RIDING DIRTY (Steel Titans MC Book 4) by Franca Storm (ebook voice reader .txt) 📕

“At first, but the rest was your body needing to rest and heal, all natural.”

“It was for the best, Slade,” Mason added.

Up until Liam coming into his own, Mason had always been the one with balls of steel, out of all of them. He questioned everything, fought for everything, and never took things—or orders—at face value. Sometimes it’d pissed me off like nothing else, but it had its upsides. After all, I’d never wanted a bunch of yes men surrounding me. When you were strategizing, you needed to play Devil’s Advocate, and there was nobody else better at doing that than Mason.

I folded my arms across my chest. “Where is she?”

“You mean, your woman?” Mason asked with some clear attitude.

“Yeah, my woman,” I shot back. “Where’s she at?”

Liam reached out and laid his hand on my good shoulder. “Slade, listen—”

Well, I weren’t liking the sound of that. I glared at him, then at each one of them in turn. “Told me I weren’t needed, that you all had it, that you’d sort it, yeah? Weren’t that the deal you made before you put me down?”

The tension ramped up, each of them exchanging worried glances here and there.

“Well?” I barked, shrugging out of Liam’s grip.

“We are sorting it,” Liam told me.

“Yeah? Then where is she?”

“We’re working some leads,” Cole piped up.

“The tracer thing didn’t work out,” Tank added. “Your cell was crushed to shit, boss man.”

I shrugged. “Everything’s backed up.”

“True,” Mason said. “And we’ve got all your stuff loaded onto a brand-new phone, but the tracer you planted on her is no longer emitting a signal. Either it was found and destroyed, or she’s currently in a dead zone.”

“What about the last known location?”

Cole chimed in, “The middle of fucking nowhere.”

“Fuck,” I grunted.

Van held up his hands. “It’s okay, we’re not sitting on our hands. We’re working leads.”

I folded my arms across my chest and settled against the wall, needing the support. Yeah, I felt better than a few days ago, but I wasn’t back to normal yet. That shit took a load of time. “Fill me in on these leads of yours.”

Liam took the reins then, stepping up as Acting Prez, telling me the deal, “Rick’s compiled a list of all of Freeman’s known holdings, as well as his old man’s. We’re knocking them off the list, one by one. It’s just a matter of time.”

Just a matter of time?

That meant more waiting.

Sitting on my hands.

Doing fuck all.

Helpless.

Powerless.

I clenched my fists in a bid to reel in my rising frustration.

Nah, it was more than even that.

It was straddling the line between frustration and outright rage, so fucking volatile, I knew it could detonate at any time, at any one.

I just couldn’t wrap my head around what was going down.

I’d worked my ass off and spent years to get to a point where I’d never be helpless or powerless again. The last time I’d felt the full weight of all of that had been when my wife had been murdered. I’d sacrificed having things and getting close to people to make damn sure I was never put in that position again. Now, the second I broke that vow I made to myself when I had to bury Lisa, the second it got taken from me again.

I should’ve seen it.

I should’ve seen how much of a threat Blake Freeman really was. Instead of relegating him to a potential threat, I should’ve realized.

But I didn’t want to.

When I was so close to finally getting out and finding that peace that I’d been chasing for so long, the last thing I’d wanted was to acknowledge that there was another Nik Stone situation on my hands. Another bloody, brutal battle that would wage for years and impact countless lives.

Fucking shit.

“What about Nolan? I’d been tracking him too. Last I saw, he was still at the Strikers compound.”

“That was before your apparent death,” Liam told me. “He moved real quick after that all went down. He’s back at his club, Indulge.” Before I could get a word out, he held up his hand and warned, “A place you know that we can’t risk hitting, not so close to your recent attempt to take him out there.”

“Let’s focus our efforts on Freeman then. He’s the larger threat anyway.” I scrubbed my hand over my face. “Shit.”

“It’s not your fault,” Cole said. “Nobody saw this coming.”

“He’s right,” Mason agreed.

“So, let’s just sit tight until we get a lead on Willa and Freeman,” Liam said.

“We’ve got an advantage right now with the both of them thinking you’re dead,” Van added.

“Besides, Willa will be okay,” Liam assured me. “She’s not just anybody. She doesn’t need our protection, or anybody else’s. She’s a danger in her own right.”

She was that. No question.

It didn’t mean I could just shake the instinctual need to want to protect her. But I could tame it. Going in wild and half-cocked would only endanger Willa further. It had to be done the right way.

“All right,” I told them.

“Yeah?” Liam said. “You’re… good?”

What other choice was there right now? I gave a nod. “Yeah.”

As I made my way to the door, Liam called out, “Where you headed?”

“Chill. I’m just gonna take a shower. You ain’t all gonna take me down and sedate me for that, are you?”

They all shook their heads, almost in unison, the tension palpable.

“Nah, Prez,” Liam spoke.

“All right then,” I muttered, before pushing out of the room.

***

Much better.

I fixed a towel around my waist as I stepped out of the shower.

Refreshed didn’t even cover it.

I’d spent days laid up and basically stewing in my own filth. It was a load off and the steam had helped to ease the ache in my muscles from not using them for a while. It had cleared my head a lot too. I felt more awake, my thoughts much clearer.

Now I just had to eat something to get my strength up more.

It turned out, I didn’t need to go far to see