Page 54 of Coyote

“Roger that.”

The phone went dead in my hand when he disconnected. I brought it down and stuffed it in my pocket. I had a bad feeling about all this. I looked at the bit of blue fabric Ruby had gotten hold of—it looked like a piece of a scarf. I wondered about that, was the person who took her trying to gag her so she wouldn’t shout out?

I was still pacing and worrying when Breaker came barreling down the stairs. “Did you find her?”

“In the last three minutes? No, I didn’t.”

“Sorry, man. I thought you’d find her in the garage or something.”

“I searched the whole house, the exterior and her vehicle. Something’s seriously wrong, Breaker. We need to find her, someone’s got her.”

His eyes went to the piece of fabric I held scrunched in my hand, “Any colors? Could it be gang-related? Other than Twisted Metal we ain’t got no beef with anyone.”

I opened my palm, it was navy blue with white stars. My mind flashed to Cyclops, that fucker always wore a confederate flag bandana, fucking redneck piece of trash.

“Cyclops,” I stated.

“You sure man?” Breaker said uncertainly. Given the uneasy truce between the Slayers and Twisted Metal, accusing one of their members of kidnapping was pretty serious business.

“That bastard tried to scare Bethany yesterday when we were headed to the clubhouse.”

“Damn. You have a ring camera on your door, right?”

I nodded and went to my laptop, which was sitting on the desk in the living room. “Yeah, I was so panicked I didn’t think to check it.”

We watched the front door camera for a while, there was nothing to see but a beaten-up white panel van driving past. I was about to tell Breaker that it was hopeless, when I saw the van go past again, and then slow down. It was clear that whoever was driving was checking out my house.

“Shit!” I exclaimed.

“You got eyes on the back of your home?” Breaker asked.

“Sure,” I was onto it already and had gotten the footage loaded up before the words left his mouth. Bethany had disconnected the security alarm to let Ruby go out to do her business, that was time-stamped just under fifteen minutes ago. The footage had no sound, but Bethany was standing there watching the little dog and checking something on her phone. I didn’t know what she was looking at, but she was laughing. Then something must have distracted her because she looked towards the gate. She stuffed her phone in her bathrobe pocket and opened the gate then—

“Fuck! Who’s that?” I shouted. Suddenly a large form barreled through the gate and tried to grab her, I couldn’t see the face and they were wearing all black. Ruby rushed over trying to stop him. The man kicked her away and she rushed for him again, clearly taking a bite before she was roughly thrown into the corner of the yard where I’d found her cowering. With that, the man dragged Bethany out.

“Fucking hell,” Breaker said.

“I put that tracker app on her phone. If she still has her cell phone with her, I might be able to use it to guide us to her location.”

Breaker yawned, opening his mouth wide enough to make me worry that his jaw was going to unhinge. Then he stretched his arms above his head until his back popped. Watching me pull up the tracking app, he mumbled, “It’s almost like you don’t even need me on this one.”

I knew he was joking about that. Shock roiled through my gut when I realized how far they’d gone. “Shit, she’s on the other side of town. How the hell did that happen?”

Breaker was suddenly at full attention. “Damnit!”

“We eliminated Rufus and his band of fuck ups, but we didn’t find out who set fire to Reggie’s house. The cops were thinking it was a serial arsonist, but what if it wasn’t?”

“You still thinking it’s Cyclops?”

He was the only person I could think of that I’d seen acting shady around Bethany, “At the grand opening I threw him out for hitting on her. He was none too happy about it, but I thought it was just a one-off act of assholeness on his behalf. Then he showed up again yesterday.”

“Your woman got history with him? Sounds fucking persistent for someone who has no skin in the game,” Breaker said.

I shook my head.

My brother-in-law grimaced. “He’s one of those Twisted Metal fucks. Storm might have established a truce with their club president, but I never trusted those assholes.”

“I never gave them much thought. If Storm said there was a truce, I took him at his word.”

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