Brock glared at them, that bile still eating away at his throat. Visions of Bree in her hospital bed filling his head, visions that morphed into Tess, jaw wired, teeth missing, eyes swollen shut, dark bruises at her neck.

Fuck.

Fuck!

He turned back to the captain. “My boys need to be picked up from school. I need to make some calls.”

“You do it from in here,” Cap replied.

Brock shook his head. “I gotta be out there. I know where he hides. I know where he creeps.”

“You give that info to Jimmy, Hank, and Eddie. They’ll follow it up.”

“She’s my woman, Cap,” Brock reminded him.

“We’ll find her,” Cap promised again.

That bile in his throat was swelling, threatening to choke him. “My job to keep her safe,” he spoke around the bile, this making his voice thick.

“We’ll find her, son,” Cap promised yet again and his eyes went intense. “Goes against the grain, man like you, I know it. Goes against the grain. But the smartest thing you can do right now is sit your ass down, brief Jimmy, Hank, and Eddie so they can work this, then call someone to take care ’a your boys. When we get her, you need to have your shit together ’cause she’s gonna need you. So, you gotta keep your shit together, Brock, do the smart thing, help us help her.”

After the captain stopped speaking, Brock “Slim” Lucas didn’t delay.

He walked to the chairs in front of Cap’s desk, sat his ass down, and looked to Jimmy Marker who was seating himself beside him. Then he ran down everything he remembered about Josiah Burkett, which was everything he knew about Josiah Burkett. He didn’t forget anything. Not anything.

Eddie Chavez left first to disburse the first wave of intel.

Hank Nightingale left second.

Jimmy Marker waited until the end.

Then Brock called his mother to go pick up his boys.

And after that, standing at the window in the captain’s office, eyes staring unseeing outside, that bile still choking him, his brain torturing him, his instincts screaming for him to move, his palms itching, his teeth clenched, it took everything he had to lock himself down and not do, again, what he’d done years ago. Something that was wild and stupid and fucked up then and something that he could have no way of knowing would put his Tess in jeopardy now. And, for the first time in fucking years, he prayed.

My wild man, he heard her sweet words whisper in his head. My snake charmer.

Brock Lucas closed his eyes and prayed harder.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Tell Slim

“DO YOU KNOW what he did to me?”

“You’re the one who hurt Bree.”

“Do you know what he did to me?”

I went silent when he started screaming.