OK, that’s enough fucking around. Sarah’s not getting better, and if she actually comes out of this, she’s probably going to be forever changed. I played the game their way – gave the cops time, gave that dickhead’s family a chance to do the right thing. Now I’m done. Now I do things my way.
Fuck. Them.
**
Jax closed his office door, hard. King stood for a minute, watching the other man quietly. He didn’t like what he saw, at all.
Jax looked like hell. Strained and raw; stretched and primal. The fury in his eyes was dulled by sadness and worry, but his large body was coiled up tight, ready to let loose. King knew that Jax was holding on to his self-control by the slimmest of knife-edges, and the smallest thing would drive him right over the rage cliff now. If he thought it would help Sarah, he’d smash and burn without regret; he’d kill and maim and not feel one second of guilt about it.
Jax faced him. “I want to hire your team.”
King leaned back against the door. He wasn’t at all surprised. When Jax had asked to speak to him alone, King had known right away what it was all about. He stayed silent, watching Jax through narrowed eyes.
“We never talk about it – about your real business,” Jax said. “But it’s not like I don’t know what you’ve got going on in the back of your garage after-hours. I want to hire you.”
“What for?” King held his eyes. “Be specific.”
“You want specific? Fine. I want to hire you to track down that fucker, wherever the hell he’s hiding out. To grab him and tie him up and stick him somewhere isolated where nobody can hear him scream. To get the fuck out of the way when I beat the shit out of him.” Jax paused. “If she – if she dies, I need you to leave me alone with him while I make sure he disappears permanently. No debate, no discussion, nobody stops me.”
“And if she lives?”
“Then you stay in the room with me while I beat him within an inch of his life. You make sure I don’t go that last inch. Then you deliver him to the cops. He may be in pieces, but he’ll be alive.”
“You don’t beat him to death if Sarah lives? If she comes out of the coma?”
“No. Assuming she could even understand what I was telling her, she’d never be able to live with herself, knowing that somebody died because of her. And I’d never be able to look her in the eye again, knowing what I’d done. I’d have to tell her, I’d have to confess.” Jax exhaled. “That would be too much for her to handle, and I won’t do that to her.”
King nodded.
“But if she dies?” Jax’s voice got quiet, clenched and dark. “All bets are off and I don’t give a good goddamn if I go back to jail forever for murder. If Sarah dies, then I just – I won’t give a flying fuck about anything at all, anyway. But no way I’m trusting the courts to deal with him… his Daddy will make damn good and sure that he doesn’t spend one minute behind bars. I take care of things my way, and I live with the consequences.”
King regarded him calmly. “A job like that ain’t cheap, man. One hundred at least. Probably more, in the end, especially since we may need to hire a private plane to extract him from another country.”
“I know it. I don’t care.”
King sighed. “You sure? Really sure? Because once my people find him and bring him to you, there’s no stopping it, no taking it back. You get that?”
“Yes.”
“OK, then.”
Jax stared at him. “Just like that? Just, ‘OK, then’?”
“Yep, just like that. You pay me half up-front, the rest when the job is done and all the final services are tallied up and added in.”
Jax sat down heavily. “So easy…”
“If you have a spare hundred-thousand sitting around? Damn right it’s easy.”
Jax was quiet for a minute. “So, who are you going to send?”
“Honey. And Tank for backup, if necessary.”
“Honey?”
“Uh-huh.”
Despite himself, Jax perked up a bit. Tank was a hardcore ex-SEAL son-of-a-bitch who made King look like a wimp, but Honey was one hundred pounds of pure lethal. If she went after Dave, he wouldn’t have a fucking prayer. The woman had a real hate-on for abusive men, having barely survived one herself years ago, and she’d make it her personal mission to bring Dave to Jax. Chances were, she’d get a few punches in herself before handing him over, trussed like a Thanksgiving turkey.
“So your price is definitely too low,” Jax said. “I know she’s one of your best, and Tank ain’t cheap, either.”
“The price is fine. It’ll cover fees and expenses, and I’ll just forget about my percentage.” He shrugged. “Consider it a gift from me to you.”
“So this is the ‘you’re-my-friend’ price, huh?”
King’s gray eyes were hard. “It’s the ‘I-want-to-kill-this-fucker-as-much-as-you-do’ discount. What he’s done to Sarah? It hasn’t just upset you, man.”
“Yeah. I know.”
The two men gazed at each other for a few seconds.
“So.” King looked away first. “I’ll make a call.”
“You do that,” Jax said. “You tell me the where and when. And depending what happens with Sarah, I’ll decide on the what.”
**
Aidan nodded goodbye to King, then waited patiently for Jax to emerge from his office. He’d wait as long as he had to; this was a conversation that was a long time in coming.
It took an hour for Jax to show his face, and when he did, he looked different. Not beaten down and helplessly enraged anymore: he looked defiant and defensive. And that was when Aidan was sure what had happened behind that closed office door.
Goddammit, Jax.
Jax strode over to him. “You have the numbers from yesterday?”
Aidan leaned back. “Yeah. You want to run over them now?”
“Sure.” Jax glanced around the almost-empty bar, not taking in anything or anyone.
“Don’t do this, man.”
Jax’s green eyes flicked back to Aidan, the anger surfacing rapidly. “Do what?”
“You know damn good and well what.” Aidan didn’t back down, drop his glance. He knew that he came across all laid-back, good old Texan boy, but that wasn’t really him – not by a long shot. That was just for the tips and the pussy and the job security.
The men studied each other, grim and silent. Then Jax shrugged.
“None of your fucking business, Carter.”
“Wrong.”
Jax actually did a double-take. “What the fuck, man?”
“It is my business, because I’m the only person in this place who knows about your time in jail.”
Jax turned white. “You – what?”
“Uh-huh.”
Those eyes were harder than Jax had ever seen them; he hadn’t even known that Aidan could look like this. The grinning, charming Golden Boy bartender with the loose, relaxed body was gone – all the way gone, man – and in his place stood some kind of jungle cat. Flat, dangerous eyes; those huge muscles coiled up and all set to pounce; his mouth drawn up in a snarl, ready to rip Jax’s throat out.
Holy shit.
“Talk.” Jax’s voice was so rough, Aidan was sure it could crush asphalt right now. “What the fuck do you think you know?”
“You killed your mother’s murderer with your bare hands.”
Jax swallowed.
“You were seventeen and there were about a dozen extenuating circumstances, so you caught one hell of a break. Just three years, but you served every second of ‘em.” He stared hard. “Two of them in a maximum security prison. That’s where you met a guy named Sig Rattner.”
Jax’s mind whirled. Rattner?
“My half-brother,” Aidan said. “Also in for murder. You used to box with him sometimes.”
Jax’s
thoughts clunked in to place like a row of cherries on a slot machine. Hell, yeah. Rattner. Big bastard, with one mean right hook.
“He’s your brother?”
“Half,” Aidan corrected him. “And he’s dead now.”
“Sorry.”
Aidan shrugged. “Don’t be. He wasted every single chance every handed to him in his life. He wasn’t like you.”
“What’s that mean?”
Aidan sighed. “Sig didn’t kill some bastard because said bastard hurt his family… Sig killed people for the hell of it. So while you did your time and came out no major threat to society, he came out worse than ever. You got yourself work, and you held it down until you got fucking lucky. And man, you used that luck to change your life, for good and for the better.”
Aidan paused, gathering his thoughts.
“You did something horrible, but it was a one-shot thing. A perfect storm of sorts, something that never would have happened if your Mom had lived. You’re not a killer, Jax, even though you’ve killed someone, and you’re no pacifist. But Sig? He was a killer, and I think he was born that way. A sick little fuck, even as a kid. He died the way he lived – in violence.”
Jax clenched his hands. “What are you getting at?”
“That you’re not that kind of man, not in your core. You don’t have to do this.”
“Do what?” Jax repeated.
“Beat Dave Townsend near to death – maybe even to death.”
Jax froze. “How did you –”
“Because I’m not a fucking moron. I stand here behind this bar hour after hour, and I see every single thing that happens in this place. And when you and Matthew Kingston head in to your office for a private chat and he comes out with that look on his face, I know he’s got a job, one of the kind that has nothing at all to do with bike engines.” He shrugged. “Only one job you two would be discussing, huh?”
“Aidan,” Jax said. “You can’t say anything to anyone.”
“Who the hell am I going to tell?”
Jax exhaled.
“But don’t do this.”
“I have to… can’t you see that?”
“No. I don’t.” Aidan leaned forward. “You’ve worked like crazy to build up a whole new life out of the hell you came from. You have a choice here, Jax, and you’re choosing wrong.”
“I’m choosing to make that asshole pay for what he did to Sarah.”
“And I get that. I do. But there are other ways.”
“No, there aren’t. That family has money and power and contacts, and they’re using every resource they have to protect him. They’ve got his abusive ass stashed away in some mansion or cabana somewhere, while my girl’s lying in a hospital bed, barely alive. You think I’m hopeful that he’ll give himself up, or that Daddy will call the cops and volunteer his whereabouts? And if by some goddamn miracle, he’s spotted and reported and dragged on back here, you think he’ll serve one minute in jail?”
Aidan was silent.
“Well. Do you?”
“This isn’t about him. It’s not even about Sarah.”
Jax paused. “So who’s it about?”
“You, man. It’s about you.”
“What about me?”
“You’re a good man, Jax.” Aidan spoke over Jax’s astonished protests. “You are. Sarah knows it, which is why she was with you, and frankly, we all know it. You do your damndest to be a self-absorbed prick and you pull it off pretty well most of the time. But in the end, you’re not a cold-blooded killer, and premeditation ain’t your style. You’re no Sig, I promise you.”
Jax was stunned. “Hey…”
“Call it off.” Aidan was quiet, gentle. “There’s still time. Call it off.”
“No.” Jax shook his head. “No, I’ll do this for her. For – for Sarah. And I’ll accept whatever happens after.”
“Jail?”
“If she dies, or she stays in a coma for years, or she wakes up and is paralyzed, you think I’m going to give a shit where I am? If I’m not with her and she’s not OK, I don’t care where I am. You hear me?”
“Yeah.” Aidan was resigned. “You’re saying if she’s trapped, you’re in the cage with her – so how’s jail any different?”
“Now you get me.”
Aidan sighed. Then he said, “You’ll have my letter of resignation on your desk tomorrow morning, first thing. For now, consider this my verbal one-week notice.”
“Aidan…”
“No.” Aidan’s harsh tone cut him off. “No way. I’m not standing here and watching all this go down. You’re better than this, and if you go ahead with what’s the equivalent of first-degree murder, then I don’t want to be around when it all hits the fan.”
“Please…”
“No.” Aidan hit the bar with his open palm. “I can work for a man who lost control and killed his Mom’s murderer in the heat of passion, no problem. My conscience is crystal clear about that. But this thing that you and King have going on? Sarah would never get on board with this, and you fucking know it.” His eyes were blazing gold. “You say this is for her, but that’s bullshit… this is for you. And once you do this – plan a man’s murder, and I don’t care that the man is an asshole, to be honest – then I don’t want to be anywhere around you.”
“Fine.” Jax shrugged, trying to look nonchalant. “Your notice is accepted. Give it to me in writing ASAP.”
“No problem.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
Both men glared at each other, then Jax turned around and walked back to his office.
Chapter Seventeen
Four days later
Clarice ‘Honey’ Potts sighed as the noise in the back of the truck increased, both in volume and tempo. She checked the GPS on her cell and saw that there was a small wooded area coming up in about two miles. With her wide, gorgeous eyes – deceptively and softly baby blue – she glanced over at the man in the passenger seat.
“I was hoping the drugs would tranq him for another hour, at least.”
“Yeah, me too.” Tom ‘Tank’ Devereux shifted his muscled bulk in the too-small seat. “We’ll have to deal with this.”
“Yep.” Honey checked the rearview mirror, saw that the road was clear. “Let’s pull over up here and persuade our boy to shut his fucking trap, huh?”
Tank flashed her a grin. “Now you’re talking, darlin’.”
She saw a small dirt path leading in to the woods and she took it, handling the hill slow and easy. The trees provided good cover, and she knew nobody could see them from the road above. She shut off the engine, was amused when the banging in the back suddenly stopped.
Too late, dickhead. You got our attention, and now we’re coming.
They stepped out of the furniture delivery truck, looked around one last time. Tank rolled his massive shoulders, pulled his gun.
“Ready?” he said to her.
“Always.”
Honey lifted the latch on the one side of the door, then stepped back and pressed her small body against the still-locked side. Just as she expected, the unlocked half of the door burst open and Dave Townsend came flying out, screaming wildly through the gag. He fell the six feet or so to the ground, and then he lay there, rolling over and over, struggling against the tape binding his wrists and ankles.
They stared down at him, half-amused, half-disbelieving. In their years as hired guns, it never ceased to amaze them just how determined people were to escape, no matter how futile the attempt. These morons provided hours of entertainment, really, but enough was enough.
Honey raised her tiny foot, encased in wicked high-heeled brown boots, and brought it down on Dave’s balls. He screamed again, at a much higher pitch, and rolled away. He came within an inch of Tank’s huge combat boots, and his eyes widened when he looked up and not
iced the barrel of the gun aimed at his face. Dave froze, suddenly wondering if they were going to shoot him right here.
“You want to shut the fuck up now?” Tank’s deep voice was pleasant, the Cajun drawl misleading in its relaxed warmth. He had no relaxed or warm feelings for this piece of shit wallowing in the muck at his feet.
Dave nodded, snuffling for breath.
“Now, I’d like your undivided attention, if you please.” Honey was all sunshine and sugar, and Dave gave her what she asked for. “We’re almost where we need to take you, but you’re making quite a ruckus back here. I don’t like ruckus… gives me a headache.” She smiled. “So, if you’ll just turn over and present that spoiled ass to me, I’ll give you another shot.”
He groaned and shook his head. Honey cocked her head.
“You refusing me?”
He paused, sure that there was no correct answer to that question. He had no fucking clue how these two had found him at his grandfather’s farmhouse over in Kansas. He’d barely poked his head out the fucking door since his father got him dropped over there under the cover of darkness, all covert and shit. He hadn’t answered the door, barely left the farmhouse.
Well, actually. OK, yeah, he’d been outside a few times – against his father’s explicit orders and to the annoyance of the guards stuck babysitting him – but, fuck. He’d been going stir-crazy, trapped in that place. Nothing to do, not allowed to call anyone, and the selection of movies sucked. The professional bodyguards refused to let him drink, and they had no fucking sense of humor to boot.
And anyway. It hardly seemed fair that he’d been under what was effectively house-arrest for something that he barely remembered, right? Christ, he’d just gone back to Denver to meet with the college board, sign a few documents and present another bogus doctor’s note, and he met Richard for a few drinks. All very hush-hush and on the down-low, since nobody could know he was back, even just for two days. But when Rich had told him that Sarah was screwing that biker asshole, the one who had humiliated Dave, he lost it.
He got leglessly drunk, and it was still kind of a surprise that he had even managed to drive the rental car to Sarah’s place. But man, her face when she opened the door and saw him there… it had been priceless. And why shouldn’t she be punished a little bit? That bitch seemed to be making it her personal mission to completely fuck up his life every chance she got. Why couldn’t she just drop the whole thing, take his Dad’s money? God knows she could use it, and he was dying to get back to his life.
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