And on the last, she jerked a thumb High’s way.

“Memory serves, bitch, someone else was in shreds after your gash laid him to waste,” Boz returned.

“Oh yeah?” Kellie asked, eyes narrowed dangerously on his brother.

“Yeah,” Boz shot back.

“You didn’t see.”

Hop was now at their table, the band still playing onstage, but the players embroiled in the current mindfuck could be anywhere, their attention completely on what was happening right there, right then.

Especially when Kellie whispered those three words.

And how she did it.

They all heard it; High could sense how they heard it.

But he felt it.

Each word.

“What didn’t we see?” Pete asked.

High watched Kellie’s body twitch, then she shook her head. “You don’t deserve to know that. You don’t deserve,” she looked to High, “dick.” She raised a hand to point a finger in his face. “Keep the fuck out of her life, asshole. Leave her alone.”

“She left me,” High growled.

“Wasn’t her who walked away,” Kellie returned.

High’s shoulders strained taut in a way it felt any movement would make them snap.

Jesus.

Fuck.

Jesus.

“Was her told him to get gone,” Boz pointed out angrily.

“Wasn’t her who walked away and didn’t come back,” Kellie replied to Boz, but the words were for High and he knew it from more than the fact that she didn’t take her eyes from him. She was whispering in a heaving bar with a rock band playing but he heard every word clear. “You didn’t come back.” She repeated, got up on her toes, her gaze locked to his, and sneered, “So who left who behind, asshole?”

On that, she rolled back on her heels, sent a poison look through them all, turned, and stormed through the tables.

High watched her go, frozen.

You love a man, Millie, you believe in him, you take him as he is. You go on his journey with him no matter what happens, even if that means you have to walk through fire.

He’d said that.

Twenty years ago, he’d said that, looking into her eyes, feeling so much, he didn’t see shit.

He didn’t see what was in her eyes.

I’m done walking through fire for you, High!

Jesus.

Newsflash, assholes, there was nothing to fuck up. She was gone.

Fuck.

She was gone.

He knew it. He saw it. Her house. Her clothes. Her office.

The only time she was back was when he had her in his arms.

So who left who behind, asshole?

Fuck!

He came unstuck just as a hand landed on his shoulder.

He turned to it.

“Brother,” Tack said low.

“Control. Your. Woman,” High ground out, shrugged off his brother’s hand, and pushed through the bar to the door.

He got to his bike, swung on, and took off.

He hit every red light, every fucking one, before he parked right in front of Millie’s house.

He saw it was dark.

He found this concerning.

Jesus, her face at the bar.

That was not anger. It wasn’t frustration.

It was anguish.

Etched there.

Hidden until then.

It had leaked out. He’d seen it in her office.

But he’d still refused to see.

Fuck.

He prowled up to her house, pounded on her door, and kept doing it.

Nothing. No lights coming on, he sensed no movement through the sheer.

He continued pounding.

She could be ignoring him.

The look on her face in that bar, she could be in there doing something else.

He didn’t have his picking kit and he didn’t have time to go get it. Furthermore, upon testing it, she had a deadbolt, so a credit card didn’t work.

That meant he had to take off his cut, wrap it around his fist, and punch through her glass.

He did it, unlocked the door, pushed it open, and went in, his boots crunching through the shards.

He went right to her bedroom switched on the light, and his lungs expanded so sharp, he thought they’d explode.

Shit was everywhere. Clothes, shoes, drawers open, stuff hanging out.

He jogged to the bathroom and found more of a mess.

Fuck, did she do this or was someone waiting for her?

Was this a struggle or a frenzy?

Was someone paying attention to what High was doing, where he was going, who he was doing, and they targeted Millie to get to High? To Chaos?

Shit, had Valenzuela finally lost patience and made his play?

With Millie?

Fuck, could their luck suck that bad?

He jogged out of the bathroom, her bedroom, into the house, finding switches, turning on lights.

Everything in the rest of the house was as it should be.

Immaculate.

He moved to the back door, pulled the curtain aside, and looked through.

No red SUV.

He swiftly moved back through the house to the unused bedroom, going straight to the closet.

Her luggage was gone.

It was frenzy.

It was Millie.

It was Millie packing in a rush to get away from him and to get away from Tyra and her crew’s bullshit.

“Goddamned... fucking... shit,” he bit out, yanking out his phone.

It was then High made the call he’d not made in twenty years.

It rang five times and then he heard, “Hello, you’ve reached the voicemail of Millie Cross of Cross Events. I’m unable to take your call right now but leave a—”

He hung up and tried again.

Voicemail again.

He went to the email with the file Shirleen sent and pulled it up.

He stared at it, scrolling through with his thumb to get the number he needed.

He decided to start with phoning. He’d see where that got him and make his next move.

So he punched in Dottie’s number.

It was picked up on the second ring and High got a pissed male voice who didn’t bother with a greeting.

“I know who the fuck this is and I know your shit is done,” the man stated. “She’s gone. Let her be gone and stop dicking with her head.”

High studied his boots and ordered, “Listen to me—”

The man cut him off, “You got nothin’ to say I wanna hear. Nothin’ Dot wants to hear. Sure as fuck nothin’ Millie wants to hear. It’s over, man, and it’s that in a way you got no choice. So let it go.”

“I don’t know you, bud,” High started. “But I know you weren’t around then, so you don’t know dick about what’s happening, so you don’t know I gotta speak to Millie and you don’t know how I gotta speak to Millie. You got no call to trust me but I’m askin’ you to trust this, it’s urgent.”

“Only chance you got of gettin’ your urgent message to her is if you can send smoke signals, she can read them, and she sees them before she gets her ass on a plane. Dot and her are on their way to the airport. She’ll be gone before you can get your bike parked out there.”

Fuck!

“DIA?” High prompted.

“Far away from you,” the man replied. “First hit, red-eye to New York. Second hit, Paris. Think that’s far enough she can get her head together and sort out her life. But, man, I’m tellin’ you this for the sole purpose that you’ll get the message. She’s not comin’ back. She’s puttin’ distance between her and here, which means her and you, and she’s gonna keep that up one way or another and I mean physically. Denver is a memory for her because you need to be a memory for her. And while I got you, bud, thanks,” he spat the last word. “Thanks for takin’ our girl away from us. The aunt my kids fuckin’ love, the sister my wife adores, the woman I met who’s got no light in her but she’s still got enough love in her to light up the worlds of the people who matter. That’s lost to us now ’cause a’ you. Thanks for that, asshole. Thanks a fuckin’ lot.”

And with that he hung up.

High dropped his hand to his hip, fingers still curled around his phone, and he studied the toes of his boots.

Not sure you can get a passport in a day, Logan.