“Tanner, take it easy,” Brooks warned.
I gripped the man’s leather jacket and slammed my fist against his chin once more. He coughed up blood as one of his teeth clattered to the ground, but I cocked back for another blow. If I had to break him in order to break his little friends, I’d do what needed to be done.
I had to figure out how the fuck Chops found Summer.
“I don’t know. I don’t—know nothin’,” the bloodied man said through his wheezing.
I tossed him to the ground. “Time to move on, then.”
And when I reached for another one of the Black Flags we had taken captive, I cocked my leg back. Ready to sink my steel-toed boot into the man’s fucking crotch.
Only this time, the man sang like a fucking bird.
“Okay, okay, okay!” the man squeaked out. “I know how Chops found her.”
“Stop,” the bloodied man growled, “he’ll kill us if we talk.”
I chuckled. “Trust me, you’re already dead.”
The room fell silent before my little bird sang me a ballad again. “The tattoo. Chops kept saying she had some sort of tattoo, so we kept an eye out for any girls with tattoos. Then, it was just a matter of figuring out where those girls went to high school. Whether they knew you or not. It was just a coincidence that we started with the girls at the club. I mean, they were already there, so why not?”
I pulled him up to my face. “It’s still a needle in a damn haystack. What did he do?”
The man sighed and closed his eyes. “He had one of our guys who’s more tech efficient to do some research on you. He figured out what high school you went to, and it opened up a wealth of information. He had her tracked down within days.”
I tossed the man to the ground. “Fuck!”
“That’s not all, though,” the man said breathlessly.
I walked toward the warehouse door. “Don’t worry, I’m not as stupid as I look.”
“Well, act like the rest of us are, then,” Porter called out to me.
I peered over my shoulder, my hand resting on the doorknob. “They tracked Summer down while she was working for them at the club. That means they have her employee records.”
“Fuck,” Porter murmured.
I ripped the door open. “Exactly.”
“Wh-wh-wh-wh—when are you gonna kill us?” the bloodied man stammered out.
Brooks chuckled as he turned his back to them. “Once you’re done being of use to us. That’s when.”
And as the three of us left our abandoned warehouse by the sea, we hopped on our bikes and sped back toward the clubhouse.
But I had a mounting urge to track down Summer’s address so I could go talk to her and make sure she was safe.
When we got back to the clubhouse, the rest of the guys were sitting out on the porch. We parked our bikes and had beers tossed into our hands as we walked and picked out a rocking chair to sit our asses in. As we lined the back porch, gazing out over the ocean that lapped at the cliffside our clubhouse sat on, I cracked my beer open and chugged it back. One, after another, after another.
I let the burn pull me from the anger of my soul before I let the cool ocean breeze sober me right back up.
“We need to find Summer’s address,” I said.
Porter shrugged. “Shouldn’t be too hard.”
Cole sipped his beer. “I said it once and I’ll say it again: any information we get from those guys might be tainted. For all we know, this is exactly what Chops had planned and they’re feeding us bad intel.”
I snickered. “Well, the alternative is to take a step back and wait for them to strike, and I’m not willing to sacrifice Summer or our daughter in order to let that happen.”
Finn pointed at me. “Let’s walk through as if it is a trap, though. So, we get her address out of those guys and we get there. Then, what?”
I shrugged. “If it’s a trap, I’m killing whoever I have to in order to get to Summer.”
Brooks pointed at me. “I’m with him on that.”
Porter sighed. “Or they could be waiting for Tanner to break off and show up alone, then they take him hostage like we’ve taken their guys hostage.”
I crumbled a beer can in my left hand. “They could also be waiting in the darkness, ready to take Summer and our daughter at a moment’s fucking notice. That’s why we need to get there sooner rather than later.”
“Archer!” Finn exclaimed. “What would you do!?”
He had been eerily silent since we all got back, so I turned in his general direction and genuinely waited for his answer.
And honestly? It shouldn’t have shocked me as much as it did.
“If it were my child at stake? I’d go around, sit in wait, and pluck every one of those Black Flag bastards off until someone came to find me with a truce. And if they never came to me with a truce because they’re too stupid to figure it out? Then, I’d take pleasure in killing every single one of them if it meant getting my child back.”
Brooks whistled lowly to himself and Porter tried not to laugh. But me? I found myself sympathizing more with Archer than I ever had during the duration of our brotherhood. Archer looked over at me and nodded his head, as if he were giving me his silent approval if I did just that. And if I were being bluntly honest with myself, I would have done just that.
If I thought for one second these ruthless jagoffs wouldn’t kill Summer for my actions.
“Consider it my back-up plan,” I said.
The guys chuckled as Archer held his beer up in the air, then he turned himself back toward the ocean. In fact, after the laughter died down, we all drank in how beautiful the ocean looked with the sun hanging heavily in the sky. We were about an hour away from sunset, and with our sunglasses on we could see the perfectly round sun slowly approaching the shimmering edge of the watery horizon.
I wasn’t usually one to be poetic about fucking sunsets, but this one felt different.
For this sunset, I knew I had a daughter out there. One that might want to share these sunsets with me one day.
And I wanted to show her that men had softer sides if they trusted you enough to show it.
“You should go after her, you know,” Archer said.
“That’s enough,” Porter shot back.
I drew in a deep breath. “You think so?”
Archer nodded. “Yeah, I do. I think that you still love her, and I think that whatever made you leave her will be inconsequential when you meet your daughter for the first time. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that she’s still in the same sort of area you two grew up in, and I definitely don’t think it’s a coincidence that she didn’t tell you that you had a child while we worked undercover at The Body Shop.”
I swallowed hard. “You think she’s still looking for me.”
His eyes met mine. “I think the heart wants what it wants, no matter where it goes in life.”
And after I soaked in his words, I stood to my feet. “Whoever wants to come with me, you’re more than welcome. But tonight? I’m finding Summer.”
I marched back inside, not bothering to wait and see who would join me. Why? Well, because I knew I could do it without them. I wasn’t a stranger to the kind of life Summer led. I knew how ultra-conservatives her parents had been. I knew how much they hated everything Summer and her sister ever did. To this day, I could still hear Summer crying against my shoulder; one of the numerous times she did so while we were still young and still together.
Every time I found her crying, it was because of them. And every time she was saddened, threatened, or scared, an army of electricity swept through my body. It heightened my senses, my control, and my abilities. Almost as if I were Superman or some shit.
And every time, I was her rock while we worked her out of the tight corners her parents pushed her into.
This won’t be any different, either.
I slammed my way through the clubhouse and geared up. I slipped a bulletproof vest underneath my clothes and refreshed my ammunition in our stockpile closet we kept at the back of our place. I holstered guns beneath both of my arms and slid a small gun against my ankle. Each of my pockets were adorned with a switchblade, and I harnessed my age-old throwing stars on the right side of my leather belt.
Then, Brooks’ voice sounded behind me. “All right, you guys. Suit up and follow Tanner’s lead.”
I slowly turned around, staring at our president as the guys walked down the hallway. They moved me out of the way so they could get to their tactical gear, but the sounds were muffled as I nodded my head down the hallway toward Brooks.
And when he nodded back, I knew we were on the same page.
“Any idea how we’re going to track down her address?” Cole asked.
Archer yelled above the chaos. “I got it! Josie finally got back to me! I have Summer’s address.”
I whipped around. “Let me see. Let me see it, Archer.”
He rushed his phone over to me and I quickly punched the address into my own phone. I saved it to my contacts, then copied it into my GPS and blazed a trail out toward my bike. I nestled my phone into its little protective holster so it could guide me all the way to her place, then a chorus of bikes struck up all around me.
Reminding me of the family she’d have once more if we made it out of this alive.
And if she ever forgave me for what happened all those years ago.
