Nolan by Lane Hart, D.B. West
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Nolan
“We’ve got the rings,” Hugo says as he and Abel come walking up to where we’re all gathered around waiting near the gazebo in the garden, surrounded by perfectly trimmed hedges and rows of colorful flowers.
The sun is about to set, and all the fairy lights wound through the slats of the gazebo are lit up. I’m not a romantic, but even I can appreciate the beauty of the scene.
“Thanks,” I say as I hold out my palm. Abel drops the two white gold bands into it. Fuck, I can’t wait to put the smallest one on her finger and make her mine. “You’re just in time, but Rita’s still not here.”
I glance out toward the entrance, waiting for her with a knot in my stomach.
“She’ll be here,” Abel says with a slap to my back. “Traffic is shit downtown. Must have been an accident or something. It took us forever to get around it.”
“Yeah? I’ll call and make sure everything is okay,” I say before I pull out my phone from my cut and call her. It rings and rings before clicking over to her voicemail.
Dammit.
“Roman! Cannon!” I call out to get the men to both come. “Can you try calling Madison and Charlotte to see how much longer they’ll be?”
“Sure thing,” Roman says. Cannon has his phone out first.
Both men look surprised and concerned when their women don’t answer.
“Something’s wrong,” I say before they even end the call to try them again.
“Oh shit,” Abel whispers. When I turn to him, he’s scrolling through his phone. “There was a shooting downtown. I just got the notification from the local news!”
“Where?” I snap.
“At some café. Two men were shot and taken to the hospital…”
“Fuck!” I exclaim. With trembling hands, I try calling Lucas, already knowing he won’t answer. “It’s the prospects. I shouldn’t have let them go out!”
“We don’t know that yet,” Roman says, his voice tight with concern.
“Lucas isn’t answering.” I try Jake and hold my breath when it clicks over as someone answers.
“Hello?” The voice is a man’s but not the prospect.
“Where’s Jake?” I ask.
“This is Chris. I’m one of the paramedics who just brought him to the hospital.”
I close my eyes as I wait for him to say the rest.
“Is he going to make it?” I ask quietly as the guys crowd around me trying to hear.
“It’s too early to know that yet. He was shot in the stomach and lost a lot of blood. They took him straight to surgery.”
“What about Lucas? Do you know…” I trail off.
“The other male who was injured at the scene was also shot. I believe he also has severe injuries. If he made it to the hospital, he’ll be in surgery too.”
“You don’t know if he made it?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
“What about the women?” I snap.
“Women?” the paramedic repeats in confusion.
“There were three women with the two men.”
“I didn’t see any injured or uninjured women at the scene,” he says, making my heart drop. “But someone wrapped a shirt around Jake’s waist and tied it off to help slow the bleeding…”
“Fuck!” I exclaim and then thrust the phone in Roman’s direction, giving him a chance to ask questions.
“The prospects were hit?” Hugo asks, and I nod.
Various swears go up around us.
Roman ends the call and hands me my phone back, his face creased with a pain that I can feel deep down in my soul. “We need to get to the hospital, be there when the prospects come out of surgery to ask what happened, although I have a guess…”
“Leroy took them. It had to have been him!”
“And we’re going to find them and kill that motherfucker once and for all this time!” Cannon grits out.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him and Roman. “I don’t know how the fuck he found them!”
We all jog to our bikes and mount them before I suddenly notice there’s only nine of us. “Wait!” I yell with a hand up before anyone cranks up. “Where the hell is Leo?”
“I called and told him about tonight,” Hugo responds. “He said he would close up and meet us here.”
“Shit! Marcus, you, Verek, and Winston, go check the clubhouse,” Roman orders. “The rest of us are going to the hospital. Call me when you get there!”
I don’t think I’ve ever been so enraged. Not only are the women missing, but the prospects are fighting for their lives, and Leo, hell, he could already be dead, for all we know.
And it’s all my fucking fault.