Page 12 of Everlasting

“We just pulled up at the clubhouse here. We’re going to go inside and see if they have anyone up that way that might be able to hop on her trail, so we don’t lose her,” Christina suggested.

“I hope like hell they have someone available. The last sighting that I have for her was at a rest area off 77 near Mt. Airy. Maybe, one of the guys from Cedar Falls can get to her as she’s passing through West Virginia or Virginia. Honestly, we have to hope we pick the right path to follow and catch her, because she has two major routes to take. I don’t think she’ll deviate to backroads since she probably wants to get back as quickly as possible.”

“Why not fly then?” I asked.

“Who is that?” Keys questioned.

“It was Ever,” Christina told her.

“Oh! Hey, Ever! She won’t fly because she knows she can be tracked easily that way. This bitch has got to be crazier than a whole can of nuts because if she came all the way from where we last thought Deck was, then she has at least a 15-hour drive in each direction.”

“That should work in our favor though, shouldn’t it? There’s no way she can drive the 15-hours straight through. Right? So, someone should be able to catch her if and when she stops to rest.”

“Maybe, if we’re able to keep track of her movements. I’m working on narrowing things down, but it’s not like we have eyes in the sky watching her in real time. Besides, we want someone to be able to keep a bit of distance and follow her back to where she has Deck, not pick her up. We don’t know how well interrogation will work on her. We also don’t know what they’d do to Deck if she doesn’t check in or come back in a specified amount of time.”

“I hate this,” I mumbled.

“I know you do, sweetie. We’re going to find him!” Keys sounded so confident that I really believed her for the moment, even though the odds didn’t seem to be in our favor at all. The woman had a ton of miles to cover in a car and she could easily get lost in anywhere, everywhere, or even find herself a new set of wheels if she was paranoid enough about possibly being followed.

Lucy and my mother-in-law stayed with the girls overnight because I refused to leave the clubhouse. I ended up staying in a spare room that was kept for the president of the club. I don’t think he had ever actually used it. From the time we had the girls, he never missed a night coming home to us and, before that, he wanted me to have complete faith in him, so he never stayed there. I would have trusted him to be there alone if he needed to be, but he didn’t ask me to do that. He just did what he knew he needed to do for me. It was one of the best things about Declan. He did that in all facets of his life. He took everyone’s feelings into consideration and did what he could to accommodate them. Obviously, that wasn’t always possible, but he did his level best.

I’m not sure when I actually managed to fall asleep, but it felt like I had only been out for moments when I was awakened. “You need to see this,” Christina whispered to me as she encouraged me to get up out of the bed. “Keys has video footage. One of the nomads from Aces High was able to track the bitch down and followed her across the border to where she had been hiding Deck.”

“Was he there? Did we get him back?”

“Please, just come with me. It’s better that you see it,” she insisted and all I heard was the fact that she couldn’t tell me we had him back. Surely, she would have told me that up front it were true. My heart plummeted at the thought of what I might be waking to see. Would it be his emaciated, dead body? Would it mean, not only the end of our search, but the end of my husband as well? Every cell in my body ached for him and I couldn’t stave off the worry that threatened to swamp me.

“Ever,” Jay intoned coolly as he twisted a laptop around so that I could see what he had been looking at. He didn’t bother prefacing the video, just hit play and stood back as I watched.

The same woman from the pictures that had been left at my house stood outside a small cottage-style house, glaring in disbelief before she went inside. “Where have they taken you?” She screamed as she came storming back out of the house to search the area around the cottage. The desperation shrouding her was palpable as I watched her run around, shrieking the entire time. She cursed the gods, her brother, and Deck himself. “When I find you again, I will make all of you pay for your treachery!”

“Jesus, she really is completely out there, isn’t she?” I asked. “She just threatened Deck and he obviously had no choice in being moved again while she was away.” I turned to Jay then, “Or did he manage to escape?”

“Our guys searched the area, just in case. No sign of him, but there was a sign of other vehicles having been there recently. We think someone else was responsible for moving him while she was gone. Whether or not they inform her of his whereabouts is another story. Phoenix is sticking to her like glue, and can follow her if she is contacted. Ghost sent someone up with him to take shifts so that we don’t have any mishaps.” Jay pulled me in for a hug and just held me tight for a few minutes. “I know that this is incredibly difficult, but you are the absolute strongest person I’ve ever known. This is the closest we’ve come to finding him too. Keep holding on to whatever reserves you have, be they faith, positive thoughts, or prayers. At this point I don’t care. Just keep it in your heart that we are going to bring him home to you.”

I simply nodded my head against Jay’s chest and let his warmth surround me for a few minutes. “I need to get back home to the girls. You’ll call me if you hear anything?”

“You know I will,” Jay told me as he kissed my forehead before he released me. “Keep your phone close, just in case.”

Chapter 11

No Justification

Lucy

The lines on the paper started to blur along with the words as I read CJ’s latest letter I pulled from another box. It was an odd one because it didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the timeline where he only wrote when we were separated. This one had been written when Ever was struggling so hard with our family and with CJ’s extended family with the club.

Lucy,

I don’t even think I deserve the right to call you anything else right now. I realize I’ve been a complete asshole. I know I’ve been unfair to Ever and, in turn, to you as well. Everything has been left on your shoulders and I don’t know how you bear the weight of my fuckup. I had a child with someone else, yet you’ve been able to look past that, while I have let the thought fester and bubble up inside of me. It was supposed to be only you. Always, only you. As much as I try, I can’t rectify that in my mind.

You have stood by our girl, my girl, since she came to us. You’ve sheltered her from me. Me! The person who should have been the one to protect her from anyone else. You’ve turned away from me, and rightfully so. I feel so completely lost. If I do one thing, my family suffers. If I do the other, my brothers suffer. Well, I guess they don’t so much suffer as get pissed off. The thing is, they were there for me when I went through all that shit when you were gone. They stood by my side, picked me up when I was at my worst, and they put up with me beating the shit out of them, literally. Anything to curb the anger and sadness I felt with your loss. They knew, when that shit went down with Ever’s mom, how it bothered me. The tailspin I could have gone down, they kept me from the worst of it.

When Ever showed up, I went to that dark place again. That space in my head where my choices were taken from me, where I felt filthy all over again. Unclean. I didn’t know how to process it. Hell, I still don’t.

I love her. I’ve watched her grow. These feelings inside me are so goddamn conflicting though. I am proud of her and all those accomplishments she makes on the one hand, and on the other, I’m pissed off at the amount of time you’re spending with her and not our children. Not me! I know that sounds completely selfish and fucked up. I don’t deny that. It’s just that I was trying to wrap my head around the fact that she had all your attention, but I could never pull my head out of my ass long enough to see that it was only because she was getting none of mine. Yeah, the balance was off, but it was entirely on me. I just couldn’t see it. I’m starting to though.

I smiled at my daughter yesterday and she cringed. Cringed. At a smile. What in the hell kind of piece of shit am I, that simply smiling at my daughter makes her jerk back reflexively? Anna came around the corner shortly after, and when I half-assed smiled at her - afraid of getting the same reaction - she beamed at me and nearly knocked me down with a hug. I just kept imagining Anna cringing at me too and, it was that moment I knew. I understood the insane amount of damage I had done to my own daughter. Her mother didn’t make her into the evil child I had dreaded or was made to fear by some of the guys.

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