It all sounds perfectly logical, but my brain is fuzzy and takes time to catch up. “You want me to blow them all up?” I whisper.
“Yeah,” Elliot replies. “Look.” He holds up a sealed bag, which isn’t any bigger than one of the cellphones sitting on the table.
“Wait,” I say, my stomach sinking like it’s full of lead. Lead bullets, maybe.
“There are six bags.”
“Yeah,” Elliot replies, his gaze challenging me to argue.
“Why are there six?” I repeat.
He narrows his gaze at me. “Seven sons, plus one father, equals eight. Minus two dead fuckers, equals six.”
My blood turns cold.
“You’re not serious, are you?”
He frowns. “What do you think’s going to happen when you kill his entire family and he finds out it was you? Do you think he’ll forgive you? You think you’re going to run off and live happily ever after?”
I wish.
“Of course not,” I respond. “But I’m not killing him.”
“The guy knows who I am, Juliette. He knows where I live and where I work. He’s probably looking into me right fucking now.”
I stare at the floor, my head whirling. No. I never wanted this! I never wanted to hurt Jase. Everything is getting too muddled, too murky, and I’m drowning under the weight of it all.
But if Jase hurts Elliot—I couldn’t live with that, either. An image of his daughter pops into my mind and I bite back frustrated tears.
“I’ll deal with him, alright?” I say to him. “Not like this. But I swear to you, if he’s a threat to either of us, I’ll put a bullet in his head myself.”
He rubs his hands over the back of his head, the way he does when he’s angry. And he is so pissed at me right now.
It’s not fair, I want to scream at him. You can’t ask me to kill him.
But I’ve hardly been fair on him over the many tortured years our lives have been entwined, and so I don’t argue my point.
All I know is, the only way I’m killing Jason is if he’s got a gun pointed at my head, and I’m all out of options.
And even then, I might just let him do it. I’d deserve it, after all, for the things I’ve done. For lying to him. For killing his brothers. For Dornan. My gut twists painfully at the thought of everything I’ve sacrificed in my quest to get back at him.
My mind briefly wanders over to the possibility that Jase might forgive me for murdering his father and brothers. I mean, he’s said himself that Chad was better off dead, right?
But on the flip side, family is blood, and nothing is more important than that. That was the number one motto instilled in me growing up, the number one thing Jase was brainwashed with from the moment he stepped foot in the club.
“How do you even know how to do this?” I ask as I gesture to the pile of explosives in front of us, changing the subject to easier things.
Details. Plans. Impersonal pieces of information. This is how you detonate a homemade bomb. This is where you put it. I can handle those things much better than You have to kill the first boy you ever loved.
“I was a cop before I met you, remember? I picked up a few things.”
“Right. Well, these things aren’t going to randomly explode in my hotel room, are they?”
He rolls his eyes. “They’re not Molotov cocktails through a window, Julz. They’re hooked up to a timer. You have to activate them if you want them to explode.”
“Right,” I answer. “And how do I put them in the club so they only kill the people I need them to kill, and nobody else?”
Elliot grins. “You’re not putting them in the clubhouse. You’re putting them in their motorcycles.”
I frown. “Some of them don’t have saddle bags. What do you want me to do, duct tape them to the seats?”
“Notice how small these cellphones are?” Elliot says, picking up one of them and handing it to me. I nod. “You’re going to shove this shit in their gas tanks.”
“Wow.” Pure. Brilliance. My brain starts processing that. “So the fuel can be the accelerant?” I ask excitedly.
“Yeah, exactly,” he replies, taking the phone back from me.
I study the line of bags when another thought occurs to me. “Wouldn’t the zip-lock bags melt in the fuel tank?”
He nods. “I’ll wrap everything in this stuff.” He holds up a sheet of what appears to be thick, opaque plastic. “They use this stuff to line gas tanks in helicopters. Gasoline won’t melt through it for five hundred years.”
“And…how am I going to call five phones at the same time? Don’t tell me you’re smart enough to clone cellphones or something.”
“An app.” He stops for a moment, the masking tape stretched taut in his hand.
“An app?” I echo dubiously.
“Yeah, baby.” He flashes a devious grin. “There’s an app for that. There’s an app for everything.”
He turns serious again, his face suddenly years older. He looks as tired as I feel, both of us worn-out husks of the people we used to be. It kills me that I’m the reason he’s so stressed and tired.
He nudges one of the steel-filled bags on the table and looks at me with determination.
“You need to end this,” he says emphatically.
“I know,” I whisper.
“So end it.”
TEN
Several hours, and one crash-course in detonating bombs later, Jase calls me. It’s the middle of the night, and Elliot and I have long since fallen asleep, each taking a bed. I desperately wanted him to lay with me like he used to, to stroke my hair and whisper things to me until I fell asleep, but I knew it wouldn’t happen. He’s too fed up and frustrated with me to do those things. So we slept alone, side-by-side in matching beds.
I turn my phone to silent and tiptoe onto the balcony. Closing the door gently behind me, I answer the call. “Hey,” I whisper, leaning against the high balcony edge.
“You in Fiji yet?” Jase asks.
“No,” I reply. “I’m across town. Is it safe to come back yet?”
He chuckles. “You sure you don’t want to just run away with tattoo boy?”
“It’s not like that,” I protest. “Can I come back now?”
“The cops have finally cleared out,” he says. “I was on my way home. Big day tomorrow.”
“Oh, yeah?” I ask, my interest piqued. “What kind of big day?”
“We’re riding out to Tijuana in the morning,” he says. “Over the border. You got a passport?”
“No,” I say, my stomach sinking. Well, I have several fake passports, but none of them in Sammi’s name.
“Well then,” he says. “Guess you’re staying on one side while we go to the other.”
“What do you mean? Why would I be coming anywhere?”
“My dad’s convinced someone in the clubhouse has it out for you. I think he’s full of shit, but after the coke incident, he isn’t letting you out of his sight.”
The way he says it, it’s almost like he’s over-explaining himself. That’s when I realize, with a dull thud in my chest, that he’s lying.
All the blood rushes to my head and my legs turn to jelly.
“Are you sure it’s not you who wants to keep an eye on me?” I ask him.
There’s a brief pause on the other end of the phone before he answers.
“It doesn’t really matter now, does it? Just tell me where to pick you up in the morning.”
“Your father doesn’t want me back straight away?” I’m surprised.
“My father is busy dealing with shit,” Jason says tiredly. “This is me giving you an out, Samantha. This is me giving you five hours to get the fuck out of L.A.”
I turn around and press my forehead to the glass, watching Elliot’s chest rise and fall steadily as he sleeps.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I reply.
“I’ll call you at eight,” he says, and the line goes dead.
I let Elliot sleep until si
x, and then I wake him.
In two hours, as we eat room service eggs and bacon for breakfast, he schools me on exactly what I need to do, giving me a dummy practice run with the app he’s found that will let me call the five phones simultaneously.
Thirty seconds later, when it’s the real deal, the bombs should explode, triggering a chain reaction that will ensure anyone riding one of the rigged bikes will be riding into a fiery and certain death.
Including Dornan.
After Elliot leaves the hotel, before Jase is due to call me, I spend a long moment on the balcony, watching the city wake up as cars clog the busy L.A. street below.
I cry, then, because I’m alone, without a single possession save for the six bombs that sit innocently on the coffee table. I cry because, even though it’s not the way I imagined it going down, even though I won’t get to savor each individual death—it’s about to be over.
Something about that makes me feel so empty inside, a feeling I hadn’t expected to feel. I’d always imagined feeling nothing but relief at the prospect of finishing Dornan and his remaining sons, apart from Jase, that is.
It’s at this exact moment, staring out at the cars as smog begins to gather in the air, that I realize two things:
One, that there is never any way I am going to harm Jase, no matter what he threatens to do to me, no matter how dire it seems. I won’t ever hurt him. Even after all this time, even beyond my supposed death, he’s still the boy I want to spend the rest of my life with.
And two, after they’re all dead and it’s just Jase and I standing amongst charred ashes, if he can’t forgive me for what I’ve done…
…I won’t have anything to live for anymore.
Those thoughts make my head spin to the point where I feel dizzy and lightheaded. My hands grip the balcony railing.
Please forgive me.
But I know he probably won’t.
Jase calls at exactly eight a.m., the buzz of my phone startling me out of tortured daydreams. I answer the phone and hold it to my ear, swallowing back thick anxiety.
“Morning,” I say. “Where should I meet you?”
“How about out the front?” he says, his tone taunting, and my blood runs cold. I peer down over the balcony railing, adrenalin and fear slamming into me when I see his bike parked on the sidewalk below.
How the fuck does he know where I am?
“How…?” I say.
“Never mind how,” he says. “Just get your ass down here. We’ve got a busy day.”
I sink to my knees on the balcony, feeling like I’m headed for a panic attack. I need a brown paper bag to breathe into, or I’m going to pass out.
“Come on,” he says, and it’s almost a dare rather than a reassurance. “I won’t tell Dornan where you’ve been. Or who you’ve been with. It’ll be our secret.” He speaks in such a dark, teasing way, goading me, that I forget for a moment everything I’ve achieved, and the victories I’ve had with Chad and Maxi. I go to pieces, panicking. I start breathing much too fast, my eyes pricking with fresh, painful tears that blur my vision.
“You’ve got three minutes to get the fuck down here, or I’m coming up there to get you.” His words are so deliberate, so chilling; that I don’t doubt for a second that he will do just that.
It takes me a moment to process that this is Jase I’m talking to. This is Jase taunting me and threatening me. It makes me feel ill that he reminds me so much of Dornan in this very moment.
I stand on jelly legs and peer over the balcony again, only to see Jase standing there, staring back up at me through his mirrored-aviator sunglasses.
“What if I said I changed my mind?” I ask weakly, stumbling inside the hotel room, where I gather the bombs up and carefully pack them into the bottom of my handbag, covering them over with my purse and a couple of napkins from the night before.
“I’d say it’s too late,” he says, and I can hear him moving as well. “I’d say you’ve lost your chance.”
I zip the bag shut and scoop it up, throwing it over my shoulder as I survey the room. Nothing left to show we were ever here, apart from our breakfast dishes stacked on the room service trolley, which sits next to the door. Satisfied, I wrench the door open and burst out into the hallway.
Straight into a hard, leather-covered chest. I tilt my head up to see Jase has taken his sunglasses off, his dark eyes full of something so frighteningly familiar. Dornan. He reminds me of Dornan, and I have to fight not to shudder.
“That wasn’t three minutes,” I protest.
Jase smirks, one hand closing around my wrist. I relax my tense body, try to act casual, but my heart is still going a million miles an hour.
“Nice night?” he asks, looking into the hotel room over my shoulder. I shrug. “I got some sleep,” I say.
Something else flashes in his eyes—suspicion, maybe? As he drags me back into my hotel room and slams the door behind him.
I want to ask him what’s going on, to know what is happening in that tortured mind of his, but I know he won’t tell me. I’ll just have to wait until he reveals his suspicions in his own time.
“Sit down,” he says, pointing at the sofa where Elliot and I were eating breakfast and going through Bomb School 101 only hours earlier.
“I’d rather stand,” I reply, backing away from him.
His face twists into anger and he takes two long strides, clamping his hand around the back of my neck and throwing me against the sofa. I land awkwardly on my hip, gasping at the sudden attack, and hurriedly scramble so that I’m sitting.
Moving slowly and deliberately, he sits on the coffee table in front of me so that we are close enough for our knees to touch. He presses his palms together and rests them against his mouth, almost like he’s praying for an answer. Only, we both know he’s not the praying type. He surveys me with those dark eyes and something twists angrily inside me, a buzzing that has permanently invaded the comfortable hollow void I’d so carefully cultivated. I’m afraid of him, and afraid of what he knows, and we both know it.
“I’m going to ask you a question, and you’re going to answer,” he says firmly. “If you lie to me, I’ll kill you.”
I nod, feeling crushed under the weight of my artifice. My heart sinks as I realize where I’ve heard those words before, not twenty-four hours earlier, out of the mouth of his father. If you lie to me, I’ll kill you.
“Are. You. A. Cop?” he asks deliberately, pausing between each word.
I frown, surprised at his question. I’d expected Did You Kill My Brothers or even Are You Working For The Colombians, but not Are You A Cop.
I giggle, a nervous sound that bubbles up from within me unbidden.
“No, Jason,” I reply. “I’m not a cop.”
He studies me for a long moment, chewing on his lip as he does so. I match his gaze, happier that he is on the wrong track.
“What makes you think I’m a cop?” I ask, and I almost throw up as I take a calculated guess at why he’s come to this conclusion.
Elliot.
“Your little boyfriend’s a cop, or at least he was,” Jase answers, a devious smirk tugging at his beautiful mouth. “Seems he took his leave right around the same time we started having issues with the Colombians six years ago.”
He’s so, so close to the truth, and yet so far away.
How long is it going to be before he connects the dots?
I want to shake him by the shoulders and yell at him. Ask him to remember what else happened six years ago. Tell him to look at me, really listen to me, and figure it out for himself.
Instead, I shrug. “Yeah, he used to be a cop. So what?”
“So there’s a good chance he’s still a cop. An undercover cop.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I say. “He got discharged from the force because he stole money and drugs from a crime scene. He was dirty.”
Not for the first time, I’m aware that I’ve layered another lie on top of the pile I’ve already created, and I ha
ve to remember to mentally catalog it and file it away, so I don’t forget it and contradict myself later.
“Whatever,” he says. “I’ve got someone looking into it, anyway. I don’t believe a word that comes out of your mouth.”
“That’s funny,” I bite back. “You didn’t seem to mind this mouth when you were trying to kiss it all those times.”
Goddamn it. He was baiting me, and I took it. I’m losing my mind here.
His face clouds over and his hand shoots out, yanking me to my feet. “Yeah, well,” he says, pulling me toward the door. “I started thinking with my head instead of my dick, and look how quickly it all started to unravel.”
I struggle against his grip, trying to pull away, and he just laughs. “Where do you think you’re going?” he says.
“I’m not going back there with you until you tell me what’s going on,” I say, fighting against his grip. He smiles a twisted smile that makes a little part of me die, the part that still believed that he was completely pure and gentle. He might be those things, but here, now, he is angry, suspicious and ready to explode.
“Sammi,” he says, clearly delighting in his torture of me. “Come on. You don’t really think you have a choice, do you?”
He stops pulling, so I stop struggling, our gazes locked in a silent battle of wills.
“What is wrong with you?” I ask, dropping the confident act. “Why are you so angry at me? Is it because of your brother? I’m sorry he died, okay?”
His jaw clenches so hard, I swear all of his teeth are going to smash together and come flying out of his mouth in broken pieces.
“You’re so fucking deluded,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m angry with you because I kissed you, Sammi, and then I find out that everything that comes out of your mouth is lies on top of lies!”
“That’s not true!” I snap back. “When I kissed you back, that wasn’t a lie.”
The smirk is back. How I loathe that smirk on his face. It doesn’t belong there, and it rips at my heart that it’s my fault for torturing him like this.
“Nobody sticks around a man like my father unless they’ve got something to gain,” he says, his voice deathly calm. “What are you after? Money? Information? Are you spying on us? Because I’ll tell you now, nobody has ever bested him. He’s Dornan fucking Ross, Samantha.”
Gypsy Brothers: The Complete Series Page 22