Ride Rough

by Laura Kaye

  Becca was completely overwhelmed by the thoughtfulness and perfection of the whole thing. “You shouldn’t have done all this,” she said. “But I’m really, really glad you did.”

  They all traded their dresses and heels for robes and slippers and settled in for pedicures. One of the ladies from the spa kept Becca in a continuous stream of drinks and treats and presents. So many presents. A gorgeous lingerie set for her wedding night. A big basket of body lotions and spa products and makeup. A set of pillow cases that read Mr. Right and Mrs. Always Right. A trio of crystal picture frames. A happily ever after wish jar with their names on it to be put out for people to fill at their wedding. A pair of red satin panties with the words You got lucky on the crotch. Sparkling, drop diamond earrings. A beautiful framed print that had Becca and Nick’s names, their wedding date, and the words And they lived happily ever after.

  “I love everything so much,” Becca said as the woman put the finishing touches on her purple toe polish. “Not that long ago, I had almost no one in my life. My parents were gone. Charlie had distanced himself. And I threw myself into work just to fill the void. Now, I can’t believe everything I have. I’m so grateful for each and every one of you.”

  “I’ve never had friends like this before,” Sara said, blinking fast. “Sometimes I’m afraid that I’m dreaming and I’ll wake up.”

  “It’s not a dream, Sara,” Jenna said. “What happened is that you woke up from the nightmare. This is your reality now.”

  “Oh, God, you guys are going to make me cry,” Emilie said. “I think we need more champagne. And chocolate.”

  Kat’s pedicure was already done, so she brought the bottle around and refilled everyone’s glasses. In all, Becca was treated to a pedicure, a manicure, and a mini facial, and she had her eyebrows shaped. She hadn’t felt so relaxed in forever. No doubt everything Nick had learned earlier in the day helped, and for the first time since she’d returned to work, she felt hopeful.

  It was after eleven by the time they were all dressed again and had the presents and leftovers packed up to take home. Tony carried everything out to the Hummer for them, then Becca noticed him talking quietly with Kat.

  “Is everything okay?” Becca asked, joining them at the front door of the spa.

  “Yes, Miss Merritt,” Tony said. “There’s a man hanging around down the block who’s drunk and belligerent. He threw a bottle at a passing car earlier. And he gave me a little bit of guff when I asked him to move away from the Hummer. He left without incident, but I don’t want any of you stepping outside until we’re ready to get in the vehicle and depart.”

  Through the haze of champagne and sugar, Becca’s gut clenched. “Okay, of course.”

  “Don’t worry,” Kat said. “It’s just a precaution.”

  When the other women emerged from the bathroom, Tony said, “Ladies, I’d like you to move directly into the limo once you’re outside, please.” He went out first, paused as he opened the door, and waved them out.

  A half block down the street, a tall, thin man wearing too-big pants and an oversized black hoodie with the hood up skulked in a circle, his arms waving and his body gesticulating like he was having an argument. From this distance, Becca couldn’t make out the man’s face, but she couldn’t deny the relief she felt at the fact that the man was way too thin to be Woodson, who’d been bulky and muscular. Not that she should be worrying about Woodson. Nick’s research today really had made her feel a lot better.

  Kat bustled Becca into the limo, then climbed in after. As the other women got in, Becca could just make out the man shouting.

  “You think you so fucking better than me!” he yelled, his voice full of drunken slur. “Well, you not! You not! And I’m gonna show you! I’m gonna show you!”

  The minute Emilie was in, Tony had the door secured behind them, cutting off the rest of the tirade. Almost immediately, the engine started and the Hummer eased away from the curb.

  “Please don’t let that tarnish your night,” Kat said.

  Becca smiled. “Not at all. Nothing could tarnish this night. It was fantastic. Perfect. One of the best ever.” She meant it, too. And the whipped cream on her cake? In just a few minutes, it would be midnight. And that meant in just one week, Becca was going to be married to the love of her life.

  And absolutely nothing could ruin the amazing miracle of that.

  CHAPTER 9

  Nick,” Chen said when he called on Wednesday morning. “I’ve got bad news.”

  “Shit, what is it?” Nick asked. When a guy like Chen said he had bad news, you knew it was bad.

  From the driver’s seat of his truck, Shane frowned, his expression full of questions. He parked the truck in front of the dry cleaner. They’d dropped Becca off at work a half hour before and were picking up their uniforms for the wedding.

  “Woodson’s in Baltimore. Has been for at least a week, maybe longer.”

  Nick’s gut dropped to the floor, his mind racing. A week? That meant he’d been in town long enough to be responsible for the stuffed animal, for Becca’s feeling of being watched at the mall, and maybe even for some of her sightings that they’d thought were impossible and chalked up to her PTSD. “Goddamnit. Are you sure? How do you know?”

  “I put a guy on the ground in South Carolina. He learned from some locals that Woodson had left town and traded vehicles with his uncle. I managed to track the uncle’s truck to a rest stop near Richmond, where another car had been reported stolen. That car was found abandoned in Baltimore County last week, which we just put together. Otherwise, the guy’s been way off the grid. No credit cards. No known vehicles. I have two undercover agents in the city looking for him from within the gang scene. As soon as we locate him, we’ll grab him.”

  “Fuck,” Nick said, the weight of this new development crushing in on him. “Thanks for letting me know. Keep me posted.” They hung up. “Head back to the hospital. Now,” Nick said.

  Shane had the truck in reverse and barreling out of the parking lot immediately. “Talk to me.”

  “Woodson’s in town. Has been for over a week. We got fucking outfoxed.” Nick dialed Becca. It went to voice mail. “Please call me as soon as you get this, Becca.” Ice sloshed into his gut as Nick filled Shane in.

  “No one stays off the grid like that unless they fear they’re being hunted. Or they don’t want to be noticed,” Shane said, running the tail end of a yellow light.

  Nick appreciated the hell out of his friend’s aggressive driving. He really did. “Given the situation in the city, it’s probably some of both in this case. But I’m a helluva lot more worried about the latter.”

  “Roger that,” Shane said, darting around other cars as much as he could.

  Nick tried Becca’s cell again. Voice mail. Damnit. He was about ready to crawl out of his skin. Flipping through the contacts on his phone, he found the number for Barry Coleman at the hospital.

  “Mr. Coleman, this is Nick Rixey, Becca Merritt’s fiancé,” Nick said, his knee bouncing as he scanned his gaze over the street as it flew by.

  “Nick, what can I do for you?”

  “I need you to find Becca and keep an eye on her until I get there. She’s not answering her cell, but I know she might be with a patient. I just got word that Tyrell Woodson is back in town and has been for more than a week. Since we still don’t know who pulled the stunt with the stuffed animal, I’d feel better if Becca left early today until we get to the bottom of this and know what Woodson’s up to. It seems he took some pains to get back into the city unnoticed.”

  “I wish I had your connections for intel,” Coleman said.

  “Yeah, well I wish I didn’t need them.”

  “I hear you,” the other man said. “I’ll find Becca and stay with her until you get here.” They hung up.

  In another five minutes, Nick and Shane made it back to the hospital. Nick barely waited for Shane to bring the truck to a stop before he was opening the door. “Pick us up near the ER entra
nce. It’s more sheltered.”

  “You got it,” Shane said.

  Nick rushed across the plaza to the main entrance, his gaze scanning the streetscape, the crowd, the sea of faces. He let his guard down for five goddamned seconds, and this was what happened. Becca, potentially exposed to danger and completely unaware.

  Inside, he made his way to Coleman’s office. Relief flooded through him.

  Becca. Sitting across from Coleman at his desk. Her face was a shade too pale, but otherwise she was safe, sound, a fucking sight for sore eyes.

  “Nick,” she said, rising as soon as she saw him. “He’s back?”

  Nick cupped her face in his hands. “Yes, but Chen’s on it. Woodson won’t be free for long. Don’t worry, okay?”

  She gave him a doubtful look that was like a knife to the gut.

  Nick turned to Coleman. “Thanks for your help.” They shook hands.

  “Anything else you need, you just let me know,” the man said.

  Taking Becca’s hand in his, Nick led her to the main ER entrance, keeping back from the glass until he saw Shane’s big black truck pull into the drop-off lane. “That’s our ride. Come on.”

  They jogged toward the truck, Nick’s gaze doing a constant scanning circuit as they moved. He got Becca into the truck’s backseat, shut her door, and moved to his own—which was when his eye caught it. A glint of morning sun off metal. There at the corner of the building.

  Nick opened the passenger door just in time, the report of the gunfire reaching his ears only a second before the round pinged off the door. Close. Too damn close. He dove into the cab. “Go, go!”

  “Fuck!” Shane punched the accelerator and pulled the truck into a hard U-ey. Another round hit the back quarter panel.

  “Get down, Becca,” Nick said as he reached for the Glock at the small of his back. But she was way ahead of him, tucked in a ball on the floor behind his seat. He didn’t have a clear shot of anything, especially with chaos already breaking out around the ER’s entrance as people dove for cover and the couple of on-site police officers rushed into defensive positions.

  In what felt like long minutes but was only a few seconds, they were clear of the area. Shane ran a red light to get them away from the hospital altogether.

  Twisting in his seat, Nick looked out the cab’s rear window. “Watch for a tail.”

  “On it,” Shane said. “You need to alert the team, Vance, Chen.”

  “Yeah,” Nick said, but first he needed to check on Becca. Christ, every reassurance he’d offered the past week had just been blown to shit. His gut was a wreck, his mind unhelpfully crafting one horror story after another about what might’ve happened if Chen hadn’t called. Or if Nick hadn’t returned to the hospital immediately. Or if Coleman hadn’t been able to pull Becca off the floor. “Becca, are you okay?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, her voice shaky. When she looked up at him, her skin was ashen.

  He reached back and clutched her hand as he dialed Marz.

  “Yo, hoss, wassup?” Marz said.

  “We’ve got a situation,” Nick said, filling him in. “Let everyone know what’s going on. And if you have a chance, scan the security feeds around our neighborhood looking for anything potentially suspicious. We’ve been keeping an eye out for the wrong damn car.”

  “You got it,” Marz said.

  Nick had just hung up when his cell rang again. Chen. Nick put it on speaker.

  “I heard about the hospital. You okay?” Chen asked by way of a greeting. Nick wasn’t surprised that Chen had information that was only minutes old.

  “Yeah, we’re in one piece,” Nick said. “But it was fucking close. Too close.”

  “Damnit. Wanted to let you know we have a lead on where Woodson’s been staying. Putting together a raid for tonight as we speak.”

  “Well there’s a bit of good news,” Nick said. “You need backup?”

  “No, you stay hunkered down. I’ll let you know when it’s done.”

  “I need you to take this guy out,” Nick said, anger lancing through the words. If it had just been him in danger, it would have been one thing. But now it was Becca. Now it was his family. And that was a whole other goddamned thing. “I need this situation to go the fuck away.”

  “I hear you,” Chen said. “And I’m working on it.” He clicked off.

  “If anyone can take care of this, Chen can, right?” Becca asked from the backseat. A little color had returned to her cheeks.

  “Yes,” Nick and Shane both said at the same time.

  When they got back to Hard Ink, Marz had everyone else assembled and briefed in the big unfinished space across from their apartment that was part gym, part war room. It was where they’d run the whole of their investigation against the Church Gang and the mercenaries who’d killed Becca’s father and smuggled heroin from Afghanistan into Baltimore. Nick wasn’t thrilled at all about the similarity of this meeting to the many they’d held during the investigation they’d thought was done. Closed. Behind them once and for all.

  Except it wasn’t. Because sometimes the past wouldn’t fucking die.

  “Chen’s people think they’ve discovered where Woodson has been holing up. They’re going after him tonight. His actions at the hospital demonstrate his intention to get revenge, so until we hear from Chen, we’re back on lockdown again. I don’t want anyone leaving the building today,” Nick said.

  “What if they don’t get him?” Becca asked from where she sat on a folding chair near Marz’s improvised desk.

  The other team members traded looks with Nick. “I don’t know the answer to that yet,” Nick said.

  Becca nodded. “Do we need to think about postponing the wedding?”

  The question was like a punch to the gut, especially because he’d been asking himself the same thing. Fuck. “Not yet,” Nick said. A bleak sadness filled Becca’s baby blues, and the fact that this scumbag had managed to hurt her yet again lanced boiling hot rage through his blood. Enough was efuckingnough.

  The meeting broke up, and the day crawled by like an inchworm moving in reverse.

  Nick spent hours worshipping every inch of Becca’s body, hoping to keep them both distracted from everything that was at stake as long as he could. The women made six batches of homemade chocolate chip cookies. They watched movies until they were all cross-eyed. And still it wasn’t time for the raid.

  Finally, a little after ten o’clock, Nick’s cell rang with a call from Chen. The devastating news was that they’d apprehended a number of former Churchmen—but Woodson hadn’t been among them.

  “Well, what’s next?” Nick barked into the phone. “This guy came after Becca three times. He’s not going to stop.”

  “I know, Nick,” Chen said. “We’re interrogating the Churchmen we brought in. We’ll find him.”

  But how fast would they find him? And would Chen find Woodson before Woodson found Becca again?

  Because Nick would never survive if something happened to the only woman he’d ever loved.

  CHAPTER 10

  Chen showed up at Hard Ink Friday morning. His people still hadn’t caught Woodson. And Becca was beside herself. She couldn’t believe . . . so many things. That Woodson was back. That they might have to cancel the wedding. That maybe she really had seen Woodson some of the times she’d chalked it up to her imagination.

  The whole group gathered in the gym, and Chen sat in the middle of them, wearing his usual, nondescript khaki pants and light blue button-down. Chen wasn’t his real name, but it was the only one they knew him by—the one that had been on the nametag fastened to the stolen doctor’s coat Chen had been wearing the first time Nick had seen him. They’d been at the hospital where Jeremy and Kat had been treated after the funeral.

  “I have a proposal for dealing with Woodson,” Chen said, scanning the group and finally settling his gaze on Nick and Becca.

  “Let’s hear it,” Nick said.

  “I get the word out on the street
that Becca is going to be at the restaurant tonight for her rehearsal dinner. We lure Woodson to us rather than wait for him to come at you.” Chen’s matter-of-fact words hung there for a long moment.

  “No,” Nick said. Just as matter-of-factly.

  This wasn’t the first time it had ever been proposed that they use Becca as bait. Nor was it the first time Nick had reacted negatively to the idea. “Nick, Becca said.”

  “No, Becca. We’ve been there, done that, and you got hurt,” he said. The fierce protectiveness in his gaze made her love him even more.

  “I know, but the last time, we also caught Woodson and got information out of him that saved Charlie’s life. So it worked,” she said. Tension hung so thick in the room you could cut it with a knife. “The alternative is that we cancel the wedding, stay shut up inside the building, and wait it out, right?”

  Chen nodded. “We will get him. It’s a matter of when, not if.”

  “I believe you,” Becca said. “But when kinda matters a lot right now. The wedding can be rescheduled if we need to, of course, but none of us wants this hanging over our heads. If we can end it tonight, let’s end it.”

  “I agree,” Kat said, looking at Nick with sympathy in her eyes.

  “So do I,” Beckett said. “We’ll all be there. We’ll all be armed. Nothing’s going to happen to Becca or anyone else.”

  “And my team will be there,” Chen said.

  “Is this what everyone thinks?” Nick asked, his voice like gravel. He crossed his arms and surveyed the group. Nods and affirmatives all around. “Fuck. Then what’s the plan? Because I want it to be goddamned foolproof.”

  For the next hour, the guys strategized. Chen had brought plans for the Italian restaurant where they were scheduled to go, as well as a big map of the surrounding streets and alleys. He’d arranged to have surveillance on the restaurant starting immediately, to make sure no one arrived early and found a place to lay in wait. When they were done, Chen put in calls to his undercover contacts to get the word out. He was apparently confident enough in the way information moved within and between gangs to think that the word would make it to Woodson in time if in fact he was actively looking for her. Worst-case scenario, it didn’t, and he didn’t show. And then they were right back to square one, but no further behind.