Page 33 of Sly (Dragon Riders MC 5)
“Well,” Knuckles said with a yawn, “guess he finally understands how we feel about our girls now.”
Ash snickered. “Does that mean you’re going to get off our asses for ‘selling out’ and ‘settling down?’”
I rolled my eyes. “I haven’t moved in with the chick or anything. But yes. She’s becoming important to me.”
Knuckles made kissing sounds over the headset while the guys had a chuckle at my expense. And while any other situation would’ve been grounds to choke him until his eyes popped out, I actually found it a bit funny myself.
However, once I pulled into the parking lot of the warehouse where Chains and I had been attacked, my smile quickly faded away.
I cut the engine to my bike. “I hear you guys in the distance. See you in a few.”
I shut down the call and slid my helmet off as darkness settled around the abandoned place. There were so many skid marks in the mud that I didn’t even know where to begin. I sat there, straddling my bike as the guys pulled in. One by one, in a heroic roar of justice, they filed in and lined up beside me. Their gazes filtering over the ground.
Clocking the same skid marks I was.
“I’ll get pictures of it all,” Ash said.
Link hopped off his bike. “Sounds like a plan. Knuckles, you stay with him. Take pictures of the perimeter and alert me if you find anything at all. The rest of you? Inside, with me. I want Sly to walk us through exactly what happened.”
I nodded. “I can do that.”
I followed Bowser and Link inside where I slowly walked them through what happened from my point of view. I showed them the hallway Chains and I had inhabited when they rolled up on us. I pointed in the direction of every sound I recalled and where it came from relative to where I had been hunkered down.
I didn’t leave a damn thing out of my story, no matter what it made me look like.
And when we made our way back outside, Ash trotted up to us.
“So, we got a pretty strong lead,” he said.
Link blinked. “Why do I get the feeling there’s a catch?”
I scoffed. “Probably because there is.”
Ash turned his phone around. “I’ve got this tracking application a friend of mine developed. Well, is currently developing. Anyway, not the point. The point is: I’ve been using it periodically to try and track Skeleton’s cell phone. But it hasn’t been active in months.”
Bowser put his hands on his lips. “Let me guess: you got a trace on it.”
Ash held up his phone to the man’s face. “See that blinking dot? It came up on my screen a few minutes ago and has been still ever since.”
My head fell back. “Great. So, either he’s fucking with us—”
Link jumped in. “—or he wants us to find him.”
Knuckles chuckled. “Who’s up for a little night ride, fellas?”
We wasted no time in hopping on our bikes and making Ash the leader of this brigade. I took one last peek over my shoulder at the warehouse behind me, then brought up the end of the line as we made our way back onto the road. Ash swerved down back country roads and tore through patches of fields spotted along either side of the roads, and part of me wanted to know where exactly we were going.
But not knowing kept my senses alive and alert.
And that was the kind of sensory alertness I needed to make it out of this scenario alive.
I made a promise. I have to make sure I keep it.
As soon as Ash pulled off the road, I saw his finger jutted out. He pointed at an abandoned house that sat about a quarter of a mile off the beaten path with the yard grown up so much I knew there were snakes and other shit lying in wait. The dull red shutters against the moldy white house sat cockeyed against the exterior, and the front door hanging wide open left nothing to the imagination.
But something didn’t sit right with me.
So, I engaged everyone’s Bluetooth headset built into all of our helmets and spoke.
“Anyone get the feeling this is too easy?” I asked.
Link snickered. “Yeah. Pretty much all of us.”
“You wanna do the honors, Sly?” Bowser asked.
I parked my bike. “Ash. You're with me. We’ll clear the house and search for Ben.”
Ash paused. “Actually, the pinging is coming from around the back of the house.”
I looked around at the guys before we all swung our legs over our bikes. We removed our helmets and had our hands on the butts of our guns as we cleared both sides of the house. The weeds and grass of the front lawn came up to my hip as we eased our way around to the back. And when we all got back there, we stood as we stared at a storage container back at the edge of the property.
