Page 18 of Babe

Cameron sighed and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’ll ride up today and take a look around.”

“And I’ll talk to Gunner,” Shaw said. He looked at me. “In the meantime, I need you to head out and gather intel on Dorman. I want every single bit of information you can get on him. His routine. His home. His neighborhood. The cars he drives. The fucking food he eats for lunch. I want to know when this son of a bitch takes a shit, Ace. Everything.”

“Why me?” I griped, throwing my hands up. “I’m still suffering from headaches, Shaw. Any of them can go,” I snapped, throwing my hand around.

“Blu has a doctor’s appointment today, and Grey has a therapy appointment shortly after,” Konrad informed me, his lips set in a deep frown. Couldn’t Blakely take them? “Arlo needs to be here to help Frankie with Teeny. Jax has to clean the SUV. Cameron is going to search the area where you were supposed to dispose of Carmen and Jeffrey to make sure you left nothing behind. You’re our only option, kid.”

I shoved back from the table, my chair smacking into the wall. It was always me. I always had to be the one to do the damn dirty work. Who gave a fuck if I still needed time to recover?

“I fucking hate this family,” I seethed. “Let Gunner know where I’ll be.” I pointed a finger at Shaw. “And don’t you dare fucking wake him up. You can talk to him when he wakes up on his own.” He’d had a rough day yesterday, and he needed rest. He still hadn’t been completely right when we went to bed last night, even if he’d tried his best to pretend he was for my sake. Flashbacks obviously drained him, and I wanted him to be able to rest so he could face the day with a fresh head on his shoulders.

Shaw sighed, annoyed but choosing not to argue with me. “Sure, kid. Be safe. I expect a check-in every hour.”

I saluted him with my middle finger before storming out of the chapel. Heading upstairs, I quietly entered our room and slipped inside. Gunner’s chest was slowly rising and falling as he slept, the blankets just covering his bare hips.

I didn’t want to leave him. Not even for a few hours. I wanted to be right here with him where nothing in this world could touch me. But club business called, and no matter how much of a fight I put up, I knew I wasn’t getting out of this.

After grabbing my bike keys and my burner phone off the charger, I walked over to his side of the bed and leaned over him, pressing a kiss to his slightly parted lips.

“I love you,” I whispered. Then, I slipped from the room and jogged downstairs, ignoring my brothers as I walked out the door, heading for my bike. Was I being a brat? Yes. But I was getting real tired of getting stuck with all the damn tedious and dirty work.

CHAPTER NINE

Gunner

Islowly ripped open my eyes, blinking at the sunlight filtering in through the room from around the edges of the curtains. Looking next to me, I frowned. Ace was gone, and when I patted his side of the bed, it was cold. Quickly, I sat up, my chest tightening.

Where the fuck was my boy?

I vaguely remembered him promising he’d come right back to bed after church, so I’d passed back out, still too worn out and drained from my flashback the day before to stay awake. But I should have.

Because every fiber of my being was telling me my boy was not even in the fucking building. And if he wasn’t, I was going to lose my shit.

I flung the blankets off me and lurched from the bed. Snatching my jeans off the floor, I tugged them on, yanked a t-shirt over my head, and shoved my feet into my boots. I grabbed my pistol and shoved it into the waistband of my jeans at the small of my back before I grabbed my truck keys, phone, and my wallet, shoving them into my pocket.

When I got downstairs, Arlo was the first person I saw. And just as I expected, when I scanned the room, my boy was MIA. I pointed a finger at Arlo, and he glared at me as he shifted his little girl in his arms, readjusting his hold on her. Frankie, who was coming out of the kitchen, blinked in alarm at the hostility radiating off my tense frame.

“Where the fuck is he?” I growled.

“Watch how?—”

“I sent him out to gather intel,” Shaw hurriedly said, appearing from the hallway where I knew his office was located. Ace had given me a tour of this place yesterday, and I’d memorized every room and every single exit, just in case I ever needed to get Ace to safety. “He’s fine. Go ahead—call his burner. What he’s doing isn’t dangerous, Gunner.”

I scoffed and snatched my phone out of my pocket, typing his burner number in, which I’d taken time to memorize yesterday. Disposing of two bodies shouldn’t have been dangerous either, but he’d managed to get hurt then. I glared at Shaw as I raised the phone to my ear. “He’s still recovering from a goddamn concussion,” I snarled, listening as the phone rang. “He doesn’t need to be out by himself yet.” And definitely not without me.

Ace’s phone rang. And rang. And rang.

Trepidation flooded my gut. Hanging up when the voice message popped up to tell me he didn’t have a voicemail set up, I jabbed my finger against my screen, calling him again, trying not to panic. I’d been in high-risk, dangerous situation before. I knew how to keep my cool.

But in those situations, my boy wasn’t fucking missing.

My heart, my soul, my life wasn’t fucking MIA.

When I got the same message again, I clenched my jaw, grinding my teeth together. I lurched forward and gripped the front of Shaw’s shirt, slamming him against the wall. His head bounced off of it, and he winced, but he didn’t try to fight me back. He just calmly met my gaze and even shook his head at Arlo when Arlo got up, passing the baby off to Frankie.

“Where is he?” I snarled. I shook him. “Where the fuck is he?!” I roared. They’d sent my boy out by himself to gather intel on a dangerous as fuck trafficking ring, which I had no doubt had big players. Big players with big enough pockets to make my boy completely disappear. I wasn’t playing fucking games.

“He went to gather intel on Jeffrey Dorman,” Shaw told me calmly. I wanted to bash his head through the wall. How the fuck was he so calm? I noticed Amaliya come down the stairs, her eyes wide and filled with horror as she took in the scene in front of her. “If he’s not answering his burner, he could just be in a place he can’t. It doesn’t mean he’s in danger, Gunner.”

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