Hard As You Can

by Laura Kaye

  She inhaled to take a breath, paused, then tried again. “It’s not that simple,” Crystal managed.

  Color flooded Jenna’s cheeks. “Like hell! It’s totally that simple.”

  “Jen—”

  “No.” She shoved up from the table. “When is it going to be enough, huh? When he puts you in the hospital? When he kills you?”

  In eight months. That’s when it’ll be enough. But Crystal didn’t say that, of course. She didn’t want to do anything—yet—to give away her plans, not even to Jenna. Because waiting ’til winter wouldn’t make sense to Jenna unless she also understood the financial and safety considerations Crystal juggled. And those were burdens Crystal didn’t want Jenna to have to bear.

  Because Crystal was the big sister. She was the one who’d promised their incarcerated father to do whatever it took to take care of Jenna. Crystal might’ve been forced to grow up fast and set aside her dreams at the age of nineteen, but she refused to let that happen to Jenna, too.

  But what can I say? How can I make her understand? “Please sit down, sweetie. It’s okay.”

  If possible, Jenna’s expression became even more irate. “It’s not even a little okay, Sara.” She shook her head, spilling fat tears from the corners of both eyes. “You want to know why my seizures are getting worse? Why I’ve been getting behind on schoolwork and having to pull all-nighters?” She plowed on before Crystal got the chance to respond. “Because I am so worried about you, sometimes I can barely think, barely sleep. Every time a new mark shows up, I wonder if the next time, I’ll lose you and end up all alone.”

  Crystal rose, guilt and regret souring her stomach. She knew that feeling. God, did she know that feeling. “Oh, Jenna. No. If you could just trust me—”

  “Trust you? Not until you’re willing to take care of yourself, too. Not until you’re willing to stop being a victim.” She ran across the room and down the hall. Her door slammed, punctuating the word echoing in Crystal’s ears.

  Victim. Victim. Victim.

  Crystal slumped into her chair as all the oxygen was sucked out of the room, and, for a minute, she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She didn’t blame Jenna for being upset with her. If the tables were turned, Crystal would’ve been every bit as upset. Probably more. But that didn’t change the fact that Jenna’s words cut her deep because there was a small part of her that couldn’t help but wonder if it had taken her this long to plan a way out because she was just . . . weak. A victim.

  Maybe if she was stronger, she would’ve found a way out sooner. Maybe if she was smarter, she could’ve figured out a way to avoid becoming dependent on Bruno while getting Jenna the care she needed. Maybe if she was braver, she would’ve fought back instead of going along, biding her time until all her ducks were in a row.

  She gasped, trying to swallow the sob that lodged in the back of her throat. Biting down on the inside of her cheek, she forced a few deep breaths until her brain reoriented its attention from the agony in the center of her chest to the slicing pain on the side of her mouth.

  When she’d successfully fought back the urge to cry, to fall apart, to curl up in a ball and scream, she cleared the table. Put away the leftovers. Did the dishes. The mechanics of the movements calmed her, helped her set aside the hurt.

  Someday, Jenna would understand. Maybe then, she’d be able to forgive Crystal all the things she’d done wrong along the way. Until then, Crystal had to hold on tight to the belief she was doing the right thing. It wasn’t like you could take a class on how to survive and escape your relationship with an abusive boyfriend and a notorious organized-crime ring while taking care of your chronically sick sister. Or else she would’ve been first in line for that bad boy.

  Doing the right thing.

  Shane.

  Why her brain brought him up at this moment, Crystal didn’t know.

  Yeah, you do. Because helping him was the right thing. It had been the night he’d rescued his friend from Confessions. And it was now.

  Crystal wasn’t a fool. She played ignorant really well, but she’d picked up on a lot more than people gave her credit for. Not just the never-to-be-seen-again women, but the drugs and the guns and the rampant violence and intimidation. These were daily life for Bruno and the whole Church gang.

  Walking down the hall, she debated knocking on Jenna’s door. But between her sister’s anger and exhaustion, Jenna wasn’t gonna be in a talking mood for a while. And if Jenna had any hopes of making her three o’clock history class, she needed to get some rest. So Crystal gave her door a last look, then slipped into her own room, closed the door, and turned the lock.

  Looking around her room, Crystal’s gaze went from the lavender comforter she loved to her sewing machine on a desk in the corner under the window, to the long dresser covered in picture frames and trinket boxes. For a long moment, she stared at the dresser like it might be filled with snakes, then she dug deep for the resolve to do what she needed to do. What she should do.

  Getting a grip on the wooden molding of the old piece of furniture—along with her mom’s sewing machine, another of the things she’d saved from their house—Crystal heaved with a grunt and pulled the end out from the wall about eight inches.

  An air-conditioning vent sat low to the floor in the shadow of the dresser. Crystal knelt, undid the loose screws with her fingers, and tugged the metal cover free. Stretching, she reached her hand in until her fingers encountered one of her stashes—about three grand in cash she’d squirreled away bit by bit, a handgun she’d stolen from the club, and the cell phone that Shane had given her the night before.

  She turned the square rectangle over and over in her hands, debating, summoning the courage. Because unlike the other times she’d helped Shane McCallan, this time it would be intentional, purposeful . . . planned.

  Could she call him from inside the apartment? Maybe make it sound like she was calling someone else and hope Shane got it? She wished she knew exactly how Bruno had learned a man had been in the apartment, but she didn’t. Better not chance it.

  Retracing her way through the apartment, Crystal stepped out onto the cement landing the four units shared and eased the door closed behind her. The steps to the upper floor blocked her view of the street, which meant anyone watching from below shouldn’t be able to see her either.

  Taking a deep breath, she turned the phone on. One missed call. A few button presses revealed the call had come from the same number programmed into the phone. Shane.

  He called me?

  Why?

  Curiosity mixed in with her determination. She pressed the call button and put the phone to her ear. Her gut told her she was safe standing there, but as the phone rang, her skin crawled as if a thousand eyes were watching. On the third ring, her stomach slowly descended. It figured that she’d worked up the nerve to do this and he wasn’t going to—

  “Hello?” Shane answered, his voice familiar, warm, and a little breathless, like maybe he’d run to pick up the call.

  “Shane,” she said quietly.

  “Are you okay?”

  Her heart squeezed at the fact that his first question was about her well-being, but then a car started up in the lot below and she nearly jumped out of her skin. Be quick, be quick, be quick! “Yeah. I, um, have information,” she rushed out.

  “Not over the phone,” Shane said.

  “What? Oh. Then how—”

  “I’ll come over.”

  And Crystal thought her heart had been racing a moment before. “You can’t. Not to the apartment,” she said. Not after last night.

  “Okay. Where?” he asked.

  Crystal’s mind raced. “Out back of my apartment building. There’s a trail that leads into the woods.”

  “That’ll work. What time?”

  “Um. Around two thirty?” That would ensure that Jenna had left for her three o’clock class at Loyola and that Crystal and Shane would have enough time to talk before she returned.

  “I’ll
be there.”

  That’s all she needed to hear. “Okay, then I should go.”

  “Yeah. And, Crystal? Thank you.”

  Heart in a full-out gallop, she hung up, nerves making her jittery.

  Back in her bedroom, she turned off the phone, placed it deep inside the vent, and righted everything again, double-checking that the dresser settled precisely into the depressions in the old beige carpet. Using her fingers, she erased the marks in the rug’s nap that revealed the dresser had ever sat away from the wall.

  Her gaze cut to her alarm clock on the nightstand across the room. Two hours until he would be here.

  A ripple of fear and anticipation shot through her stomach—along with an excitement she couldn’t deny.

  Chapter 9

  Standing in the quiet of his bedroom, Shane stared at his phone, a sense of triumph heating his blood.

  Crystal had called.

  Just the thought that Crystal had apparently decided to help him flooded restless energy through his veins. Because it meant she was reliable. Even more importantly, it meant she was taking a chance on trusting him. Shane didn’t know everything there was to know about this woman. Not by a long shot. But he was pretty damn sure she didn’t trust easily.

  Now he just needed to make certain he didn’t do anything to damage that trust.

  The listening devices in her apartment came to mind. The ones that had allowed him to overhear her conversation with Bruno and made it possible for the team to spend the morning researching the marine terminal and getting Marz’s fingers to work looking for any other clues and connections that might help them.

  No question the devices violated Crystal’s privacy and her trust. And he felt twice as shitty about that given the trust she evidently planned to put in him. Already had, just by making the call.

  But then his mind put those facts up against some others—namely, her scumbag’s penchant for getting violent. And Shane’s brain landed on the side of thinking the devices a necessary evil. Didn’t mean they sat well in his stomach, though.

  Deciding to allow himself five minutes to bask in the victory of Crystal’s having called, Shane made his way out of his room and down the hall to the wide-open space of the Rixeys’ combined kitchen and living room. Everyone had been hanging here after lunch when he’d slipped away to take the call, but they’d all made like ghosts and disappeared. He searched the gym and found more of the same.

  He jogged down the cement-and-metal steps, his footsteps echoing in the industrial hallway, to the doorway of Hard Ink, the tattoo shop Jeremy and Nick co-owned. Whereas Nick only did some occasional work in the shop around his job as a process server—talk about your odd mash-ups—Jeremy was apparently well-known among tattoo enthusiasts, and the shop had an excellent reputation.

  The back door to Hard Ink led into a large rectangular lounge with high windows and three brick walls. The longest wall held a kick-ass mural that read, “Bleed with me and you will forever be my brother.” Shane’s gaze traced over the red, black, and gray of the graffiti-like design and identified with the sentiment to his core. The team stood congregated around the center of the room, some standing, some half sitting on the round tables that filled the space.

  “This is Nick, Derek, Beckett, and Easy,” Jeremy said, pausing long enough between the introductions to allow each of them to shake hands with someone Shane couldn’t see.

  He joined the group and laid eyes on the man Jeremy was introducing.

  “Oh, and this is Shane,” Jeremy said. “Shane, Ike Young, the man with the magic hands.”

  With his shaved head, skull tats, full sleeves, and cutoff denim jacket, Jeremy’s tattooist looked like he belonged in a tattoo shop. Shane and Ike shook. Guy seemed friendly enough.

  “Pfft. He’s not all that,” Jessica Jakes said, walking in from the front reception area and elbowing Ike with a wicked smile.

  “It’s a good thing I like you, squirt,” he said, putting his arm around Jess’s neck and yanking her in tight. He absolutely dwarfed her in size—a combination of how petite she was and how huge Ike was.

  “Of course you do. I’m totally adorable,” she said, glaring at Jeremy as he rolled his eyes. What Jess lacked in height, she made up for in the size of her personality and the bite of her sarcastic tongue. Shane’s gaze glanced over her, from the black braid that curved around the side of her neck and laid over her shoulder to the low vee of her tight, black shirt to the killer heeled boots she wore over a pair of curve-hugging jeans. When they’d met, Jess hadn’t done a damn thing to hide her attraction to Shane, and he’d had half a mind to have a little fun with her when this mission was over.

  Now . . . ?

  Crystal.

  His mind conjured up the softness of all that red hair, the heat of her curves in his hands, the press of her body against his.

  Aw, hell.

  Shane gave Jess another look and . . . nope. His interest wasn’t there. Not anymore.

  “And this is Becca,” Jeremy said. She smiled as she shook Ike’s hand, but worry and exhaustion shone in her eyes. This situation would’ve been a helluva lot of stress for anyone, but in the past few days, Becca had been injured, nearly abducted—twice, and now she was pulling all-nighters to stand watch over her brother. Thank God she’d managed to take a couple weeks’ leave time from her nursing job. No way she could’ve juggled all that right now.

  “So, Ike and Jess, just wanted you to meet the guys since they’ll be coming and going from the building while they get their new security-consulting business up and running.” The team had strategized this morning what to tell Jeremy’s staff. They needed some plausible cover for why they were hanging around so much, and the consulting business well fit their military backgrounds and explained why they were buttoning up the security around here.

  Jess pulled out of Ike’s hold and crossed her arms. “Security consulting. What exactly does that mean?” she asked.

  “Private investigation, computer and physical-security analysis and installation. That kind of thing,” Nick said casually.

  “Jess’s dad was a cop,” Jeremy said, neither his stance nor his voice as relaxed and convincing as Nick’s.

  She pressed her lips into a tight line and nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Well, good luck with it. I’ve got a client coming in ten, so I better get ready.” She gave a small wave and left the group. It was maybe the most reserved Shane had ever seen her. The mention of her dad had almost seemed to take the wind from her sails. Jess’s dad was a cop. Why had Jeremy used the past tense? And, Christ, did they need to worry about Jess or her father being in any way connected to the police on Church’s payroll?

  As if hearing Shane’s thoughts, Nick said in a low voice. “Her father died a number of years ago. She doesn’t talk about him much.” He turned to Jeremy. “We’re heading out for a while. See ya later.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Jeremy said.

  Becca walked up to him. “Can I ask you a favor?”

  Jeremy’s smile was immediate and full of affection for Becca. “Name it.”

  “Can you keep an eye on Charlie for me? It’s just that I don’t know how long we’ll be gone, and—”

  “I’d be happy to. My next client isn’t until four anyway. I can do the prep work I need upstairs.”

  “Thank you.” She hugged him. “That makes me feel a lot better.”

  Nick gave Jeremy a nod that communicated his thanks, too.

  “We better get going,” Shane said. In addition to their humanitarian concerns about Charlie’s condition, Marz was worried he wouldn’t figure out the meaning of the binary codes without Charlie’s help, so it hadn’t taken anything for Becca to convince Nick and the team that Charlie needed treatment beyond what she and Shane could provide. Even leery as they were about bringing in an outsider. A veteran emergency medical technician nearly through with medical school, her friend seemed about as qualified as they could hope for. Better yet, he’d agreed to meet with Becca after lunch.
But Shane didn’t want to be late to Crystal’s and risk her getting spooked.

  The group of them made their way to the parking lot out back, and Shane updated the guys about his call. The whole team agreed Shane had to cultivate Crystal. Who knew what else she might share? Like a more specific location for Wednesday’s meeting—Derek had explained just how ginormous the marine terminal actually was. Turned out what they knew of the meeting’s location so far amounted to jack squat.

  Despite their relative certainty that their presence at Hard Ink hadn’t been compromised, Nick had asked all the guys to go to the meet to provide cover. Church had clearly infiltrated UMC, so Shane understood Nick’s desire to err on the side of caution.

  “Hey, whose bike?” Shane asked, nodding to the big black-and-steel beauty parked between his truck and Nick’s black Challenger. Hadn’t seen it back here before.

  “Ike’s,” Nick said. “He belongs to a motorcycle club.”

  Beckett came to a halt as his gaze narrowed on the motorcycle. “An actual social club or an MC?” he said.

  “What’s the diff?” Marz asked.

  “MCs often engage in organized crime to support their members. They’re big businesses,” Beckett said, his blue eyes going frosty. Shane turned a hard stare at Nick. Beckett owned a private security firm in D.C. and was never easily ruffled, so the big guy’s concern was enough to fuel Shane’s own.

  “Oh goody. The Church gang on wheels,” Marz said, echoing Shane’s thoughts.

  “Yeah,” Nick said, nodding. “There are several here in the city. I encounter them every once in a while serving papers. Ike’s group is an MC, but he keeps his club business separate from his work at Hard Ink.”

  Beckett braced his hands on his hips and glared at Nick. “And you didn’t think to mention this? Is Ike something we need to worry about? Because we need problems from another direction like Noah needed more rain.”

  Nick shook his head, his expression and stance relaxed. “No. Ike’s a good guy. Loyal to Jeremy. I’ve known him for a while, and I’m telling you it’s not a problem—”