Excuse The Obscene

Jimmy's P.O.V.

"No one fucking sleeps until we have some kind of fucking lead." Zacky's voice was low and dangerous, a sign that he was losing all patience.

He turned on his heel and left the room, tension still filling the space.

"He was shitting us when he said no sleep, right?" Matt asked from his spot on the couch. He was slumped over and had bags under his eyes from serious lack of sleep.

It'd been four days seen Brian and I had seen what I literally thought was a hallucination. That is until she kicked mine and Brian's asses. Simultaneously. The girl had turned into a little monster; one with a damn good right hook. It had taken the full two hour drive back to Huntington Beach to get over the shock. Not shock from getting our asses kicked but the shock of seeing Toni. In California. After two years. Telling Zacky had been eventful to say the very least. It took him ten minutes to fully understand that Toni had been in San Diego. It took twenty minutes for him to realize that Brian and I had let her get away and fifteen minutes for him to fully flip a shit over it. It took an hour by himself to get his mind under control and fifteen minutes for him to start shouting orders.

We'd been working practically non-stop to try and find any information. Brian had caught the license plate of the car that Toni and her little friend had jumped into. A little research on Johnny's part showed that the car had been a rental. Brian had driven back down to San Diego to find the rental place and get the name of the person who rented it. The place had a policy about giving out information but apparently after Brian fucked the receptionist in the closet she'd been more than willing to give him the name of the person who had rented the car. And that was as far as we'd made it in trying to figure anything out. The receptionist said a guy named Drew Pierce had rented the car but the name was practically useless. We had no way of knowing whether or not the fucker had even used his real name. He had paid in cash so there was no trace from a credit card.

The lack of leads had been pushing Zacky closer and closer to the edge. His fuse was short and his patience was nonexistent. Anyone that entered his office, with the exception of the guys, Val and I, became a punching bag. We could all tell that Zacky was desperate to find Toni and if he didn't...well we might all be at risk.

But these past four days have been nothing compared to the last two years. Zacky had always had a ruthless, harsh, straight business side but after Toni left he'd become something else entirely. Though I guess, 'left' isn't exactly the right term.

I had been laying unconscious with a bullet wound when all hell had apparently broken loose that night, two years ago. When I'd woken up the next day, Zacky had been locked in his office and the only sounds coming from the room was the sounds of shit crashing into each other and things smashing. When I found everyone else they all had various looks of grief and distress on their faces. No one seemed to care that I was conscious and walking around. After coughing to announce my presence, Matt stood up to fill me in on what had happened. I saw the pictures myself and they did look pretty incriminating. It wasn't until Matt and Johnny made it to the cop's place that the truth started to come out. They'd beat the shit out of him for almost half an hour before he'd given them all the information he knew, including the fact that Toni had never breathed a word to the cops about them. She hadn't been the leak but she'd been played to look like it. A few more beatings had the cop explaining that they framed her in hopes that she would turn to the police station for help and trade information for protection. Like Toni would ever need protection from them. Like they were capable of protecting anyone from us. The guy's death would have been far more drawn out had Matt and Johnny not been in a rush to get back to Zacky before he did anything rash and stupid. When he hadn't picked up his phone, the guys had known it was too late. They'd gotten back to the house and found Toni gone and Zacky sitting alone with his gun.

The pain Zacky must have felt when he thought Toni was the leak must have been nothing compared to the pain he felt then. Considering what he did for a living, Zacky was incredibly good at keeping his emotions hidden but everyone could see the pain he felt in the days after Toni's disappearance. We'd had men scouring the city but Toni had made it out of Huntington faster than anyone had expected. For awhile Zacky was nothing but an incomprehensible mess. He hardly ate and he hardly slept. But misery turned into sheer rage after the first few days. He went from being ruthless to dancing the line of pure cruelty; he wasn't just harsh anymore, he was sadistic.

After a few months we gave up on looking for Toni and for the most part Val, the guys and I tried to fall back into life like it was before Toni. Zacky, on the other hand, just never got over it. He was significantly different than he had been before he met Toni. He fucked every skank that came his way and beat the shit out of every fucker that crossed his path. And now with the chance to get her back...it was easy to see why Zacky was so on edge.

"What the fuck are we going to do?" Val's voice snapped me out of my thoughts.

"There's not a lot of options. We find her. Point fucking blank." Brian spoke up. He was the only one who didn't seem to be feeling the weariness from all the late nights.

But then again, besides Zacky himself Brian was probably the one most closely effected by this. Johnny and Val mourned the disappearance of their best friend but at the same time they never fully forgave her for leaving the city without saying goodbye to them. Matt and I were close to Toni but not as close as Val and Johnny. So it turned out that Brian was the one to lose the most in this situation. Not because of Toni, despite the fact that he liked her just as much as Matt and I. No Brian was hurting the most because of Zacky. They've been best friends long before any of us knew either of them. When Zacky started changing, Brian lost out the most. The rest of us were watching the man that was our boss and our friend go through so much but Brian had to watch the man he considered a brother go through it all. So, naturally Brian had a little bit more to gain by finding Toni than the rest of us.

"Who the fuck are we kidding?" Johnny spoke for the first time that night. "She left for a reason. She ran the fuck away and never looked back. Even if we manage to track down the guy you saw her with and manage to find Toni through him where does that leave us? Do you really think she'll just up and come back here? She hasn't so much as called or sent a fucking e-mail to any of us in two fucking years. Tracking her down won't change shit."

We all had our own ways of dealing with Toni leaving. Johnny's was bitterness.

"You wanna go tell that shit to Zacky?" Brian challenged, moving from his spot up against the wall.

"Last I checked he was the reason she fucking left!" Johnny stood from his spot on the chair and the two started moving towards each other.

"Cut the shit. We don't fucking need to be fighting each other right now." I said and the two stopped walking but continued to glare at each other.

It was silent for a moment before my ringtone filled the room. I grabbed my phone off the table and read the caller ID. Hopefully we were finally getting some fucking good news.

Zacky's P.O.V.

They saw her.

I sat at my desk and played with the small, white gold charm bracelet, tossing it from hand to hand. It had been my one year anniversary gift to Toni. The same night she left, I'd found this on display at the local pawn shop.

She'd been in California less than a week ago.

It was taking a lot to wrap my head around the fact that Toni had been just two hours away. It took all of my self control to keep all my senses straight. I knew what I'd become in the last few years and I knew how I was acting in the past few days but none of that mattered. None of it mattered if it meant I could find Toni again. If I could apologize, something I had never done for anyone but Toni. If I could run my hands through her hair and hold her pressed against my body. If I could see her and have her whisper in my ear like she used to. If I could feel her shiver when I ran my hands down her sides. I more than want to find her. I need to find her. Knowing that she had been so close and there was even a small chance that I could finally see her again.

The door to my office bursts open and the guys all walk in, Jimmy leading the pack.

"We've got something." He said as everyone took seats around the room.

"Unless it's a name and fucking address, you shouldn't look so proud of yourself." I slipped the charm bracelet into my pocket and stared at Jimmy waiting for him to tell me whatever it was.

He clenched his jaw and I could tell he was fighting to keep from saying the wrong thing. I raised my eyebrow and waited for him to speak, my patience running thin.

"Anthony found the records for this Drew Pierce." Jimmy said. "He's sending them to Johnny right now."

Anthony. Anthony, the police officer who just so happened to be on my payroll. After the shit with Toni I was done taking chances with the fuckers over at the precinct. It was easier to have a few of them on your side. Now that a few men in blue discovered how well crime pays, I always know exactly what's going on over there. It's come in handy more than a few times. This was one of those times.

Johnny slid his computer in front of me and I glanced at the man on the screen. Longish hair, piercings, tattoos. He looked like the type of guy I would do business with so it shouldn't surprise me that this would be the guy Toni works with. My eyes traveled down the screen and I read some of the information out loud.

"Drew Jonathan Pierce. Resisting arrest, reckless driving and a few speeding tickets. No serious jail time but a few court hearings. Boston, Mass."

"The guy hasn't been arrested in a little over a year. We don't know how outdated the information in the system is. Anthony could only get his hands on the general files." Jimmy spoke, immediately killing my plans to hop on a plane to Boston, Massachusetts.

"So what good does any of this shit do me?" I asked leaning back in my chair.

"I've made a few calls to the little connections we have on the East Coast. It turns out this guy deals in killings. Works with a partner that most people never get to meet unless they're on the receiving end of the bullet. Sound like someone to you?"

"So she does hired work now." I smiled a little to myself. My little firecracker was a little assassin.

"Start calling in favors that people owe me on the East Coast. I want a meeting set up between this Pierce and us. Tell 'em I'm looking for someone to do a job and I'm willing to pay a lot. Say whatever the fuck necessary to get that meeting set up." I said, speaking to Jimmy since he handled most of the connections.

"And then we what? Beat the shit out of him until he tells us where Toni is?" Matt asked, already flexing his fingers as if there was already someone that needed to be punched.

"No." I smirked.

"If he's the one that sets things up then she probably won't be there, Zacky. There's no other way to get to her." Val, the voice of reason, spoke.

"I know Toni. She wouldn't work with this guy unless she was close to him in some way. If we tried to snatch her from where ever she is, she'll only end up fighting us to try and run. If we take this guy and drag his ass all the way across the nation to Huntington Beach it'll only be a matter of time before she comes running here to take him back. We aren't going to her. She's coming to us."