Storm by Aria Ray

Chapter Fifteen

Storm

Iknew I was too hard on her when we took off from the motel.

But I could see the sorry state she had put herself in this morning, and it was all because she got drunk last night.

Also, I didn’t know if she remembered what happened between us last night. I lost control. I should have put her in bed and made her sleep it off. Instead, I got close to her.

Sure, we didn’t technically have sex. I didn’t even let her touch my cock. But what happened was enough to prove that it was going to be hard to control myself around her.

She made me weak. That wasn’t something I dealt with well. I needed to stay in control. As Zoe sat behind me on the bike, the tension between us would rise and then fade away. All this time must have given her enough of an opportunity to work through her hangover, too. Seven hours passed uneventfully.

By the time we got to Phoenix, she looked much better.

The information that Buzz and Teeny collected on the car led us to a rental company. Chances were that we weren’t going to find the guys who drove the car on the surveillance tape, but I hoped someone at the rental company would be able to give us some information on them.

When I parked my bike and got off, Zoe put a hand on my arm to stop me from walking away.

“Storm, look, I just want to clear the air between us before we continue.”

“Okay.”

She licked her lips. The same lips I’d tasted last night. The mouth I couldn’t get out of my mind because I hadn’t tasted anything sweeter.

“I want to apologize for my behavior last night. I know I need to be stronger. I need to act more professionally.”

“Shit happens. We move on.”

Zoe shook her head. “I want you to believe me when I say that I’m usually better than this. Stronger than this. I’ve covered devastating cases, chased serious leads, I’ve dealt with things like this before.”

“But it’s never involved your sister,” I stated.

She forced a lump down her throat. I noticed how her fingers trembled a little, and once again, I felt the urge to take her in my arms. Her pussy was so tight and warm last night. I’d fallen asleep fantasizing about being inside her. Giving her what she wanted. Somehow, I’d managed to keep it together, but for how much longer?

“This time it’s personal and I’m handling it badly, but I promise to do better. You’re right, I can’t let my grief jeopardize the mission.”

I was wrong about her the first time we met. She was more than the money she came from, more than the fancy house she grew up in. She didn’t need to prove it to me, I already knew she was strong. She was capable of finding her sister single-handed if she had the resources.

She was a lot stronger than she looked, and certainly a lot stronger than she gave herself credit for.

“Okay, I get it. We should go,” I replied.

We stared at each other in silence for a moment and then I led the way. We were headed to the rental office. Our arms brushed casually, but I felt the electric buzz her body gave off. I was still thinking about how perfect she was. It was killing me.

A part of me wished I’d taken her last night. It was what she wanted, right?

We walked into the small messy office together. There was one guy, and he was in a wheelchair. Within seconds of seeing him, I knew he had the blood of a soldier. He must have clocked the same thing about me.

I reached in my pocket and pulled out the piece of paper with the registration number.

“We’re looking for this vehicle,” I said, slapping the paper down on the desk in front of the man.

He peered at it and then typed it in his computer.

“Yeah, what about it?” His eyes drifted to Zoe. He was checking her out, but I took a step towards the desk, snapping him out of it.

“Where is it? Who’s using it?” I growled.

“Nobody. It’s available for rent.”

“Two guys rented it,” I said, and pulled out the grainy snapshot of them from the surveillance tapes and handed it to the man. “When did they return it?”

He looked at it with furrowed brows.

“Two weeks ago,” he said, typing into his computer again. “It says here.”

“Did you see her?” Zoe stepped up to the desk. She was holding up her phone with a picture of Alison on it. “Was she with them?”

The man eyed the picture, stared at Zoe some more and then back at me.

“Didn’t see her.”

“Look again,” I growled.

The man wheeled himself away from the desk.

“I would have remembered her if I saw her.”

I looked at Zoe who was standing beside me now. She refused to meet my eyes, but I knew she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

I loomed over the man, glaring down at him.

“Is there anything else you can tell me? One soldier to another.”

Zoe didn’t know what I was talking about. She obviously had no clue I was ex-marine. The man looked up at me with clenched jaws.

“One of the guys left in a private car that had been parked here the whole time they were using ours. I didn’t see the girl. That is all I can tell you.”

Zoe turned abruptly and went to the door.

She didn’t want to hear anymore. She had hoped we would find some information on her sister here, but it was looking like a dead end now.

“Try the gas station. That’s where they went from here,” the man called out before we left the office.

We rode to the gas station next.

Zoe was silent the whole time. I knew she was thinking about her sister and how time was slipping away. We had just spent the past fourteen hours chasing after a rental car that was leading us nowhere.

“We gotta keep looking,” I remarked when I helped her off the bike at the gas station.

She flicked her hair over her shoulder and shook her head.

“It’s okay, Storm, you don’t have to console me. I can deal with it.”

“I’m just trying to remind you that we’re on the right path. This is the farthest we have come in this case, right?”

She stood in front of me with her cheeks coloring to a deep red. She was struggling to keep her head above water, and I wanted to keep her from sinking, but I had already pushed her away. Maybe she didn’t want to try and get close to me.

“You’re a vet?” she blurted.

“I was a marine, yes.”

Her eyes brightened a little, almost like she hadn’t expected it from me.

“I didn’t know that about you.”

There were a lot of things she didn’t know about me. And if she started finding them out; she would realize she definitely had to stay away from me.

“I served one tour. It was a mistake,” I said, and instantly regretted it.

“Why?”

“I have never done well under someone else’s authority,” I replied.

There was a dainty smirk in the corner of her mouth, but she gulped it away.

“Yeah, I can’t exactly picture you taking orders from people.”

“I thought it was going to be my ticket out of the world I lived in.”

“This world?”

“The world I grew up in.”

“You wanted to get away from your family?” she asked.

We were approaching dangerous territory again. How did we even end up here? Zoe took me out of my comfort zone. I didn’t know how she did it.

“Yeah, I wanted to get away from my family because they asked too many questions,” I growled. I hoped she got the message.

I walked into the gas station, and she followed me closely. This time, she already had her phone out. Alison’s photo was ready to be flashed at anyone who was willing to look.

An older man behind the counter was smoking a cigarette.

“Two men and a young girl. They come by here two weeks ago?” I asked. There was no time for introductions, and certainly no time for small talk.

Zoe held up the photo of Alison to support my statement.

The man lowered the newspaper he was reading and squinted as he tried to get a good look at Alison.

“Yeah, I remember her. They wanted to take her to the Ladies room out back.”

Zoe’s back instantly straightened. She stared at me and then at the man. She may have had questions for him, but she was waiting for me to ask them.

“What do you mean they took her to the ladies room?”

He shrugged. “They made some comment about how she wasn’t doing so good and that she couldn’t go alone. I took one look at her and knew she was scared shitless. Out of her mind. I knew something was up.”

“And you didn’t call the cops? You didn’t think to tell anybody?” Zoe’s voice was high-pitched and threatening.

I turned to her and tried warning her with my eyes, but she wasn’t willing to stand down.

“We have a lot of weirdos coming in through these doors, Miss. If I start calling the cops for every whacko thing I see on my shift, I’ll never have a moment’s peace.”

“But this girl was young and vulnerable. How could you let two men, who you claim were acting shady, just take her away?”

“It is none of my business,” he snapped.

I stepped in between them, purposely blocking Zoe’s view.

“You remember anything about the car they were driving?” I asked, trying to keep it cool. One of us had to.

If this guy started resisting giving us information, then I’d have to take action. Behind me, I could sense Zoe getting restless.

The man stared at me and then drew in a deep breath.

“Sure. I can give you the model and make. It was a dirty purple thing. I remember thinking who buys a car in that color, ya know?”

He wrote it down for us—the model and the make. Like I wasn’t going to remember it.

When he handed the paper back to me, he looked past my shoulder at Zoe. She was still fuming, refusing to look at the man again.

“Look here, Miss, you have what you need. You can take your attitude and get out of here now.”

I was already texting Buzz the information about the car.

Then I grabbed Zoe by her arm and led her out of the gas station.

“I hate him. I hate that man. He could have done something to stop what was happening to Alison.”

“He saw her. This is why we came here.”

Zoe rubbed a hand over her face. She looked exhausted, like she didn’t believe this was going to lead anywhere. She had already given up hope.

My phone pinged with a text from Buzz.

“We got it,” I said. Zoe looked up at me, confused.

“Got what?”

“The license plate number. It’s registered to an address in Texas. They have the guy’s name. The guy the car is registered to.”

Zoe’s mouth fell open and her chest and shoulders heaved. She wrapped her arms around her stomach, like she was trying to give herself a hug.

“Now what?” she murmured.

“I’m going to order backup, and then we show up at this address.”