“And we’ll be ready. Couldn’t have made that work out any better if we’d tried,” one of them grumbled. “The father gave us just the distraction we needed to pull this thing off.”
“Just so we’re clear, their enforcer takes his last breath tonight.”
Alarms started going off in my head, screaming at me to get the hell out of there. I had to find a way to warn Griffin and let him know that he was in danger. I raced down the steps, praying that I wouldn’t fall as I headed for the back door I’d spotted earlier. I slowly eased it open and slipped outside, trying to keep the door from making any noise. Once it shut behind me, I started to run. I needed to find a phone or at the very least, a decent place to hide. As soon as I made it over to one of the large metal containers, someone grabbed me and pulled me into the dark.
Chapter 22
Stitch
?
He laid there, cowed down on the floor, and I had to fight the urge to kick the motherfucker again. It took all I had to restrain myself but I knew killing him wasn’t an option, at least not yet. “Where is she?”
“They’ve got her,” Michael stammered.
“Who is they, asshole,” Maverick barked.
“I don’t know… I’d been waiting for Wren to come home all weekend… stopped by there a hundred times looking for them, but she wasn’t home. She finally showed up this morning… I just wanted to talk to her… try to work something out, but these guys… they pulled in behind me. Jumped out of some black pickup and p-pointed a gun at me and threat – threatened to kill me,” he stuttered. “I told them that I… I just wanted my son… that they could have Wren.”
I clenched my fists at my side and growled, “Fuck!”
“Then what happened?” Maverick pushed.
“I waited outside. They went in to get her. I think they might have shot somebody. I just wanted to get the hell out of there, so when I saw Wren helping Wyatt out of the ww-indow, … I gr-grabbed him. I saw one of those men come up behind her, and they hit her on the back of the head, hard. Knocked her out cold,” he explained.
Rage surged through me, and I couldn’t restrain myself any longer. I slammed my fist into the side of his face, almost crushing his jaw and shouted, “Where did they take her?”
His hand immediately went to his jaw. Blinking his eyes with panic, he stared at me as he tried to regain his composure, then he answered, “I don’t know. Once I had Wyatt, I left. They were still there when I pulled out of the driveway.”
“Gonna need more than that, you piece of shit. How many were there? What did they look like?” Maverick snarled.
“There were three of them. Looked a lot like you… leather vests and one of them had a big snake tattoo on his arm,” he muttered. “That’s all I know.”
“They have her. Call Cotton and let him know,” I told Maverick.
“On it,” he told me as he stepped outside to make the call.
I looked down at the piece of shit lying on the floor, tempted more than ever to put a bullet in his head, but something stopped me. Even though in my mind he didn’t deserve to live, he was still Wyatt’s father. I was just about to start in on him again when my burner phone started ringing. I quickly pulled it from my pocket and saw that Cotton was calling.
“We’ve got her. She’s good. Keeping her with us until it’s safe to get her out,” Cotton explained.
Relief washed over me as I said, “Thanks brother. Leaving here in ten.”
“We’re on the west side of the warehouse. Meet us there,” Cotton ordered before he hung up the phone.
I shoved my phone in my back pocket before I nudged him with my boot and said, “Right now, you’re still breathing. You drag your sorry ass back to that car and get the hell out of town. If you come near Wyatt or Wren again… call them, look at them, hell if you even think about them… that will be your end!”
“I got it. I’ll do what you say. I won’t come back,” he assured me.
“Just in case you have any second thoughts,” I said, throwing several pictures at his feet. “You might want to take a look at those.” He took the pictures in his hand, and his face went white, as he looked at all the intimate pictures of him with his married neighbor from across the street, along with several shots of him buying drugs out on the eastside of town. “Is that where all the anger comes from Michael? The drugs… your need to wail on Wren and knock around Wyatt comes from the fact that you’re gay and don’t want to accept it?” I growled. “You afraid your folks will cut you off if they find out?”
“It’s not… what it looks like,” he stammered.
“It’s exactly what it looks like, Michael. You’ve been trying to pretend you’re something you’re not, but there’s no more hiding. No more pretending,” I told him as I placed a small recorder in Michael’s hand. With trembling fingers, he pressed the play button, and the sounds of his voice came barreling out of the small device: