Missing Ch. 21-30

Red thought about it for a minute as his men stood around nervously. When he looked up, it wasn't at me. He looked at Tartarus and made a slash across his throat.

His Sergeant-at-Arms cut the rope, and I dropped into the freezing water.

Ch. 25

Iron Horsemen President Red's POV

Babsom Point, Annisquam Village, Massachussets

I knew I was putting the club at risk, but killing the cop had to be done. Now that we had the information we needed, she couldn't live to testify against us. I had to trust my men had done things right, and no one would be able to prove we were involved.

Bonnie didn't scream or beg for her life. I heard the splash and walked to the edge of the dock. The water was so cold that the body's automatic response would be to gasp for air, bringing the cold water into her lungs. Her hands wouldn't help her swim, and the cold clothing would make it even more difficult. Drowning was inevitable. The outgoing tide would do the rest, carrying her body out to sea.

"Let's go," he told his men. They walked back to the van where the driver was waiting to go. I was back in my jeep, heading back home where my wife would swear I never left.

My VP was already moving anything incriminating from the clubhouse to a secret storage location. Tomorrow? The shit was going to hit the fan, and we had to be ready for it.

Bonnie Woods' POV

The second or two warning I got was enough for me to take a deep breath and prepare for the water. I knew what was coming when I hit the water. Sean and I had taken many a late-night swim in the cold water of the lake behind our home. We'd done enough snorkeling to know I could hold my breath for a minute or longer if I remained calm.

The water was deep enough that I didn't hit the rocks. I fought the instinct to struggle back to the surface. First thing? Fix my shoulder. Now that I wasn't hanging from a rope, I could bring my arms down. It hurt like hell, but the rotation of my shoulder popped it back into its socket. I unzipped and pulled off my hoodie, then ripped my T-shirt off. Looking up, I could see I was far enough underwater in the inky night to make the next part work.

I shifted.

As my hands and feet lengthened and grew into paws and claws, slid free of the leather cuffs, and my ankle boots fell off. As soon as they were gone, I shifted back and swam in between the pilings. Only my yoga pants survived the change. I ignored the cold and growing numbness until I could rise unseen and breathe again. I didn't want to leave a bubble trail, so I waited until my face slowly broke the surface before quietly letting my breath out. I hugged the barnacle-encrusted piling as I caught my breath and listened.

"Let's go," Red told his people. Their footsteps echoed above me as they walked back to the rocky shore.

I moved closer to the shore but stayed in the water until I heard their vehicles start up and pull away. I could recover from being cold, but not from being spotted. By the time I walked onto the beach, I was hypothermic and shivering uncontrollably. I tossed my yoga pants aside and shifted to my wolf again, shaking my fur out before trotting painfully up the sand and rock shoreline.

There was a large building to my left, and just to my right was the road my kidnappers had taken. The building had some lights on around the outside, so I moved that direction along the seawall. My shivering was getting worse, and every step was a struggle. When I got closer, I realized my mistake. It was a yacht club and restaurant that was closed for the winter. It was sure to have video surveillance and storage. Going near it as a wolf was dumb, so I veered inland towards where the driveway met the main road.

My luck wasn't getting better as I trotted along in the snow next to the road. It started to snow, and the wind picked up to add to my misery. The street was full of expensive summer homes, and most sat empty in the winter months. I was getting desperate as I passed one dark residence after another. If I didn't find shelter soon, I'd freeze to death out here.

I turned back, cursing myself for not choosing the road the bikers had used. My wet fur was matted and frozen, and the jagged ice and sharp rocks were cutting up my paws. I moved onto the plowed road and pushed myself to keep moving. If I stopped, I would die. If I died, my mate's killers would get away.

I saw a porch light on a few houses down on the left.

I forced myself on, stopping just before the house to shift back to my human form. I left bloody footprints behind as I stumbled to the door, falling to my hands and knees as I reached the porch steps. I used the last of my strength to bang on the screen door and scream for help.

I saw the shadows change as a light turned on inside, and then the front door opened. "OH MY GOD," a woman said. "GEORGE, GET DOWN HERE!" The grey-haired woman sat me up, but I was having trouble focusing. I couldn't talk when she asked what had happened to me.

Darkness took me as her husband carried me to the couch inside, and she covered my frozen body with blankets.

DEA Special Agent Lee Peng's POV

I-95, Southern Maine

I was halfway to Portland when I realized I didn't have the keys to my apartment in my pocket. Annoyed, I took out my phone and called Bonnie to see if she could look for it in my room.

No answer. Dammit. Maybe Bonnie went right to bed?

I checked my clothes and car one last time as I cursed myself for leaving them on the bedside table in the cheap hotel room. There was no point in continuing without them, so I got back on the freeway and headed south to Kittery. I parked in the lot and called Bonnie one last time as I walked towards the main entrance.

I was confused when I heard a phone ringing from the bushes behind me.

I turned around and looked for it, finding the old iPhone 6 Plus next to the wall in the rocks. The cracked screen showed a missed call. I phoned Bonnie again, and it started ringing. I pocketed her phone and ran into the hotel, running down the empty corridor to my room. I took my gun out, quietly opened the door, and verified no one was inside. I moved to the connecting door and put my ear to it.

Nothing. I turned on the flashlight under my Glock 22 pistol and gripped the door handle with my off-hand. I opened the door and swung the gun up; the room was empty. I moved to the bathroom and cleared it as well.

I was getting my phone out to call it in when I saw the note on the bedside table. "Blade is taking me to the clubhouse tonight. I had to go."

DAMMIT! My next call was to my boss, Resident Special Agent Allison St. James. She blew her top when I told her Bonnie was missing, and I suspected foul play because of where her phone was. "Call local law enforcement and put out an APB on her. I'll get the rest of our people down there. I can't believe she disobeyed a DIRECT ORDER not to go to the clubhouse!"

"We should get a search warrant for the Iron Horsemen clubhouse," I said. "She wouldn't have tossed her phone if things were all right. We may have to rescue her."

"I'll take care of it. Get the security tapes from the office and find out what they show. I'll call you back soon." She hung up before I could respond.

I looked around the room, wondering if she was already dead. How could an experienced Law Enforcement agent be so damn STUPID?

Ch. 26

DEA Special Agent Lee Peng's POV

Kittery, Maine

I was on the phone with the Kittery Police Department Night Sergeant as I walked down to the front desk. "Yes, her name is Detective Sergeant Bonnie Woods of the Penobscot County Sheriff's Department. She is working undercover at the Full Throttle on a DEA Task Force involving biker gangs. We have reason to believe she's in trouble."

"I wasn't aware of any operation in progress," he complained.

"Need to know," I said. "Just get people over here. I'll be in the office." I reached the front desk and flashed my badge. "Debbie, I need to see security tapes from outside the hotel, starting at two in the morning."

"Do you have a warrant?"

"I can get one, but we have a potential kidnapping, and time is of the essence."

She asked to see my badge again, studying the identification. "Drug Enforcement Agency? I knew you guys were Feds, but I thought you were FBI. You're pretty easy to spot, you know." She waved me behind the desk as she sat down at a computer screen hidden from the customers. A few mouse clicks later, the desk clerk had the camera views up, showing the entrance from each side on a split-screen. "You control the playback with these controls," she said as she pointed to the controls at the bottom. "You said two in the morning?"

"Yeah."

She typed the time into the viewer and used 10x speed playback to speed through. At 2:14, we saw Bonnie walking in. "That's our victim," I told her.

"I remember her. Destiny is kinda old, but she's nice. She works her ass off at the Full Throttle. She said it was the only job she could get since her husband left her. It wouldn't be the first time a stalker followed one of those girls home. I told her going running in the middle of the night was a bad idea," Debbie said. She moved the playback forward. At 2:22, I left the hotel. At 2:30, Bonnie walked back out. She'd changed clothes into dark yoga pants, short boots, and a hoodie. I watched her looking at her phone on the sidewalk, maybe twenty feet from the doors.

I watched in horror as a van rolled up and three men jumped out. All were wearing dark clothes, gloves, and ski masks. The black-and-white image couldn't show any details, and I couldn't tell for sure if these men were Bikers or Cartel. Bonnie tried to run away, but she got hit with a Taser and fell to the ground. I saw her phone flying towards the bushes to where I found it. Thirty seconds later, she'd been bound and tossed in the back of the van, and it was driving off. I paused and zoomed in on the license plate to see it covered up. There were no markings I could see on the outside of the van. "I need a copy of this portion of the tape right away, Debbie," I told her.

She downloaded the relevant portion to a video file, saving it on a flash drive as I made the phone call. I gave her a card with my work email and asked her to send it that way too. "Allison, I've got the kidnapping on video. Three men plus a driver in a white Ford Transit cargo van tasered her, tied her up, and drove off with her at 2:31."

"Dammit! That was almost two hours ago! They could be anywhere by now." Boss Lady was pissed off and with good reason. Even though Bonnie had disobeyed orders, the Task Force was her responsibility.

Every minute that went by meant less of a chance to get her back safely. "We need to get eyes on the Iron Horsemen clubhouse! They could be torturing her right now!"

"I'll call the Manchester Police and have them send detectives over to watch it. As soon as I get the warrant, we'll have the Manchester SWAT team serve it."

"We aren't taking it?"

"Our people would take too long to get here, and there's always the chance she isn't there. Everyone else on the Task Force is coming into our office to coordinate the search. Your job is to liaison with local law enforcement in Kittery and Portsmouth."

I could see the lightbars from two cruisers pulling up in front of the hotel. "I have to go before they trample the crime scene," I told my boss.

"Call me when you have more." She hung up.

I grabbed the flash drive and walked out to meet the officers, pointing out where to put the crime scene tape up. I placed an evidence tag where I'd found the phone and marked the tag number on a ziplock bag I put Bonnie's phone in. My phone dinged with a notification of an incoming email from the hotel. I made sure the file worked and then forwarded it to the entire Task Force.

The Kittery detective arrived a few minutes later. "Heard you had a kidnapping?"

"Yeah. Our victim is an undercover cop for the DEA task force, working out of the Full Throttle strip club. Her cover identity is Destiny Falls. We're keeping her real identity back for now; she's Bonnie Woods out of Penobscot County."

The detective froze. "Bonnie Woods? Wasn't her husband?"

"Yeah. Lieutenant Woods was ambushed and killed a few months ago."

"I know, I was at the funeral. Fuck! This shit is going to be ugly. Do we have any suspects?"

"She was supposed to be meeting with a guy named Blade; he's an Iron Horsemen patch out of Manchester."

"Any chance he's the guy?"

"Blade wanted her in his bed, and Bonnie never expressed any fear of him. Still, if his Club found out who she was? Or the Outlaws, Hell's Angels, Saracens, or Exiles figured out she was a cop?"

The detective shook his head. "Pretty ballsy to abduct a cop. It's more likely they would spread the word about her, and they'd avoid her. Maybe it's your garden-variety stalker and rapist?"

"With three guys and a driver? That would be stupid."

The detective pinched the bridge of his nose. "You're right. It has to be one of the clubs. What do you need?"

"Can you get the security recordings from the hotel and start going through them? We need to know if anyone followed Bonnie from the Club. What about the previous nights? Check the Full Throttle security video and surrounding businesses. Maybe we get lucky and get a shot of these guys before they put their ski masts on or covered up the license plate."

"May as well. After watching that video, I don't think the State Police crime scene investigators will find a damn thing."

"Call me if you find something." I handed him my card, and he went inside.

I went back to Bonnie's hotel room to search for anything else that might help. I was digging through her lingerie drawer; she had good taste and a lot of choices given her undercover job. I'd just closed the drawer to go to the next one when Allison called. "I got the warrant for the Horsemen's clubhouse. The DEA office in Bedford will follow the SWAT team from Manchester inside as soon as they are ready."

"Any intelligence from the detectives?"

"According to them, it's another Saturday night there. Since they are a private club, they don't have to close when the other bars do, so the party's still going strong. They did say Blade is there. He showed up alone."

Shit. "What else can we do?"

"If she isn't in that Clubhouse, we don't have probable cause for anything else. We'll have to go public with the kidnapping but using her real identity."

"I thought we were keeping that quiet."

"How long would her cover last with all the press coverage from the funeral? Those reporters will know as soon as we release a photo."

They would, too. It was too much to ask for a cut, color, and fake biker tattoos to hide Bonnie's identity. Looking back, we never should have let her do it. "Anything else?"

"Yeah. You've got a couple dozen of Bonnie's friends and coworkers coming down I-95 from Bangor to help with the search. Try and keep them from fucking things up."

"I'll do my best." She hung up, and I went back down to the office.

"Agent Peng? Do you recognize this guy?"

I went around the desk to where the detective sat at the computer surveillance video. He pointed to the figure in a pick-up truck on the still image. "Yeah, that's Blade, the guy she was going to meet with."

"He showed up about five minutes after Destiny's kidnapping. He sat there for almost half an hour, then drove off."

"You sure?"

"I already called in his license plate and got his real name. No wants or warrants."

We couldn't catch a break. Blade was our best lead, and we had proof now that he didn't do it.

I called Allison with the new information. It didn't change the warrant for the clubhouse raid, which went off just before five in the morning. Allison said it was like they knew we were coming! No one resisted the SWAT team, no drugs or weapons were found, and no evidence connected the Horsemen to the kidnapping.

Bonnie had been missing for three hours now, and we had no idea where to look next.

Ch. 27

Alpha Anthony McInnis' POV

Baxter Pack House, Alpha Quarters

"Alpha, we have an emergency call from Sheriff Rabb." The mental push-message from my Security Supervisor was enough to wake me up. In an emergency, any Pack member could break through the mental barrier I set up while sleeping or busy with other tasks.

"Transfer it to my room," I replied. A moment later, the phone by our bed rang. Pamela woke up, turning towards me as I answered. "What's going on, Ty?"

"I just got off the line with the DEA Resident. Someone kidnapped Bonnie from outside her hotel. Four people, unmarked van, no identifying marks or plates."

"DAMMIT!" I was on my feet in a moment. I saw the clock showing four-forty-five on Sunday morning. "When?"

"About two hours ago. We've got an all-points-bulletin out for Bonnie's undercover alias. We're assuming one of the biker gangs she was investigating figured out who she was."

I thought about it as I pulled clothes on. "Why kidnap a law enforcement agent? Wouldn't they kill her instead?"

"Not if they need to know what she knows," Ty replied. "We're mobilizing from our side, and I need you to alert our friends."

"I'm on it," I told him. "Send me a picture of Bonnie's undercover appearance, and call me back if you hear anything."

I opened the door that was the private entrance to the Alpha Offices. It was doubtful that the kidnappers would put Bonnie on a plane or cross the Canadian border, so I had to assume she was within a two-hour circle from Kittery, the search area widening by the minute. I booted up the Council computer and went to the section for emergency alerts. Selecting all the Packs within a three-hour radius from the kidnapping site, plus the Northeast Council Chair, I sent the message requesting an emergency teleconference at five AM.

From Boston to Canada, Packs received the alert and woke their Alphas. While I waited for them to get on the call, I sent out an email with the relevant information. Ty sent me the photo and video file with the kidnapping, so I added those to the message.

Many Alphas knew Bonnie from her quarter-century at Baxter, and all the Trackers knew her scent. After all, Bonnie was the best Tracker in North America. Alphas regularly begged me to allow her to train and evaluate their people.

By the time I finished, it was almost time for the call. Pamela joined me, soon followed by my Beta pair. Lieutenant Mark Cleary was in his uniform after getting the update. His mate Tiffany was getting vehicles ready and breakfasts packed for the trackers and warriors already awakened. I forwarded them the surveillance video as Pamela and I got in front of the camera.

All the designated Alphas were online, and Chairman Norman Platt of the East Region started the meeting. "We're here because Bonnie Woods of the Baxter Pack was kidnapped a few hours ago in Kittery, Maine. Alpha McInnis, can you update everyone on the search?"

"Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I sent the video to everyone. Bonnie was working undercover at a strip club, gathering intelligence about the outlaw biker gangs and Cartel drug operations in the Northeast. The kidnapping was well-executed, and law enforcement has no actionable leads right now. I'm asking all Packs to send warriors and trackers to potential locations nearby to see if Bonnie's been there."

"What kind of locations," a New Hampshire Alpha asked.

"The targets were the Hell's Angels, Outlaws, Saracens, Iron Horsemen, and Exiles. Clubhouses, biker bars, garages, homes, and anywhere else they might go. Check emergency rooms,, rest areas, and cheap motels as well. The kidnappers used a white Ford Transit cargo van with no markings or plates, but they could have covered it up or moved her to another car. We have to find her before she is tortured and killed."