Mag-log inJarek
Daylight was the first thing I understood when I opened my eyes.
Pale gray light leaked through a narrow window high on the wall across from me, too weak to tell me whether it was early morning or late afternoon. The last thing I remembered clearly was Ortega after dark, men dragging me into the back of a van while enough drugs to knock down a fucking horse finally shut my body off. Now the sun was up, but whether I had been unconscious six hours, twelve,
SableBy morning, the clubhouse no longer looked like a clubhouse. It looked like a command center that happened to have a bar.Maps covered two tables while Nixx and Benny worked across three laptops, camera feeds and traffic records filling the screens. Stone was going through every business along Ortega that might have caught a vehicle leaving the area, and Bryce had a legal pad full of names and phone numbers. Marcus had been moving between all of them for hours, assigning routes, checking updates, and making sure nobody doubled back over ground somebody else had already covered. Nobody had gone home, and neither had I.I had changed out of the clothes I wore when we found Jarek’s bike, but his grocery bag still sat on the counter near me. I didn’t know why I brought it back. The sherbet had melted hours ago, the ice cream sandwiches were useless, and the chips were probably the only thing in the bag that hadn’t been ruined. I still couldn’t make myself throw any of it away.“Head
JarekDaylight was the first thing I understood when I opened my eyes.Pale gray light leaked through a narrow window high on the wall across from me, too weak to tell me whether it was early morning or late afternoon. The last thing I remembered clearly was Ortega after dark, men dragging me into the back of a van while enough drugs to knock down a fucking horse finally shut my body off. Now the sun was up, but whether I had been unconscious six hours, twelve, or longer was anybody’s guess.I tried to lift my head and immediately regretted it. Pain rolled through my skull, followed by nausea strong enough that I closed my eyes until the room stopped shifting. My ribs hurt when I breathed too deeply, my right shoulder throbbed, and my left thigh burned where one of those assholes had shoved a syringe into me after the darts hadn’t worked fast enough. There was still something in my system too, enough that my arms felt heavy and my bo
MarcusBy the time we reached the grocery store, Jarek had been gone long enough that every excuse we had made upstairs was starting to feel thin.Sable killed her engine beside me and immediately scanned the parking lot, her eyes moving over every row of cars before settling on the front entrance.“He could still be here.”“Yeah.”She looked at me. “You don’t believe that.”“I believe we check before we decide anything.”That was all either of us had right now. Check what we knew. Follow the route. Find the point where normal stopped being normal.Stone and Bryce pulled in behind us while Nixx and Benny arrived less than a minute later. Nixx was already heading toward the store entrance with Benny beside him, both of them focused on getting whatever camera footage they could before we even had to ask.Sable stayed with me.We alr
JarekI was still in the clubhouse parking lot when my phone buzzed.I had one boot planted on the pavement and the bike idling beneath me when Marcus’s name lit the screen.Get the chocolate-covered ice cream sandwiches instead of the regular ones.I stared at the message for a second, then typed back with one thumb.You’re a pain in my ass.His answer came almost immediately.You love me.
SableFor a second, Marcus saying Jarek had been gone over an hour didn’t sound alarming.It sounded annoying.I lowered the towel from my hair and glanced toward the clock on the nightstand, doing the math in my head. The store was maybe five minutes away, which meant ten minutes of driving total. Even if Jarek had taken his time wandering the aisles, decided Marcus needed six different kinds of ice cream sandwiches, and stood there debating which raspberry sherbet I wanted, he probably should have been back already.Probably.That still didn’t mean something had happened.“He could’ve stopped downstairs before he left,” I said. “Maybe somebody caught him and wanted to talk.”Marcus was still looking at his phone. “He definitely left the clubhouse.”“How do you know?”“I texted him right after he walked out because I remembered I wanted the chocolate-covered ice cream sandwiches instead of the regular ones.” He turned the screen toward me. “He answered from the parking lot.”I leaned
SableI lifted my head from Jarek’s chest and looked at him. “Now?”“Yes, now.”Marcus rolled onto his back beside us, considering the idea for all of two seconds before deciding, “Ice cream actually sounds pretty good.”Apparently that was all the encouragement Jarek needed. He untangled himself from both of us and climbed out of bed completely naked, leaving Marcus and me sprawled in the sheets while he headed toward the door. Neither of us bothered pretending not to look.







