Page 1 of Offside Angel

1

ZANE

Finding her looked different in my head.

In my head, I never followed Mira through the water-stained hallways of some pay-by-the hour motel.

In my head, she is already at home with me, and two horrible weeks haven’t passed, and we’re tangled in my sheets, fucking for the hundredth time like the darker parts of life don’t even exist.

But this isn’t happening in my head.

This is real.

The private investigator I hired woke me up with a phone call at two in the morning to tell me he had a lead. “Sunshine Ray’s, room 315.”

“You’re sure?” I asked, already sliding out of bed and pulling on the jeans I shucked off a few measly hours ago. Sunshine Ray’s—that’s a motel just outside the city. I can be there in half an hour. “You laid eyes on her this time?”

“Black hair, legs for days. It’s your woman.”

Forgive me for having my doubts, but “my woman” has allegedly been spotted in southern California, Utah, New Mexico, even as far east as Austin, Texas. None of them panned out. No matter how fast I ran there or how long I searched, I never found her.

Aiden has been at Jace’s or Reeves’s house more than he’s been at home. I’ve missed more practices in the last two weeks than in the last six years combined. I’m running on fucking fumes and clinging to every tiny lead.

But this time is different.

This time… I saw her.

It was a glimpse from the motel parking lot—silky black hair whipping around a corner with an ice bucket under her arm—but it’s the closest I’ve been to Mira in two weeks.

I stalk down the hallway, studying every room number. They’re not in any kind of order, as far as I can tell. By the looks of the rust brown stains on the carpet and the patched-over holes in the walls, the front office has good reason to make the layout as confusing as possible. If all of their best clients get arrested in what I have to assume are frequent raids, they’d go out of business.

Room 629… Room 428… Room 135.

I’m about to turn around and force the gangly man behind the front desk to take me to Room 315 himself… when, suddenly, there it is.

It’s at the end of the second floor, wedged between a maintenance closet and the back stairs down to the parking lot. The window is closed tight, but there are muffled voices coming through the thin door.

I press my ear to the warped wood.

There are shuffling noises, heavy breathing. Then a hard, quick slapping sound.

“Stop fighting,” a man growls. “Let me choke you.”

Mira is supposed to be alone. In the few emails she’s sent to Taylor, she hasn’t mentioned being with anyone else.

But I don’t think. Don’t hesitate.

I just step back, lower my shoulder, and plow through the cheap door. It’s there one second, gone the next, replaced by a view of the queen-sized motel bed through the shattered frame.

A woman is on her back along the end of the bed, her head tipped over the side, mouth open, a cheap polyester dress twisted up high over her hips. A naked man is standing over her, with a dick not capable of choking anyone clutched in his tight fist.

“Who the hell are you?!” he gasps, twisting away to give me a full view of his pale, pimpled ass. “If you’re the police, you have to announce yourself first!”

I ignore the moron and—oh, fucking hell. Her hair is red.

Her hair is red.

Copper-colored tresses cascade over the side of the bed to the threadbare carpet as the woman gawks at me from upside down. There’s a massive tattoo along the woman’s thigh and over her hip.

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