana, you gorgeous thing, what are your opinions on mini goat—“ Dezi started as he barged in, but stopped short at our looks. “What the fuck now?” he asked, sighing hard.
“How much do you know about the major players in the southeast coast area?” I asked.
“Some. Depends how far down we’re going. What we don’t know, Huck would know.”
“Who the hell is Huck?” I asked, looking at Voss, but he shook his head.
“Huck. President of the Florida chapter.”
Oh, right. Yeah. I forgot the club had sister chapters now. Golden Glades in Florida. And Shady Valley in California.
“Why? What’s going on?”
My gaze slid toward Voss, who shrugged.
We both knew we would have to let the club in on shit eventually. And if Valen was in trouble, time was of the essence.
“Is Fallon around?” I asked. “We think Valen is in trouble.”
“Someone’s in trouble. Sounds about right,” Dezi said, nodding as he reached for his phone. “But, what are your feelings on mini goats?” he asked.
“What?” I asked, shaking my head.
“Mini goats. What are your feelings on them? Or are mini pigs better?”
“Better for what?” Voss asked, as lost as I was.
“Dezi, Valen is missing, we can’t be talking about farm animals right now,” I said, pushing past him and going toward the common room. “Is Fallon on his way in?”
“Yeah,” Dezi said, following us out.
“I should… should I call his dad?” I asked a couple of tense moments later, looking at Voss. “Or Vi?” I added, hearing Fallon’s bike rolling into the lot.
“You,” he said as he came in, looking at Voss. “We’re going to have some words,” he said, face hard. “I don’t believe for a fucking minute you didn’t know shit was going on with him. And you didn’t come to me until it was too late?”
“It’s not too late,” I insisted, tone raising.
“It’s too late to handle it before it escalated, though, isn’t it?” he asked, turning that hard look at me, and for a moment, he really looked like his father. “Did you know something was up too?”
“Yes,” I said, not caring if he was pissed off.
“And you didn’t come to me with it?”
“In their defense, Fal,” Brooks said, seeming to appear out of nowhere, “I suspected something too.”
“The fuck, Brooks?” Fallon asked. “You never give anyone slack.”
“And I never will again,” Brooks agreed. “Made a bad judgment call.”
“Um, does this really matter right now? Valen is missing,” I reminded them.
“We don’t know he’s missing,” Fallon insisted.
“Um, the fuck we don’t,” I shot back.
“He’s not here right now. That doesn’t mean he’s missing. He could be out at the bar. Or went home with some chick.”