CULVER: A Motorcycle Club Romance Novel (18 page)

“But they’ll find her a lot quicker if they have your
testimony to help them,” he added. “I’m going to be fine, Samantha. Go talk to
my men. Tell them everything you know.”

I nodded again, reaching out to grab his hand.

“Okay, Daddy. I will. I promise,” I said. That, at
least, would be an easy promise to keep. I looked down at him once more,
feeling my heart ache. Then I turned quickly, knowing that if I stayed a little
bit longer they would need seven men to carry me away.
He’s safe. He’s alive and he’s going to be okay and he’s safe,
I
thought.

In that moment, even with everything else I didn’t
know, even with my mother still missing, that one fact was enough. My father
was safe.

~
28
~

Alicia, Becky, and Kevin were waiting for me as I let
the door click shut behind me.

“Ready?” Kevin asked, tentative. I nodded, too choked
up to speak. Alicia and Becky flanked me again as we left the hospital. We
followed Kevin’s squad car to the station, and Alicia and Becky didn’t leave my
side until the absolute last moment.

“Do you want us to wait for you?”

 
I shook my
head no. It could be hours, and they weren’t exactly going to be allowed to
hold my hand through the whole process.

“I’ll just call you later? Can I stay at one of your
houses tonight?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely,” Alicia said, grabbing my hand.
“Call us whenever. Even just to cry. We’ll come pick you up later, okay?” I
nodded and let them both wrap me in a big hug, savoring the small moment of
comfort. As they pulled away and walked out the door, I felt more alone than
I’d ever felt in my life.

“Ready, Samantha?” Kevin’s voice came from behind me,
softly, patient. I turned and nodded again. I was as ready as I’d ever be. He
led me to a simple gray room with one desk in the middle; it was sterile, like
the hospital had been, but much less bright. I was thankful for that. I didn’t
want to feel like I was being interrogated.

The questions were both simple and complicated: where
did you meet Boon, how did you grow close, what did he ever say about his
father, what were his friends like, where did they take you in Vegas.

When asked to describe Tank and the two other men I’d
met from the Cold Steel club, I realized that every mistake I’d made was coming
back to haunt me. I’d been too drunk and high that night to remember what
anyone looked like; if only I’d stayed sober! If only I hadn’t agreed to take
that hit! I could tell them exactly who to look for.

They’d used imaging software to age the sketch they
had on file for Tank, made ten years ago when he’d last been in Missoula. But
since everyone had been wearing masks, and since changing your appearance was
really as easy as shaving, hopes were low that the sketch would yield any
results. They’d already sent it out to all the hotels and businesses in the
city, but nothing had come back.

Kevin was patient with me throughout the questioning,
giving me plenty of time to think and to, sometimes, cry. I wanted to go
faster, to make the whole process quicker so the police could get to my mother
quicker, but I realized as I spoke that I wasn’t saying anything helpful. As
the questioning drew to a close, Kevin reached into a drawer under the desk we
were sitting at and pulled out my phone.

“We’ve already dusted this for prints, nothing but
yours. We tried calling Boon on it earlier…”

“So that’s who was using my phone,” I said, stupidly.

“Yes ma’am,” Kevin said. “His phone seems to have been
turned off, otherwise we’d be tracking it.”

“I thought you could track phones as long as the
battery was still in them?”

“It depends on the phone. Regardless, we can’t track
him,” Kevin said, frustration behind his words.
Good,
I thought, surprising myself. I was disappointed, heartbroken,
by the way Boon had abandoned me, but I still cared about him enough to not
want anything to happen to him.

“Well, he wouldn’t take you anywhere useful, anyway,”
I said, not wanting to tell Kevin that Boon was on his way to Mexico.

“Maybe you could leave a message, Samantha. We talked
to the DA. They’re willing to drop charges if he helps us,” Kevin said, leaning
forward. I could tell he’d been waiting a while to tell me this, that he was
excited by the possibility. I shook my head.

“He said he wouldn’t sell his dad out,” I said, my
heart falling with each word as they reminded me of the way Boon and I had
parted: bitterly, with regrets.

“Just try,” Kevin said, pushing the phone across the
table towards me. I sighed and picked it up; it was dead. For some reason, I
thought that was hilarious:
some police
department, can’t even charge a phone.

“It’s dead,” I said, pushing it back. Kevin looked
down in surprise, then groaned.

“Christ,” he said, shoving his chair back and storming
out of the room, shouting out into the hallway: “who the fuck let the phone
die?”

After a few minutes, Kevin reappeared with a charger.
Plugging it into the wall and connecting it to the phone, he handed it back to
me. I powered it on, waiting for the familiar chime that meant the phone was
ready to use.

Before I could even pull up my phonebook, I heard the
chiming of my text message alarm. The first three texts were from Becky and
Alicia, from before they’d picked me up. The last text, though, nearly made me
drop the phone onto the table.

I was wrong. I
was so wrong. Forgive me. I’m going to make this right, no matter what it
takes.

It was from Boon, of course. I looked at the time
stamp. He’d sent it at 10, and it was just around 11. I looked up at Kevin,
eyes wide.

“What is it?” he said, standing up and leaning
forward, eager.

“Boon texted me,” I said, showing him the phone. Kevin
grabbed it from my hand, reading the text and fairly leaping out of the room.

“We got a text, someone get on the tracker, move it,
people!”

I felt so out-of-the-loop. Obviously, Kevin was hoping
that Boon hadn’t turned his phone off again. But sitting there, alone in that
room, I felt like I was on the outside looking in on the mess. The minutes
stretched on and on, each one feeling like an hour. It was too quiet in the
room, too cold, too still. Finally, Kevin re-appeared, his face grim.

“Little shit turned his phone off again,” he said.
“Last location we have for him is somewhere up near McCloud Ave.”

“Well, are there any hotels or stuff up there?” I
asked, trying to remember if I’d ever been to that part of town.

“A few. We have calls into them,” Kevin said, shaking
his head.

“What was the hotel that…last time…you know, the last
time all this happened, what hotel was that?” I asked, the question appearing
in my mind even as I spoke it aloud. Kevin shrugged.

“Well, it was the Indian Lodge Motel, and that’s up in
that area, but we’ve already sent them the ID and it’s really unlikely that
they’d go back to the same…”

“Is it? How unlikely is it? I mean, you said it’s
close to where Boon last was,” I said, my general malaise and depression making
way for frustration. It was the
only lead
they had, why wouldn’t they want to take it?

“Yeah, but…”

“Can’t we just check it out? Just go talk to the desk?
I mean, maybe their fax machine is broken or something,” I said, pushing.

“We have patrols up in that neighborhood, I could…”

“No, can’t we just go? Kevin, please, I just…I need to
try…I can’t just sit here!” My voice rose to a cry as I spoke, and I realized
the truth behind my own words. I didn’t know if my idea was worth anything, and
there really wasn’t any use in going to the motel ourselves if they already had
people canvassing that area, but I didn’t want to sit in that room. And I
didn’t want to sit in Alicia’s room, or Becky’s room. I wanted to
do something,
even if that something
wound up being nothing.

Kevin studied me, his face sympathetic. He nodded and
stood up.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said, stepping out of the
room once more. I hated being left alone in that room. It seemed that something
inside me was waking up: something angry, and motivated, and passionate. I
wasn’t just going to sit in that room and wait. I got up and went into the
hallway, looking in both directions for where Kevin might have gone. I heard a
low conversation coming from a door on my left and tiptoed up to it.

“She just wants to do something, I say we take her for
a ride. I mean, if anything happens, I’ll call for backup ASAP, but probably
nothing will happen. But just for her peace of mind, you know? Let her think
she’s helping, or whatever,” Kevin’s voice came.
Condescending prick,
I thought, surprising myself once more with
the depths of my anger at that moment.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea. I mean, I could just
send one of the units out, she never has to be in danger,” came another voice,
presumably Kevin’s superior.

“Well, why would they go to the same place twice,
really? I just think…well, we owe it to Sheriff to try and take care of his
daughter.”

“And you think taking her to a likely hostage
situation is taking care of her?”

“It’s better than keeping her in an interrogation
room, or letting her just go home and probably wind up going there herself,
anyway.”

There was a pause in the conversation, then a sigh.

“Okay, okay, fine. Take her. Quickly, though, in and
out. And if
anything
seems off, don’t
even pull in, just call for backup. I’ll let everyone out in that section know
to be on the alert. There should be a team checking out that place in a half
hour or so, anyway.”

“Thanks, boss. I just want the kid to feel better,”
Kevin said, his voice growing nearer. He appeared around the corner of the
doorway and nearly jumped a foot into the air when he saw me waiting.

“Shall we?” I said, turning on my heel. I don’t know
exactly when I went from being a ragdoll who could barely hold her own head to
this person who felt like she could climb Mt. Everest if it meant getting her
mother back, but I knew I didn’t want that feeling to leave. I wanted to take
advantage of it while I could.

The drive to the Indian Lodge Motel was about ten
minutes, mostly spent in silence, listening to the crackle of the radio and the
reports coming in from base and from other squad cars. I thought, along the
way, about whether or not Boon was there, too. I

f he knew where his dad was staying and he’d been in
this neighborhood when he sent the text…I could only hope. Or, not hope. I
didn’t know what I wanted to be true. Well, I knew what I really wanted: I
wanted for Boon to have talked his dad into surrender, for my mom to be sipping
tea in the lobby by the time we got there.

But the reality, I knew, was much more complicated.
What if Boon had agreed to leave with his father? What if Boon had fought his
dad? What if he didn’t really know where his dad was, and we were, in fact, no
closer to answers than before? We pulled into the parking lot; it was almost
deserted. The motel itself looked like it could be blown over with a single
puff from the big bad wolf.

“Stay here,” Kevin said, unbuckling and opening his
door.

“No way,” I said, fairly leaping out of the car and
striding towards the door. I could tell Kevin was already regretting the fight
he’d put up to take me there. He’d probably imagined he was taking me for a
little cruise, that I’d just sit in the car and wait for him to come out
empty-handed. Tough luck, Kev.

The night clerk was a bearded old man with a wheezing
way of breathing. He smelled like lozenges. I didn’t care. If he was going to
be able to help us, I’d consider him Jesus. Kevin approached behind me, pulling
the police sketch from his pocket.

“Did you get a fax today looking for this guy?” I
asked as he slid it onto the counter. The old man shook his head.

“Fax machine is broken,” he said, and I looked back at
Kevin pointedly. The old man studied the picture for a few minutes. “Actually,
yeah, he looks real familiar. I checked him and his buddies into room 127 a few
hours ago. Maybe around 7 or 8.” He smiled, clearly thrilled to have a chance
to help.

I can only explain my actions after that as the
actions of someone gone crazy with grief. I mean, looking back, I really can’t
tell you why I thought any of the things I did were good ideas. I guess I knew
they weren’t, but I wasn’t really thinking of anything. I was like a wire coil,
all tensed up, suddenly sprung. I looked at Kevin once, quickly, then bolted.

“Wait, Samantha, stop!” he called out, trying to grab
me as I raced past him.

“No, no, fuck you! That’s my fucking
mother
in there!” I cried, running out
the door. Kevin started after me, but I was already halfway around the motel,
room numbers whizzing past. Finally, I arrived at 127; Kevin was hot on my
heels as I began to bang on the door, crying out.