Jack - Perfect Burn: Hot Crime Romance

by Alice May Ball

  However much I tried to keep a grip on thinking about Ryan, I kept on coming back to those few moments in darkness. His strong, expert fingers and the lethal force of his touch, the waves of loving force of his lips and his mouth. His breath on my neck, in my ear, on my breast. Between my thighs.

  Maybe if I just turned on my phone for a couple of seconds, I could find out if I got a signal. Maybe I could figure out where I was.

  Fishing it out of my purse, I found the little phone that Ryan had given me in the diner. I had forgotten all about it. It was switched off.

  Unsure whether to switch it on or not, I decided to try mine first. When it started up, I got a shock. It was my phone, in my case, but it didn’t have my welcome screen. When I opened the phonebook, it was empty. It had the last calls made, but none of the names, only the numbers. I didn’t recognize any of them.

  People’s phone numbers were something I’d never paid any attention to. They were just things for phones to remember. Having the phone and so much of its data so near, and yet having next to no chance of being able to use it, stirred a sense of panic that rose in my gut.

  While I absorbed the shock and thought about what to do, I switched the phone off again. Ryan must have taken the chip out and put another one in. To prevent me being tracked on it, I guessed. And right now, I couldn’t figure out whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. Except that the phone seemed like it was no use at all, so that was a pretty bad thing.

  The last few days, I’d felt like I was living in a shoebox. Every so often, someone would come along and turn the shoebox upside down and all of the things I knew would fall out.

  There was noise upstairs. Footsteps. A door opened, then more footsteps. The wood floorboards amplified the clomp of heavy boots and the curdling bounce of Gregor’s laugh. More bootsteps. Then a door slammed. After that, it seemed quieter.

  Soon after, about ten minutes later I guess, I smelled fresh coffee. The door at the top of the steps opened and Seb came down with a mug. A strange sensation whirled in my stomach as I realized how happy I was getting at the sights and sounds of gangsters approaching. This was what captivity did. I remembered reading about it. You become acclimated. You learn to want whatever it is you regularly get.

  Human beings can get used to anything, the book said. When I read that, I thought, How fantastic, that we’re so able to adapt. Looking harder at some of the things that I was adapting to, it maybe didn’t seem such a great thing.

  Seb put the coffee cup on the table and he sat on the chair near the couch. The fact that he sat farther away cheered me. It seemed like he was being considerate, and I liked him for that.

  He said, “You’re going to be all right, you know? This…”

  I stopped him. “Seb, you’re a good guy. I like you. But I have to tell you that the next guy that tells me it’s all going to be all right, and I’m perfectly safe, and it’s all going to work out just fine… I’m sorry, Seb, but I really will have to kill him.”

  After he left, I pulled out the phone that Ryan had given me and the screen said it had four missed calls. When I found the button to see who they were, they were all listed with his name. I looked in the contacts list. In it were two numbers. His, and Tynie’s.

  I thought hard about the numbers on my own phone, trying to figure a way that I could work out who each number was. It only made my head hurt. Then I tried to think of another way to look at it. What did I know? Okay, I knew what times each person called, and how many times. At last, a lightbulb went on.

  So first, I turned my phone on and opened a map to see if I could get any idea of where I was. A map came up, and there was an address. I knew these things were approximate at the best of times, though. A guy in college told me it was good for about fifty to seventy yards. “So you’ve got a pretty good shot at where one end of my cock is,” he’d said.

  Idiot. “You’ll remember it, though,” he’d added. And he was right. I still remembered what an idiot he was.

  So, after I got my approximate location, I looked for the number that showed up as an incoming call the most times. I started dialing that into the other phone and put it in the contacts list.

  I looked at the number, thinking of what I was going to say. How I would put it. Something like, “Okay, I know you aren’t going to like this, not one bit, but stay calm. There’s something you absolutely have to do for me.”

  First, I would have to call Seb to come back down here. That part had to be resolved, and I might as well get it done before anything else. I really hoped that I wouldn’t have to shoot Seb.

  Mainly because I didn’t think that I would be able to do it. For an instant it made me wish Ratke was still my damned guard.

  Careful what you wish for, Haley, I thought.

  Chapter Nineteen

  HAZY SUN WASHED THE wide streets, cars and trucks. Big, pale downtown buildings dazzled me. Everything glared bright. Peering and squinting, I circled the Escalade around the long block with the white steps and columns of the First City Commercial Bank.

  To look out for unusual numbers of cops, and scope out parking places that would work for Gregor and the gang, I crawled as slowly as I could, twice around the block. I took pictures on my phone and sent them to Gregor. There were plenty of vacant spaces alongside the building, so he wasn’t going to have a problem.

  After I’d made one more slow circuit, I located the parking garage. Then I just needed a parking space with a good enough view of the square where I could wait and watch.

  The Escalade wound up the dark cement floors and up the ramps to the third floor of the lot, and I found a spot by the outer wall, one with a view that overlooked the bank.

  Maybe it was just the nerves, making me jumpy. The feeling bubbled up inside me that this whole thing had gotten so far out of my control it wasn’t even funny anymore. Since the moment I first saw her face, since she peered at me from the back of the BMW, all I had wanted was to keep Haley safe. It was tough to admit it, but I couldn’t say that I’d made a great success of achieving that so far.

  So far? I had to face the facts. I had no idea where she was. And no clue what Gregor had planned for her. What he may have already done, for all that I knew.

  If anything bad happened to her, I would kill him. I swore that to myself right there and then.

  I took out the little burner phone. I was about to try and call Haley again when it buzzed. My heart jumped. When I looked at the screen, it said it was Tynie. Tynie almost never used the phone.

  Tynie said, “You need to tell me the location of the bank, Ryan.”

  “What, Tynie? Why?”

  “She told me I have to get it from you.”

  She? She must have called him, spoken to him. She was okay. She must have been if she was calling Tynie.

  At least, she was okay on some level. I really wanted to know more.

  I finished talking to Tynie as fast as I could, then I tried her number again. It went straight to voicemail. This time, I left a message.

  Right after I hung up, the phone buzzed again. It was her.

  “Hey, I saw that you just called.” All of my senses snapped to. Nothing else mattered but the sound of her voice. It was like floodlights flashed on.

  I said, “I thought you had the phone switched off.”

  “No. I did earlier, but I turned it on.” In the pause, I listened to her breathing. “I was on another call.”

  With who? I wondered. Tynie again? The uneasy feeling stirred in me that things were going on, things that I knew nothing about.

  “Wait,” she said, “the phone’s beeping. Hold on…”

  “No, don’t click over. I might have to leave any second…” But she didn’t hear me.

  It was probably only a few moments that she was away, but it felt like an hour. Any moment, Gregor could show up by the bank, and then I’d have no time to talk.

  She said, “It’s telling me I have a voicemail. Hang on.” Again I tried to stop her, but she
’d gone and she didn’t hear me.

  When she finally came back, she said, “Yeah, it was the message you just left.” And I heard the smile in her voice. I wanted to be with her then so much it hurt. She said, “It’s good to hear your voice.”

  “Yours, too,” I told her. My other phone rang. It was Gregor.

  “Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll call you back if I can.”

  “Sure, I…” I’d hit the button before I realized she was trying to tell me something.

  There was no way to call her back now. I had to take Gregor’s call.

  “We’re coming into the square now, Jacker. You’re all ready to go, I hope. Are you? Are you ready for the drive of your life?”

  Gregor’s black Hummer slid in to park alongside the bank. It seemed like they could have gotten closer to the doors, spent less time in the sunshine, showing the big guns to all the civilians. There wasn’t any point in me worrying about any of that.

  The Escalade fired up on a press of Tynie’s fob button and I drove back down the ramps to the exit. That dumped me right onto the street that ran in front of the bank. If anything, I was going to be way too early. I paused at the entrance.

  How would I ever be able to make it right with Haley? Doing what I was doing now, there were a thousand ways I could be hauled off to jail. All the rotten things that she thought about me, all the bad ideas she had, I’d done nothing but confirm every one of them.

  There was no doubt that beautiful girl would have been a lot better off if she’d never seen my face. Just thinking of her—the warmth of her breath, the shining light in her smile, and the roll of her gorgeous hips—I could hardly keep my mind on what I was doing. It’s really hard to get things right when you feel so damned wrong.

  I was about to commit the most serious crime of my life to date. I’d had run-ins with the law before, of course. Some encounters, a few chases, some moments dazzled in the headlights, stood by a car on a dark road with red and blue lights whirling while a cop leaned on his gun as he talked to me.

  The insides of a few holding cells were places I knew better than I might have wished. But I hadn’t ever stood in the dock of a federal courthouse. No serious charge had ever been brought against me. Ever. Yet.

  Taking part in a bank robbery, there was no easy slide out of that. If I was caught, I wouldn’t be getting any “first offense” discount. There would likely be a five-to-ten stretch of federal jail time opening up for me. And I shouldn’t have been letting my mind race around any of that now.

  It would be like taking a fast turn on a mountain road, focusing on the ledge. You do that, you’re going out into free air and there’s a long drop waiting for you. Look at the road ahead. Concentrate on taking the next turn. Think too much about what can go wrong, you’ll make it happen.

  More than anything, I needed to get through this. To drive perfectly. Get the gang from the bank to the drop-off and get Haley back to safety. Now that I’d given her the gun, I wasn’t so sure about how I was going to do that. Truth be told, though, holding that tiny Beretta against Gregor’s big, hard skull, it never did seem like a perfectly balanced picture.

  I knew I couldn’t count on his goodwill to let me have her back, though. I couldn’t even be sure he wouldn’t have Haley and me slotted into the compartment of his brain labelled “loose ends.” Somehow, I was going to have to overcome him. And right when he was pumped with adrenaline off the raid.

  As casually as I could, I coasted along the street in front of the bank. As I got level with the doors, I slowed to a stop. There was no sign of them coming out. Drivers behind me were leaning on their horns. So I put on the flashers.

  Leaning across and behind, I popped the doors open. On the far side of the road, a civilian peered at the bank and registered me double-parked in front. He took out a cell phone. Goddamnit. What the fuck was keeping Gregor?

  They had been inside nearly three minutes now. That was way too long. There’s never a protocol, no procedure for the driver. No way for you to bolt, leave a note. “Sorry. Couldn’t wait.” You just have to hold your position, hanging out in plain sight. Smoke curled out of the bank door.

  The civilian with the phone had gotten his call connected. He was talking animatedly. He moved around the back. I know he was going to be looking for the license number. Then there were shots.

  Lubic and Hannes burst through the bank doors and dashed down the steps, supporting Jared between them. They all carried big black sacks. Gregor came out behind them and it looked like he was dragging Ratke after him. Ratke’s sack was slung across his back. He had a short, pump-action shotgun in each hand.

  As Hannes shoved Jared onto the back bench, I saw there was blood running down his temple. Gregor pushed Ratke, holding his collar to shove him into the seat beside me. As Gregor clambered in the back with Lubic, Hannes, and Jared, I gunned the engine and the tires smoked as we took off. The little burner phone in my pocket buzzed. There was no way that I could take it out now.

  The door flapped and one struck the side of a bus before it slammed shut. As I made a hard left turn, the doors on the right swung open. For a fraction of a second it looked like we could lose Ratke. He slipped fast toward the open door and his hands were still full of guns.

  As I straightened up, though, he was slung back in and the door slammed shut beside him. Sirens were starting up and getting louder. They were too distant, echoing too much, to get any idea what directions the sounds were coming from.

  Ratke said, “Time is it, Gregor?”

  “Shut it, Ratke,” Gregor growled.

  “Think the garage is gone yet?”

  “I’m telling you, Ratke.”

  Ratke elbowed my arm. “Loose ends, Jacker. Nice big fire to burn off the loose ends.”

  The garage? Ratke said, “Shame about your jumpy buddy, eh, Ryan? That fucker with all his ‘don’t touch me’ and his twitchy scowls. Shame if the shutter door was locked. He’d be floating embers by now. Torched.”

  Gregor grabbed at Ratke’s neck. “Shut the fuck up, Ratke, or I swear…”

  Ratke leered back at him. Then he said, “Your snappy friend will have gotten fried, Ryan. Your bargaining chip turned into a roasted chip and went up in smoke.” And he laughed. “Seems like your Tynie could have been evidence.”

  It was less than three minutes since I spoke to Tynie. Even though he unsettled me, I didn’t rise to Gregor’s bait.

  As we hurtled through the traffic, at each turn I picked the route with the most vehicles, looking out for trucks, busses, anything that would slow down whatever was behind us. Where I had to, I sounded the horn. A flash of my brights was enough for most of the vehicles. Trucks moved. Car drivers were slower to react. We scraped the side of a Volvo and he slid off into the path of a Toyota Camry.

  There was still no way to know which way the cops were coming, but the sirens were definitely getting closer.

  Across a junction, traffic on our side was log-jammed. As I swung onto the other side, a light one street ahead changed and a wall of lights, painted metal, and glass rolled right at me. To get back on our side, I side-swiped a milk van. An ugly, dark smear lined the gash we took out of his side.

  The little burner in my pocket buzzed again. As I slewed into a side street, just for that moment we had a clear run, I slid the phone out and glanced down. I hoped Ratke wouldn’t see it.

  A text message on the little screen said,

  I’m coming to get you.

  Chapter Twenty

  I SAT PARKED AT the side of the street with the engine running and watched Ryan turn onto the street in front of me. He gunned the gray SUV out of a side street, steered hard, and I caught a glimpse of his concentrated frown, that scarred eyebrow, before he sped away. Ratke was next to him. Gregor was in back with the other men.