RIP ME: A Dark Romance

by Naomi West

  Cat flung herself at me, her eyes flashing maniacally. “You little—” She started to say.

  But before she could make contact with me, one of the FBI agents intervened, pulling her back away. The man was reading her her rights before I even knew what was really happening.

  I looked around, trying to figure out just what was going on. One of the agents separated from the crowd buzzing around Cat and Castor and came over to me. It was Cherri, I realized, staring at her in shock.

  “So we meet again,” she said wryly, a small smile twisting her face. She nudged at the box with the toe of her boot. “All the packages were already delivered, so what's in the box?”

  I paled a little as I looked at her. “Explosives,” I admitted. “Pretty low-level explosives, and I haven't started the timer or anything yet.”

  “What were you planning to do?” Cherri asked with a bit of a frown.

  I shrugged, looking away from her. “The only way Liv could ever truly be free was if Cat and Castor were both dead,” I told her. “So I planned to, uh, take care of that problem.”

  Cherri narrowed her eyes at me. “You mean to tell me that you were actually planning on dying for Liv's sake?”

  Before I could respond, two of the other agents were there as well. “We'll need to ask you some questions about your involvement in all of this,” they told me. “Right now, you're being arrested under charge of...”

  I hardly listened as the man droned on about my rights. Instead, I fixed my eyes on Cherri. I wanted to say that she owed me one, that I needed her help to get out of this situation, but at this point, I'd lost track of who owed whom. And I knew I probably deserved to go to jail, after the role I'd played in delivering the packages to Cat. It was about time all of this caught up to me.

  I let them handcuff me, not fighting back at all.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Rip

  I drummed my fingers restlessly against the table in the questioning room as I waited for them to send someone in to interview me. I knew they were giving me time to think things over, to decide what I really wanted to tell them. The thing was, I planned to just tell them the truth. I should never have helped Cat with anything; I knew that now.

  Especially since I'd gone against Damien's wishes in doing so.

  Mostly, I wondered what Damien would do now, with the Gemini Riders in disarray. I wasn't exactly sure what sort of evidence the feds thought they had on Cat and Castor now. Cat at least would be going back to a more secure prison for the rest of her original term; she wouldn't be getting out any time soon. But I had to assume that Castor was somehow being implicated in all of this as well…

  The door swung open and Cherri stalked gracefully into the room, falling into a chair across from me. “Well, well, well, Rip Stevens,” she said in her silky voice. “I have to say, I'm impressed. Nabbing not one but two women out from under the nose of Castor Pollux takes skill. Are you sure you aren't an undercover agent as well?”

  I snorted, twisting my fingers together. “It didn't really take skill when it came to freeing Liv,” I pointed out. “If it had, I wouldn't be sitting here.”

  Cherri leaned forwards. “I'd like to believe you're innocent in all of this,” she said, her eyes glinting a little. “But you're going to have to give me a reason to let you go.”

  I bit my lower lip. Surely she couldn't be suggesting that she wanted to just let me walk clear of all of this, right?

  “Do you know how Cat Zodiac escaped from prison?” she asked.

  I frowned and shrugged a little. “Not entirely, no,” I said. I hadn't paid close enough attention to the news story; I'd been more shocked to learn that Cat was already out of the prison. But when I thought about it, I was even more surprised. I could remember a few flashes of the video tape in my head, and I didn't recall there being any blood or anything like that. If Cat hadn't fought her way out using the guns… “No, I have no idea how she got out,” I said, realization dawning on me.

  Cherri was trying to help me out of this.

  “What do you know about Castor Pollux?” she asked, switching gears a little.

  “Most of what I know about him is hearsay,” I admitted. “I've heard he's not a very pleasant guy and that he's been involved in a lot of the top schemes of the Gemini Riders. But I don't know that much about him personally.”

  “And yet you were there in the Gemini Riders' national headquarters talking to him and Cat as though you were all best buds.”

  “I made a deal with Cat,” I said, shrugging a little. “Castor Pollux was keeping a good friend of mine as a captive. I told Cat that she could have my life if Liv walked free.”

  “And the explosives?”

  “I meant that quite literally,” I said, smiling sharply. “I told Cat that she could have my life if Liv walked free. I planned on setting off the explosives and ensuring that Castor and Cat were both caught in the mess. I wanted to ensure that they weren't able to hurt anyone else in the future.”

  “Vigilante justice,” Cherri muttered under her breath, a small smile on her lips.

  “I'm not sure if it was justice or not,” I said truthfully. “That's for you all to decide. I just knew that based on what I know about the two of them ... well, the world would have been a safer place.”

  “Except that you admitted yourself that you don't really know much about Castor Pollux and that what you do know is based off hearsay,” Cherri argued.

  I stared at her, wondering if she was actually helping me at all or if this was just hearsay. I thought suddenly of Damien, of his insistence that Cat and Castor be removed from their positions of power in the Gemini Riders, about how the organization needed to be rebuilt without them in it.

  “You need to talk to members of the Gemini Riders,” I told her. “There are plenty of people who want Cat and Castor removed from their positions. People who think that the organization has become too much of a criminal activity lately, full of brash and impulsive, and bloodthirstyleaders.”

  “And who might you suggest I talk to?” Cherri asked, leaning forwards again.

  I shook my head, leaning back casually. This might doom me, but I had no desire to be the snitch. “You'd have to talk to one of the Gemini Riders,” I told her again. “But I'm not one of them.”

  There was silence in the interrogation room. I could tell Cherri wanted to ask me more, to get me to snitch the names of everyone involved in the organization, but I couldn't do that, no matter if it meant I was going to jail or not. That would just make new enemies for me and continue to put Liv in danger. I hoped, of course, that Damien had already spirited Liv far away from here, got her set up back at home. But even there, she could be found if someone had a big enough grudge against me.

  I refused to be their snitch.

  To my surprise, Cherri stood up and walked around the table, offering me a hand up. “Well, in that case, Rip Stevens, I have no further questions for you,” she said. “I'll make sure that all charges against you are dropped.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Rip

  Damien jumped to his feet when I walked into the hotel room, looking exhausted, as though he'd been up all night waiting for me to return. “Where the hell have you been?” he snapped, striding over to me and pulling me into his arms.

  I collapsed a little against him and then pulled away. He continued to eye me critically, looking for signs of injury. “Damien, I'm exhausted. Can we just sleep on it and leave the story-telling for tomorrow?” I grimaced. “I need a shower too. Jail cells are not the cleanest places in the world.”

  “You were in jail?” Damien snapped, catching my arm as I made to walk past him. “What happened? Who paid your bail?”

  “There was no bail,” I said wearily. “I was only in jail because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time when the feds showed up. But Cherri got everything straightened out for me and let me go.”

  Suddenly, there was a noise from the doorway of the bathroom. The next t
hing I knew, Liv was flinging herself into my arms. “I thought for sure that you were going to jail,” she sobbed into my shoulder. “Or if not, I thought that Cat was going to find some way to kill you after all. What happened? I left right as the FBI were swarming, but they were so focused on all of you that I had time to get out.”

  I sighed, just reveling in the feeling of having her close to me again for a moment. I could see Damien raising his eyebrows at me from over her shoulder, but I chose not to respond to that.

  “I need a shower and a nap,” I told both of them. “Everything's going to be fine, and I'll tell you all about it when I've revived myself a little. But I need a shower and a nap before I'll say anything else.”

  “Of course,” Liv said immediately, pulling back away from me. She leaned up shyly to kiss me, though, glancing over at Damien and blushing a little when she was done. “Sorry,” she said. “I've just missed you.”

  I pulled her back into my arms and kissed her resoundingly, sucking at her lips and forcing my tongue into her mouth, claiming her as mine. Even though I had no intention of starting anything right now — not when I was so tired, and not in front of Damien — I cupped her firm asscheeks with my hands and pulled her in close so she was pressed against me.

  Finally, we broke apart, both of us panting for air. I couldn't stop myself from leaning down and gently kissing her forehead, a tender gesture that I would never normally have allowed myself. Knowing that she was safe and that she was here ... it was all a bit surreal.

  I broke away from her and went to shower.

  Later that afternoon, we all sat down together for lunch. “Cherri was a federal agent the whole time,” I told the other two. “And I suspect that Rosetta was as well ... I don't think they were really sisters, I think that Cherri was trying to get her free because they needed her information in the case they were building against Castor. And that explains why Cat was so dead-set on not letting her go.”

  “Hmm,” Damien said. “But how did Cat find out that she was a double agent?”

  “I don't know,” I admitted. “There's a lot that still doesn't make sense to me about this. All I know is that...” I glanced over at Liv. “Well, we're free. As far as I'm concerned, the packages were all delivered, I upheld my end of the bargain I made with Cherri, and Liv is safe. I'll have nothing more to do with the Gemini Riders.”

  Damien frowned at me. “What about when the organization is under new leadership?” he asked. “I have a meeting already set up with—”

  “No,” I said, holding up my hands. “I don't want to hear anything more about it. My days of belonging to a biker gang are over.” I grimaced a little. “I guess you could say that I've lost any feelings of immortality that I ever entertained.”

  Damien smiled a little at that. “Well, that at least is a benefit from all of this.”

  “What are you going to do instead?” Liv asked. I couldn't read her expression, but there was something in her voice that I responded to.

  I shrugged at her. “I haven't decided yet,” I told her evenly. “I'm keeping my options open.”

  The thing was, I didn't really want to be separated from her. After everything that had happened, I realized I had developed some very real feelings for her, and having nearly lost her to Castor and everything else had really cemented those feelings for me. I had no idea what she was thinking, though. She had her nice, ordinary life to go back to. I doubted she wanted me to have any part in her future, not with all the mayhem I had caused in her life over the past couple weeks.

  “Well, if you need buddies to ride with sometimes, you know where to find me,” Damien said, smiling a little. I had a feeling he knew exactly where my thoughts were turned, what I'd like to do with my future. But he was nice enough not to blurt it out. Liv and I would need to have a serious talk at some point, but the lunch table wasn't the place to do it.

  “So what did Cherri say about the box of explosives anyway?”

  I shrugged. “She called it vigilante justice and didn't say anything more about it. The more I think about it, the more all of it seems strange to me. Cat clearly didn't use the guns in her escape from prison, and—”

  “Well, she couldn't have used the guns,” Cherri said, slipping into a seat at the table with us. She shrugged at my surprise. “I knew I needed to talk to you a little more before you left town, but not in the interrogation room, where anyone could hear. So I had you tailed back to the hotel.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Okay. But what do you mean Cat couldn't have used the guns? You delivered the packages, didn't you? All the pieces were there.”

  “When I took the packages from you, yes, all the pieces were there. But mysteriously enough, when they ended up in Cat's possession, the parts necessary to actually fire the guns were missing. Basically, all she got were some little toy guns. I doubt you would even have been able to use them as water guns.”

  I stared at her. “How did you…”

  “But how did Cat escape, then?” Damien asked, a look of consternation on her face. “And why didn't she come after you? She must have known you had something to do with it.”

  “I think she suspected Rip had done it, given his earlier moral qualms about the mission,” Cherri said, shrugging. “That's why she was so keen to make a deal with you in exchange for Liv's life.”

  “But how did she escape, then?”

  “Easy,” Cherri said with a little shrug. “She picked ten of the most brutish guys that she could find, armed them all with what everyone thought were real guns, and overpowered the guards at the gate. Unfortunately, most of the others died in the escape attempt.” Her face twisted into a sneer. “Cat didn't care, though. All she cared about was getting herself out of there and back to safety.”

  “So what was the whole point of your ... mission?” Liv asked suddenly.

  “Castor Pollux,” Cherri said grimly. “He got away with murder and whatever else when we managed to put Cat behind bars. I'm still not sure how he walked away from that one. But this time, he won't be so lucky. Not after everything with Rosetta.” She cocked her head to the side, staring at Liv. “You could testify as well. Get him locked up for even longer.”

  Liv laughed a little, shaking her head. “And then I'd have a whole host of Gemini Riders loyalists coming after me,” she said.

  “We might be able to arrange something for you,” Cherri said. “You've heard of the witness protection program, I'm sure...”

  “Sure,” Liv said, sounding a little surprised. “But would you really extend that to me, after everything that...”

  “If you testified against Castor, yes,” Cherri said firmly. “You'd have to leave behind your family and everything that you've ever known, though.”

  Liv winced and shook her head. “I couldn't do that,” she said. “My brother Barry...”

  I reached over and put a hand over hers, sensing her distress. “That's not an option,” I said, as though I had any right to have a say in this.

  Cherri shrugged a little. “It was worth a try,” she said. She narrowed her eyes at me. “I'm holding you at your word, though, Rip Stevens. You aren't a member of the Gemini Riders anymore. Don't get caught up in another scheme with them or we'll have no choice but to prosecute you.”

  I nodded at her, and she turned to Damien. “And Damien Bradley, you'd better make sure that this new organization of the Gemini Riders quits causing us so many problems, do you hear?”

  I stared at Damien. “You guys know one another?” I asked. “Have you been working together on this all along?”

  Damien shrugged. “That's part of being in a leadership position in one of the most well-known gangs in the country,” he said. “You have to know who to pay off.”

  I shook my head, wondering just how long he'd been planning this overthrow. But I didn't really want to know that.

  In fact, I didn't really want anything to do with any of this anymore. I stood up and held out my hand to Liv. “Let's go upstairs,” I said to h
er, even though I had only picked at my lunch. I had other things on my mind.

  She grinned up at me and stood as well. “You'll have to excuse us,” she said to Damien and Cherri. “Have a nice afternoon.” Then, she followed me giggling upstairs.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Rip

  Once back in the room, I wasted no time in pulling Liv into my arms. For a moment, I just held her, still amazed that I somehow managed to have her back in my life. “I really missed you,” I told her honestly. “I couldn't stop thinking about you. I was kicking myself for letting you go through with such a risky plan to start with. Castor—”