Rook and Ronin Company Box Set: Books 6-9 (JA Huss Box Set Series Order Book 2)

by JA Huss

  He knows I can’t argue about that. He’s the one who takes the fall. It’s been that way since he made his choice to ditch the FBI and work alone. “It doesn’t matter. You got a lot of bad people off the streets of Denver, brother. You did your job and now you’re done.”

  “Yeah,” he says, walking over to the terrace door and sliding it open. “I’m done.” He turns back to me, the cold wind from outside blowing past his face and catching his hair. “I’m out of here. You can do whatever you want with that Company girl, but I’m officially retired. I want everything you promised back in that interrogation room. Everything. I want that kid I told you about who went missing four years ago and I want my name erased from all the police reports they’re writing today. I’m not taking the fall for this, Jax. I won’t do it.”

  “Hey, I said it’s done. And it is. It might take time to get the kid—”

  “Fuck you and your time.” His eyes blaze as he walks back into the cold room. “And I want access to everything you took out of my apartment.”

  “That’s FBI evidence, Jake. You know this.”

  He sweeps his arm across an end table and shit goes flying. A lamp crashes against the wall and shatters, a plant lands on the coffee table, the dirt spilling out all over it. “Get it back!” he roars. “Get it back or I will turn your ass in. I will tell them, Jax. I will tell them everything we’ve been doing. I’m not even fucking around.”

  I let out a long sigh. “I’ll get it back. I will. But I have to work on this case. I have to get back to that girl in Nebraska. Like today. I can’t leave her alone for too long.”

  “Put a babysitter on her.”

  “I will. I mean, I have. My street partner is watching her Kansas house right now, but my partner’s not one of us, so she doesn’t know about the Nebraska safe house. So if this girl walks out on me, there’s no one there to follow her. It’s a critical moment, Jake. Nick Tate is in the picture. He’s probably making a move right now. So I need to get back to Nebraska and work this shit out.”

  Jake walks back to the chair, takes a seat, and pulls out another smoke. He draws in deep as he lights it, and then blows it out into the room already thick with haze. “I just lost everything.”

  “It wasn’t yours to lose.” It’s a low blow, but someone’s gotta say it, and since Max isn’t here, I’m the only one who can.

  “I don’t know how to get past this, Jake. You have no idea what was happening in my life the past few months.”

  “I have some idea.”

  He shoots me a look.

  “And I’m not judging, OK? I’m not. But do you really want to throw away twelve years of waiting and planning so you can mourn?” I wait for an answer but he stays silent. “Or do you want me to get the fuck out of here and go find Tate? Because this is the decision, Jake. Nick Tate’s time is up. But that guy is like a cat. He’s got spare lives tucked away in hell. So it’s possible he gets to Sasha first and turns on the charm. We both know what an accomplished liar he was when we were kids. Just imagine how good he is at this game by now.”

  “Sasha?” he sneers. “You’re on a first-name basis now?”

  But I stay silent. He can’t know how conflicted she makes me. He can’t know.

  Another drag, more smoke, and then finally a sigh that says I give up. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Nothing.”

  He shoots me a sidelong look that says, Try again.

  But I’m not lying. “You’re done, brother. It’s over. You’re free. Full pardon for all that shit that happened in Miami and no responsibility for what happened last night. I got the girl, she’s gonna help me, we’ll get Tate, and you just have to stay out of the way.”

  “I want to go talk to my boss in Denver, Jax. I need to talk to Ray and figure this shit out. I need to know what I should do next.”

  “No. No fucking way. The FBI is all over that motherfucker. You can leave town, hell, you can leave the country for all I care. But you’re staying the fuck away from that case. You do not talk to anyone about anything we had going. You don’t know that those guys last night weren’t Company. You have no clue. So we’re handing it over to FBI, I’m going back to get Sasha so she can tell me where I can find Nick, and you’re gonna…”

  He shakes his head. “I’m gonna what?”

  “Recover. You just go recover.”

  “Get over it, then?”

  “Dude, I get it. You lost your friends—”

  “I lost two fucking lovers!” He yells it. His words echo off the high ceilings. But at least he finally admitted it. “I want Nick Tate dead. Do you understand me? I know he’s behind this. I know he’s pulling all the strings like some kind of twisted puppetmaster. He just took everything from me, Jax. Everything. And he’s gonna take everything from you next.”

  Fuck. Up until yesterday I didn’t have much left for him to take. But now I have Sasha. And like it or not, she’s officially his. So this threat from my brother hits me hard. A lot harder than he knows. But I have to keep him contained. I have to keep Jake out of this or he might lose his shit and start killing people. This whole case might end up like Miami.

  So I keep my calm. I keep my fear for Sasha tucked away. And I give him good, solid, rational advice. “I know. I get it. But we took an oath to Max Barlow and that oath said we’re professionals, Jake. So you have to be a professional this time. Leave town. Spend money. Be patient. And I promise you, I will get enough revenge for both of us. I swear on Michael’s life.”

  Jake scrubs his hands down his face and breathes deep as he considers my offer. “I trust you, Jax,” he finally says. “I do. So I’ll wait it out.” He takes his hands away from his face, revealing bloodshot eyes filled with pain and heartbreak. “I know you’ll make it right. You have to make it right.”

  I swallow hard and nod my head. “I will.” I stare him in the eyes and say it again, and again, and again until he believes me. “I will. I will. I will.”

  Now I have two promises—kill Nick for Jake and keep him alive for Sasha.

  The only question left is… which of them do I keep?

  Chapter Twenty-Eight - Sasha

  My parents’ house is dark and empty, but it feels light and full the second I walk through the door. It’s weird to be greeted by silence, since we’ve had at least three German shepherds in this house since I came to live with them. But my dad takes them with the family on long trips. The cats stay with the neighbors since they don’t care for nineteen hours of flying across the world.

  I head to the kitchen and drop my keys on the table, and then continue into the family room and flip on the TV. The couch is old and comfy, so I flop down and slide the spare laptop out of the drawer in the coffee table. Ash and Kate use this one when they feel like going online. Ford and Five have an entire room devoted to computers upstairs. But I don’t have the code for the security lock on that door.

  I only need to check my email, anyway. So it’s not like I’d ever need it.

  I flip through the channels until I find something mindless to watch, and then open my email.

  Fuck. Seventy-two emails in two days.

  I scan down the list to see if any of them need to be opened and sure enough, there’s one from Professor Brown. I feel sick just looking at her name. But she might be kicking me off the email server altogether, since they won’t let you have a university email if you leave school.

  I open it and take a deep breath.

  Dear Sasha,

  I wanted to make sure you understood exactly what I was saying yesterday. I went up to your office to see if you had any questions and found your desk cleared out. Does this mean you’ve made a decision to leave school? Or, as I fear might be the case, you think I kicked you out of school during our talk?

  I hope you don’t think that. It was not what I was saying at all. I love having you as my student. I think you are bright and motivated. I’d be proud for your future research to be a reflection on my career.

&n
bsp; If you truly do not want to continue to study under my guidance, I will understand and I will wish you good luck and happiness. But if you misunderstood me and packed your office up on the assumption I was kicking you out—please, please reconsider. Come talk to me when you have time. I’ll be in my office for a few more days finishing up grades.

  Your friend and mentor,

  Dr. Janet Brown

  Holy shit. I am a total idiot. I stare at the screen for like five minutes. I’m not kicked out!

  “Woohoo!” I jump up and do a little dance. “She believes in me!”

  Oh my God, I am so happy. And to think I was depressed all day yesterday thinking I was a total failure. I look around, wondering who I should tell my good news to. But I never mentioned it to my parents and Ronnie and Rook will still be pretty busy with the birthday party.

  So hmmm. I had a crisis and victory and I have no one to share it with. That sorta sucks. I guess being anti-social and having no friends is only fun when you’re a failure and don’t want to share news. But success, that’s a good time to have friends.

  And I have none. Boo.

  I could try Jax. That makes me smile.

  But then he would start in on me about that FBI job. And I really don’t want to think about that right now. I’m not sure I want to be an FBI agent. I spent the last ten years trying to get away from a life like that. What possible reason could I have to go back into it working for the other side?

  Nope. Jax doesn’t need to know. I’ll just check the rest of my email, then call for pizza delivery. My mood has done a one-eighty in five minutes and I’m starving.

  I go back to perusing my email and then gasp out loud when I see one a few lines down from Professor Brown’s.

  It’s addressed to Smurf.

  “No,” I say, shaking my head. “It can’t be him. Not now. Not when my life just got back on track.” It could be James, he’s the one who gave me that name. But James does not email. And Merc wouldn’t address it to Smurf. He calls me Sash.

  I know before I click the screen who this is, but the face in the video message brings it home. He’s wearing a gray hoodie with a black beanie covering up his golden hair. The chain tattoo around his neck peeks out from the collar of a black thermal shirt. The video message that starts playing as soon as the page is displayed makes my heart stop.

  “Got you,” is all he says. Five seconds long.

  But it’s not what he says that’s disturbing.

  I press replay and it starts again.

  “Got you.”

  Replay.

  “Got you.”

  He’s holding a cell phone up to the computer monitor as he says the words, Got you. But the disturbing part is the barely audible sound of a camera shutter just before he speaks.

  Got you.

  My stomach starts to churn as things become clear. He’s taking a picture… not of the computer monitor, but of me. My face is being displayed on his computer monitor.

  I slap the laptop closed.

  What the actual fuck?

  I swallow hard and try to keep my cool, and then I open it back up so I can see when the email was sent. Yesterday afternoon. Before I even got home from school. He hacked into my webcam at home and then waited until he saw me on his screen—when was the last time I used my computer? Two days ago.

  My phone rings in my purse. “Ahhhh!” I scream, my hand over my heart. “Jesus Christ, Sasha. Calm the fuck down!”

  I get up and walk slowly to the kitchen table, but the phone never rings again. Instead I get a voicemail alert.

  This is it. He’s back. He’s made contact and he’s gonna—

  Another alert. This time it’s a text. I fish my phone out of my purse and read the message flashing across the home screen.

  Come outside.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine - Sasha

  I can’t see anything through the peephole, so I stand there for several seconds debating internally. What if it’s not Nick? What if it is Nick? Am I ready to see him again? What does he want?

  I hear Merc’s voice in my head. Just open the door, you little brat. You’re a trained killer. They are more afraid of you than you are of them.

  Which is most likely true in this case. I’m not afraid of Nick. He would never hurt me. So I punch in the security code and swing the door open.

  “Took you long enough.”

  A hooded figure is sitting on the second stair of the front porch. His hands are stretched out behind him, palms down, and his legs are kicked out in front. He hasn’t got a care in the world, that pose says.

  I take a deep breath and let it out. “I’m mad at you.”

  “I know.”

  “Why are you here?”

  He turns his head a little and I catch a bit of his face under that hood in the lights coming from City Park across Mountain Avenue. We are at the end of a cul-de-sac, so there are no cars, and the park is empty in the winter, so it’s just us. “I was in the neighborhood.”

  I smile, recalling our first conversation at the antiques mall in Cheyenne back when we were still kids. I asked him what he was doing in Cheyenne all dressed up like a surfer.

  “It’s a nice neighborhood,” I reply, changing the answer from the past when I told him he could do better.

  “You deserve it, Sash. You really do.” He pats a hand on the stoop and says, “Come sit next to me. Let’s catch up.”

  I reach back inside and grab my coat off the hook near the door, then shrug it on before slowly walking towards the steps. My heart is beating so fast, I put one hand over it and feel the thumping. I take a deep breath when I get to the steps and then sit down. “I missed you.”

  He turns to me, fully illuminated now. And none of the photographs back at that safe house can prepare me for what I see.

  The scar on his cheek that looked small and superficial is… not. It’s thick and speaks volumes about the life he’s been leading. The tattoos on his neck are so realistic, I have to take a second look to make sure the chains are not real.

  “Nick.”

  He looks me in the eyes, his brown ones meeting my blue ones, then shakes his head. “No. Nick’s been gone a long, long time. They call me Santino now.” He talks with an accent and that kills me almost as much as the scar. “How have you been?” He manages a smile, but I can tell it’s forced.

  “OK.” I search his eyes for a moment, but then he turns his head and he’s hidden in the shadows of the hoodie again. “I want to know how you are too—but I’m afraid to ask.”

  “You don’t want to know.” It’s not sarcasm. It’s truth. He doesn’t want to talk about his life because he’s got nothing good to say about it. I put a hand on his shoulder and he reaches up and gives it a squeeze. “I loved you. I just needed to tell you that. I’ve been practicing this speech for ten years and I had so much planned. But”—he sighs—”the only thing that matters is that I loved you.”

  I feel the tears, but I’ve locked them away for so long, I squeeze them back out of habit. “I would’ve gone with you, ya know.”

  “I know. That’s why I was mean to you that night. I knew you’d do anything to stay with me and it was wrong, Sasha. I’m not sorry for the way it ended between us that night.” He stops to swallow down his sadness and then he turns his head again and looks me straight on. “I’m not sorry. You’d have grown up in hell if you came with me.”

  “You planned it, didn’t you? You always knew I’d go to Matias for help.”

  “I knew.” He smiles at me then and I find the old Nick in that grin. It comes back easy. I see him as a teenager when we first met. How golden he looked to me. Like a movie star. And his life was something out of a movie too. The good kind. The kind where rich kids live on superyachts and play in paradise growing up. “Your father gave you an exit strategy.”

  “My father?”

  “Yeah. When I used to come see you guys in Cheyenne, he told me about Matias. He told me all the secrets he gave you. And when I left you a
t that hotel and told you I’d be back, I lied.”

  “I know.”

  “No, I mean I lied about everything. I was never coming back. But I knew you’d never let me go. I used you to bring Matias because I had to go find Harper and I didn’t have time to set it up myself.”

  “How could you know it would all work out that way? I mean, was I that stupid and transparent?”

  “So fucking transparent.” And then he laughs and so do I. “I had you pegged as a sappy romantic from the first second I saw you. And you know what?”

  I smile at his laugh. “What?”

  “I knew back then that you believed in that promise. I knew you were the only person on this whole fucking planet who would go the end of the earth to save me.”

  Oh, God. I bite those tears back again. “I would,” I squeak out. “And I did my best, Nick. I really did.”

  He puts his arm around me and pulls me close. He smells different now. I used to think he smelled like the beach, but now he smells like the cold. “I know you did.” And then he laughs again. “You’re fucking spectacular, you know that?” He turns his head and his hand slips behind my neck to pull me closer to him. He’s about to kiss me, but I turn away. “Sorry,” he whispers. “I can’t help myself.”

  I rest my head on his shoulder and lean in. God, how many years have I wished for this moment? How many ways did I imagine him as he professed his love to me? And now I don’t want it.

  “Are you in love with him?”

  I know he’s talking about Jax. I’m not sure how Nick knows we’ve been seeing each other, but I know that’s who he’s talking about. “I’m not sure what love is.”

  “You like him, though?”

  “I do. He’s so nice. He’s one of those guys who holds doors for old ladies. And every time I find myself stuck in the rain, he’s got an umbrella over my head.”