Page 44 of Cocky Secrets

So much for a surprise visit.

Silence.

I exchange glances with Bear and Jett, and Bear kicks the door in, the wood splintering under his force. Impressed, I follow him in to find it’s empty. Bathroom door wide open. Shower curtain, too. Leaving nothing to the imagination.

Jett points, “Look.”

There’s a door adjoining it to the next room. I bang on it, and it swings open to reveal a scruffy-looking man, sunken eyes darting nervously. “What do you want?” Jett and I exchange a look. He’s no biker, just some beat-up guy. But one look at Bear and the old bastard goes white. “I didn’t do nothin’!”

Jett says, “That’s a double negative.”

Bear strides inside the adjoining room, straight for the shut bathroom door. We all hear the whimpering. He raps on it with his knuckles, “Open up. Police.”

The door cracks open and a young woman barely out of her teens, if that, peeks out. Seeing his uniform, she widens the door, wearing only a towel to cover herself. “You okay?” Bear asks.

She shakes her head. “I just needed the money. He’s a creep! He’s into weird things!”

“It’s okay. It’s over. Put your clothes back on.”

“He hid them from me.”

Jett punches the guy. “Where’d you put her clothes?!”

The scrawny sicko falls and we see for the first time he’s got a gun stuffed in the back of his belt. I wrestle it free, hand it over to Bear. “Call your buddies for this one. We don’t have time to waste. Unless you want to stay.”

Bear pulls out his phone, dials dispatch. “I need a perp picked up at Starlight Motel on charges of assault with a deadly weapon, and a bunch of other things I’ll get to later. We’re still on the search for Sage Martinez.” Bear hangs up. “They’re on their way.”

The other Ciphers investigate what we’re up to. Jett motions for Sofia Sol and Celia to tend to the victim while we give the three of them privacy.

Scythe reports, “Nothing in the other rooms.”

Tonk Sr. confirms, “We checked.”

Atlas and Luke show up, shaking their heads.

“You found nothing?” I ask.

Luke says, “Not even motorcycle tire tracks.”

Atlas adds, “The dirt was thick enough we’d see them. Only car tracks.”

“Where’s Sage?” I demand of the moon. “Where’s my little girl!!!”

Bear handcuffed the creep, has him sitting on the dusty sidewalk out front of the office.

He stutters, eyes wide. “I…I don’t know what she’s talking about.”

A fresh cop car skids into the lot, lights blazing. Two police officers, one male, other female, leap out. Bear faces them as they eyeball us. “Find anything?”

“Not yet,” the male cop mutters.

The female cop asks, “What’d you find here?” jogging one shoulder toward the handcuffed, jabbering creep.

Sofia Sol and Celia appear with the girl, now dressed, arms wrapped around herself, right behind them. Soph says, “Leeza will tell you what he tried to make her do, at gunpoint. We have to go.” She turns to Tonk Sr. “Tonk, what was the name of that hotel farthest from town? The one you took Carmen to for a weekend getaway a few years back? We haven’t checked that one.”

“The Moonsong Inn.”

But the female cop shakes her head. “We just came from there. No sign of The Spiders.”

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