Page 44 of Karma
Hugging him, Colt wipes his own tears. “She loves you, kid.”
“She told me she loved me before he yanked her out by her hair. It felt like she was saying goodbye, but I’m not ready for herto be gone. Not when this is my fault. She shouldn’t have been home. She was supposed to be here.”
“What else did he say?” Jennings asks. “When he was there, what else did he say to you?”
Pulling away, his lip quivers. “He’s been watching her. He knew she wasn’t supposed to be home, and he knew she didn’t have any protection detail.”
“Colt, I swear, I followed her here. After drop off at school, she came here and walked into the clubhouse,” Venom says. “I never would have left her alone otherwise.”
“She came home for me,” Lucas says. “Phillip said that if I listened, he might leave her somewhere we could find to have something to put in the grave we’ll visit.”
“You did the right thing,” TK says. “If anything happened to you, Lex would never forgive herself.”
“I’ll never forgive myself for letting him take her!” he screams.
Putting his hands on Lucas’s shoulders, Colt looks him in the eye. “You did what you could. If you hadn’t listened, you wouldn’t be here. That means you couldn’t call Undertaker. You couldn’t get the license plate. You couldn’t tell us which direction they went. She would be gone, and so would you, and we’d have nothing. You did everything right.”
“We have to do something,” he says, his lip trembling. “We should drive out there. Follow where he may have gone. Maybe… Maybe he got a flat tire and had to pull over. Maybe… What if we could catch up to him? Or maybe she found a way to get out. Or… Or get someone’s attention, and the cops are talking to her right now. We should go… We…”
The desperation in Lucas’s voice breaks Colt, and all he can think about is how it’s all happening again. Just like when the Slashers took Lex, Colt has no way to find her. He didn’t find Lex for three days before, and it was the longest three days of his life.
Psycho locks eyes with him, and he knows the crazy man understands exactly what he’s thinking. He was there the night Lex was kidnapped, but just like then, they’re up a creek. How the fuck do they find her?
“Lex is smart,” Venom says, cutting off Colt’s spiraling thoughts. “She’ll find a way to stay alive and get in touch with us. Give us something to find her, and we’ll save her.”
“How?” VP asks. “Does she have her phone on her?”
“No, it’s at home, dead,” Colt says.
Lucas glares at VP. “This is all your fault.”
“Excuse me?”
“Phillip is doing this because of you. He hates you so much he put it on his license plate, and now he has my mom. This is all your fault!”
“She’s not your mom, kid. She just took you in because she felt sorry for you, and—”
Colt’s fist hitting VP’s jaw feels as good as he’s imagined it would for the past few years. “Sheishis mom. She’s more his mom than you haveeverbeen Lex’s father. Whatever happens to her is on you, so you better figure out where your oldest kid would take her.”
“You expect me to pull something out of my ass?” he asks, rubbing his chin. “I haven’t seen him in thirty-five years!”
“I expect you to be a fucking parent for once in your goddamn life!” he shouts. “My son’s right. This is your fault, and when this is over, you better be prepared to grovel to keep your place at our table because I’m as done with you as I was with your second son.”
“You can’t—”
“This isn’t the time to try to defend yourself,” Jennings says. “If you want to force a vote right now, you won’t win. There are very few people, if any, who will fight stripping you of your leather.”
He looks betrayed, and Snake moves to the Chapel. “Okay, the shop. There are quite a few pictures of a shop. Did you have a shop at a house that you lived at with him? Or one that he would have had when he lived with his mom?”
Colt feels a small glimmer of hope until VP shakes his head. “No, we lived in a small two-bedroom house outside of town. His mom and I split when he was two, so Nero wouldn’t remember me living with him. I was in his life for a few more years after that.”
“Okay, did they live in another house after that one?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll look it up,” Brock says.
Arm wrapped around Lucas, Colt feels them vibrating at the same frequency. They have the same fear of losing Lex, and he wishes he could wipe away Lucas’s guilt. It’s not his fault. Not even a little bit.
