“What do you want me to do, Jagger?”
“I don’t know.” He ran his hands through his hair. “I don’t know anything about this. There’s no telling how this guy is going to react, and there’s no telling when they’re going to do this. There are too many variables here that can’t be controlled.
She sat next to him and cupped his hands in hers. “This is one of those times when you have to trust me. You have to let me decide what’s best for me. You can’t keep me safe all the time.”
“But I want to.” He swallowed roughly.
“I know,” she whispered, running her hands over his stubble covered cheeks. “But you can’t, babe. Life is messy, it’s not controlled, it’s not the same thing every day, and we don’t all have a crystal ball. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen.”
He took a deep breath and let his head fall. “I know, but it doesn’t mean that I’m not gonna have an ulcer worrying about you today.”
As Bianca approached the school, she felt the beginnings of an ulcer in her own stomach. There had been calls into the local radio station asking why police were at the school. So far, no one had called any school events off, they just made noises about a possible threat and that the police were there for an extra precaution.
“Yeah right,” she muttered as she turned the radio off.
What she wouldn’t have given to stay in bed with Jagger on this day, to even have him come to school with her. While she had put on a brave face, she had in reality been scared to death. Men like Raymond Tucker came a dime a dozen in the business of strip clubs, and she’d seen more than one go a little crazy. It wasn’t pretty when it happened, and she could bet that someone threatening his cash flow would be the one thing that would send him over the edge. Not for the first time, she wished she knew how to operate a gun. She made a mental note to ask Jagger about it when this day was over.
Pulling into the parking lot of the school, she saw a couple of police cruisers and vans, but nothing really out of the ordinary. They were keeping it pretty well under wraps. No one could tell exactly what the police were looking for by just seeing the presence at the school. Gathering her courage, she walked through the front doors, her chin held high.
“How’s it going?” she asked Stacey as she walked into the office, nodding a hello at Rooster who stood outside the office door.
Stacey glanced around, her face pale. “I have no idea what’s going on here, but I don’t like it.”
“Yeah, I’m not that big of a fan myself,” Bianca admitted.
“What was Mr. Tucker into?” she whispered as she handed Bianca her badge.
Truthfully she answered. “I have no idea. With him, I have a feeling it could be anything.” Just because she had her ideas didn’t mean she had proof on any of it. That wouldn’t come until Rooster completed his investigation.
“Well anyway,” Stacey sighed. “You’ll be with Mrs. Harris’ class today.”
“Okay, does she have a class first thing?”
“She does, but they are sweeping her classroom right now, so she’s got the kids meeting in the library. I think you’ll do fine just going in there with her. Too bad for you that today had to be crazy like this, huh?” Stacey tried to make light of what was going on.
“Yeah, but I never seem to have anything easy. It’s pretty much par for the course for me.”
For an hour she sat with the kids in the library. She wasn’t sure why they were sweeping Mrs. Harris’ room, but perhaps they had found proof that Money Bags was hiding something there. Maybe they were sweeping the whole school; she had no idea. It was as she was beginning to get bored that she heard a commotion out in the hallway. Over the intercom, she heard an unfamiliar voice saying that the school was going on lockdown.
“What’s going on?” she asked Mrs. Harris.
“Standard procedure when they do searches,” the older woman assured Bianca.
This was not standard procedure, and Bianca wanted to shout that at the woman who was far too calm for Bianca’s frayed nerves. The library door had been locked by the elderly librarian with a key she carried in her pocket. A few minutes later, they heard a key go into the door and heard it engage to open.
“Maybe it’s safe now?” Mrs. Harris wondered aloud.
When Bianca saw Money Bags walk through the door, looking disheveled, she knew that it wasn’t safe at all.
“Mr. Tucker, is it safe for everyone to come out now? I would really like to go to my class room and teach Ms. Hawks a couple of things.” Mrs. Harris put her hands on her hips and demanded an answer from the principal.
“Actually,” he smiled at the older woman, “we’re still under a lockdown, but I need Ms. Hawks to come with me.” He motioned to her with his hand.
She wracked her brain for something she could say to keep from going with him. “I thought during a lockdown we aren’t supposed to leave our room,” she babbled, looking to the other woman for assurance.
“He’s the principal. I think you’re fine going with him,” she smiled.
Bianca wanted to knock this woman upside the head. Obviously she didn’t know what was going on, but she was making this entirely too easy for Money Bags.
“Yeah, Ms. Hawks, I need you to come with me,” he said again.
Not wanting to alert the children that something was wrong and worried that she might really piss him off if she disobeyed his order, she grabbed her purse and went to stand next to him. “If you say it’s fine,” she told him.
“It is. We need to go to the office.”
She knew without a doubt they would not be going to the office. There was no telling where they were actually going, but she knew there wouldn’t be that many people where they were going. They exited the library and he put a hand on her arm.
“You ruined everything,” he told her. His eyes hard, his grip even harder.
“You’re hurting me.” She tried to jerk her arm away from him.
“Good,” he told her. “Then you can hurt the way I do. I was working on giving you everything, Bianca. Everything. Then Jagger had to come along, and you had to get caught up with that stupid group of grown men riding bikes. I mean really, how childish can you get?”
“Like giving money to women who take their clothes off is any less childish?” She said those words before she realized who she was dealing with.
In an instant, he had pushed her up against the wall and smacked her across the face. “Childish? Bianca, I love you. There’s nothing childish about the way I feel for you. Why do you think I always make sure I give you money? I want you taken care of. That’s what a real man does.”
He had completely gone off his rocker, she realized. Something had snapped. His eyes looked different than she ever remembered them looking. “What are they looking for, Raymond?” she asked, calling him his real name for the first time.
“You know my name?” He seemed surprised that she knew it, but delighted at the same time.
“I do. I just wanted to respect you by calling you by the title of your position.”
He seemed to appreciate that. It seemed to give him power. “That’s the problem, no one wants to give me respect. You know how to respect someone though; you know how to appreciate someone.”
“I do,” she nodded, feeling blood drip from her mouth.
“But you made me hurt you,” he accused her, running his finger over the drop of blood.
“My fault.” She did her best to smile as her lips shook.
“It is your fault. It’s your fault that they’re looking into me like this. If I hadn’t needed money to give to you, I never would have been in this mess,” he flipped on her quickly.
He was going back and forth so fast, she wasn’t sure how she would keep up. “I’ve always appreciated it,” she told him.
“I know, but right now, your boyfriend and his friends have fucked me over. So what’s going to happen is you’re going to get me out of here.”
Her stomach sank. �
�How am I going to do that?”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone. “You call your boyfriend and you get him to call Rooster and the other police off of my back.”
“I don’t know that I can,” she told him. “The feds are involved because of the bank robberies.”
From his pocket, he pulled out a gleaming gun—large, silver, and shining. “You do it, Bianca, or I’ll be forced to break my own heart. I can’t let you stand in my way. I’ll just have to put you down.”
Bianca swallowed roughly. If this man didn’t kill her, Jagger was going to. She had just promised him she wouldn’t put herself in this situation, and she had already broken that promise.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“What do we know?” Jagger asked as he rushed to Liam’s side in the parking lot of the school.
“I haven’t been able to talk to Rooster that much, he’s been with the feds, but Money Bags is walking around at this point. Somehow he got into the school after they put it on lockdown,” Liam explained.
“Even though this wasn’t supposed to be that dangerous and they ‘had everything under control’?” Jagger could tell that Liam was holding something back. “Where is Bianca?”
“She was in the library with the class that she was shadowing for the day,” he told the younger man, running a hand through his hair.
“But what are you not telling me?”
“At some point,” he cleared his throat, “Money Bags went to the library and took Bianca out. He’s got her, and they aren’t sure what he wants to use her for.”
At that moment, Jagger felt complete and utter rage. The words he had spoken to her, warning her of what could happen, replayed in his mind. Why hadn’t he insisted that she stay home on this day? Why hadn’t he forced her to see how worried he was? “Does he have a weapon?”
“Don’t know,” Liam admitted. “We’re trying to convince Rooster to let us in, but he’s in a clusterfuck with the feds right now.”
“This is just great.” Jagger put his hands behind his head and tried to calm his breathing. “If something happens to her—” he started to say.
“Hey,” Liam put his hand on Jagger’s shoulder, “I got kids in there, I know how you feel. We can’t go there. We have to believe that this going to play out fine.”
“We gotta get in there…what about Layne? He’s ex-military. Can they not let him go in?”
“Already on it. That’s something that Rooster’s talking to his team about. It wouldn’t be so much of a clusterfuck if somebody went rogue. Know what I mean? They could cover that shit up if something was to happen to Money Bags.”
It was on the tip of Jagger’s tongue to laugh. People always talked about conspiracies and government cover-ups and here they were possibly perpetrating one.
“I just wish I could see her, ya know? Make sure she’s really okay.”
“I know.” Liam put his arm around the younger man. “Believe me dude, I know.”
“What are you going to do with me?” Bianca asked as she sat in the cafeteria with Raymond. He had tied her hands behind her back and sat her in the kitchen area where they hid behind double doors. They were well protected and no one could see them. That made her very uncomfortable and even more nervous.
From where he stood looking out of one of the small windows on the door, he glanced over his shoulder back at her. “If I had unlimited time, I know exactly what I would do with you.”
The look in his eyes made her sick. “If you plan on doing that, I suggest you kill me and yourself here right now because Jagger will murder you with his bare hands or I will,” she threatened.
“Oh come on, Bianca,” he taunted her. “Your hands are tied behind your back. What can you really do?”
Her heart rate kicked up in her throat as he approached where she sat on a stool. For the first time, she cursed the skirt she wore. Putting the gun to the side, he took his hands and shoved her knees apart.
“And look at that,” he breathed, leaning into her shoulder, putting his mouth at her ear. “Such easy access, and you can’t do a damn thing about it.”
She fought to close her legs against the invasion of his hand, but all she succeeded in doing was trapping it against the barrier of her underwear. “Please,” she begged him, tears coming to her eyes. “Don’t do this.”
“Don’t do this?” he questioned her. “I’ve walked around with a hard-on for you for a long time, girl. You owe me something,” he breathed heavily into her ear. “I’ve given you my life savings and then some.” He used his body to push her legs apart, and she felt his hardness against her thigh.
“I didn’t ask you for it,” she choked out against the tightness of her throat.
“Women like you never do, do they? They prey on lonely men who develop an unhealthy obsession with them, and then they use them like the whores they are. You do realize that’s what you are, right? You’re nothing but a whore. How does that make you feel?”
She shook her head, the long ends of her hair getting stuck to her cheeks. The tears that had spilled over making them wet. “I have never in my life had sex for money. I am not a whore,” she argued.
“Technicalities, Bianca. Do you really want it on a technicality?”
“I know what I have and what I have not done, Raymond. Whatever you want to believe, you can. But if you want it from me right now, you’ll have to take it,” she told him, raising her chin up.
“I’m not above that. I’m surprised you think I am,” he told her.
Right then her cell phone began ringing, and he grabbed it out of her pocket. She recognized the ringtone as being Jagger and her heart ached. She wanted him to save her, she needed his strong arms around her right now.
“How sweet. Lover boy is calling to check on you,” he smiled. “Must be nice to have someone who cares about you,” he told her, dragging his finger along the bar that would answer the phone call.
“Please don’t do this,” she begged.
Outside, Liam had instructed Jagger to call her phone. Unbeknownst to her, Steele had a brand new app he was working on, one that would keep the women in the club safer. Not to spy on them, but just in case something like this happened. It would tell him exactly where she was based on cell phone signals and Wi-Fi frequencies. That way, they could plan their next move. Jagger hadn’t expected Money Bags to answer.
“Jagger?”
His blood ran cold as he heard the voice on the other end.
“You better not have hurt a fucking hair on her head,” Jagger threatened the other man.
“Right now, she’s a little bit upset, Jagger,” he taunted. “She’s crying and I have her hands tied behind her back. It’s a wet dream really. The skirt she wore means easy access, and it looks so hot riding up on her thighs. You know exactly what that looks like, don’t you?”
Jagger did and he was ready to murder this man with his bare hands. “Let me talk to her.”
“You’re really not in any kind of position to make demands.”
“Let me talk to her right now or I swear to all that is Holy I will come in there, guns blazing, and blow your brains out—federal agents be damned. Before I blow your brains out though, I’ll castrate you like the piece of shit pervert that you are.”
The tone of Jagger’s voice told Raymond that he really did mean business, and it was enough to scare him. Putting the phone to Bianca’s ear, he instructed her to talk to the other man.
“Jagger?” she fought to control her voice.
“Hey beautiful,” he greeted her.
Just hearing his voice was enough to make her eyes shut tightly and tears stream even faster down her face.
“Are you okay?” he asked her.
“I’ve been better. I’ve been worse,” she admitted.
“Listen to me,” he instructed her.
Steele ran over with a piece of paper in his hand. Is she in the kitchen? Scrawled in hasty scratch.
“You’re in the kitchen, rig
ht?”
“Yes.”
He wanted to fist pump right now. The app that Steele had been working so diligently on was fucking spot on at the most crucial of times.
“He has your hands tied behind your back?”
She was nervous that if she answered another ‘yes’ that Raymond would know she was answering questions. “You’re so right. Please get me out of here.”
Raymond rolled his eyes at the pleading tone of her voice, and she knew she had bought herself just a little bit of time.
“Good girl. Now, can you flex your wrists? You’re strong from carrying those trays. Keep trying to flex them to get you some room. You’re wearing heels, use those fuckers. We’re trying to get in, but you are not helpless here. You understand me?”
“I do,” she told him, calming down now that she knew there really was something she could do to help her situation.
“We’ll be there as soon as we can. I love you. Do whatever you have to do to come back to me.”
“I love you too,” she told him as Raymond took the phone away.
“As sweet as the sentiments are, they give me a stomach ache. Jagger, tell the Feds they better be working on my demands. I’ll be in touch later.”
He ended the call and looked at Bianca. “Now where were we?”
“She’s in the cafeteria, in the kitchen part. He’s got her tied up, but her legs are free,” Jagger told the group that had gathered around him. “She’s really scared, but I think I gave her enough info that she can stop thinking about the situation she’s in and maybe try and help herself.”
The fear in her voice had almost undone him. Bianca was nothing if not strong, and to hear the fear, it broke something inside of him. He needed to get in there as soon as possible, and then he needed to put Raymond Tucker down like the dog he was.
“This shit is getting on my nerves,” Rooster breathed as he came over to the group of bikers.
Heaven Hill Series - Complete Series Page 55