Game (Gentry Boys, #3)(71)

Creed actually looked at me with some sadness. “What those animals did to you was f*cking terrible. I almost want to kill them so I can imagine how my brother feels.”

Just then Cord came busting through the front door. He rushed into the living room, breathless and bewildered. “Well now that you’ve scared the shit out of me, how about you tell me what’s up? Where’s Saylor?”

“She’s still at work.”

Cord stared at me. “Where’s Chase?”

“That’s why we’re all here.”

I kept my head down while Creed briefed him on current events. Cord cursed and sat down on my other side. He knew, without being told, what Chase had gone to do.

“You have any idea where Chase might start looking?” he asked.

I shrugged. “He doesn’t really have anything to go on. I’ve never handed out names and there’s nothing connecting him to anyone-“ I stopped short. The brothers both leaned forward and waited for me to finish.

There was something connecting him to that world. We’d had a friend in common all along. Last night Chase had even admitted that the man I’d seen him with in a parking lot one afternoon was not just an acquaintance from rehab.

Still, Chase had no reason to believe Alonzo had a thing to do with the video.

With an escalating sense of anxiety I pulled out my phone and began playing the video. Creed put a hand on my shoulder. “We don’t need to see it, Steph.”

“Yes, we do.” We needed to know if there were any faces visible in the crowd, anyone Chase might have recognized. Cord couldn’t watch. He would glance at the screen and then his face would dissolve into the most pitying expression before he looked away. Creed stared stonily at the show of my abject humiliation. I knew it pained him, and that he was thinking about how he would react if it were Truly who’d been treated this way. He was putting himself inside Chase’s head.

Finally, when there were only a few seconds remaining in the video, I found what I’d feared. There was someone I could clearly identify, though his head was down and his shoulders sagged. He had climbed the steps of the narrow stage to stand beside me, extending an arm to hand me back my clothes. I dialed his number without hesitation.

“Why the hell can’t anyone answer their phones? Alonzo, it’s Stephanie. You need to call me right away. Right f*cking away goddammit!”

Chase’s brothers were already on their feet before I’d finished shouting into the phone.

“You know where to find this guy?” Creed asked.

“I know where he lives,” I answered. “I’ll drive.”

It felt strange being alone with Chase’s brothers. In the dim interior of the car they looked more like each other, and more like him, in a way that made my insides hurt. I just wanted to find Chase and bring him home.

“He’s not the violent type,” I said out loud, maybe more to convince myself than anything else.

“He’s not,” Cord agreed from the backseat.

“Not usually,” Creed confirmed, drumming his fingers on his leg as he stared anxiously out the passenger window.

Cord sighed in the back. “Tables are turned now,” he said.

“I thought about that,” Creed answered quietly.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Cord was the one who offered an explanation. “You know about Chase getting jumped, right? How the sons of bitches blindsided him from behind and nearly killed him?”

I shuddered. Of course I’d seen his scars. The assault itself wasn’t something he liked to talk about, but those painful days were when he was introduced to the pills that would become a problem he couldn’t deal with alone.

“We found out who did it,” Cord continued. “We were going after them, no matter what it cost us. Blood, jail, it didn’t matter. We just wanted the bastards to pay.”

Creed spoke up. “Chase asked us to forget about revenge and stay with him. He begged us.”

I didn’t know this part of the story. “And you did?”

“No,” Creed admitted slowly. “I didn’t. Luckily Cordero is a better listener than I am. He stepped between me and violence. We were able to return to Chase, where we belonged.” Creed exhaled thickly and held his head in his hands. “This has to be f*cking killing him.”

“I know,” I croaked, thinking of the torment I’d seen in Chase’s face earlier. Cord reached from the backseat and patted my shoulder comfortingly.

“This is it,” I said, pulling into the small, run down apartment complex where I knew Alonzo occupied a studio unit.

“And there’s the truck,” Cord pointed, opening the back door.

Creed hopped out and was the first one to reach the scruffy parked Chevy. They both peered in the windows and glanced around the dark shadows, as if Chase would somehow materialize.

“Which apartment?” Cord called.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. The brothers looked around with some uncertainty but I stalked up to the first door I saw and started hammering away.

A young Asian man answered. He appeared supremely annoyed by the interruption.

“You know a guy named Alonzo?” I asked.

“No,” he sneered and slammed the door.

“Asshole,” I muttered and heard Creed chuckling. He was actually looking at me with something fairly close to respect as I went to the next door and repeated the brief skit. Finally, after three more doors a blonde woman with an ugly scar running down her cheek nodded tiredly when I mentioned Alonzo’s name. She told me he lived directly upstairs.