my hand and arm, the burning sensation making it clear I was bleeding. But all I could think of was finding Harmon as I threw open the door, rushing inside.
My pulse was pounding, my stomach twisted into a painful knot.
"Fuck!" I growled, grabbing the side of a wooden folding table, flipping it - and all its contents—onto the floor.
Goddamn it.
Nothing.
Not a hint that anyone had been inside here, save to tinker with a car.
"We'll find her," Che said, voice calm, as he stepped in behind me, taking in the mess. "You're bleeding everywhere," he told me, a mix of concerned and frustrated. Because I was making shit more complicated by bleeding all over the place, leaving my DNA carelessly around a crime scene. "Here," he said, grabbing a handkerchief off a work table, handing it to me. "Wrap it up. I will deal with the clean-up," he said, shooing me out.
I was just walking back into the house when I heard my phone ring in my front pocket.
I reached for it, finding Seeley's name there.
"We're busy, Seeley," I said in greeting.
"Doing the wrong thing," he told me. "No disrespect," he added, sounding tense.
"Don't give a fuck about formalities right now, Seeley. Trying to find my woman."
"Yeah, that's why I'm calling. I've called a dozen times. You're looking in the wrong place."
"What are you talking about?" I asked, stomach clenching at the idea that we were torturing and killing people who had nothing to do with the drive-by, with taking Harmon. "Arty said these were the guys."
"Who shot me, yeah," Seeley told me. "But not who took Harmon."
"How do you know that?"
"Because we got this person on camera. And they don't match up to any of those guys in that cartel."
"Then who the fuck are they?"
"That's what I'm getting at. He doesn't know yet. Wait," he said when I tried to speak. "He's working on it. You know him. He's on it. But the thing is, he thinks this isn't about us."
"What do you mean it isn't about us? They took her from our clubhouse."
"Yeah, but he thinks that we had two things going on that were unrelated. Well, technically, we only had one thing going on. Harmon had something else."
"Harmon?
What the fuck could she be involved in?"
"Not involved. Stalked," he said, and it felt like my stomach bottomed out.
I mean, stalking was common in general. But add on the fact that she was relatively famous in her circle, that she was hot, that she was accessible to her fans, some of whom I'd seen for myself were fucking inappropriate with her, and, yeah, I could see her having a stalker.
"Why does he think that?" I asked, feeling the rage simmer down, finally letting me think more clearly. "Che, tell McCoy to call it off. Shit has changed," I said when he walked into the kitchen to grab a bottle of bleach from under the counter.
"How bad has it gotten?" Seeley asked, voice tense.
"Bad enough. Though they're guilty of putting a hole in you, so they weren't getting out of this anyway. Why does Arty think she was being stalked?"
"He went up to the room, saw her set up, and you know him with computers. So he asked if he could nose around. I didn't see why not. I mean, we were trying to find her. And I couldn't get in touch with you."
"It's fine, Seeley. You can apologize to Harmon when we find her. What did he find?"
"She has a virus."
"Okay..."
I knew the basic shit about computers, but when it got too complicated, I couldn't keep up. Sometimes when Arty got going, I zoned out.
"One that gave them control over the camera. Yeah, they, ah, you guys gave them an eye-full."
"I better not have given you an eye-full," I snapped. Not so much for me, but for Harmon, for the privacy that was taken from her.
"Arty turned it right off when he saw it was recorded there. But, yeah, whoever it is has been watching for a while."
"Well, who is it?" I demanded. "You had to have caught them on our video."
"Somewhat, yeah. It's... grainy. And whoever it is was wearing baggy clothes and a hat. They kept their heads down. Arty thinks he can narrow it down, track them down."
"How long?"
"I tried to ask that, and he started making a humming noise, "Seeley said, sounding a bit freaked, having the least experience with Arty compared to the rest of us. If you weren't prepared for Arty, he could freak