CHASING SUNSHINE: GODS OF CHAOS MC (BOOK THIRTEEN)

by Honey Palomino

  “Tell me about school, Sage,” I said, standing up to look out the window as I tried to draw her out.

  She took a deep breath, her eyes trained on me.

  “Well, it’s just…a lot. It’s overwhelming. It never stops, really. When you’re in the thick of it, there’s barely time to eat.”

  I spotted the same red car from yesterday and the same woman sitting in the driver’s seat, just under the same large oak tree it was under before.

  “Mm-hmm…”

  I turned, nodding to Sage, looking her over.

  It was clear she didn’t trust me. And yet, she’d returned.

  That meant something.

  Something I can’t ignore.

  “Sage,” I said. “Forgive me, but will you please excuse me a moment? I’ll be right back.”

  She blinked, but nodded politely. “Of course.”

  I walked out of the office, leaving her sitting on the couch.

  I had one thing to take care of and then, well…I’m confident everything is going to fall into place perfectly.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  COLT

  Making love to Sage under the stars was one of the highlights of my life. We’d laid there until the sun came up over the horizon, throwing ribbons of shades of pink and orange over Sage’s skin, renewing my desire for her and causing me to make love to her all over again, with the added risk of being discovered by possible early-bird tourists. Sunrise on the Oregon coast is famous with travelers and locals, alike. Anyone could have spotted us without the cover of darkness.

  Sage didn’t seem to mind, though.

  She’d wrapped those milky thighs around me once more and welcomed me in all over again.

  It was like a home I never knew existed. Like I’d found something I’d been searching for without really knowing what I wanted. What I needed.

  After following her home and heading back to the hotel myself, I’d spent the entire day hearing her moans in my ears, feeling the scrape of her nails on my back, throbbing painfully as my body remembered the way she wrapped around me and held on so tightly that I never wanted her to release me.

  She left me wondering how I ever breathed without her.

  Me. Ex-con. Felon. Murderer.

  If the Gods knew what was going on in my head, they’d have a field day making fun of me. Or, maybe not. I’d never seen a man love his woman as fiercely as Slade loved Diana.

  Fuck. It doesn’t matter what they think, though. We’re way fucking past that. Now, I’m off the deep end, and there’s no turning back.

  After returning to the hotel this morning, I snuck back in before anyone else had woken up. Slade saw me dressed, though, and I lied by telling him I’d gone for an early breakfast. My hair was a mess, the curls I’d been cursed with completely out of control from the effects of the sea-spray and he took one look at me and laughed.

  “Sure, whatever,” he said, shaking his head.

  Instead of sticking around for an interrogation, I took off again, this time to actually hunt for breakfast, because I was absolutely starved. Skipping the pathetic excuse for a continental breakfast in the lobby, I opted for the diner down the street we’d frequented a few times. It didn’t seem right to invade Sage’s kitchen again. Not after we’d spent the night secretly wrapped up in each other’s arms. There was no way in hell I’d be able to keep my hands to myself if she was within arm’s reach.

  No, I needed a little time to recover my strength. To put on my poker face.

  I thought I’d find it by myself over bacon and eggs, but I should have known better. One by one, a steady stream of sleepy-eyed Gods showed up to the diner, not bothering to ask if they could join me, and before I knew it — after the first round of coffee — my little meditation session had turned into a raucous morning meeting.

  “Alright, listen,” Riot said. “We need to amp things up. Apply some pressure. I’ve got my friends looking into a lot of different angles, and I’m expecting some background reports today.”

  “On who?” I asked.

  “The cop, MacGregor, Mac, he calls himself. The neighbor, Finn. Slade caught him sniffing around and he’s just downright weird, to be honest. He may not be our guy, but something isn’t right there. Mainly, I’m interested in the cops. I contacted the Chief and he seemed a little surprised, but it was obvious he was going to protect his guy. Colt tried to shake him up with the element of surprise yesterday and he left even more confident the guy’s hiding something.”

  “Yep,” I nodded. “So we wait on the reports. What can we do in the meantime?”

  “I think it’s time to put a tail on Mac.”

  “I can do that,” I replied.

  “No,” Ryder said. “He’s already seen you. Another one of us.”

  “Slade?” Riot asked.

  “Sure, man,” Slade said, shoving a piece of bacon in his mouth. “I’m always up for bashing some fucking corrupt cop’s heads.”

  “You’re gonna follow the dude and report back,” Riot said. “No heads will be bashed unless you check with us first, got it?”

  “Well, you know I can’t fucking agree to that, but I catch your drift.”

  Riot rolled his eyes. “Maybe someone should go with you.”

  “I’ll take Wreck,” he said. “He’s into bashing heads too.”

  “Goddammit,” Riot said, shaking his head and laughing.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CORINNE

  Something doesn’t feel right.

  I tried to talk Sage out of going but that didn’t happen. She was convinced if he got to know her, if she opened up to him a little, he might open up to her, HIPAA laws be damned.

  What was I going to do? Restrain her? Hell, her mother was missing. I knew we had to turn over every stone. And yeah, well, this was all my idea, wasn’t it?

  But I just wanted her to go to one appointment, not show up again the next day. She was taking it too far.

  And that’s what bothered me.

  I was convinced that was what was causing the pit in the bottom of my stomach, too.

  “It’s okay,” I whispered to myself. I looked at the clock and saw it was a little past one o’clock. She should be out in an hour and then we’ll be on our way to pick up Maddy from school at three and everything will be fine.

  “Fine, just fine,” I murmured. “Everything’s fine…”

  A sudden rap on my window caused me to damn near jump out of my skin.

  When I saw that Leo, Sage’s therapist, was standing there with a friendly smile on his face and giving me a little wave, that pit in the bottom of my stomach grew to the size of a baseball.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  SAGE

  Corinne and I sat side by side in front of Leo’s desk, like two girls in trouble in the principal’s office.

  “Have some tea, ladies,” he offered, setting two cups down in front of us, before sitting down across from us with cup of his own. Blank faced, he peered out at us, his eyes squinting, curious.

  Nervously, I took a sip of tea, my fingers trembling as I brought the cup to my lips.

  We were busted. That much was clear.

  Corinne sat silently, her chin lifted in a defiant gesture, ready to either accept full responsibility or deny all allegations, I wasn’t sure.

  Leo just watched us for a moment, letting the awkwardness sit heavily in the air between us.

  “So, ladies, do you want to tell me why you were following me to the hotel?”

  Corinne stared back, continuing to stonewall him.

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it?” I said, suddenly realizing this was ridiculous. Why keep up an act? “I wanted to make sure you were the same person my Mom was seeing. It’s the same reason I came here.”

  “But not why you came here today.”

  “Well, yeah,” I shrugged. “Why not?”

  “So, you were hoping I’d break the law and tell you what I know about your mother, despite what I stated to you clearly yesterday?�
�

  “Pretty much,” I replied.

  I looked over at Corinne, who’d grabbed her tea and was sipping it, watching us both carefully. Half-irritated she wasn’t piping in, I continued.

  “Look, obviously, I’m not going to give up looking for my mother. You wouldn’t either. I was just hoping…”

  “…hoping?” he asked, raising a brow. “Hoping for what?”

  “For a miracle,” Corinne finally interrupted, setting her cup down on the table next to her. “Can’t you see she’s hurting? Desperate? Nobody will help us. We’ve looked everywhere. The cops don’t seem to care. We were just taking things into our own hands. Is that so wrong?”

  I looked over at her admiringly. Fuck, I loved her.

  “Yeah,” I agreed, taking another sip of tea. It was an Earl Grey and it reminded me of a cup I’d had at a hotel in Portland once. Strong, but not overbearing, with just a hint of bitterness.

  Leo nodded silently. “I see,” he finally said, before standing up slowly. “Ladies, if you’ll excuse me, I need to step out for a moment, but I’ll be right back.”

  We nodded, watching him leave.

  I turned to Corinne as the door latched. “I can’t believe he pulled you out of the car.”

  “He didn’t pull,” she laughed. “He asked nicely.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I guess he recognized me,” she said. “Although,” she paused, staring up at the ceiling as she contemplated things, “I don’t know if that’s the best move for a therapist. It seems, I don’t know, just weird.”

  “Yeah,” I said, nodding slowly. I looked over at her as she took another sip of her tea. “Where do you think he went?”

  “I’m not sure,” she replied, putting the cup down and staring into her cup. She shook her head and ran her hand through her hair and then looked over at me, cocking her head. She took a deep breath, looked at the door and then stood up and walked over to it.

  Her fingers wrapped around the doorknob, attempting to turn it.

  “It’s locked,” she murmured, turning to me.

  “Locked?” I asked, holding my cup mid-air. “Why is it locked?”

  “Stop,” she said.

  “Stop what?” I asked.

  “The tea! Stop drinking the tea!” She cried, knocking the cup from my hand. It crashed onto the hardwood floor, shattering into pieces at my feet, warm tea puddling amongst the remains of the mug.

  “Corinne!” I said, standing up, my knees suddenly weak, the room blurring and spinning.

  “Sage, sit down,” she muttered, guiding me back into the chair, right before she collapsed into her own. She looked over at me, her head a bobbing blur.

  “Oh, fuck,” I mumbled, my head falling back, the entire world becoming a big blur that turned into complete darkness.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  MADDY

  Ethan waited at the curb with me.

  “I can give you a ride home if you want,” he offered.

  Sage and Corinne were half an hour late.

  “No, they’ll show up,” I said. “Corinne’s always late.”

  “She seems cool,” he said. “From what you’ve told me.”

  “Yeah, she’s like my cool aunt or something,” I said. “I like her.”

  I pulled my coat around my torso, staring down the street as I tried to spot Corinne’s car. Or Sage’s car. But then I thought, what I wouldn’t give to see Mom’s car round the corner, her happy little face peering over the steering wheel absolutely stoked to see me.

  I wonder if that’ll ever happen again…

  “I’d love to meet your sister, too.”

  “If she ever shows up,” I muttered, growing impatient and cold, very cold. I contemplated letting Ethan give me a ride. It wouldn’t hurt anything, really, but I just knew that as soon as I got into his car, Sage would show up and then we’d have to circle back and it would be a whole thing.

  I just wasn’t in the mood for a thing.

  And I didn’t want the first time Ethan met my family to be a thing.

  I wanted it to be right. Natural.

  The way it’s supposed to be — you know, with sweaty palms in the threshold of our house with Mom quizzing him and repeating my curfew time twenty times and embarrassing the hell out of me.

  I wanted that.

  Another slice of my heart broke as I realized it was just another thing I wouldn’t get to do with Mom. The more days that went by, the more my brain seemed to want to convince my heart that I needed to realize that everything I’d imagined for my future just might not work out the way I thought it would.

  I never realized how much a part of my future Mom was. She colored everything in my life. Her absence only highlighted that.

  I turned to Ethan, longing for a little bit of light in my dreary day.

  “Sure you don’t want a ride?” he asked.

  “No, thank you. You know what? I’m going to call Colt.”

  “Colt?” he asked. “The biker?”

  “Yeah, I bet he’ll know where Sage is and why she isn’t answering her phone.” I’d already called both Sage and Corinne six times each and sent three texts.

  I pulled up his number and he answered on the first ring.

  “Hey Maddy.”

  “Colt, hey,” I said, smiling. He’d insisted we trade numbers when we first met and now I was thankful to hear his voice.

  “What’s going on? You okay?”

  “I’m okay, yeah,” I said. “I was just wondering if you were with Sage. She was supposed to pick me up half an hour ago.”

  “She’s not with me,” he said, his voice deepening. “She’s not answering your calls?”

  “Nope. Neither is Corinne.”

  “Shit,” he muttered.

  “Yeah, I don’t know…”

  “Where are you? I’m on my way.”

  “I’m at school. Colt, you don’t —.”

  “— ten minutes.”

  The line went dead and I couldn’t help but laugh and shake my head.

  Ethan looked at me expectantly. “Well?”

  “Colt’s on his way,” I shrugged.

  He nodded, slowly. “So, should I stay or should I go?”

  I ran through my head a scenario where I had to introduce Colt to Ethan and it just didn’t appeal to me at all.

  “You know what? He’ll be here in just a few minutes. I’m fine. You go ahead and go home. I’ll call you later.”

  Ethan pulled me into his arms and hugged me tight, his lips landing in my hair.

  “Okay,” he said. “If you say so. You call me if you need me. I’m happy to turn around if he doesn’t show up.”

  “He’ll show up,” I smiled. “But thank you.”

  He brushed his lips against mine gently and my heart skipped a beat. He flashed me his blindly handsome smile and walked to his car nearby. I watched as he drove away, waving at me until he was out of view.

  I heard Colt before I saw him, but he roared around the corner like he was a man on a mission.

  Apparently, that mission was me.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  COLT

  The ten minutes it took to grab an extra helmet and race to Maddy’s school was enough time for every bad thought I could come up with to invade my brain and send me into a panic of what-ifs.

  “Any word?” I asked Maddy, as I roared up to her.

  “Nope,” she said, taking the helmet from me and looking at me curiously.

  “You ever rode on the back of a bike?”

  “Nope,” she said, sliding the helmet on her head. “But I’m so down for it.”

  “Okay,” I laughed. I helped her fasten the chin strap and then showed her how to swing her leg over and hop on behind me.

  “Hold on tight,” I said, and we roared off towards her house. The entire way there I just hoped like hell this was some big mistake and Corinne and Sage were at home with their phones turned down or something.

  Anythin
g but the worst of my fears.

  Sage’s car was there, which only half satisfied me. They’d been leaving the house together in Corinne’s car lately, so it didn’t mean a thing.

  Maddy and I ran into the house together and I knew she was thinking the same thing I was. When we saw the house was empty, we both looked at each other with dread.

  “Shit,” I said. “Well, they’ll turn up.” I didn’t want to scare her, but fuck, I was worried.

  “What do we do?” she asked.

  “I’m going to make a phone call,” I said. “Be right back.”

  I stepped outside and called Riot.

  “Hey Colt,” he said. “What’s up?”

  “I need you brother. I need you now.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  FINN

  I watched as the Gods drove up a few minutes after Colt. I like Colt, I’d decided. He seemed kind and treated the girls with respect. I could tell Sage liked him. I bet Frannie would have liked him, too.

  I listened in from my office with Sunshine laying on the floor next to me. As soon as the other Gods showed up, Colt filled them in.

  “Thanks for coming, guys. Sage and Corinne aren’t answering their phones and they were supposed to pick up Maddy from school and never showed up,” Colt said.

  “How long ago was that?” Ryder asked.

  “An hour ago now,” Maddy replied. I felt bad for her. She sounded scared.

  And what did they mean, the girls were missing? I’d just seen them. In fact, I’d followed them. But it was getting late and I needed to come home and take care of Sunshine. I left them after Corinne went in with the shrink.

  Damn.

  To hear they’d not picked up Maddy was very concerning.

  I kept listening, my head spinning.

  “We found out some other information,” Riot said. “We got those background checks back. Turns out, not everyone around here is who they say they are.”