Ragged, painful breaths tore from him as his eyes went wild and a pained sob broke free.
“Chains!” Voodoo said to break him out of whatever memory he was trapped in. When Chains glanced at him in confusion, Voodoo reached out to him. Chains jerked away.
“I’m…,” he began but couldn’t finish. His eyes darted around before he covered his face, then dragged his hands down. “It’s Jasmine’s.”
“Is she…?” I couldn’t finish the question. The possibility that she was dead made me sick. She was all I had left of my childhood family, because my father was dead to me. She was my only sibling. The thought that I’d failed in keeping her and Trace safe gutted me.
“She wasn’t when this happened, but I promise you—if you don’t kill this motherfucker before I get to him, he’s going to pay,” he vehemently vowed. So much so, it gave me pause.
When I opened my mouth to question him, he held up a hand. “Not now. We need to find out if anyone else has had any luck.”
My eyes narrowed as I studied him. Kicker was sending out a text. Shortly after, his phone went off.
“Yeah?” he answered. We could hear someone on the other end talking. He gave a few short replies then disconnected the call.
“Raptor has a gas station as his last spot. Attendant doesn’t remember seeing anything. Ghost went by Korrie’s mother’s hotel room again to see what she’s up to and see if she’s been up to anything.”
“I thought Facet had tapped into the security feeds there,” I questioned.
“He did, but with nothing else turning up, Raptor sent him to check on the witch.” Kicker sighed.
Impatient as fuck, I shot a text off to Ghost to see if he had anything. He replied immediately.
Ghost: Call u in a few. What a bitch. Will send pics 4 u 2 c
At the same time, Kicker’s phone was vibrating again. “Venom,” he told us as he answered. We could hear him talking as Kicker circled his finger in the air to motion us to leave. He didn’t wait to see if we were following as he rushed out of the building.
“Venom and the boys have a possible visual, but they need us there for backup,” Kicker said as we ran down the sidewalk to the truck. Within minutes we were hauling ass to Venom’s location.
My phone started going crazy with text messages from Ghost. As I opened them to see the images he sent, my anger and hatred grew.
Picture after picture of a text conversation timestamped before and after her visit between Korrie’s mother and the former senator. Everything from discussing my woman like she was a piece of meat on an auction block, to more recently the veiled conversation about his revenge she’d helped to establish. Revenge that included my son as well as Voodoo’s newborn baby and his wife.
“That fucking bitch,” I growled. Everyone cast a glance in my direction. Ghost had sent the messages in our group chat app, so I knew the rest of the brothers were getting the images too.
Voodoo and Chains were looking at their phones, and I knew they were seeing the same thing. Voodoo must’ve caught up to the part about his family, because his teeth ground so hard I thought he cracked them.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Chains muttered.
My attention was torn from my screen as we came to a stop behind the SUV Venom and his crew had taken. We all piled out and converged in the covered shelter of a small run-down park. The whole neighborhood looked like it was deserted—on the verge of falling down.
“You all saw the messages?” Venom asked, and we nodded. Raptor and his crew slipped in after us from the other side of the park. Night had fallen, and half the streetlights in the area didn’t work. It was good cover at least.
“What do we have?” asked Kicker as we glanced around. Every one of us was on edge. Though it was my sister and son, along with Goob’s ol’ lady, they wereallfamily, and no one fucked with what was ours.
“That house across the way,” Blade said as he lit a joint and leaned against the post while he inhaled deeply. We studied the place he’d indicated.
It looked like half the condemned houses in the neighborhood, except there were faint lines of light showing around a few of the boarded-up windows. When I stepped over to the side to see better, I caught sight of the tire of a bike parked up by the caved-in single stall garage.
“There’s more parked in the backyard. And a beat-up panel van parked down the alley.” At Ghost’s murmured statement, I jumped and looked over my shoulder.
“I swear to fuck, if you don’t stop doing that shit, I’m gonna shank you one day,” I grumbled quietly. The half smile that curled his lips had me shaking my head.
“It’s so much fun though. Besides, if you did that, you’d just have to turn around and fix me,” he said with a smirk. He reached over to Blade and motioned for the joint. After taking a drag, he blew out the smoke and handed it back. “Now what?”
“Put that shit away,” Venom growled. Blade pinched it and tucked it away.
Venom told us that they’d snuck up to the house and looked through one of the split boards. They’d seen Trace and Lynda in a room. I sent up a prayer of thanks until I realized they hadn’t said anything about my sister.