I need to call my mother, she said suddenly standing. She needs to know I'm safe. She needs to know all of this. Emily, wait.
But Emily was already pulling her phone from her apron pocket. And the second the screen lit up, her stomach dropped for an entirely different reason. "Fourteen missed calls, all from her mother. The most recent one, four minutes ago."
"Something's wrong," Emily whispered, hitting Redial with trembling fingers. It rang once, twice. On the third ring, someone picked up, but it wasn't her mother's voice. Emily Carter, a man's voice said, calm, almost pleasant.
The kind of calm that made every hair on Emily's arm stand straight up. Your mother's right here. She's fine for now. The phone nearly slipped from Emily's shaking hand.
Who is this? Where's my mom? Let me talk to her. To her?
That depends entirely on you. The man's voice stayed level, almost bored, like he was discussing the weather instead of holding a woman hostage. You have something that belongs to us. Or rather, your father did 23 years ago, and we have reason to believe he was foolish enough to leave it somewhere you might one day find.
Bring it to us, and your mother walks away untouched. Involve the bikers. Involve the police. And I promise you, Emily, you will spend the rest of your life understanding exactly what your father's stubbornness cost the people he loved.
I don't have anything. I don't even know what you're talking about. "Then I suggest," the man said softly, "you find out quickly." The line went dead.
Emily stood frozen, phone still pressed against her ear, the dial tone buzzing uselessly into the silence of the room. Victor was already on his feet reading the horror on her face before she even managed to speak. Emily, what happened? "They have my mom," she said, voice barely a whisper and then louder cracking apart at the edges.
They have my mom, Victor. They have her. And they said, if I don't bring them something, my father hid. "They're going to..."
She couldn't finish the sentence. She didn't need to. Victor was already moving toward the door, shouting something to the main room in a voice Emily had never heard from him before. Sharp, commanding, absolutely without mercy.
"Bear, Marcus, everyone up now. We've got a hostage situation." It had just become personal. The room outside erupted into motion boots hitting the floor.
Voices overlapping someone grabbing a set of keys off a hook by the door. Rosa appeared in the doorway of the small room rifle already off her shoulder and in her hands her earlier calm entirely gone. "Victor, talk to me. What do we know?"
"They've got Laura Carter, Emily's mother." Whoever's running this operation just went straight for the throat. Victor's hands were shaking now too. Emily noticed, not from fear, but from a fury so old and so deep.
It had clearly been waiting 23 years for a target to finally land on. Victor. Emily grabbed his arm, forcing him to look at her. They said if I bring them whatever my father hid, they'll let her go.
What did he hide? Where is it? "I don't know," Victor admitted, and the honesty in his voice was somehow worse than a lie would have been. He never told me where.
He said the fewer people who knew, the safer it would be. I only know it exists. I don't know what it is and I don't know where. Then how are we supposed to save her?
Emily's voice broke into something close to a scream. Months, no, years of buried grief, and now sudden sharp terror pouring out all at once. You promised him you'd protect me. You promised him you'd protect me.
You promised. What good is that promise if my mother dies because of a secret none of us can even find? Victor's face went pale, the accusation landing exactly where it was aimed. For a moment, he looked less like the unshakable president of a motorcycle club and more like a man watching a second promise slip through his fingers in real time.
I am not going to let that happen, he said low and fierce. Not to her, not to you. "Not again." "Again?"
Emily caught the word instantly. What do you mean again? Victor's eyes flickered just for a second toward Rosa. Some silent exchange passing between them that Emily couldn't read.
There's something else you need to know, Victor said slowly. Something I should have told you the moment I sat down across from you tonight. Emily's stomach turned to ice. "What?"
The night your father disappeared, Victor said. I was supposed to be with him. We were meeting to move the evidence somewhere safer, I was 15 minutes late. Victor...
Fifteen minutes, he repeated. And the guilt in his voice was old and worn smooth like a stone carried in a pocket for two decades. By the time I got there, all I found was his bike on the shoulder of the road and blood on the seat. If I hadn't stopped for gas.
If I had left five minutes earlier... You don't know that would have changed anything, Emily said. But even as the words left her mouth, she understood with sudden and painful clarity exactly what she was looking at. A man who had spent 23 years trying to atone for 15 minutes.
He could never get back. Maybe not, Victor said. But I have spent every day since telling myself that the least I could do was make sure I was never late again. And right now, Emily, your mother is somewhere out there because I let this get out of control tonight.
And I am not I am not going to lose another person I promised to protect. The room around them had gone quiet. Every rider now armored up. Engines already turning over outside waiting.
Marcus appeared in the doorway, his earlier hostility toward Emily entirely gone, replaced by grim readiness. Victor Duke traced the call. It bounced through a relay, but he thinks he's got a location. An old grain facility off Route 12.
20 minutes out. That's Voss land, Victor said, and something dark passed behind his eyes at the name. Voss, Emily repeated. "Who's Voss?"
"Richard Voss." Victor's voice had gone flat, controlled in the way of a man forcing himself not to feel the rage clawing up his throat. The businessman your father was building his case against. I should have known he'd be the one behind tonight.
He's been waiting 23 years for the right moment to make sure nothing your father found ever sees daylight. "He's still around after everything?" Emily's hands curled into fists. "He got away with it for 23 years?"
Every year he gets more powerful and every year it gets harder to touch him. Victor said, "But your mother is inside one of his buildings right now, and that is the one mistake that man is about to regret for the rest of his life." Emily grabbed Victor's arm again, this time not in accusation, but in desperation. "I'm coming with you."
"Absolutely not." Victor's answer was instant. "It's too dangerous. She's my mother."
Emily's voice cracked apart entirely, now raw and furious and terrified all at once. You don't get to decide this for me, Victor. Not tonight. Not after everything you just told me.
I lost a father I never even got to meet because of these people. I am not losing my mother, too. While I sit safely in some back room waiting for news, Victor stared at her and something in his face, some flicker of recognition made Emily wonder just for a second if he was seeing her father in that exact moment. The same stubborn refusal to stand aside while people he loved were in danger.
You stay in the truck, Victor finally said, voice tight. You do exactly what I tell you when I tell you, or so help me, I will personally carry you back here myself. Are we clear? "Crystal," Emily said, already moving toward the door.
Rosa fell into step beside her, pressing something small and cold into Emily's hand. A folding pocketknife worn smooth with age. "Your father's," Rosa said simply. He left it here once years ago and never came back for it.
"Feels right that you should have it now." Emily's fingers closed around it so tightly the edges bit into her palm. A strange comfort blooming in her chest even as terror clawed at every other part of her. Outside the compound had transformed into something out of a war movie.
Engines roaring to life one after another. Riders checking weapons with the kind of practice calm that came from having done this before. Headlights cutting through the dark like a small army assembling in the dead of night. Victor swung on to his bike and Emily climbed into the cab of an old pickup truck beside Marcus, who'd been assigned reluctantly to drive her.
"You're really his daughter," Marcus said, glancing at her sideways as he started the engine. "Same stubborn look in your eyes he used to get right before he did something insane." "Is that a compliment or a warning?" Marcus said, pulling out behind the line of motorcycles.