body, trembling from head to toe.
“Victim’s Assistance?” I heard Hank ask quietly.
“Give her a minute,” Mo replied in the same tone, holding me close but pulling me closer. Then in my ear, “What do you feel?”
Terrified.
Plastic sheets.
His arms tightened further. “What do you feel, sweetheart?”
“Y-you.”
“Me,” he agreed. “Where am I?”
“R-right here.”
“Right here. With you. Are you safe?”
I forced myself to nod, but the movement felt foreign, like I’d never done it before.
And I couldn’t stop shaking.
Man, it was so cold.
“Get her sister here,” Mo ordered.
“On it,” Eddie said.
“And her mom,” Mo went on.
“Got that,” Tex replied.
“I’m okay. I’ll b-be okay. Don’t worry them,” I said to Mo’s chest.
“Lottie?”
“Y-yeah?”
“Shut up.”
“’Kay.”
Still trembling (okay, more like shaking), I pushed closer to Mo.
And he held on.
Chapter Eleven
I Hit the Mother Lode
Mo
“Fuck, Mo. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
Lawson hit him with that the second his foot hit the ground floor after he left Lottie in bed with her mother and sister.
Mo looked to the man.
He looked wrecked.
Mitch Lawson was about doing what he could to make things right, not the other way around.
Freaking Lottie like that wasn’t in his DNA and knowing he did gutted him.
But that was on Mo.
She’d shown her level of fear that first night.
He should have known something like this would happen and the second Mitch and Slim showed, he should have been on that.
“I know you didn’t,” Mo replied. “She knows you didn’t. She’s a together woman. Puts on a tough front. Even I didn’t know she wasn’t hangin’ in there, Mitch. And you couldn’t know, Lottie bein’ how she is, that we hadn’t kept her up to date. That’s on me. I should have warned you. But like I told you outside, she doesn’t know anything. The first letter, that’s it.”
Lawson nodded.
“Right. Let’s just get this done,” Mo said, moving into the living room.
He was shocked as shit when they settled in, the Nightingale brothers (Lee and Hank), the Chavez brothers (Eddie and Hector), Tex, Vance, Luke and Ren all stood at his back.
Guess his approval rating went up.
In that moment, he couldn’t care less. He needed to focus on getting this done so he could get back to his girl.
He leveled his eyes to Lawson and Lucas who sat next to each other at the dining room table after Mo sat in the chair at the head, where Lottie had been.
Lawson had dealt with it (for now) and had his game face on.
And Lawson started it, taking point as bad cop, though Mo suspected Lucas might not take the role of good.
“Axl reports he locked this guy down because you called him in the crowd.”
Axl would not report that.
Fuck, this wasn’t going to go easy.
But it couldn’t.
If they appeared to be sweeping shit under the rug, this whackjob could walk.
“I didn’t get a good vibe from him, but he wasn’t notable, which is why I didn’t clock him at King Soopers where I saw him first,” Mo somewhat confirmed. “But I made the call and Axl said he was on him. I don’t know anything about locking him down and that wasn’t our remit, so I can’t confirm if he locked him down. But I’d be surprised Axl would do that unless the man gave Axl a reason to lock him down.”
“The suspect reports, when he was approached, he tried to leave and wasn’t allowed. Were you a witness to that?” Lucas asked.
“I was on Lottie in the dressing room. So no.”
“You just tagged him as a person of interest and then you took care of Lottie,” Lawson said.
Mo nodded.
“You need to make a statement on the record of that and the King Soopers sighting,” Lucas remarked. “You sure it was him at the store?”
“A hundred percent, honestly, no. But gut, the second I saw him in the club, I’d bet all I had on the fact it was him checkin’ out cucumbers.”
Lawson and Lucas looked at each other.
“Receipt,” Lawson muttered.
“Noted,” Lucas muttered back.
That meant they’d search through the guy’s stuff and try to find a receipt to place him at the store, verifying Mo’s statement so Mo didn’t have to be a hundred percent on placing him there.
And Mo hoped that guy bought something and kept the receipt.
“I’ll go on the record about it,” Mo added. “When I clocked him at the club, he wasn’t watching Lottie. He had eyes on me.”
“He threatened your life in the last letter,” Lucas noted.
Mo felt the men behind him shift and wondered if they knew that part.
“Yup.”
“And you didn’t