The Sister He Never Stopped Searching For
Paramedics arrived first. Then deputies. After that came more questions than anyone could reasonably answer in a single afternoon.
Tessa was transported to the hospital with Maren sitting close beside her. Nolan Pike was taken into custody, though it quickly became clear the situation was larger than one nervous man in a dusty parking lot.
He hadn’t been acting alone.
He had been tied to something darker, broader, and far more organized than the local deputies had initially suspected.
Wade sat outside the emergency room that evening with his hands clasped so tightly the tattoos across his knuckles had turned pale. For years he had imagined what it might feel like to find his sister again.
He had imagined relief.
He had imagined joy.
What he had never pictured was how grief and gratitude could arrive at the same moment and hit with equal force.
A nurse eventually stepped out and told him Tessa was stable—weak, exhausted, shaken, but stable.
Wade closed his eyes and breathed out slowly.
When he opened them again, his phone was already in his hand.
He called his club brothers.
He didn’t ask for trouble.
He asked for watchful eyes, for presence, for protection.
Because the expression Nolan wore when deputies drove him away hadn’t looked like the fear of a man worried about jail.
It had looked like the fear of someone worried about who might come looking next.
