Page 91 of Creed

Unknown: See you soon.

I stare at the phone, unseeing for a moment.

What. The. Fuck.

Slowly, I set the phone down, mindful not to launch it across the room, and lift my head, my eyes snapping to Creed’s crazed ones. His blue irises are downright menacing with the promise of a painful death. I can’t say I feel much different right now.

“What the fuck?” I whisper, unsure of what else to say.

“She—” he covers his mouth, his hand swiping furiously over his lips. “She fucking suffered because of me, Ri.” He resumes pacing while gripping his hair in tight fists, tugging hard.

Oh, fuck. He’s spiraling again.

I shoot off the couch, my mind immediately snapping into caretaker and storm tamer mode and grip my best friend by his shoulders and give him a single, firm shake. Now is not the time to play the fucking blame game. “We already had this talk, Creed. Stop. Focus.”

His wide eyed stare volleys on mine before he nods robotically. “She can’t—” he points at the phone again. “She can’t see that. And we,” he motions between us, “will not treat her any differently. She deserves to fucking heal and she can’t do that when she’s constantly reliving her past and looking over her shoulder.”

I nod in agreement. She’s easily the best person I’ve ever met besides my bandmates—most of them, anyway—and I’m in awe of just how wonderful she turned out to be as a human being, despite how all that she endured throughout her life. Collins deserves all things happy, and I stand by my promise to give that to her as her self-designated new best friend.

Creed finally takes a calming breath and flops onto the couch, worrying his bottom lips between his teeth so hard I’m afraid it’ll bruise or split. I sit next to him again and without looking at me, he starts speaking while staring at a fixed point on the floor. “When we stop for food I’m going to get her a new phone. The only numbers she’ll have are mine, yours, Asher’s, and Bear and Ayla’s. I know she’s got contacts that she spoke to at Viper, but we need to keep her contact with them nearly non-existent because we don’t know where Guy is.”

He picks up her phone and starts scrolling through old messages, his rage starting to reach a boiling point.

“He made it seem like he found her and has been following her. These pictures are proof that he’s watching her or at least has someone with eyes on her. From what I’ve read, he’s a wealthy, well-respected guy in the community. A snake. A fucking wolf in sheep’s clothing. I’m hoping our spontaneous trip to see her brother and the trip straight here was enough to throw him off, though with powerful men comes powerful resources, so I doubt the harassment and stalking will stop.

He nods to himself, seeming to come to some internal conclusion. “We need to be smart about this, Ri. He’s clearly a dangerous man and he even fucking threatened you from your trip to the mall with Stardust earlier this week. We need to get this to someone who can try and locate where these messages are coming from and see if we can pinpoint that it’s actually her former foster father who’s been sending them.”

I nod again, knowing he’s right. We both think for a minute before we look at each other, and I’m pretty sure we just found the same answer to our unspoken question. Without a word spoken, Creed locks Collins’ screen again and pulls his own from his jean pocket, then dials and holds the phone out as it rings on speaker phone.

“Miss me already, Brother?” A deep voice chuckles out by way of greeting. I instantly recognize the voice as Collins’ older brother, Asher.

“I need a favor,” Creed rushes out, not bothering to play into Asher’s teasing words.

“What is it? What’s happened?” Asher snaps, his demeanor shifting, instantly alert.

Creed sighs before he speaks again. “I need you or one of those brothers you work for to look into an unknown number that’s been sending threatening texts to C—me.” He stumbles over the last words before he corrects himself. I lower my brows at him.

What the fuck is he doing?

He looks at me and shakes his head twice as if to say shut up and let me do the talking. I have no idea what he’s up to, not telling Asher that his own sister is the one being harassed. I know they hadn’t had contact in years, and Asher’s stayed out of the tabloids since he left the MLB years ago, but I briefly wonder if there’s a deeper reason for switching the narrative. But it’s a story I’ll ask about later. Right now we’ve got other problems to deal with.

The image of Collins being fucking duct taped or zip-tied to her bed covered in blood and bruises flashes through my mind. Nausea churns in my stomach at the thought and I squeeze my eyes shut as tears threaten to rise when I think about the sweet, beautiful girl who’s turned my whole world upside down in the span of a week.

I feel Creed’s hand cup the back of my neck and he squeezes once in comfort. The action is grounding and I suck in a deep breath. He might be a bit unhinged at times, but he always seems to know when to flip the switch to care for others. I open my eyes but keep them focused on the ground.

“I’m just a bodyguard right now, but Lachlan is the tech guy. Let me see if I can patch him into the conversation?”

“Please,” Creed says, his knees starting to bounce uncontrollably.

“Okay, hang on and I’ll call him.” The line goes quiet and we sit there waiting. Since we can’t both start spiraling, I reach over and squeeze his knee once. Instantly, he slows his bouncing. He eyes me and gives me a barely-there grateful smile but it drops the moment an unfamiliar foreign voice comes over the phone.

“Mister Saint James?” A male asks, his voice deep and crisp with a bit of a Scottish lilt.

“Uh—y-yes.” I know he usually finds it funny when others call him such a formal name, but right now there’s no humor to be found on his face.

“I’m Lachlan McTavish.” He introduces himself. “Sutton told me you’ve got an issue with an anonymous number contacting you with messages that are threatening in nature?”

I’ve heard about the McTavish family in Northern California. Creed had mentioned they own a nightclub, but I was curious about why they needed security so I looked them up. Rumor has it that they’re part of some kind of Scottish Mafia family, though nothing has ever been confirmed. I’m not one to judge someone based on their looks alone, and I’d only seen the one brother earlier this morning, but that scary, scarred-up fucker definitely fits the bill for belonging to an underbelly mob or something.

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