Page 50 of Baiting Kong
“That boy nearly panicked about being a minute late,” Kat said, waving her phone, and the disembodied voice hollering from the other end, in his direction. “Don’t you dare say that we don’t know that he’s in trouble. He’s not here, so he’s in trouble. Now you go find him and fix whatever has gone wrong!”
“Yes, ma’am,” Mark replied, no sarcasm, no attitude, just obedient and apologetic.
Seeing the club president contrite as hell in the face of his queen's wrath revealed another side of the man that Axel neverwould have guessed existed and told the true story of who really ran things around here.
“I’d like to help,” Axel said.
“You can ride with me,” Creature declared.
“Kong, go empty the place. Everyone’s riding. Kickstands up in three.”
“On it.”
“I’ll lock down once you leave,” she declared. “And I better not have to wait too long for an update, or I’ll head out hunting him myself.”
“As soon as I know something, you’ll know something.”
“I’d better,” she muttered, before hitting the red hang-up icon on the phone without even pausing to listen to whatever the person on the other end was trying to tell her. Maybe that was the infamous Teddy. What little Axel had heard about him hadn’t been favorable, but he didn’t have time to think about him or anything else as he followed Creature out the back door of the kitchen while Night shut off all the burners and shoved the items he’d been prepping back in the fridge.
The rumbling roar of twenty bikes firing up sent a tingling sensation down his back as he clung to Creature, who rubbed his leg.
“We’ll find him,” Creature said. “You keep an eye out and holler if you spot him or that brother of his.”
“I will,” Axel said as they took off.
He’d ridden in and out of factory row hundreds of times, but never as fast as they did it that night, pulling up with unerring precision in front of a warehouse Axel had noticed a lot of activity taking place at over the past few months. It was dark, but that didn’t stop one of the men from prying the door open and four more from heading inside.
“Search the whole place, every room,” Mark declared as they killed the engines. “Duggan, take Swirly and Pat around the leftside of the building. Kong, you go right with Critter and Gray. Scout left the compound on his bike this morning. See if there is any sign of it.”
While they moved to do as they were told, Mark pulled his phone from his pocket and knelt, shining the flashlight in the grass and feeling around like he was looking for something. Axel stayed pressed up against Creature’s back while they waited, but when Mark straightened up, he just shook his head and returned to his bike.
“Not here,” Duggan declared once they’d returned. “But someone was using it not too long ago. Found a water bottle with ice still melting inside it. Pretty sure it’s Scout’s.”
When he held up a bottle with a bright green dragon printed around it, Mark immediately spoke up. “He keeps that behind the bar with him when he works. Okay, so he was here, and recently too. Let’s fan out; he might still be out here in factory row somewhere.”
“If he is, he better have a damn good reason for not checking in,” Kong snarled as he mounted his bike.
The moon was high and bright, meaning Axel had a clear view of the mixture of fury and concern etched into his face as he swung his leg back over his bike.
“Let’s roll,” Mark declared.
Each time they reached a road, Mark would point, and four bikes would break off. Axel scanned as much of the space as he could with how fast they were moving, but he didn’t spot any movement until they rounded the last bend, where the old, abandoned coat factory sat, only it wasn’t abandoned tonight. They encountered cars leaving a parking lot full of them when they pulled up, and people milling around outside as well as spilling out of the entryway.
“What the fuck?” Creature muttered as the four remaining bikes parked. “Hop off.”
Axel did so, immediately followed by Creature. Kong and Danger did as well, the four of them following Mark up to the door.
“Fights are over,” a bald man declared.
“Good, ‘cause we’re not here to start one unless one of you gets in our way,” Mark declared. “Now move!”
For a moment, it looked like the tall, buff, and scary doorman, along with his equally buff and bald friend, were about to do just that, until the bald guy smacked a hand across the other one’s chest and shook his head before they stepped aside.
“Good choice,” Mark said as he stepped past them, meaning Creature, Kong, Danger, and Axel followed. There weren’t many people left inside. Mostly just a bunch of men demolishing something that looked like a makeshift version of the cages he watched MMA fighters compete in on television.
The fighting ring.
Scout had mentioned that his brother was fighting to make money the same way Scout was shooting those videos. Mark marched right over to where they were working and asked where the fighters changed out.
