Page 101 of Rafe: Sins of the Father

“No problem.” She puts her hands on the bar, her arms spread wide and tilts her head, studying my bruise. “That bruise looks nasty. Did they hurt you bad, honey?”

“I’m okay, but I’m worried about my friend.” The thought hits me that this lady might know Connor. What if he comes here all the time? “Um, you don’t know the governor’s son, do you?”

She makes a face like I just asked her the craziest thing. “Nope, and I don’t know the king of England, either.”

“Sorry.”

“No problem. The crowd we get is mostly boaters. They drink beer, and they eat wings and shrimp. Occasionally we get the bikes in here. Like I said, we’re biker friendly.”

“Bev?”

“Yeah, doll?”

“There might be a lot of them. He might bring the whole club.”

By the time I finish my food, a distant roar rumbles the air, and Bev looks at me.

“I think your ride’s here.”

Through the side windows we see bike after bike roar onto the lot, followed by the chase van.

“Honey, you weren’t kiddin’. That’s a lot of bikers.”

I’m off my stool and sprinting for the door before she finishes the sentence. My father almost drops his bike in his rush to get to me, and I run into his waiting arms.

“Baby girl.” He kisses my temple, his hug so tight I don’t think he’s ever going to let me go.

Rafe comes to stand next to us, a look of worry on his face like I’ve never seen before. “Did you say they have Tori?”

I pull free of Dad’s embrace. “Yes, they brought her in last night.”

“Who? Where?” he barks.

“Connor and his friends.”

His brows lift with surprise, and then a look of vengeance fills his face. “Connor took you? I’m gonna kill that motherfucker. I’m gonna kill them all.”

“We gotta find the place first,” my father says, clapping a hand on my brother’s arm. “Calm down.”

“It’s a house on the waterway.” I point over the small bay it feeds into. “I came across from that way, but it was dark. I stole that kayak there and paddled for hours to get here.”

“That’s not much to go on,” my father says.

“I swiped a piece of mail with an address on it. It’s inside. Come on.” I lead them into the bar. “This is Bev, Daddy. She helped me and gave me these clothes and fed me.”

My father reaches across the bar and takes her hand. “I’m beholden to you, Bev. You ever need anything, I owe you a favor. He digs in his pocket and pulls out a card with the club’s name and clubhouse number. “You call, and I’ll come runnin’.”

She stares at the card, then his face. “You serious?”

“As a heart attack, sweetheart.”

A younger woman enters the door and looks around at all the bikers. “We having a poker run I didn’t know about, Bev.”

Bev tosses her an apron. “Nah, just helping some people out. Get to work, Wendy.”

I dig through the plastic bag and find the damp envelope, but thankfully the address is still visible through the little clear window.

Rafe grabs it out of my hand and puts the address in his phone map app. “Goddamn it. We take the bikes, it’s twenty-eight fucking miles. Gonna take us a half-hour.”

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