A pale face appears on the camera and Rebel goes stiff next to me, the tips of his fingers bleached white from his strained grip on the phone. I hadn’t recognized the voice—it was too gripped by fear—but I do recognize the face. It’s the face of a ghost. A dead girl. A girl I never thought I’d see again. Her name is Laura. She is the reason why Rebel became the man he is today. Her face is thinner, more drawn, devoid of the plumped youthfulness that always made people gravitate toward her like they would gravitate toward the sun. And there’s a gloved hand around her throat.

“What the fuck is this?” Rebel chokes out.

“I think you know what this is. This is an ultimatum. Your information for this girl. Does that not sound fair?”

Rebel’s whole being is vibrating; the bikers at our back are shifting uneasily from foot to foot—this wasn’t something we expected. Fighting, killing, running, maybe, but not this. I think Rebel’s going to start shooting people, but somehow he manages to crank down his fury. “I want proof of life,” he hisses.

Julio appears to consider this reasonable. The owner of the phone retrieves it, dials in a number and then holds it to the side of Rebel’s head. A look of devastation travels over Rebel as he listens. His voice is cold as ice when he speaks. “Lo? Lo, say something.”

I don’t know what the person on the other end of the line says, but Rebel exhales sharply and tears his head away from the phone, as though the very sound of the person’s voice is enough to destroy him. The call is ended and the room remains silent as Julio lets that sink in.

“I’ll give you what you want,” Rebel says eventually. The other Widow Makers look shocked, but they don’t say anything. Julio smiles a sickly smug smile; he struggles to heave himself out of his seat, but fails on the first attempt. Second time lucky, he gets to his feet and paces slowly out of the room. At the door, he turns around, his men shuffling out of the way so that the fat Mexican can have the last word.

“You’ll find your friend in the other room. He has a strong force of will. I admire that kind of loyalty. You should reward your pet dog, Rebel. I will see you in three days.” He shuffles out of the room, his men following him with guns still drawn, masks of aggravation on their faces, and then we’re alone.

Well, not alone. We’re left with the still-warm body of Andreas Medina, which is going to be a problem.

“Go check on Cade,” Rebel orders. Carnie and one of the other Widow Makers rush into the room Medina appeared out of; their immediate shouts and curses can probably be heard three floors up. Stepping over Medina, I rush into the room and I’m hit with a wall of rust and sweat. Cade is lying on the bed in a pool of his own blood. His face is swollen so badly that I wouldn’t recognize him if it weren’t for his tattoos. His right arm is bent at an ungodly angle, clearly broken, and a sharp shard of pure white bone protrudes from a wound on his forearm.

“Holy fuck, man,” Carnie yells. “They’ve almost fucking killed him.”

Rebel appears in the doorway. He’s very pale, but there’s a hardness forming in his eyes. He takes one look at Cade and I know that regardless of what he told Julio, there’s no way my cousin is giving him what he wants. He’s never gonna let him get away with what he’s done.

Cade groans, head rolling to one side on the blood-stained pillow, and a bolt of relief shoots through me—at least he’s alive.

“Get him up. We’ll take him out via the service elevator,” Rebel snaps.

“What about Medina?” Carnie asks.

“Leave him.”

It takes three of them to lift Cade off the bed, and then a man under each arm to drag him out of the room. Rebel puts a hand on Carnie’s shoulder as he passes him.

“Make sure you get him somewhere safe. When you’re done, head back to the others. Tell them to get their shit in order.”

Carnie grunts, slapping Rebel on the back. “What have you got in mind, boss?”

Rebel’s eyes flash when he says, “We’re going to war.” Carnie leaves, and then it’s just the two of us. Rebel puts his hands on my shoulders, eyes burning through me with a righteous fire that I know all too well. That fire won’t be quenched until Julio Perez is dead. “So you were saying…you trust this guy, Zeth?” he asks me.

“Implicitly.”

“Good. Then take me to him.”

I can’t think about Lacey. I fucking can’t. I know she’s safe—Charlie’s a fucking psycho but he won’t hurt her physically. Not his own daughter. I’m more concerned about the lies he’s filling her head with right now. He’s told her the Duchess is her mother, which is out and out impossible, and Lacey will have believed him. She needs a mother figure even more than she needs a father figure. And so the girl’s going to follow along at Charlie’s heels to fawn over this miraculous new mother, only to have that new mother die a few short hours later. That’s the most damaging part. Lacey already lost her mother once, but she wasn’t old enough to feel the bite of that loss. The Duchess’ death will be hard for her; a woman she believes is her blood, so close, only to slip through her fingers again. She won’t be able to take it.

I have to find her, but I can’t do anything until Michael shows up. Sloane and I traveled the remaining thirty minutes from the motel to the safe house on the shores of the McKay Reservoir, Sloane’s face pressed up against the window as we arrived, eyes huge as she took in the mass of water. The reservoir’s almost frozen over. That doesn’t normally happen until January, but this year’s been particularly cold. White frosting coats everything from the blades of grass on the sides of the roads to window panes of the single-story wood cabin I’ve owned out here for years. It’s old, really fucking old, but it has heating and cell phone reception and that’s all that matters right now.