“What the hell did you do with Naomi?” Fi demanded, waving her lollipop in my face when I hit the bar floor.
I noticed Naomi’s parents were gone, and their table had been turned over.
“I talked to her. Nicely,” I said when her eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“Couldn’t have been that nice since all her tables are getting restless with empty drinks.”
I peered over Fi’s shoulder, doing what I always did, looking for Naomi.
But Fi was right. She wasn’t there.
“If you chased her off in the middle of a shift—”
“I didn’t chase her off. We talked. It was good. We’re good. Did you check the bathroom?”
“Now, gee, why didn’t I think of that?” Fi said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Did you ask him what the hell he did with Naomi?” Max asked as she buzzed by.
Something cold settled in my gut. Ignoring my employees, I pushed through the doors into the kitchen. “Naomi in here?”
Milford looked up from the chicken he was grilling and tilted his head toward the door to the parking lot. “Went out a couple minutes ago to make a call. She looked upset. You say something mean to her again?”
I didn’t bother answering. Instead I went straight for the door and shoved it open. Fi was on my heels. The night air had a crisp bite to it that did nothing to thaw the icy fear inside me. There was no sign of Naomi.
“Fuck.” I did not have a good feeling about this.
“She’s probably just getting some fresh air since you broke her heart and then embarrassed her in front of half the town,” Fi guessed, scanning the lot with me. But she didn’t sound sure either.
“I don’t like this,” I muttered. “Naomi!” But there was no response.
“Naomi, Knox is sorry for being an ass!” Fi shouted into the night next to me.
Nothing.
My phone vibrated in my pocket, and I yanked it out.
Nash.
“What?”
“Just a heads-up. I’m on my way to Liza’s. She said Waylay’s gone.
Took your dog out for a pee break, and neither one of them came back.”
The ice in my gut turned into an iceberg.
“How long ago?”
“About forty minutes. Liza went out looking for them. Thinks she saw tail lights heading for the road. Said she tried to call Naomi, but she’s not picking up her phone. I tried too and got voicemail. I’m sure it’s nothing, but I need you to tell Naomi.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
My heart was hitting like a damn bass drum.
“Naomi stepped out to make a call, and no one’s seen her since. I’m standing in the fucking parking lot, and she’s not here.”
“Goddammit.”
“I don’t like this,” I said, dragging a hand through my hair. “I’m gonna go look for them.”
“Do me a favor first and call Naomi’s parents. I’m gonna get Liza and have some of my guys do a sweep of the woods.”
“She’s not gonna be there,” I told him.
“Gotta start somewhere. Call you back,” Nash said.
I immediately dialed Naomi’s number and headed back inside. Fi followed me with wide, worried eyes.
I snapped my fingers at her. “Get on the security feed for the parking lot.”
She didn’t give me an ounce of shit, just bobbed her head and hurried off in the direction of the office.
“Naomi okay, boss?” Milford asked.
“Hey! I could use a hand out here. The natives are gettin’ restless and thirsty,” Max said, swinging through the kitchen door. She took one look at us and stopped in her tracks. “What?”
“Can’t find Naomi,” I told her as the phone rang and rang in my ear.
“What the hell did you say to her this time?” Max demanded.
“Hi, you’ve reached Naomi Witt. Thanks for calling! Leave a message.”
I hit redial as worry crept over me like an icy, black cloud.
“Come on, Daze. Pick up,” I muttered.
“Let me try,” Max said, pulling out her phone.
“Tell me the second you talk to her. I need to know where she is.”
“What’s happening?” Silver asked, sticking her head in the door.
“Waylay and Naomi are missing,” I snapped.
All eyes landed on me.
“What are the odds that they’d both go missing at the same time?” Max asked.
I shook my head and scrolled through my contacts. My hands were shaking. I dialed Lou’s number.
“I know it’s date night, and I know I’m not your favorite person right now, but I think we’ve got trouble,” I told him when he answered.
“What’s wrong?”
“Liza said Waylay went missing again. She and Nash are out looking for her now, but Naomi walked out of the bar to make a call, and I can’t find her either.”
“I’ll meet you at Honky Tonk in two minutes,” he said.
“If something happened to them, Lou…” I couldn’t even finish the thought.
“We’re gonna find them. Keep it together, son.”
“Knox.” The worry in Fi’s tone had me turning fast.
“I gotta go,” I said and hung up. “What did you find?”
“Her coat and bag are still behind the bar. And the camera has her getting into a car in the parking lot about ten minutes ago.”
Ten minutes felt like a lifetime. “What kind of car? Who was driving?”
“I couldn’t tell. On either count. Some dark, crappy sedan. But it looks like she got in willingly.”
“What the hell’s going on?” Wraith demanded, poking his head into the kitchen. “There’s gonna be a revolt out here soon if someone doesn’t start pouring beers.”
“Naomi’s missing,” Fi told him.
“Fuck me.”
“Waylay too,” Max added with a tearful sniffle.
“Double fuck,” Wraith said, then disappeared back into the bar.
“Her phone,” Fi said.
“She’s not answering.”
“But she’s on your family plan, isn’t she?”
My mind was going a million miles a minute. I needed to get out there and start looking for her. Every second I wasted was one second that she got farther away. “Yeah.”
Max slapped me in the arm. “You can track her!”
Technology for the fucking win. I shoved my phone at her. “Find her.”
As she moved deft fingers over the screen, I headed for my office. I grabbed my coat and keys and returned to the bar.
It wasn’t the pandemonium I’d expected from pissed-off drinkers on a Saturday night. It was organized chaos. Wraith stood on the bar, boots planted between beer glasses. Everyone was gathered around, shrugging into coats.
“Last seen getting into a dark gray four-door shitmobile wearing a denim skirt and long-sleeved shirt that says Honky Tonk.”
“What the hell is this?” I demanded.
“Search party,” Silver said as she shoved her arms into a gray tweed coat.
The front door opened, and everyone turned expectantly.
It was Lou and Amanda.
“Let ’em through,” Wraith ordered. The crowd parted for them, and they hurried forward.
“I got her!” Max said, holding my phone up triumphantly. “Looks like she’s just off Route 7 near the Lucky Horseshoe Farm.”
I snatched it out of her hand. “Call Nash,” I said, pointing to Lou.
Lou turned to Amanda. “Call Nash. I’m going with him.”
I didn’t waste time arguing. We hit the parking lot, and I had the truck started before either of us closed the doors. I floored it out of the lot, fishtailing onto the road.
“Who took her?”
“I don’t know for sure,” I said, gripping the wheel tighter. “But if Waylay’s missing too, my money’s on Tina.” Lou swore under his breath.
My phone rang. It was Nash. I hit the speaker button.
“You find Way?” I asked.
“No. I’m bringing Liza J into town. Got some footage off the Morrison’s doorbell cam. Dark, shitty sedan pulled out of Liza’s about an hour ago. A big, black SUV was parked on the shoulder, waiting for it. Headlights set off the motion sensor. Timeline fits for Liza seein’ the brake lights. Also got a call about a hit and run. Someone smashed through the Loy’s fence along the road over at Lucky Horseshoe.”
Lou and I glanced at each other. “We’re on our way there now, tracking Naomi’s phone.”
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Nash ordered.
Lucky Horseshoe was a short drive, made shorter by the fact that I hit 90
miles per hour.
“Should be right up here,” Lou said, peering at my phone.
I let off the gas. Then hit the brakes hard when I saw the fence. “Shit.”
Tire marks swerved off the road and smashed right through the rail fence.
I turned the wheel so my lights could follow the path and put the truck in park.
Mr. and Mrs. Loy were standing in the pasture surveying the damage.
Mrs. Loy was huddled up in an oversize flannel jacket and smoking a small cigar. Mr. Loy came right at us.
“Can you believe this? Some son of a bitch smashed through the fence and then drove back out again!”
“Grab the flashlight in the glove box,” I told Lou.
“Naomi!” I called the second my feet hit the ground. The frosty grass crunched under my boots.
There was no answer.
Lou flashed the light into the pasture, and we followed the tracks. “Looks like they stopped here before driving back out,” he said.
“Must have been one drunk idiot,”
Something caught my eye in the grass, and I bent to pick it up. It was a cellphone with sparkly daisies on the case.
A chill stopped my heart and had me fighting for breath.
“Is that hers?” Lou asked.
“Yeah.”
“Goddammit.”
“What’s that? Is that evidence?” Mr. Loy demanded.
I DROVE BACK to Honky Tonk in a fog. Lou was talking, but I wasn’t listening. I was too busy replaying my last conversation with Naomi. I hadn’t wanted to lose her, so I’d pushed her away and lost her anyway.
She was right. This was worse. So much fucking worse.
Someone had coordinated this. Someone had conspired to take them both away from me. And I was going to make them fucking pay.
I pulled up to the front door of the bar, and half the damn town poured out.
“Where is she?”
“You find her?”
“Does he look like he found her, Elmer, you idiot?”
“He looks pretty pissed off.”
Ignoring the crowd and the questions, I pushed inside and found half the Knockemout PD surrounded by the other half of town. The specials board had been erased replaced with a hand-drawn map of Knockemout cut into quadrants.
Fi, Max, and Silver charged me, and Nash looked up.
“You didn’t find them,” Fi said.
I shook my head.
A shrill whistle cut through the noise, and everyone shut up.
“Thanks, Luce,” Nash said to Lucian, who immediately returned to whatever phone call he was making. “As I was saying, we’ve got an APB out on Naomi Witt, Waylay Witt, a gray sedan, and a black, newer model Chevy Tahoe. We’re starting the search in town and expanding outward.”
Amanda, dragging Liza J with her, hurried over to Lou, who pulled her into his side. “We’ll find ’em,” he promised. Then he wrapped his free arm around my grandmother.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t swallow. Couldn’t move from the spot. I thought I’d been afraid before. Afraid of turning into my father. Of crumbling after a loss. But this fear was worse. I hadn’t told her I fucking loved her. I hadn’t told either one of them. And someone had taken them from me. I hadn’t crumbled. It was worse. I hadn’t had the goddamn guts to love someone enough to crumble.
I shoved my hands through my hair and kept them there as the reality of what I’d walked away from set in.
I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder. “Keep it together,” Lucian said.
“We’ll find them.”
“How? How the fuck will we find them? We know jack shit.”
“We’ve got a plate number on a 2002 gray Ford Taurus that was reported stolen from Lawlerville an hour ago,” Lucian said.
“We don’t have plate numbers yet,” Nash said, pausing to glance down at his phone. “Scratch that. 2002 gray Ford Taurus with a primer gray trunk lid.” He read off a license plate number.
“Lawlerville is half an hour from here,” I said, running the calculations in my head. It was the edge of a suburb of D.C.
“You’d have to be pretty stupid to steal a car and then drive it back to the scene of the crime,” Lucian pointed out.
“If Tina is involved with this, stupid is a factor.”
The front door opened, and Sloane and Lina rushed in. Sloane looked breathless and scared. Lina looked scary.
“What can I do?” Sloane asked.
“Whose ass do you want me to kick?” Lina demanded.
I needed to move. I needed to get out of here and find my girls, rip apart every single person who played a role in taking them, and then spend the rest of my life begging for Naomi’s forgiveness.
“Give us a moment, ladies,” Lucian said and steered me back outside.
“There’s more.”
“What more?”
“I have a name.”
I grabbed him by the lapels of his wool coat. “Give me the name,” I growled.
Lucian’s hands closed over mine. “It’s not going to help like you think it will.”
“Start talking before I start punching.”
“Duncan Hugo.”
I released him. “Hugo as in the Hugo crime family?”
Anthony Hugo was a crime lord who operated out of both D.C. and Baltimore. Drugs. Prostitution. Weapons. Enforcement. Political blackmail.
You name it, it had his filthy fingerprints on it.
“Duncan is the son. And a bit of a fuck-up. It was his chop shop where the car used in Nash’s shooting was found. I didn’t think it was a coincidence, but I wanted more information to corroborate before I brought it to you and Nash.”
“How long have you known?” I demanded, my hands balling into fists.
“Not long enough for you to waste time and energy on me tonight.”
“Goddammit, Luce.”
“Rumor has it he had a nasty and recent split from his father. Seems Duncan wants to strike out on his own. Rumors also mention a woman he’s been working with as well as fucking for the past few months.”
It clicked into place as neatly as the last piece of a puzzle. Tina Fucking Witt.
“Where is he?”
Lucian tucked his hands into his pockets, his expression giving nothing away. “That’s the problem. Since he had his falling out with his father, no one seems to know his whereabouts.”
“Or they’re not telling you.”
“Sooner or later, everyone tells me everything,” he said.
I didn’t have time to worry about how dark that sounded. “You tell Nash any of this?” I asked, digging my keys out of my pocket.
“Just the plate number. Could be a coincidence.”
“It’s not.”
The door opened behind me, and Sloane stepped out.
“Are you going to look for them?” she asked.
I nodded then turned to Lucian. “I’ll start in Lawlersville and work my way toward D.C.”
“Hold on,” he said.
“I’m coming with you,” Sloane announced.
Lucian stepped in front of her. “You’re staying here.”
“She’s my friend, and Waylay is practically a second niece.”
“You’re staying here.”
I didn’t have time to listen to Lucian use his scary ass intimidation voice.
“I think you’re making the incredibly ignorant assumption that you have any say over what I do or don’t do.”
“If I find out you leave town limits tonight, I will see that your beloved library never gets another dime of funding. Then I’ll buy every piece of land around your house and build apartment complexes so tall you never see the sun again.”
“You rich son of a…”
I left them to it. I opened the door to my truck and climbed behind the wheel. A second later, the passenger door opened, and Lucian got in. “Where are we going?”
“I’m starting at the top. I’m going to beat the hell out of Anthony Hugo until he tells us where his asshole son is. Then I’m going to find him and beat the hell out of him until I break every bone in his face. Then I’m going to marry Naomi Witt.”
“This should be fun,” my best friend said, pulling out his phone.
“You can give Nash a heads-up on the way and then tap that creepy source network of yours to find me Anthony Hugo.”
We were ten minutes out of town with two credible locations for the biggest crime lord in Washington D.C. One of the sources even coughed up the gate code for the property. Lucian Rollins was a scary motherfucker.
His phone rang again.
“This is Lucian.” He listened for a few seconds then handed me the phone. “For you.”
It was probably my brother bitching me out for taking the law into my own hands. “What?” I said.
“Knox. Grim here.”
Grim was the high-stakes poker-playing, mostly almost-legal motorcycle club president.
“This is not a good time to plan another poker game, man.”
“Not poker-related. Club business. Got some info I thought you might be interested in.”
“Unless it’s the whereabouts of Anthony or Duncan Hugo, I’m not interested.”
“Then you’re about to be real interested. That pretty little waitress of yours just marched her fine ass right on into Duncan Hugo’s new chop shop.”
My heart was hammering away against my rib cage. “What did you just say?”
“My guys have been sitting on the building for reasons.”
“I’m not the cops,” I reminded him.
“Let’s just say some local businesses aren’t real happy about the competition.”
Translation: Grim’s club was planning to hit the chop shop.
“Been keeping tabs on all the comings and goings. Just got photo confirmation. She’s a twin, right?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I remember her talking about her twin sister at the last game. Looks like she wasn’t bullshitting about the twin. Bitch had Naomi handcuffed to the dashboard.”
I dropped my foot on the accelerator. “Address,” I demanded.
