I sent a text. No reply.
Knowing it would likely be a hopeless cause, I couldn’t sit there and do nothing, so I tried again. And again. I even called Jasmine, knowing she’d stayed behind.
When I was about to give up, the phone stopped ringing. Pulling it from my ear, I looked at it to see if I’d lost the call. The call timer was still counting.
“Hello? Jasmine? Is that you? Are you there?”
Silence reigned, and I debated hanging up. Maybe it was a bad connection.
Maybe she’d gone out somewhere and had poor signal.
“Hello?” Still nothing.
I hung up and called Lynda again. Same thing. “Lynda? Trace? What the hell?” I whispered. “Trace! Talk to me!”
“I’m sorry, Trace can’t come to the phone right now. If you’d please leave a message at the beep, he might never get back to you,” said a sinister, raspy voice on the end of the line. Then the call ended.
Heart rate shooting through the roof and terror clawing up my throat, I tried not to scream.
“AngelWithScabbedWings”—MarilynManson
“No sign of anyone outside except a dead prospect,” said Ghost as he reappeared by us. We all nodded tightly. Chains cursed. Goob was pissed, but silent.
“We’re gonna find whoever did this shit,” I told them as I fought to hold my cool.
When the chapter had converted the large metal barn into our clubhouse, they’d positioned all of the windows in the clubhouse up higher. Maybe not super safe in case of a fire, but manageable. They were up higher to prevent easy access by someone that tried to storm the fortress, so to speak.
I’d never been more glad for that, because it also meant if there was someone in there, though they may have heard our bikes pull up, they likely couldn’t see which direction we were coming from.
We cracked the back door a hair. Raptor breathed slowly and sat with his eyes closed a minute as he cast his inner hawk into the building before he murmured, “Prospect injured or dead behind the bar. I don’t see anyone else inside.”
“No one?” I asked, sick to my stomach.
His expression was my answer.
We worked out a hastily prepared plan and spread out to enter both the front and back doors on the off chance Raptor was wrong.
When we opened the door cautiously, Ghost disappeared. It didn’t take long before he reappeared and confirmed what Raptor had already seen.
“There’s no one but the prospect inside. He’s alive, but unconscious,” he said with a furrowed brow.
“No! You’ve got to be shitting me! No way!” I tore down the hall and slammed the door open to first Jasmine’s room, then Korrie’s room, before I burst into Trace’s room. The empty room mocked me as fear and rage clawed up my throat.
My instinct was to destroy anything I could get my hands on. I kicked the card table, scattering cards through the room.
“Bro! Chill! Korrie’s still in the shed. We need to go get her. Maybe they escaped over to the farm,” Raptor shouted as he entered the room.
“Shit. Korrie.” My heart shattered at having to tell her. Pivoting, I passed Chains leaning against the wall with a look of shock on his face.
As I rushed to the front door, it slammed open. Everyone drew their weapons and had them ready to fire but dropped them when we saw it was Korrie.
From her stricken expression, it was apparent she somehow already knew.
“Angel?” My name came out as a question and a prayer. Wrapping her in my arms, I held her as she fell apart. Through her crying she told us about the call.
“We’re going to get him back, baby. I promise.” Though the words poured out of me, I wondered if I’d made empty promises. Scanning the room, I saw Raptor and Ghost on their phones. Goob and Chains looked like they wanted to obliterate someone. I was on board with that completely.
The hollow feeling inside was eating away at me. I had no idea where to start. My thought processes were fucked.