IT WAS late Friday night so the bar was packed, the music was loud, and the taps were flowing. The crowd was turning into white noise around me as I poured drinks and read orders off lips. Everyone seemed to be having a good time, but the room seemed dead to me like I was watching the whole
night through a screen.
I missed Baby.
I was prepared for Scorch’s moping—and holy shit, was he—but I’d thought I could take a handful of days back in the city and away from our girl. Apparently not. Hell, even Dusty seemed to be a little sour, and I knew he had to be enjoying having his garage to himself with Coal out of his
hair.
Even the beta girls were less cheerful.
Baby was right, they were part of the pack. Most of them had been around for years and now that Baby was as good as one of us, it was probably only a matter of time before the guys were bonding them.
My eye snagged over the heads of customers as the office door open, Scorch’s black curls just visible above the crowd. His eyes checked the clock on the far wall and he wove his way through bodies to slide behind the bar and up to me.
“Time for last call,” he said. “I’ll help with the rush.”
He jerked his head in Brody’s direction near the entry hall, and the lights overhead flicked on and off in warning, cheers and moans mingling as everyone realized the end of the night was near.
It was too busy and too loud to talk, but I was looking forward to the slow rush of people heading out the door to get a chance to speak to Scorch. It’d been four days since we’d gotten back to the Plaza and he was becoming…intolerable. To put it lightly. He’d been quiet on the drive back to the city, but since then quiet had turned to snarling and snappish. And brooding. Brooding like something out of one of Baby’s old books she loved. Not that I planned on pointing it out. I had a better idea entirely.
At two am, when the lights were on and we waited for the last stragglers to leave, cutting tabs off and packing glasses to be washed, I took a moment to get in my alpha’s ear.
“What do you think about calling Coal back early?” I asked. “We can put him on the bar and head back up north.”
Scorch looked up from the credit card machine, brow furrowed. “We said we’d do a week here.”
“Yeah, well, it’s been a boring week. I miss our girl, don’t you?”
Instead of the snarling purr I expected to come out of his lips, Scorch only swallowed, throat
bobbing, and avoided my gaze.
What the fuck?
“We should give her time with Coal,” he said.
I frowned. Scorch was certainly a fair Prez to the club, but I didn’t honestly believe he’d be so self-sacrificing to not jump at the suggestion of turning ourselves right back around and heading home to our omega. Because that’s where home was now, with her.
“Bullet texted that Baby’s not feeling him anymore and Coal’s being a shit about it,” I said.
That at least got a reaction. “What?! What kind of a shit? When did he text?”
“Earlier, while you were in the office.” I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and passed it to him before turning back to the bar to give the last few lingerers my best discouraging glare.
Brody was escorting a couple out of our bar bathroom, the male beta’s pants still unbuckled with his alpha’s lipstick smeared over his mouth. Yeah. Fuck. I missed Baby. And as happy as I would be to be back in the mansion, I really wanted her here with us. Because I could just imagine having her up against the wall in the bathroom, right under the vent so Scorch would have to listen to us from his office. And because it was where she belonged, driving everyone a little crazy with her scent, making all our alphas smile with her sweetness, tellin’ off anyone who annoyed her.
The bar was clear and I was getting ready to clean up as Scorch joined me, fists clenched on the edge of the counter, my phone face up.
“If he did something. If she changes her mind—“ I laughed, and Scorch flinched and stared at me, eyes wide. “Are you fuckin’ serious right now?
There’s nothing that’s shakin’ our girl out of this pack.” I frowned as Scorch paled and his gaze avoided mine. “What’s goin’ on with you?”
“Baby and I fought before we left,” Scorch whispered, wiping down a glass repeatedly.
My jaw dropped. I’d noticed tension, but I assumed it had to do with Baby not wanting us to
leave. “What kind of fight?”
“She wants me to bond her.”
You stubborn shit. I pinned my lips shut before the thought could escape. I knew Jonah was determined not to rush our girl, but to let it turn into an argument?
“Is that not what you want?” I asked. I crossed my arms over my chest and spoke again before he got the chance. “Is Baby not the omega for you? Have you not been stressing this whole time about taking advantage of her heat? It’s over, Scorch! She wants us. We want her.”
I twisted into his face, forcing him to look at me and not at the rest of the bar. “The heat just ended,” Scorch whispered.
“I’ve never been in heat. What’s your excuse for not bonding me?” I asked, eyes narrowing.
“Because to be honest, I always thought it was ‘cause you were waiting for someone like Baby, but if you’re not even sure about her… Would you really bond me?”
His head whipped to face me, eyes wide. “Of course I would! You know I would.”
“Because it’s been ten years, and you haven’t,” I said. I released a slow breath in the silence of his shock. “Would you bond me because I’m a beta, or because it’s been so long?”
“Bomber,” he said slowly, voice breaking. “She just…omegas are different.”
“Quit fuckin’ thinking of her as an omega!” I snapped. “She’s Baby. She’s our person. If you don’t get your head out of your ass she’s gonna—“ “Leave,” he said, a mournful ache in his voice and brow furrowed.
I huffed and rolled my eyes. “No dickhead. She’s gonna bond everybody but you.” I was gonna stuff my fist in his mouth if he kept leaving it hanging like that. “You think if you wait, she’ll leave.
But you’re not the only alpha she wants, Scorch. Bullet’s not giving her up. Green would sooner eat glass. Brody’s a fuckin’ heathen so he’d probably lock her up, and Mackenzie would let him just so he and Tornado could keep her. You’re alienating Baby from you, not the pack.”
“They wouldn’t bond her without a fucking pack agreement,” Scorch said, but he sounded doubtful.
“You’re the only asshole stupid enough to refuse that woman something she wanted so um… yeah, they probably would,” I said, shrugging. “Fuckin’ honestly. I’d bite her if she asked me to, and it wouldn’t do shit.”
I stood there, staring at him, long enough to see the gears start to turn in his head. I loved this man so much, it made me forget how ridiculously narrow-sighted he could be sometimes. Leaving him to work out the puzzle of the hole he’d dug for himself, I elected to check on the bathroom situation for the first time ever since I started helping manage the bar. The only thing worse than a bar bathroom at closing time was the man you loved being a damn fool.
I was surveying the damage in the stalls—nothing a mop couldn’t handle, at least—when I heard the slam of the back bar door. I slid out of the bathroom, expecting to see Brody dealing with an end of the night fight, but instead it was Chef, eyes wild and teeth bared.
“She’s fucking missing!”
“Baby?” Scorch growled, back bunching with tension as he raced out from behind the bar.
“Emmy! She went out with the trash before I noticed her leaving,” Chef snarled. “Who was in here? Who just left? Everyone out there’s sayin’ they didn’t see shit.”
“Take a deep breath and hold it together,” Red said, stepping up to Chef whose teeth gritted and body hunched. “I’ll go out now and quiz some folks.”
“The fuckin’ Hangmen,” Chef hissed at Scorch.
“They weren’t in the bar tonight, I know that much,” I said. “We’ll lock up and ride together.”
“We can’t leave the betas here,” Scorch murmured, jaw flexing. “We’re too short-handed.”
Chef growled again, hands clenched around the back of a chair, so tight either the chair or Chef’s knuckles would have to give up. “Are you saying—“ “I’m saying the girls will have to ride with us,” Scorch said. Sudden calm and command washed over my alpha, the perfect proof of why he’d not only inherited his position in the club from Nine but done so with every member’s blessing. “We stay together as a family. I’d rather lose the Plaza than a pack member. Chef, go, ride out now. I’ll get everyone together, and we’ll be following before you’re out of earshot.”
Chef released a whooshing breath of a sigh and charged for the back door, leaving Scorch and I alone in the bar.
“Call Bullet,” he said. “If Emmy… if it was the Hangmen, and they’re focusing their attention here because they can’t find Baby, then we’re gonna need more hands on deck.”
I swallowed and nodded. “I’ll be ready to ride out.”
Scorch sighed and nodded. “Lock up. I’ll see you out there.”
NOT ONE PERSON had seen a rope noose, a Hangmen cut, or even an unfamiliar bike in the lot around the time Emmy vanished. Three people loitering and smoking saw her walk out, head around the corner to the dumpsters, and not one of them heard another sound. Thumb and I canvassed the
border between our territory and the Hangmen’s, but there was no sign of them so much as slipping a toe over the line.
“Doesn’t mean it wasn’t them,” Chef said. He hadn’t sat still since we’d made it back to the Plaza. The police had just left after taking a report, and even though it was edging into morning, the diner blinds remained pulled shut as we ignored the occasional sounds of morning traffic arriving expectantly at the door.
I covered my mouth with my hand. If Books’ research was right, it was more than likely it was the Hangmen. But how had they made it seem as though Emmy had simply walked off?
“Fuckin’ told her not to worry about shit like that,” Chef grunted.
“Emmy liked to do what she was told not to,” Tiny said, in a small careful tone. Red held her tight in his arms with a wary gaze fixed to his friend as if waiting for the other alpha to snap at his beta. “If she thought you were protecting her, she’d want to prove she didn’t need it.”
Chef shuddered and groaned, elbows landing on his diner counter, and face falling to his hands.
“They’re probably using prospects. They won’t be wearing Hangmen cuts so they can’t be identified, and if they get caught they’d just cut the new guys loose,” I said.
“Books has already sent in everything he’s put together on missing girls,” Scorch said. “I think we should hit the edges of their territory, see if we can’t crack a couple locals into talking to us.
Thumb, Dusty, I’m putting you in charge. You’ve got the best contacts in that. I’m gonna make contact with Buzz, try and set up a pack meet.”
“You want to take me face-to-face with those fuckers?” Chef asked, voice crackling dangerously.
“I want us to get a headcount,” Scorch said. “And to see if it looks like Buzzard’s pissing any of his men off.” Scorch turned to me and whispered under his breath. “Text Bull and get me an ETA.
Cole needs to use any influence he has left on his old club.”
