One in the afternoon.
When I was supposed to text K before noon each day.
Shit.
Shitshitshit.
I scrambled across the room to the small, seemingly mandatory mini-desk all hotel rooms possess and grabbed for the burner.
K.
I needed to get in touch with K.
Fifteen
Repo
"You guys seen Maze?" Reign asked, walking in from the kitchen.
I looked around at Duke and Renny, wondering the same thing myself. I had expected to see her when I got back, but she was nowhere around.
"Nah," Renny said, shaking his head.
"I sent her out for food hours ago," Reign said, brows drawn together.
"How many hours..." I started when Cash walked in through the front door.
"Bro, what's the Explorer doing at the train station?" he asked, moving over toward the bar to get a beer out of the fridge.
Reign froze and I felt myself doing the same. "The Explorer is at the train station?" he repeated, making Cash straighten, putting his beer down on the bar.
"So... it shouldn't be there?" he asked, sounding suddenly more serious.
"Sure as fuck shouldn't," Reign said and I was already on my way toward the door.
Reign was quickly on my heels, calling over his shoulder to the probies, "Call if Maze shows up." We both got on our bikes and Reign turned toward me. "You're with them the most. How much do you trust Maze?"
"More than Renny, about the same as Duke," I said honestly as I tried to talk myself out of the uncharacteristic panic that was gripping my system.
With that, he tore off down the road and I followed behind, a lump the size of fucking Texas in my throat. The train station was a short five minute drive. We made it in three. The lot was packed and it took us a few to locate Reign's SUV. When we did, the ticket on the window said it was paid up for another couple of hours. Reign fished the spare key out of his bike, unlocking the door where we were assaulted by the smell of all the food left inside the trunk to bake in the heat for God-knew how long.
"The keys were locked inside here," Reign said, coming out of the front seat with said keys. "The fuck is going on?"
"She bought groceries then... paid for parking and left?" I asked, and even I could hear the slightest trace of worry in my tone.
"What do we know about Maze, Repo?" he asked, watching me move away from the truck to stand by my bike.
"Not much. A small work history. That was kind-of all we got."
"No record?"
"Nothing."
"No connections to any organization?"
"Fucking nothing, Reign," I snapped, immediately closing my eyes at my tone. I needed to get it together. I couldn't lose it. I couldn't talk to him like that.
"Alright, Repo," he said, his tone oddly calm. "I figured you weren't just making googly eyes at her," he said, shaking his head a little. "You guys got something going on?"
"Reign I know you said..."
"Fuck it," he said with a casual shrug. "Doesn't matter. What matters is you know her better than the rest of us. She said anything about old connections?"
"No, Reign. She's... quiet about her past."
"Shit," he said, slamming the door to the Explorer. "Now we gotta figure out if she ran because she was in trouble or ran because something is about to come down on us."
"I told her she wasn't gonna get a patch, Reign. I don't think she'd stick it out if this was some covert shit when I told her there was no chance to actually get in the ranks."
"So you think she ran because of trouble?"
"I don't know what the fuck to think," I admitted, raking a hand down my face. "She didn't act like someone in trouble."
"Yeah, but you told me yourself that she had some kind of training. And she was living behind a gate with a group of men who run guns. If there was anywhere she probably felt safe, it was in the compound."
"Yeah."
"Nothing else really makes sense at this point. This was the first time since she showed up that she went outside the compound alone. Maybe she ran into someone or saw someone, got spooked and ran. Otherwise, she'd take the fucking car, not park it in a lot, pay for parking, and take a train."
He had a good point. "Did she seem freaked when you asked her to get food?"
"No. She didn't even hesitate. I told her to get the shit you usually get, gave her cash, gave her keys, and she headed out." He was quiet as he got back on his bike. "Was she close with the other probies? Would they know more than you?"
"I dunno. They were competition, ya know? She hated Moose and Fox but seemed to get along with Duke and was friendly with Renny."
"But if they knew something they thought we should know about her past, they probably would have told us."
"Exactly. Especially Duke." Renny might too, but not until he got every single God damn detail he could. He was anal as fuck about things like that. But I guess when you had the fucked up childhood like he did, that shit made sense.
"Alright, let's get back to the compound and make sure. Doubt either would lie right to our faces to protect her when she's already gone. And gotta get one of the guys over here to deal with that mess," he said, waving a hand toward the SUV.
With that, we headed back to the compound.
Reign was as calmly in control as ever while I freaked out.
What if he was right? What if she ran? What if she had been running all along? What did that mean that she kept that kind of shit from me? Not to be a chick about it, but that was kind of screwed up that she hadn't trusted me with that. But, if I were being honest with myself, she shared very little with me. There had been little things here and there, usually after sex when we were just sitting with our own thoughts. She'd been facing away from me, watching the tree line, her back to my chest, when she admitted that her mom was locked up for some social security shit. It didn't sound much like a wound, but I hadn't been able to suss out if that was because she was trying to convince herself it didn't hurt or if it genuinely didn't.
Then when handing me tools one afternoon and I had commented on how much she knew about them, she'd laughed humorlessly and shook her head. "I dated a guy once who I thought was a mechanic."
"Thought?" I asked, turning my head from under the hood of the car to look at her.
"Yeah... he actually ran a chop shop. It was a bit of an ugly surprise when the cops informed me of that. But, before then, I had spent some time around the so-called mechanics and they taught me some stuff. They said it was important for people to know at least a little bit about how to take care of a car. They'd actually been pretty nice guys. Who'da thunk they'd be big criminals?"
"Honey..." I said, giving her a smile.
"What?"
"I'm a fucking one-percenter here..."
"Oh, ha," she'd said, shaking her head at herself like she had genuinely forgotten how The Henchmen made their money. "Yeah, I guess. I must just... have a thing for the bad boys then."
"So he never told you he wasn't working above-board?" I'd asked. "He got you wrapped up in his shit without you knowing what you were getting wrapped up in?" She'd shrugged, nodding. "Dick."
"Well, I mean. I can't be considered faultless there. I was naive."
"You liked the guy. You trusted him to be honest."
"Yeah, therein lied my mistake."
There was a kind of sadness in her tone that I didn't like, like she had convinced herself that trust was some kind of fault instead of a virtue. Only a real asshole made a woman feel that way. "Hey," I'd said, dropping the wrench I was holding and turning to look at her fully. "You can't just assume that everyone you meet is trying to fuck you over. You trusted, you had that shit thrown in your face. But that's on him, not you. You didn't do anything wrong."
"I don't think everyone is trying to fuck me over," she'd objected, but only half-heartedly. "It's just... it's easier to make people prove
they are trustworthy than just... automatically trust them without question."
"That's a pretty cynical way to live, Maze."
"Do you just... trust people?"
"I trust my brothers here. That's all I got."
"Even after the people who you and your uncle saw as brothers screwed you guys over?" she'd asked bluntly, surprising me. It was a topic I expected her to pussyfoot around like everyone else did. I appreciated that she didn't.
"They were disloyal. The men here, they've proved time and time again that brotherhood and the old ladies and the kids, they're more important than anything else."
"But did you trust them immediately when you came here?" At my sigh, she'd smiled. "So this is a 'do as I say, not as I do' kinda thing?"
"Maybe it's a 'because I fucking said so' thing."
"Oh, you think you can boss me around, huh?" she'd asked, head tilted, eyes challenging.
"Think I've done a pretty good job of that so far, don't you? Now why don't you be a good girl and hand me that ultra short gear wrench?" I'd asked, ducking under the hood again.
It didn't surprise me in the least when the God damn thing went sailing past my head, landing with a loud clank against the engine.
Nor did it surprise me that as I reached for it, I was smiling.
But that was the most she had ever really given me all at once. She hinted at other things, she gave me bits and pieces. She hated cologne. She liked watching documentaries. She once broke her leg in three places falling out of those trees she liked to hide in. And, apparently, she maneuvered crutches the way a newborn foal maneuvered their legs, meaning not well at all and with a lot of falling.
We parked the bikes outside the fence and Reign threw the keys at two of the guys standing around. "You two go to the train station. The Explorer is there. Clean it out and get it back here," he instructed, moving across the yard toward the door to a waiting Cash. "She paid for parking with a car full of groceries," he said, shaking his head.
"Well shit," Cash said, sighing.
"Renny, Duke, get your asses out here," Reign called into the door and all of ten seconds later, both men moved outside. "We need to know what you know about Maze that we might not."
"Is Ace alright?" was Duke's immediate question and I was reminded again why I was happy to have him on the team. He didn't immediately condemn Maze. And his knee-jerk reaction was to ask after her well-being.
"Fuck if we know. She's gone," Reign said, his tone a little dismissive, but his shoulders were tense.
"Gone?" Duke repeated, brows drawn together. "No fucking way. She wanted this more than the whole lot of us. And I can't speak for Renny or the recently excommunicated Moose and Fox, but I want this a whole fuckuva lot."
"That's why we're here. We need to know what you guys know. You live with her. You sleep near her. If anyone aside... aside from Repo," he said, giving me a brow raise and a smirk that any idiot could decipher, "it's you guys. What do you got?"
"She's got a sister," Renny supplied, making me start.
"What?" I barked before I could stop myself. She'd never said shit about a sister.
"Yeah," Renny shrugged. "She called her a fuckton of times the night of the BBQ. Apparently there was some issue with the sister's fiance cheating or some shit. She lives in the city."
Reign turned to me with a shrug. "Maybe her sister needed her?"
"So she just left groceries to rot in your truck at a train station?" I shot back, dubiously.
"I dunno. Bitches can be weird like that when the other needs her. Remember Lo when Summer went into labor?"
I felt my lips quirk up despite the pit in my stomach. I remembered that shit alright. Me and Cash had been in the waiting room of the hospital, Reign giving us a short update when Lo walked in with two rifles crossed over her back, completely oblivious to the fact that they were even there despite the worried looks all the nurses were giving her, until Cash walked over and removed them for her. Hell, Janie had showed up half an hour after that with Alex in toe, Janie bleeding profusely from her nose and Alex's lip swollen from, presumably, grappling practice.
He was right, women seemed to quite literally drop everything when another was in trouble.
"Alright. So this sister..." Reign started, "is there any way for us to get in contact with..."
The rest of his sentence drifted off when all of our attention went to the open gates where a behemoth black SUV with black-out windows came barreling to a stop, the engine barely getting a chance to cut off before the door was thrown open and a man jumped out.
"Who the fuck..." Reign started, reaching for the gun in the waistband in his jeans, me and Cash doing the same. Renny's hands curled into fists and Duke went for his knife.
The man was tall and black with a distinct boxer's build that he had dressed in slate gray slacks with a thin black plaid pattern and a black dress shirt, tucked in, black loafers and an expensive silver watch. It was a fucking ridiculous outfit given the heat, but he didn't even seem to be sweating.
It was Renny who spoke next as the man stopped advancing, jerking his chin up at our raised guns like they didn't intimidate him.
"She fucking lied to me!" he declared, sounding genuinely offended.
"The fuck you talking about?" Reign asked, not taking his eyes off the stranger.
"Maze. She lied to me about her sister. That number that was calling her? It was K.C.E Boxing Emporium."
"Start making some fucking sense or shut the fuck up," Reign demanded.
"She said her sister worked there when I grilled her about it. She lied."
"How the fuck do you know that, kid?" Cash asked.
"Because the guy who runs K.C.E Boxing Emporium is standing..."
"Right here," the man said in a deep, smooth voice. "Now lower the fucking guns and tell me where the fuck Maisy is."
Maisy?
Maisy?
Sixteen
Repo
I was the first to drop my gun. Mainly out of surprise.
"Who the fuck are you?"
"K."
Reign and Cash lowered their guns in unison. "K?" Cash asked. "As in the K and his disappearing women?"
"That'd be me."
K and his disappearing women.
His fucking disappearing women.
Jesus Christ.
"Hey, he was ready to send his woman to you a coupla years back," Cash supplied, nodding his head toward his brother.
"That's great. Where the fuck is Maisy?" he asked, looking directly at me for some reason.
"She's gone," I said, shaking my head. "And that's all you're gonna fucking get until you explain yourself to us."
"Repo," he said, nodding at me. "I fucking knew she had something going on with you."
"You sent her here, didn't you?" Reign asked.
"Did you assholes have to give her such a hard time?" K shot back, shaking his head at us.
"Alright, let's move this inside. It's hot as balls out here," Cash announced, holding the door open.
With that, everyone turned and headed into the clubhouse.
"Explain," Reign demanded, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning against the wall inside the door.
"Got a call from Maisy about four hours ago. She checked in with my receptionist and said she was bugging out. That's a serious call. It means the shit hit the fan in a big way and she had to run. She's instructed to toss the phone and board a train to Philly where she was to call me immediately after getting her bug-out bag. That should have happened almost two hours ago."
The shit hit the fan.
And it was serious.
"Who is she running from?" Reign was calm enough to ask while my fucking brain felt like it was swirling.
"The Kozlov brothers."
"Who the fuck are the Kozlov brothers?" I asked, the name meaning absolutely nothing to me.
"They arrange Green Card sort-of marriages, but a bit
more murky than that. Maisy worked as their book keeper for years without knowing who they were or what they were up to."
Jesus Christ.
She couldn't get a break.
The mom with the social security fraud.
The ex with the chop shop.
Then the bosses with the trafficking?
No fucking wonder she had trust issues.
"Until..."
"Until she realized they were laundering money through their legit businesses. She took the info to the cops who couldn't and wouldn't do shit. They pushed her in my direction."
"How long did you have her?" Reign asked.
"Six months." He gave us an almost wistful smile. "The Maze you know was nothing like the soft little blond that literally came crashing into my life six months ago."
So she was a blond. That was also news.
Obviously I knew she wasn't fucking naturally purple-haired, but she had dark brows and, well, no carpeting so there was no other way for me to tell.
I couldn't picture her blond. It didn't seem to suit her.
But then again, I guess I didn't fucking know her at all.
"Why us?" Reign asked, shaking his head.
"You're safe. You're a very insulated group. You hate the fucking Russians and wouldn't be too receptive to a couple of them sniffing around at all, let alone after one of your members. If you patched her in, you'd protect her."
"So you were just going to plant her here?" Reign asked, brows together. "Indefinitely? Just play-acting at being someone she wasn't for, what, the rest of her fucking life?"
"Better pretending to like riding that bike she used to curse seven ways to fucking Sunday than end up garroted in some alley somewhere, don't you think?"
"They're that dangerous?" Reign asked. "'Cause I gotta be honest, I ain't ever heard shit about them."
"Yeah, well from what I hear you're pretty happy with your arms dealing. You're not looking into selling poor Russian girls to the highest bidders. There's no reason you would know about them. They're a city problem anyway. They don't cross the border."
Repo (The Henchmen MC Book 4) Page 17