Jasper tsked into the phone. “You haven’t answered my question, Alex. You might remember that I don’t like that very much. And I only ask because I thought that, if she liked my work, I might make you two match. What do you think?”
“She has nothing to do with this,” Cobra snarled. “This business is between us. Just the two of us. Leave her out of it.”
“Now, that isn’t going to happen and you know it,” Jasper simpered. “You have balls, kid, that I’ll admit. And I never expected you to be the type to play the long game. But here we are, you with enough of my product for a comfortable little nest egg, and me with the little bird who was helping you feather that nest. Smart of you to use her.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Jasper. I don’t know why the hell you think that Ash or her bakery have anything to do with some product you misplaced. We tore that whole place apart trying to find your stuff—“
“Lies,” Jasper hissed. “You’ve always been a lying little bastard, Alex. You slipped away last time, but something tells me you won’t be skipping town this time. But it doesn’t matter if you do. Because I’m sure your girl here will eventually tell me everything. Where you’re hiding my goods, who gave you the intel on Angelo. She doesn’t seem like the type to hold out too well in an interrogation.”
Cobra heard Ashleigh’s pained whimper in the background. The sound lit a fire in his veins and set his blood boiling. “Don’t you fucking touch her. I told you, we don’t know what you want. We didn’t take your shit. You got bad information—“
“I’m not a patient man, and I don’t have time for your cock-and-bull story. So you listen to me, you little prick, and listen well. If you get your ass down to the warehouse with my product—and I mean all of it, down to the last gram—I’ll let your girl go. We’ll call it a truce and part ways, and if you get the hell out of my town, I won’t bother you again. But if you skip out like last time, if you even think about taking off with my product, I will take her apart piece by piece. I will make her suffer. And then I will hunt you down and do what I should have done all those years ago. You can pay in blood for daring to steal from me.”
Cobra thought about repeating that he and Ashleigh hadn’t stolen anything and that Jasper was barking up the wrong tree, but he knew it would be a waste of time. Worse, it would only provoke the drug lord, and he couldn’t afford that, not when Ashleigh was in his hands.
“I’m going to need time to get it all together,” Cobra hedged. He didn’t know how much time he could buy, but every minute would count. Especially if he wanted to do more than just get Ashleigh out of there safely. If he wanted to really end this, to cut off the head of the snake and move on with his life, he was going to have to call in a Hail Mary.
“You’ve got one hour. After that, I can’t make any promises as to what the guys might do to her. What I did to you was quite a piece, but Trenton here’s an artist.”
“Two hours,” Cobra countered. “I’ve got a few things to arrange—“
“Then you’d better do it fast, Alex. Because now you have forty-five minutes. You show up alone, you bring my goods, and you don’t try to pull any stunts. Because if you don’t, this….” Jasper paused, and then Ashleigh’s shriek rang out over the receiver. “This will be the last you hear from your girl.”
The line went dead.
Cobra didn’t waste any time. He immediately dialed Zane. It took them only a few minutes to set up a plan for the four of them. It was going to be a longshot, since they couldn’t actually give Jasper what he wanted. There was no more time to search, and it wasn’t like they were going to turn up anything new. Ashleigh’s bakery was practically gutted at that point.
Not that meeting the drug lord’s demands would get them anything but a bullet in the back of the head.
Then he called Rocco. His Hail Mary. If the War Devils couldn’t come through in this, he was a goner. Ashleigh too. He tried not to think about that.
He had to focus on the task at hand. He couldn’t think about the price of failure. About Penny. About what Jasper would do to Ash once he figured out that he hadn’t brought the drugs.
No, right now he had to focus on getting out to the warehouse before Jasper’s deadline.
I’m coming, Ash, he thought, and I’m bringing hell with me.
Chapter 22
Ashleigh
Ashleigh hated herself for making any noise. One of Jasper’s men had violently wrenched on her pinky finger, though, and the pain had been too much for her. She didn’t want to give them the satisfaction, and she didn’t want Alex to hear and rush into anything on her account. If he didn’t figure something out, she was as good as dead anyway, and if he showed up without a plan and without backup, Jasper would off them both just for the sake of convenience.
“…will be the last you hear from your girl.” Jasper ended the call and slipped the phone back into the pocket of his dress slacks.
Ashleigh tried to stand up, not exactly knowing what she intended to do. She desperately wanted to throttle him, but that desire was rooted in nothing but the rage and despair coursing through her. Making the attempt wouldn’t do her any good. She wouldn’t make it anywhere near Jasper, not with his men hovering behind her and her hands and feet bound. All it would do was invite retaliation, and that was the last thing she needed right now.
It was her own damned fault that she was here. That thought weighed on her like a steamroller. If only she hadn’t gone back to the bakery. If only she’d been sensible enough to realize that it wasn’t worth the risk. And now where was she?
Tied up to a chair in what looked like a decrepit warehouse that had seen its heyday at least fifty years prior. There was no light in the building apart from what little sunlight made its way through the dingy, smashed windows. The whole place reeked of what she could only assume was dead vermin and decay.
She didn’t remember anything of the trip out there. One of Jasper’s guys had shaken her awake, and she’d found herself bound in the chair, staring down a couple of burly thugs and a heavyset older man who was dressed way too well to be hanging around in an abandoned warehouse.
Jasper. One look and she knew. His black hair was balding, and his neatly-trimmed mustache was starting to show streaks of grey. He wore a black business suit with pressed slacks, complete with a blood red tie—an outfit that screamed that he was a powerful man, someone you didn’t want to mess with.
“So we meet at last,” he’d drawled. He’d stared down at her so coolly, as if she hadn’t been forcibly abducted, but rather was sitting for an interview with some high-end powerbroker.
“I don’t have what you want,” she’d insisted. “I don’t know why you keep harassing me, but you’re making a mistake. I don’t know what you’re looking for—“
“Ah, but I think that you do. Or, at least, that your boyfriend does. I wouldn’t have had you pegged for the risk-taking type. I thought it was coincidence when I finally heard from Angelo where he’d stashed the drugs….We figured they had to still be there. I didn’t hear about anything new on the streets. So, I thought to myself, this will be easy. Angelo can’t have stuck it anywhere too complicated. He was never too smart. We’ll just break in, take what’s ours, and be on our way.
“But then….” Jasper had shaken his head at her. His terse grin, plastered over a thin veneer of admiration, belied an icy rage roiling beneath. She could see the depth of his fury in his eyes, where it glimmered like steel. “Then your boyfriend shows up out of nowhere. The pesky little prick. I thought I was done with him years ago. He wasn’t smart enough to count his blessings and stay away, though. He was right back to his old game, trying to cheat me out of what is rightfully mine.”
Jasper had spit on the ground then. “You thought five kilos of pure, uncut cocaine would make a nice honeymoon fund. You bought that shit hole-in-the-wall place and sat on it for him for months. And when we started sniffing around for it, you called him up and told him it was time
to move.”
“No,” she’d protested. “I didn’t even know about any drugs. How the hell would I?”
“Like I said, you wouldn’t. But a rat like your boyfriend? He would have heard through the grapevine about Angelo’s arrest. Maybe someone let the address past the prison guards. We can ask him when he gets here. Because, my pretty little thing, my boys and I are going to make sure he knows I have you. And if he doesn’t come with what I want, then I guess we’ll have to see about getting you to talk.”
The whole time she’d listened to him, Ashleigh had felt cold. Numb. All of it was sheer dumb luck, pure coincidence, but it seemed as if the universe had conspired not only to make her life as difficult as possible, but to entangle both her and Alex in a web that neither of them had woven.
The only reason she was sitting here was because she’d tried to better her life by starting a business. By becoming her own boss and setting an example for her daughter. She had wanted to show Penny that no matter what life throws at you, you can always pick yourself back up.
And the universe had flipped her the middle finger. Because what were the odds that she would choose to set up shop in the one building in town where some drug runner had stashed his boss’ cocaine? What were the chances that the drug lord in question would have some kind of a vendetta against Alex and that Alex would show back up to investigate just for the hell of it?
The worst of it was the niggling doubt that was worming its way into her mind with each passing second. She knew Alex still felt something for her, and that he was twice as determined to be a part of her life now that he knew about Penny. But did that mean that he’d throw away his life in the vain hope of somehow saving her? There was nothing he could do.
Even with the few guys from his MC who were still hanging around town, there was no way that he could save her. Sure, he could call the cops, but that would turn this into a hostage situation. Or worse, one of Jasper’s dirty cops would tip Jasper off with enough time to take off with her.
Penny would be all alone. Alex would be truly helpless. She couldn’t even begin to imagine the fallout from that. Because she was sure they’d torture her, and eventually they’d figure out that she had a daughter.
And that was assuming that Alex would even try to save her. He might just bail again and save his own skin. She didn’t want to think, even for a second, that he could do that to her. She wanted to believe what he claimed—that he’d left for the right reasons the first time. But the wound still stung, and now, when the stakes were so high, she couldn’t help but let doubt poison her thoughts.
It wasn’t long after her first conversation with Jasper that a phone buzzed. The large man to her left pulled a phone from his pocket and glanced at the screen.
“Alex Henshaw,” he announced.
Shit. It was her phone. Why was she surprised that they’d taken it from her?
“Let it ring through.”
Ashleigh had waited in pure agony as the call buzzed through. When the message had recorded, Jasper played it on speaker for her to hear.
Tears sprang to her eyes when she heard him. He still sounded a bit grudging, but he was much calmer. He wouldn’t have called if he hadn’t wanted to make things right after their fight. And it was so painful to know that when this may have been the last time that she would get to hear his voice.
“How sweet,” Jasper crooned. “I think we should call him back. Let him know you’re all right.”
Having the phone held to her ear, having to speak to him when she knew the fear in her voice would only whip him into a frenzy and keep him from thinking clearly, was torture. It felt as if someone had pierced her heart with a lead pipe, like the metal rod was still there, sticking through her chest, throbbing painfully with every pulse.
After they were finished with the call, Jasper put the phone away once more. He smiled cruelly at her. She could feel the force of his eyes on her, probing her, reveling in her misery. He was enjoying her distress, the sick bastard.
Ashleigh forced herself to look away. As much as she wanted to give in to despair then and there, she knew that she couldn't. She had no intentions of playing the damsel in distress. She was going to keep her eyes peeled for every opportunity to get a message out to Alex.
If he could at least get the drugs out of the ceiling tile, they'd be in a marginally better position. They could use Jasper's precious stash to leverage the drug lord into negotiations. They would at least have some collateral that would keep Jasper from wasting Ashleigh on the spot as soon as he got what he wanted.
But she had no idea how she was going to get that message out. Jasper seemed like he would wait out the time he'd given Alex elsewhere and leave her in the hands of the two thugs at her side. Maybe that would make her task easier, she thought. She'd just have to pull one over on them rather than distracting the drug lord.
But what were the chances of her actually getting her hands on a cell phone long enough to get a call to Alex? She doubted they would be that careless with her, not when Jasper thought that he was so close to getting what he wanted.
Jasper strolled away, leaving her alone in the warehouse. His two men didn't say much. They idled by her side, pacing on occasion, stretching their arms. But apart from that neither seemed inclined to chat. Which meant that she wasn't likely to get them engrossed in a conversation long enough to somehow get her hands free.
Not that she could manage that in the first place. Why the hell hadn't she paid better attention to all the action movies she'd watched? Wasn't there some trick to getting free? Stretching your hands, or dislocating a wrist or something? Maybe that was for escaping straightjackets.
She glanced around the warehouse, searching for any exits. An escape would do her no good if she couldn't plan her route to safety. Again, not that she had any clue where they'd taken her. She had a bad feeling that they were in the middle of nowhere, which meant that even if she did manage to free herself from her bonds, sneak out of the warehouse unnoticed, and get herself far from the area where Jasper was keeping her, she still faced a long walk back to town. And given the local landscape and the lack of cover, that translated to being recaptured and possibly roughed up for her audacity.
Her best hope was still waiting for Alex and praying that he had some miraculous plan to fix all of this.
That was what he'd promised her, right? That he would fix everything? That he would somehow get her life back to normal, so she could take Penny home and reopen the bakery and get on with her plans for the future?
It was a silly promise to cling to. She doubted he thought it would ever come to this. And she had made the cliché mistake, she reminded herself, by going back to her business after he'd told her not to. After she'd been assaulted there twice.
But that promise was all she had. She had her daughter to think about. And it took an immense amount of willpower to mentally block off the instinct to imagine what life would be like for Penny if she didn't get out of this. How would her daughter ever go on? There wasn't enough counseling in the world to stitch up the pain of losing a parent, especially with no closure and under such awful circumstances.
No. She couldn't even entertain that thought. She had to stay positive. She had to keep looking for ways to fix this, to make it better. She had to make sure that she got out of this alive.
"So, Angelo stashed the goods at a bakery?" one of her guards asked. His tone was strangely conversational.
Ashleigh shook herself out of her storm of inner thoughts in order to focus on what the two were saying.
"Not a bakery, you moron. He said it was an abandoned building. But it took months to get even that message through the system. Jasper was waiting for more details, but someone took Angelo out, remember? Some guy. Gangbanger, I think. There was bad blood between them."
"Oh."
And that was it. The two fell silent again.
Shit, why didn't she have two chatty Cathies watching over her? She was afraid to squirm too much in h
er chair, knowing that her struggling against the duct tape around her wrists would be a dead giveaway.
She had to play the damsel in distress. Even though she wanted to be strong and furious, she had to play meek and helpless. That was the only hope she had of getting them to lose their attention enough to give her a chance.
If they dismissed her as a typical woman, overly emotional and cracking under the stress of her situation, she could create an opportunity for herself. Throw a fake tantrum that would send them for a loop. Men like them wouldn’t know how to handle a hysterical bawler, and she was under enough pressure to be able to really turn on the waterworks.
Ashleigh steeled herself. Then she let loose all the dread and horror she’d been trying so desperately to repress since this nightmare had started. It coursed through her like an undammed river, and before she knew it, she was full-on sobbing. She let her face twist into the ugliest expression and gave full voice to the choked cries that would slip out intermittently between her sobs.
BAD INFLUENCE: A Dark Bad Boy Romance Page 45