Page 52 of Panther's Magpie
I continue to flip through the photos now, slightly detached now that I know it’s not her. It’s terrible. I should feel bad for this dead girl, but all I can feel is relief.
“There. She has three small birthmarks on her left shoulder blade. They aren’t there. And see here? This is a dolphin on her lower back. Aspen would never get a tramp stamp. This is not Aspen,” I tell them.
They all look at Panther, and he looks up at me with relief in his eyes.
“If she says it’s not her, then it’s not her. Do whatever confirmation you need, Meek, but we continue on as if it’s not her. She is still out there. This is another decoy to throw us off of them. They are mad that we burned down their bar and hit their strip club. We expected this. Good. We got a reaction out of them. Let’s use it and find my sister.”
Panther stands, his hand going back to my hair as if caressing it is some stress relief for him.
“Before we go rushing out of here, I do have one more thing,” Meek says, looking over at Panther.
“What is it?”
“We got a hit on Asher.”
PANTHER
“Come on. If that is his sister in the picture, I am the perfect person to go,” Maggie argues.
After the stress of wondering if I was looking at my dead sister, I really needed a break. Of course life doesn’t work thatway. Instead, Meek found a now-deleted post of a picture of the man we believe to be Asher. The photograph pinged on one of his image searches, but by the time he clicked on it, it was gone. Thankfully, his program takes screenshots, so we were able to see it.
It was on an older lady’s profile. The caption said, “Little Asher and Ashley playing in the pool when they were teens. Miss you two.” The woman tagged an Ashley Zimmerman in the post. Within minutes the post was gone, but Meek managed to dig into the past of Ashley Zimmerman.
He was able to pull up everything about this woman from where she was born to her shoe size. I think he can tell me what kind of toilet paper she uses in her bathroom. Then he switched to the brother.
Asher Zimmerman.
The only thing he could find on him is the birth certificate that matches Ashley’s.
They are twins.
That’s all he can find, though. Nothing else. Not his Social Security number. He has no social media. It’s as if the guy doesn’t exist.
That’s suspicious as hell.
It means either he is one hell of a tech wiz and erased himself or he is part of something bigger than all of this. The only people I know who can erase a whole person is the government.
“Magpie.” I cup her cheek. “I need you to be here safe. We don’t know this girl or what we are about to walk into. If I could guarantee you wouldn’t get hurt, you’d be on the back of my bike, but I won’t risk you.”
She softens at my words. “You’ll call me as soon as you know something?”
I nod. “The very second.”
She gives me a quick hug, surprising me. Then she drops a kiss on my cheek.
“Hurry home then and be safe,” she tells me, backing away.
I love that she is willing to fight for what she wants but that she also knows when to back off. She’s the perfect woman. More and more I’m wondering what it would be like if she were my woman. It’s messing with my head a bit, but I can’t say I hate it.
Mounting my bike, I indicate to the guys it’s time to ride off. It’s only a three-hour drive to the current address on Ashley’s identification. With any luck, we will get there before dark. I don’t want to scare the poor woman to death.
The ride is a quiet one. I use the time to clear my head. The images from those photographs still play behind my eyes every time I close them. They weren’t Aspen, but they sure as fuck could have been. They found someone who looked eerily similar to her so that we would be convinced it was her.
Why, though?
My only hypothesis is that they wanted to distract us while they made another hit. I have my men back home watching out for it. I only brought Meek and Hawk with me on this trip. Eagle is ruling in my absence. It’s why he’s my vice president, after all.
I can trust him to keep both my club and Maggie safe.
