Chapter Sixteen: Letting Go Of The Past
Bones
I was freaking out. I’d been riding around for hours, the entire club had. There had been no sign of Ryan and he wasn’t answering my phone calls. I even ended up calling Amy, who blamed me, no surprise, and we ended up in another argument before she agreed to come and help me find him.
I wasn’t too much of a man to admit I was scared that something had happened to my boy. Why else would he be unreachable and so hard to locate?
My mind took another clumsy step in the direction of panic.
“We’ll find him,” Hawk said, placing a hand on my shoulder. “None of us are going to stop until he’s found.”
My instinct was to shrug it off, uncomfortable with the touch, but I fought the urge. I knew Hawk was trying to provide what little comfort he could offer.
We were at Wheelz, in the parking lot. I had no clue where Ryan was and I decided it made sense to regroup and divide the city into sections instead of the lot of us driving around aimlessly, hoping to stumble across him. That wasn’t working.
Once we were all gathered, I started talking to Bear about how we were going to divide up the search when a car pulled into the parking lot. I didn’t recognize the vehicle, but the Toyota looked practically new.
The woman behind the wheel, however, I was intimately familiar with.
Amy Stone, my ex-wife. She’d kept my last name, but not because she was still fond of me. I suspected it was because she didn’t want to go through the hassle of changing it back. There was a man in the passenger seat that I’d never seen before and I figured it must be Holden, her new beau.
Amy’s angry eyes met mine through the windshield and I knew we were in for another fight. I didn’t have time for that. Ryan needed me. He needed us.
Parking the car, Amy got out, slamming the door shut dramatically.
Before she could head my way, I strode toward her, hoping to cut off whatever she had to say before she got too far into it. “I know you’re pissed. I’m upset too, but we have to put that aside for now. Ryan needs the two of us to act like adults.”
The man got out of the passenger seat. He was short, definitely under six feet tall, with wavy brown hair and a nervous smile.
“This is Holden,” Amy introduced the man. “Holden, this is my ex-husband, Bones.”
Now I was meeting the man. If she’d done this in the first place, none of this would have happened.
“Nice to meet you.” Holden held out his hand. “I want to help out in any way that I can.”
I shook it, taking note that he had a firm grip. At that moment, the cell phone in my pocket rang. Fumbling to get it out, I see that it’s not Ryan, as I had hoped, but the Holbeck police station. “Hello?”
“Mr. Stone? Is this Gabriel Stone, guardian of Ryan Stone?”
I felt my knees buckle and held out a hand to steady myself against Amy’s car as I felt like all the air had been sucked from my lungs. “Yes,” I replied, scared that they were about to deliver bad news.
“This is Officer Trent Gibson with the Holbeck PD. We have your son in custody.”
“W-what?” I asked, straightening.
“We picked him up at the overpass, tagging the concrete with a bottle of red spray paint.”
I didn’t even care where he got the paint or what he’d drawn with it. I just was so relieved he was okay. I pulled the phone away from my ear and addressed Amy, “He’s okay. He’s at the police station.”
“Why?” she asked.
I didn’t answer, turning my attention back to the man on the other end of the phone. “Can I come get him?” I asked.
“Yes, bring some ID. He’s not being charged. We brought him and the other two boys to the jail, mostly to scare them.”
“Other boys?
“Yeah, there were two others. A little graffiti party. We brought them all in.”