“Say no more, Prez. I’m good,” I replied. He said the right words to have me reining in my temper. I didn’t want to do anything to take away from finding Harper. I knew, in my gut, that she was in trouble and it was killing me.
“Byte, see if you can get a location on her phone or her car if she has any kind of tracking on it. Somebody find Shaker and get his bitch on the phone. Carbon, call Ruben and see if Titan has a tracking chip,” Phoenix ordered.
We scrambled to carry out our assigned tasks as fast as possible. Byte couldn’t get anything on her phone or car, but Titan had a tracking chip, and it was showing him at the crisis center.
“Gear up and round up as many sober members as you can. We’re rolling out in 10 minutes. Duke, call Judge and your Aunt Leigh to let them know what’s going on. I’m guessing Copper and his boys will meet us there,” Phoenix said.
“Do you think Boar would send some boys out? They’re closer than either of the Blackwings clubs,” I asked.
Phoenix nodded, his eyes full of understanding. “I’ll call and ask. Just keep it together. We’ll find her.”
We left the clubhouse in exactly 10 minutes, leaving Ranger, Badger, and a handful of prospects behind to watch over the girls. Boar agreed to help us out and send some of his boys to the crisis center. As expected, Copper and his crew were on the way to Sugar Falls as well.
About halfway there, Phoenix signaled for us to pull over. “Boar’s boys arrived at the crisis center. The place is empty from what they can tell. Titan is inside the building and, according to Boar’s VP ‘is on a rampage.’ They looked through all the windows, including Harper’s and didn’t see anyone. Her car isn’t there either. They’re going to wait at the crisis center until we arrive. Carbon, do you think you can get that dog under control, or do we need to call Ruben to come down?”
“Let’s get back on the road. I’ll call Ruben and ask him what we should do,” I replied.
Phoenix nodded and pulled back onto the road. Fuck. I knew something was wrong, but Titan flipping out inside the crisis center confirmed it. Nothing made sense. She wouldn’t have left him there, so where was her car? Fuck, where was she?
The rest of the ride was a blur. I managed to keep my bike on the road, but I couldn’t tell you how. The only thing on my mind was finding Harper.
When we pulled into the parking lot of the crisis center, I could hear Titan barking and snarling as soon as we turned our bikes off. Following Ruben’s instructions, I walked to the door and called his name. When he focused his attention on me, I gave the command Ruben assured me would work. “Cessare!” Titan closed his jaws and dropped his butt to the floor, sitting still as a statue. “Good boy!”
A few of the guys behind me muttered their surprise that it worked. Ignoring them, I got to work picking the locks. It took several minutes, but I finally got the doors open. Byte and Judge had already disabled the security system. I slowly opened the door and eyed Titan warily. He was a good dog, and I trusted him completely with Harper, but Harper was missing, and I wasn’t sure how he was going to react to me. He whimpered when I took a step inside the building. I patted my leg with my hand and called him to me. He eagerly came to me and started nudging me in the direction of one of the offices. One that was not Harper’s.
He took the lead when I started walking toward her door. I heard Phoenix, Duke, Copper, and Judge following behind me. Titan walked behind a desk and stopped. He barked once and tapped the floor with his paw like he was pointing at something. I bent down to retrieve a small plastic bag lined with a white powder residue. Holding it up for my brothers to see, I bellowed, “Motherfucker!”
“No. Fuck no,” Duke groaned. The sound of something being destroyed had me turning to see Judge pull his fist from the wall.
“Brothers! She needs you to keep your shit together. Carbon, I can see the red haze in your eyes. Focus, boy. We’ll find her,” Phoenix demanded.
“Get the computer guys in here. I installed a few cameras here when I installed the ones at her house. Spazz checked the live feed for the office and her house when we first got here, but we didn’t have time to go back and look through the recordings from earlier today. One can pull up the feed from here, and the other can get the feed from her house,” Judge said, shaking his hand out and pacing the room.
“I’ll take the office, and you get the house,” Byte declared, sitting down at Harper’s desk with Spazz setting up his laptop on the opposite side.
“What the fuck?” Byte shouted at his computer. He sounded pissed, which was a rarity for our laid-back resident computer geek.
“What is it?” I demanded.
Byte motioned for us to come closer and turned his computer screen around to face the room. He clicked play, and the screen showed Harper packing her personal belongings from her office. He skipped forward to show Harper talking to someone at her office door. We saw her reach for something, eat it, and then feed something to Titan. Byte skipped forward again, and we saw Harper yawning and curling up on her sofa to take a nap; Titan snoozing on the floor beside her. Then, the screen went black for a few beats before a message filled the screen. “Carbon and Duke, here’s your only hint.” The screen filled with a bunch of dots, then lines started connecting the dots to make a picture that roughly resembled two stick figures holding hands.
“That’s what was painted on her living room wall,” I stated. “What the fuck is it?”
“I have no idea,” Phoenix muttered.
“I haven’t found anything on the recordings from her house, but if the office feed was jacked, there’s a good chance the feed from her house has been tampered with as well,” Spazz interjected.
“We’ll have some of the guys stay here while we go check out her house,” Phoenix said, already heading toward his bike.
Copper pointed toward Titan. “What about the dog?”
“He’ll be fine here. Byte, can you watch him while we’re gone?” I asked.
“Sure. Jot down the commands to get his ass under control in case I need to, and we’re straight,” Byte said, not the least bit worried about the dog.
When we arrived at Harper’s house, I immediately knew something wasn’t right. I could feel it. I crept closer to her front door, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I turned back to the guys. “Something’s not right.”
They all murmured their agreement. Copper added, “My gut is telling me we should go around back.”