Sloane, Page 2

  When Axel spoke, his voice had a purring quality. He was completely self-assured. Everything about him projected smugness. I hated him on sight. But I also couldn’t stop looking at him. He was… well, let’s say I could sort of understand why Leigh might have wanted him for a fuck buddy.

  Axel leaned back in the booth. “Is there something I can do for you?”

  Griffin’s jaw twitched. I could see that simply seeing Axel made him angry. Maybe it would be better if I did the talking.

  “Hi,” I said. “We have a mutual friend.”

  He looked me up and down. He pulled his eyebrows together. “I really don’t think so.”

  “Yes,” I said. “We only want to know if you’ve seen—”

  “No,” said Axel. “I’ve never seen you before in my life. What’s your name?” He gave me a knowing smile, arching an eyebrow. There was something in his gaze that was mischievous and suggestive.

  I blushed in spite of myself. “I’m Sloane, but that’s not really important. What’s important is that we find Leigh.”

  Axel turned sharply to Griffin. “That’s right. That’s how I know you. You’re the guy who started a fight in here and stole Leigh right off the stage.” Axel got up out of the booth. “You’re not welcome in this club anymore.”

  Griffin chuckled. “Oh, believe me, I wouldn’t be here if I could help it. I was really hoping never to see you in my entire life.”

  “You’re going to need to get out.” Axel’s voice lowered to something like a growl. But it never lost its velvet edge.

  Jesus. His voice was… doing things to me. I backed up a few steps.

  Griffin clenched his hands into fists. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me where she is.”

  “Where who is?” said Axel.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” said Griffin. “Where—”

  But right at that moment, a girl slid in front of Griffin. She was wearing a corset and stockings. Her hair was piled high on her head and decorated with feathers. She addressed Axel. “So, here’s your phone. And you got voicemails from a bunch of different girls. And your mom called to ask about the Shepherd Foundation event. She wants to make sure that you only bring one date.”

  Axel snatched the phone from her. “Candy, is it not obvious that I was in the middle of something?”

  “It’s Cindy,” said the girl. “And you don’t pay me enough to check your voicemails. This is the last time I’m doing it, I swear.” She went on her way, rolling her eyes.

  Axel shut his eyes, looking extremely perturbed.

  “Leigh’s missing,” I blurted out. “We only came by to see if you’d seen her.”

  Axel’s eyes popped open. “Missing?”

  I nodded.

  “Why would I have seen her?”

  Griffin’s nostrils flared. “Does that mean you haven’t?”

  “Seriously,” said Axel. “Does she talk about me often or something? Because as far as I’m concerned, that bitch abandoned me years ago. She was my best friend, and I haven’t heard from her since you pulled her off the stage.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I kind of wondered if you killed her.”

  Griffin’s jaw dropped. He sputtered for a second.

  Axel straightened his tie. It matched the pocket square.

  “Your best friend?” said Griffin. “You forced her to strip in this club.”

  “I didn’t force her,” said Axel. “That was her idea. She didn’t have any money or anyplace to stay, and giving her that job was a favor.”

  Griffin’s fists clenched again.

  I grabbed him by the arm. “Come on, Griffin. He doesn’t know where she is.”

  Griffin shook me off. He put his finger in Axel’s face. “You weren’t any kind of friend to her.”

  Axel backed away. “You keep your hands off me.”

  I took Griffin’s arm again. “Let’s go, okay?”

  Griffin seethed, glaring at Axel for several minutes. Then he sucked in a breath and turned away. “Okay, let’s go.”

  “Wait,” said Axel. “Is she okay?”

  “We don’t know,” I threw over my shoulder.

  “Like you care,” said Griffin.

  “I care,” said Axel, sounding defensive. “I totally care.”

  Griffin tensed, and I could tell he was really thinking about hauling off and beating Axel to a bloody pulp.

  “Griffin,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  He hesitated. Then he nodded.

  We walked out of the club.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I opened my laptop. “Give me a little bit, and I’ll see if I can pick up the GPS on her phone, okay?”

  Griffin and I had checked into a hotel room in the same hotel where Leigh was staying. I was sprawled on one of the beds and Griffin was pacing.

  “How long’s that going to take?” he asked.

  “Probably not too long. I have to pull up a program and input some info,” I said. I was okay with computer stuff. I’d gotten more training on that side of things back when we’d been in Op Wraith. My brother Silas had always volunteered for the really dangerous stuff, leaving me behind for strategy and backup. That meant I was a good sniper, and that I had some computer skills and other somewhat helpful things. Honestly, I sometimes wanted to be able to do the dangerous stuff instead of Silas. I worried about him, and it was hard being stuck in the background all the time. But Silas wouldn’t let me.

  Besides, I think he worried that I’d freeze up, like I had before. Silas was always trying to protect me. We were twins, but he was older by a few minutes, and he’d always played the big brother card. He did his best to make sure that I was safe.

  Freezing up was a problem that I’d had for years now, ever since our parents had…

  Well, anyway, it had been going on for a long time. It made me unreliable, and I knew that. When I got in the middle of a dangerous situation, especially if there was a group of people closing in on me, I would lose the ability to speak or move. I didn’t plan for it. It would hit me out of nowhere, and then I’d be completely worthless. It was better for me to stay back, further from the action.

  I knew that. Silas knew it. That didn’t mean that I liked it, however.

  I typed on the keyboard of the laptop, making a face at the screen. There. Now, I’d just wait to see what results came back.

  Griffin walked to and fro, mumbling to himself.

  I went back to the computer screen.

  Nothing yet.

  My brother Silas was big and tough and no-nonsense. He got things done, even if it meant killing people. Between us, he’d always been the guy who did what had to be done. And he often did it to protect me, or so I didn’t have to do it.

  Back when he lived with me, I used to think that he scared off any guy who tried to get close to me. Silas could be scary if he wanted to be, and I had been sure that the reason that no guys ever wanted to get close to me was that they didn’t want to tangle with him.

  But he’d been gone for nine months, and nothing had changed.

  I went out sometimes. By myself. I tried to meet people, but I usually spent the night alone, nursing a few drinks at a corner of the bar. Sometimes, I tried to strike up conversations with people. Well, to be more accurate, I thought about striking up conversations. I didn’t actually ever say anything. I’d see a guy that I thought was attractive, and I’d think about what I could say to him.

  That was the problem. I could never think of anything to say. Not something that didn’t sound stupid anyway. I’d discard ideas.

  The weather? Stupid.

  Asking about someone’s major? God, could I get more cliche?

  Ask him what he was drinking? Well, what would I say after he told me?

  So, I never said anything. And they never came up to me, either. I wasn’t sure what that was about. I wasn’t ugly or anything. Well, I didn’t think I was, anyway. It was kind of hard to judge stuff like that. I spent a lot of time looking at my body in the mirror and
trying to figure out if anything was glaringly wrong with it.

  I wasn’t a blond, sexy bombshell like Leigh, of course. But I wasn’t fat or anything. Sure, there was a little bit of extra flub on my tummy. It kind of protruded a little bit. But didn’t everyone’s body do that? And if I was being really critical, my thighs definitely touched when I was standing up. But whose thighs didn’t touch besides models and actresses anyway?

  I thought I was kind of… well, cute. I had dark hair and a pretty face. I’d seen girls who didn’t seem as attractive as I was with boyfriends.

  So, I didn’t think it was the way I looked.

  And I knew it wasn’t Silas.

  I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. Maybe the sad truth of the matter was that I was simply useless at everything. I couldn’t fight people in groups, and I couldn’t attract the opposite sex. I was a waste of air.

  I shut my eyes. It wasn’t any good thinking thoughts like that.

  Griffin rubbed his hands together. “This is taking a long time.”

  I realized that I’d been drifting off into my thoughts and not paying attention to the computer. I snapped my gaze back to the screen. Nothing yet. “Sorry,” I said.

  “I’m going down to the lobby to see if any of the people working here have seen Leigh around.”

  Well, that wasn’t a bad idea. “Cool.”

  I watched him leave and turned my attention back to the computer.

  * * *

  Griffin burst back into the room. “So? You find her phone?”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t think it’s on. I can’t find it anywhere at all.”

  He sighed. “Great.”

  “How about you? You talk to anyone who’s seen her?”

  He made a face. “The lady at the desk was super rude. She acted like it I was some kind of crazy maniac or something. She wouldn’t tell me anything.”

  “Really?” I said. “Well, how did you try to talk to her?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just talked to her.”

  “Did you have that expression on your face when you did it?”

  “What expression?”

  “You look kind of scary.”

  He sank down on one of the beds in the room. He rubbed the top of his head. “Damn it, I was never good at that kind of thing. At blending in or doing intel and that kind of stuff.”

  He was right. When we were at Op Wraith, Griffin never got sent out on the missions where he had to infiltrate someplace and pretend to be someone else. He was mostly a search-and-destroy kind of guy.

  I sat down next to him. “Maybe from now on, I should handle talking to people.”

  He groaned. “So, what do I do, then? I can’t do the computer stuff, I can’t talk to people. What am I even good for?”

  I patted his shoulder. “Hey, we’re going to find her. We need to calm down and focus. We haven’t ruled out the idea that she’s run off on her own, though. Let’s try to make sure of that.”

  He got up off the bed. “Well, she’s not stupid. If she really didn’t want to be found, she’d know how to hide herself. She’d know to ditch her phone, not to use her credit cards—” He looked at me. “Did you check her credit cards?”

  I nodded. “While I was doing the phone stuff.”

  “And?”

  “No charges for the past two days.”

  “Man.”

  “But like you said, she’d know to do that.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “But she wouldn’t have the resources to get new cards or go into hiding. She wasn’t trained like we were.”

  “Maybe not.” I considered. “But I really want her to be okay, don’t you? I don’t want something to have happened to her.”

  “I just want her back,” he said.

  I did too. I wanted that more than anything.

  Griffin walked over to the window and pulled aside the curtains to look outside. He was quiet. Then he looked at me. “Knox.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “Knox? Like Knox from Op Wraith?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “What’s that have to do with Leigh? Does she even know him?”

  “He helped us take down headquarters,” said Griffin.

  Oh, that was right. I did know that. I remembered that Knox had helped Griffin and Leigh get in and destroy the operation.

  “Plus, when Marcel showed up, she called Knox. So, she might go to him for help.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So, why don’t you call Knox?”

  “Me?” He pointed at his chest with both hands. “I thought we just agreed that I shouldn’t talk to people.”

  “Knox isn’t people,” I said. “He’s an ex-assassin like us. And you know him better than me.”

  Griffin turned back to the window. “Yeah, I know him really well. I tortured him for days.”

  “What?” I stood up.

  “I needed to get information from him.” Griffin still wasn’t looking at me. “Knox and I worked together to take down Op Wraith, but I wouldn’t exactly say we’re friends. He hates my guts. Besides, he’s got a daughter, and he made it pretty clear that he didn’t want to get wrapped up in any of this stuff.”

  I squared my shoulders. “Okay, well, then I’ll call Knox.”

  * * *

  Knox wasn’t answering his phone. I’d tried about seven times, and it kept going straight to voicemail. Griffin sat on the edge of the bed, watching me intently. At first we thought it was because Knox didn’t recognize my number, so I’d tried calling from Griffin’s number, but that hadn’t worked either.

  I set the phone down. “He’s not going to pick up, Griffin.”

  “Maybe he’s got a landline phone,” said Griffin, picking up the laptop. “At least I can find that out.”

  I waited while he typed and scrolled.

  He handed me the laptop. “Try that.”

  I squinted. “That’s not even his name.”

  “That’s the name he’d be under. Trust me. I got a lot of stuff out of him when I was torturing him. I know things about him.”

  I grimaced. But I dialed the number.

  It rang.

  Someone picked up right away. “Hello?” It was a female voice, breathless, frightened.

  “Um, I’m looking for David?” I said, using the name that Griffin had given me.

  There was silence on the other end.

  “I’m an old friend,” I said. “If you could tell him that Sloane Drake is—”

  “Oh my God, he’s dead, isn’t he?”

  I clutched the phone tighter. “Dead?”

  The woman started sobbing. “He said if anyone ever called saying they were an old friend, I’d know something was wrong. He said he didn’t have any old friends, just old enemies.”

  I swallowed.

  “What did you do to him?” she demanded.

  “I didn’t do anything. I’m looking for him. I wanted to ask him…” I didn’t know what to say. “Why do you think he’s dead?”

  “He’s not dead?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Is he?”

  “You swear you’re not trying to hurt him?”

  “I swear. We really are friends.”

  “But he said that he didn’t have friends.”

  “Well, we weren’t close enough to send Christmas cards, I guess, but I never wished him any ill will.”

  Her sobs were subsiding. She paused, catching her breath. “He went out to the store to pick up milk, and he never came back. That was two weeks ago.”

  I looked up at Griffin. “He’s missing.”

  Griffin’s expression hardened.

  “Everyone keeps saying he ran out on me,” said the woman. “But I know that’s not true. He always told me he had a past. He said there were dangerous people out there, and that someday they might come looking for him. If you want to hurt him—”

  “I don’t,” I said. “I promise you. I’m trying to help him.”

  “He wouldn’t leave,” she said.
“He wouldn’t leave his little girl, and he wouldn’t leave me. I know him. Something happened.”

  I wished I could reassure her, tell her it wasn’t true. But I didn’t have any words of comfort for her. Panic was rising in my throat, and I couldn’t find anything to say this poor woman.

  Griffin’s voice was quiet but firm. “We need to call Silas.”

  * * *

  Silas strode past the baggage claim in the airport, coming straight for me. He wrapped me up in a big bear hug.

  I squeezed him back.

  Griffin cleared his throat.

  Silas released me. “What? She’s my sister.”

  “How’s my sister?” said Griffin.

  Silas put his hands in his pockets. “Good. Studying for finals. She wanted to come, but I said it was too dangerous.”

  “Good,” said Griffin. “It is.”

  Silas eyed me. “Actually, Sloane, I was thinking that maybe you might want to go to Austin to look after Christa. She’d love to see you.”

  I glared at him. “I’m not leaving you guys. We have to find Leigh and Knox. Something bad is happening. You guys need me.”

  “Well, I’m only saying that Griffin and I would both feel better if we knew that Christa was safe, and you’re really good—”

  “I’m not going to go babysit your girlfriend,” I snapped. “Jesus, you’d think I hadn’t backed you up a trillion times before. How many times have I saved your ass?”

  Silas shrugged. “Not trying to be offensive, Sloane. I was just—”

  “You were just treating me like your kid sister. When you know that I can outshoot you any day of the week.”

  He shifted on his feet. “Um, you want to announce that to the entire airport?”

  I glared at him. “I have not missed you.”

  He hugged me again. “Come on, sure you have.”

  “So Christa’s really okay?” said Griffin.

  “Yeah,” said Silas. “She’s great. I told her not to leave the house for any reason, and I left her with some guns, and—”

  “Guns?” said Griffin.

  “Well, yeah,” said Silas. “Only a couple. In case shit goes bad. In case they come after her or something.”

  Griffin went pale. “You think they’d come after her?”