Counter To My Intelligence (The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC Book 7) (29 page)

His eyes went far away for a minute while he thought back to the note.

I’d left in a hurry that morning with him in the middle of the lake fishing from his boat.

So I ran around inside the house like a chicken with my head cut off looking for a piece of paper to tell him that my phone was dead and I had to go into work to get the charger for it. In my haste to leave, I’d written him a note on the bathroom mirror knowing he’d see it.

It’d been there for two days until the maid had come and cleaned the house, since apparently Silas didn’t even own a bottle of glass cleaner.

I remember being embarrassed at the thought of her reading what I’d said:
I’m going to the office to get my charger. Your ass looks sexy in your boat.

I hadn’t even been able to see him from where I’d been.

But I knew it to be a fact, so I’d written it to him knowing it’d make him smile.

“That was Tuesday,” Silas said, eyes again going far away as he looked at the camera in his hand. “Today is Sunday.”

I nodded but didn’t say anything.

Then Silas hauled back and threw the camera across the room, shattering it as it smashed against the wall.

Pieces of glass and plastic littered the floor, and I closed my eyes, knowing that Silas was worrying.

Worried Silas equaled bad mood Silas.

Something I’d come to recognize since we’d met and started dating.

“Can you just…get her out of here for a little bit? Take the boat,” Silas said roughly, pulling his hands up to sift through his hair.

Sebastian nodded and pulled away, walking to the closet and pulling out a pair of shoes.

He tossed them on the bed and I slipped them on to my feet, watching Silas’s chest heave as he drew in breath after breath.

Never once did his eyes turn to me, and I knew the best thing I could do right then was leave.

Standing up, I moved in between big bulky men that were taking up the space of our bedroom and stopped in front of my man.

“So, do I get to call you my old man?” I whispered, pressing my lips against his strong jaw.

He finally looked down at me, and his muscles immediately softened.

“Yeah, you do,” he said simply.

“I love you.”

His eyes closed.

“I love you too, which is why it pisses me the fuck off that I have to get you out of here while we figure this out,” he growled.

I hugged him around the belly.

“Don’t leave me over there for too long. Your grandkids are hellions,” I teased.

He huffed out a laugh. “They take after their daddy.”

“Hey!” Sebastian said indignantly.

I smiled and pressed my lips to his.

“Be safe.”

Little did I know that those words would haunt me hours later.

“You have to tell her, Sebastian. She’s going to figure it out eventually,” Baylee hissed.

I woke from sleep almost instantly, but my years in prison had finely honed my faking sleep skills.

I knew that I’d learn more from them now by eavesdropping on their conversation while I pretended to be asleep instead of waking up and demanding they tell me what was going on outright.

Or, at least, that’s how I’d get the most information from Sebastian.

Baylee would probably just tell me whatever it was that I wanted to know.

My stomach was in knots as I listened to the two argue back and forth.

“But we don’t know anything. We only found his bike in fucking pieces. He’s nowhere to be found,” Sebastian said in exasperation.

But I heard the hint of fear in it.

And I knew fear when I heard it, believe me.

Sebastian was worried about something.

“Yeah, but if Silas’ bike was broken up like that, then most likely Silas is too. Even if he’s not actually at the scene of the crash,” Baylee whispered a little too loud once again.

This time I knew she was trying to wake me, so I sat up, only opening my eyes once my feet were on the floor next to the couch.

“Tell me,” I whispered.

Sebastian was across the room from me leaning against a wall in the kitchen.

Baylee was directly across from him standing beside the kitchen island staring at him like he was the school-yard bully.

Sighing, Sebastian leaned forward until both elbows rested on the countertop before saying, “Dad’s bike crashed in between Longview and Kilgore. He left on his own while we were all doing our own thing around five this evening, and we haven’t heard from him since.”

My heart froze as I looked at Sebastian, hoping beyond hope he would tell me he was joking or that they knew exactly where he was.

But he wasn’t and he didn’t.

“You didn’t have any GPS or anything on him?” I asked worriedly.

Sebastian shook his head. “No.”

“But…but…what are we going to do? Are you going to look for him?”

Sebastian nodded. “We’ve been looking for him since we realized he left. Kettle was the one to find his bike. I’ve got a few friends working magic on their end, but dad’s normally the one using his contacts to find people we need. We’re not sure where to go from here.”

My mind raced as I fought the bile rising up in my throat.

“You can’t find whomever he worked with and talk to them?” I asked worriedly.

Sebastian shook his head. “No. We’ve been looking. I’ve never known anything about my dad’s business. And not once, in all the years I’ve been alive, has he had a slip up.”

My head hung. “I…I need to go home. I need to think. Maybe I can come up with something. Maybe he left me a note.”

Sebastian looked at Baylee with pity, not holding back his worry about me.

Well, he could just take that pity and shove it.

I knew he wouldn’t just leave without letting me know.

I knew it.

Dear NASA, your mom thought I was big enough!

- Pluto

Silas

“That rifle shot that took your daughter-in-law out was meant for you. I lucked out that you thought it was a rock that hit her. Could’ve had me then, but you fucked up. You’re getting soft in your old age,” Shovel said snidely. “You almost lost her, and
it would’ve all been your fault. All these years of you protecting them, and it wouldn’t have mattered one single bit.”

I couldn’t breathe.

Not because of what he was saying, though that was significant.

But because I was fairly positive that the broken ribs I’d sustained after going down on my bike and having the shit beaten out of me were sinking through the tissue of my lungs.

I’d woken up like this nearly an hour before, and all Shovel had done since I’d woken was talk about the old days.

Him shooting Baylee was new, though.

We’d really thought the cut on her neck was due to a rock, or something that kicked up and taken out a chunk of her flesh while we were riding.

The bleeding had never made sense to me, though.

Now, knowing that Shovel had taken a fuckin’ sniper rifle to her, it made sense.

“So what are you going to do to me?” Shovel asked.

What was I going to do to him?

I was the one that was tied up to a fuckin’ chair.

Well, granted, I had wanted to be tied up.

I knew he’d take me if I gave him the chance.

Which was why I’d gone out on a ride alone.

I knew he couldn’t resist the temptation.

And he was only one person.

He had my arms stretched upwards, tied to a pipe above my head.

But he’d made a mistake by not tying my feet.

I wouldn’t escape…yet.

I’d wait until I had my chance.

Or possibly sooner if Sawyer found the note I left her.

“You know you ruined my life,” Shovel said conversationally, pulling out a pocketknife and picking dirt from underneath his fingernails with it.

I raised a brow. “I did, did I?”

He nodded. “Leslie was going to be mine. She was going to be my reward. But then you came in, claiming her and jumping through every hoop I threw at you and took her right out from under my nose. I’d had my eyes set on her since I was sixteen, and you fucking ruined it.”

That was new to me.

I’d just seen Leslie come in, and I hadn’t been able to do anything else
but
save her.

It’d been her eyes.

The innocence in them.

I was drawn to that.

It drew me in every, single time.

Which had been the reason I’d fallen for Sawyer, too.

Now, though, I knew she was nothing like Leslie.

She was stronger.

She was someone I’d never in my life cheat on. She knew all about me, and I knew there’d never be a time that I kept a goddamn thing from her.

Hell, now that I had Sawyer, I realized just how much I
didn’t
love Leslie.

Because what I felt for Sawyer, I knew, was real love.

It was unshakable.

This love…it would withstand the test of time.

She got me, and I got her.

Before her, every damn night, I’d dream of how my life could’ve been.

Now, with Sawyer in it, I dreamed of what our life
will be
like.

I didn’t think in the past tense anymore.

I was now a future kind of guy.

And I knew Shovel hadn’t picked up on that yet.

Because he wouldn’t be talking to me right now about Leslie. He’d be trying to rile me up by threatening Sawyer.

Because if he wanted to see me break, that would be just how to do it.

He’d done it before.

Many, many times.

“Then you kept ruining my life by cleaning up my club, making me lose all that money. My gambling debts got out of hand, man, and every fucking day, every day, I worried about how I would pay those fuckers back. You did kind of solve that for me by sending me to prison, though. And I thought it wouldn’t be half bad, except my parole was denied time after time, and I finally realized that something wasn’t quite right. So I had some people start to dig for me. And what do I find when my people started digging into my club? I found you…the fucking president… living the high life while I suffered day in and day out,” Shovel hissed, pushing his face into mine.

My body locked, and I didn’t move a single millimeter back.

I had no room to move back from him. But mainly, it was because I wasn’t going to flinch away from him. I didn’t flinch.

Not from him, not from anyone.

“You ruined your own life, you piece of shit. You could’ve stayed just like the rest of us, but you chose to make a fucking mess out of everything. I cleaned your shit up. What I didn’t do, but should’ve done, was fucking kill you. Then I wouldn’t be in this predicament right now,” I growled.

Shovel smiled.

“You know, I watched you drive to Huntsville,” he said lightly. “Followed behind you the entire way.”

I froze, eyes lifting up to look directly into his eyes.

“Yeah?” I asked, voice steady.

It didn’t reveal outwardly what I was feeling, which was anything but calm internally.

“Yep. So I did some research into why you were there. Found four men that are fucking pissed as hell that they lost their jobs over a stupid piece of ass,” he said lightly. “So I invited them back with me.”

Then the doors behind Shovel opened, four men walking into the room.

Each one had a box in their hands.

“And they’ve got some entertainment for you. Each time you fail to show a reaction to what they’re showing
you,” Shovel said, pulling out a lead pipe. “I’m going to introduce you to this lead pipe. And we’re going to make you
talk even if we have to kill you.”

I doubted that.

It’d take a divine intervention to get me to react to anything.

Because as long as I knew they didn’t have Sawyer, then they had nothing.

She was safe and that was all that mattered.

“This is the picture I took of our first encounter,” the first man said.

He had blonde shaggy hair that fell over his head in a fucking mop of messiness. He had brown eyes that were dark, but not cold. Not nearly cold enough to get past my defenses.

The picture, however, wasn’t anything I wanted to see.

“We took pictures of her every day for eight years,” the man continued.

I clenched my jaw tightly as he showed me the first picture.

And I literally tasted blood as I bit into my tongue to keep from giving this creep a piece of my mind.

“Well, if that one doesn’t move you…how about this one?”

Guess I didn’t have the iron-willed control like I thought
was the last thing I thought before a seething blind rage clouded over my eyes, and the only thing I saw was a broken Sawyer being violated by the pervert in front of me.

And although I went down hard as Shovel’s lead pipe came down on the temple of my head, arms still tied above my head, I took pride in the fact that the man standing in front of me now had a knife wound in his heart courtesy of the one that slid out of my boot.

“Ohh,” Shovel said, shaking his head. “That was very, very stupid.”

Head pounding and the only thing holding me up was the rope around my wrists, I said, “Yeah, yeah, motherfucker.”

The last thing I heard before I succumbed to unconsciousness was, “Tie his fuckin’ feet.”

Sawyer

“I have this note…” I said, handing Sebastian the note.

His brother Sam was in the room with him, and they were both staring at Silas’ table with all of Silas’ open cases laid out in front of them.

Sam and Sebastian looked up, their eyes so much like their father’s that my heart ached a little bit.

“What note?” Sam snapped.

I held it out to him.

“What is it?” He asked, eyes scanning it quickly.

“Well, the other day when Silas and I were in bed…”

“Is what you’re saying pertinent to what we’re going through right now, or can we skip the life story?” Sam snapped.

I narrowed my eyes at him, but it was Cheyenne who set him straight.

“Sam, I realize you’re worried, but being a dick to the woman isn’t going to help. Get the fuck over it and let her speak,” Cheyenne growled at her husband.

Sam’s eyes closed, and when they opened again I realized that he really was worried, and covering his worry up with a bad attitude.