“Search and Rescue”
“I can only show you the door. You’re the one who has to walk through it.” – Morpheus ‘The Matrix Movie’
I just about lost mymind when Sharon called me in distress. It was bad enough that one of her girls from the dance team had gone missing, but now she was in danger. There is never a more helpless feeling, as a man, than to hear fear in your woman’s voice, and know you can’t do anything to take it away. Well, one thing was for sure, when I find the bastards that took her, they are going to die a very painful death. I corralled Baby and Ace, who were never far from me. They always had my six. Hell, Baby had just as much at stake as I did. There was no way either of us was going to walk away from this thing we had with Sharon. We were going to find her and make her ours.
“Fuck! What was she thinking? Why wouldn’t she get us to back her up?” Baby was beside himself.
“Man, we can’t go around blaming her. We have to work with what we have been given. She went to a public store to get surveillance footage. Who would think the store owner was a part of the sex ring? We’ve been knowing Floyd for years.”
“Yeah, I know you’re right. I’m just mad that she went there alone. When we find her, we need to have a long talk about this independent thing she has going on in her head. It’s cool to do for herself, but some things you need backup.”
“I get it, Baby. Let’s just find our girl and bring her home.”
We were standing in the armory gearing up for war. Luckily, Ace had already made an executive decision to call in other chapters from across the states to help with this sex trafficking shit. Most clubs were already en route, so our big back up would be here soon. In the meantime, our Jax chapter was put into action. All family members were placed on lockdown in the clubhouse. All board members were strapped and ready to ride out, along with other members. We left a top-notch team of men and women to secure the families, and we rode to find our girl.
Mouse was one pissed off woman. I had never seen her so angry. I thought for sure she was going to take Ace’s head off when he tried to convince her to stay at the clubhouse with their daughter.
“Mouse, I think you would be better served here at the clubhouse making sure TJ is safe.”
“Ace, I am not going to stand by while one of my girls and my best girlfriend have been abducted by some creepy assholes. That is not how this works. I am an officer on the board of this MC, and it is my duty to ride out! I will not be regulated to the clubhouse to sit on my hands and wait for the men to update me. Fuck all that. I am strapping up and I and going to get my girls. Not another fucking word or I swear you’ll regret it.”
“Fuck!” I heard Ace growl under his breath. He was pissed, but he dared not go up against his wife. If it had been any other time, I would have found it funny as hell, but right now I found it admirable.
“Are we ready to go? We are wasting precious time.”
Ace glared at me but said nothing. We mounted up and rode over to the store. The ride was quick, only taking about ten minutes, but it was ten minutes too late. I was surprised to find the owner Floyd still there. He must be stupider than he looked. Walking into the store, I immediately moved toward the security office where Sharon had been when she called me.
“Excuse me, where do you think you’re going?”
“Oh, don’t worry about him. He knows exactly what he’s doing.”
Ace was asking the man questions, but I needed to get to the video recording. The idiot actually thought deleting the footage meant it was permanently gone. It took me less than two minutes to recover the files and watch the video. Baby stood next to me as we watched three men abduct our woman. One was super tall, at least seven feet. He seemed to be in charge. The other two were not that impressive. The one thing that stood out from all of them was their cuts.
“Lords of Death!” both Baby and I shouted at the same time.
Ace’s head snapped in our direction as I had to physically restrain Baby. He wanted blood, and Floyd was the only one around to draw it from. He shook me off and stormed over to the store owner, landing blow after blow. I know it felt good. Hell, I wanted to do the same thing, but we had to be smarter than that. We could punish the man later. Right now, we had to get to our woman before they shipped her off somewhere.
“Baby, don’t. We need him alive so he can tell us where they took Sharon.”
“Fuck him! There’s no telling how long he’s been doing this. How many women and young girls has he lured in here to become victims for those bastards. Those fuckers are crazy. That fucker, King Pen has a horrible reputation. There’s no telling what he’s doing to her right now.”
Baby kicked Floyd as he was being dragged away by a couple of prospects. I stepped to the store owner, anger boiling in my veins. I held back my rage for fear I would kill the man and never know where they took Sharon. It seemed the battery on her phone had died or they discovered it, because the tracker was not working. Floyd was our only hope.
“Tripod, go ahead and lock the doors and turn the open sign off. Pull down the shades and let’s take this thing out back.”
As enforcer, Tripod did not hesitate to do what Ace had commanded. I had disabled the camera so there would be no evidence that we were there. I made it look like a power outage and destroyed the recordings from about an hour previously. There didn’t need to be any trace of us or Sharon in the store on this day.
Floyd didn’t even put up a fight when Ace asked where they were taking Sharon. He had no pride at all. I was disappointed not to be able to torture him, but I was thankful because we didn’t have any time to waste.
“I’m sorry, Ace. I would never hurt a woman, but those bikers threatened me. I had no choice but to help them. They threatened my family.”
“I don’t give a damn about your family. They will be in mourning soon. I need to know where the fuck they took my woman!”
Baby had lost all patience. His hands tightened around the man’s throat so forcibly, Floyd was about to pass out.
“Baby, release him so he can tell us!” Ace called out, once again getting Baby under control.
I feared he would lose it soon if we didn’t get what we wanted. That wouldn’t be good for anyone involved. The room let out a collective sigh when Baby removed his hands and stepped back, so we could continue the interrogation.