by Unknown
***
Jax watched the whole thing unfold as if watching a nightmare. Everything moved in slow motion up until Zoe crashed through an empty wooden decoy box like a broken doll flung by a giant to the floor. Hunter and Jax ran to her side, forgetting about Dimas for the moment, which was likely his intention, and carefully with shaking fingers checked for a pulse. Sweet Jesus! “She’s alive! Call a fucking ambulance,” Jax shouted and Hunter rose to do exactly that, fumbling with his phone to dial emergency. There was so much blood. How was it possible that she was still alive? “I’m going to kill Dimas with my bare hands,” he promised in a hoarse tone, trying not to hurt her by inadvertently moving her. He’d read somewhere that people with possible neck or back injuries shouldn’t be moved. Well, falling ten feet onto a wooden box on a cement floor probably qualified as possibly breaking something. It seemed to take days for the ambulance to arrive but soon Zoe was loaded into the ambulance and speeding to the hospital, leaving Jax and Hunter to answer questions from the local PD and lucky them, they got their favorite (not) police officer, Richard Bent or, as they enjoyed calling him, Officer Bent Dick.
“What happened to the girl?” Officer Bent asked, going straight to the point, his shark gray eyes boring into Jax. “You push her or something? She one of your club whores?”
“Watch it,” Hunter growled before Jax could. “Why don’t you make yourself useful and find the asshole who did push her from the catwalk. His name is Dimas Michaels and he was last seen running that way,” he pointed toward the back of the warehouse “like the fucking coward that he is.”
“Dimas Michaels…last I heard you were running together. What changed?”
“What difference does it make?” Jax shot back, irritated. “The fact remains, he did this to Zoe. She’s a good woman who didn’t deserve what Dimas did.”
“What reason would he have to push her from the catwalk?”
“Because he’s a dick,” Jax answered, deliberately withholding information about the evening’s events. Dimas was going to pay but it wasn’t going to be Officer Bent Dick who put the screws to him — that pleasure was reserved for Jax and Hunter.
“Look you can tell me now or I can take you downtown and we can talk there. Either way, someone is going to tell me what’s going on. Let me tell you what I think went down—“
“This ought to be a laugh-a-minute,” Hunter muttered, shooting Jax a glance that mirrored his own feelings of immense fuck-all irritation mixed with fear that Zoe was dying and Dimas was getting off-scot-free with a shit-ton of money that they’d worked their asses off to secure. “Don’t cops get some kind of training before they’re set out on the streets to fuck with people?”
Bent’s gaze narrowed. “Keep it up, asshole. It’d make my day to run your ass in and tie you up in paperwork until the morning. Your girl looked pretty bad off. I’d hate for you to be in jail when she kicks it, you know?”
“You sonofabitch,” Jax bit out, hating that Bent had the upper hand. “Get on with it. Dimas was holding a grudge for something that happened a while ago and he saw an opportunity to get even. He knew Zoe was our weak spot and he used it. He fucking pushed her from the catwalk to punish me and Hunter. End of story. He’s a twisted fuck and you’re letting him get away by asking us stupid questions. If you’re not gonna go after him, I will. You feeling me?”
Bent regarded Jax and Hunter for a long moment, weighing whether or not he bought their version of the story, then with a dissatisfied grunt, he motioned for them to go. “Your friend Dimas will pop up sooner or later. Scum has a way of oozing out from beneath the rocks eventually. Bit of advice...stick to your own kind. People like you bring nothing but trouble to girls like her.”
Jax held back the snarl but Hunter’s stony expression was everything he was feeling inside. Bent was an asshole but he was right. It was their fault that Zoe was in the hospital. They should’ve stayed away — they should’ve made her stay away. But they hadn’t been able to stop seeing her — from craving her body to knowing her quirky mind. She was the total package, the girl they were never meant to have. And this was their punishment. Their life wasn’t conducive to whatever they’d been doing with Zoe. She belonged with people like her, people who had backyard barbecues and chatted with their neighbors over the fence about the best grass feed or pool cleaning service. She was everything they’d never have and before she came along, Jax was fine with that. But now…he wanted what he couldn’t have, tasted the forbidden fruit and found all else lacking. And Zoe was paying the price.
Hunter and Jax climbed into the truck but when Hunter confirmed they were heading to the hospital, Jax shook his head. “She’s in the best hands. There’s nothing we can do for her.”
“So we just leave her?”
He shot Hunter a dark look. “Don’t you think we’ve done enough damage to the girl? Jesus Hunter…Bent was right…the best thing we can do for Zoe is to get out of her life.”
“You don’t mean that,” Hunter said.
Jax didn’t answer, just punched the engine. “We’ve got a score to settle,” he said, tearing up the pavement. When he found Dimas, he would rip him to pieces with his bare hands. Maybe that would ease the inexplicable roar of anguish bellowing silently in his heart.
Or maybe it wouldn’t help at all.
But that’s all he had right now.
Because what he wanted was to go to straight to Zoe’s side and promise to never put her in harm’s way again. That woman had changed him and he didn’t think he could handle the consequence of being different.
Not now. Not ever.
ELEVEN
Several days passed with no word on Dimas. Contrary to what Bent thought, whatever rock Dimas was hiding under, he seemed content to stay there.
“Anything?” Hunter asked when Jax returned, a dark glower on his face. “Nothing?”
Jax fell heavily into the chair with a shake of his head. “Not a goddamn peep. Either he’s dead or he’s being damn careful about not showing his fucking mug around town. Any word on Zoe?”
“She’s stabilized well enough to be moved from ICU but she’s still pretty banged up,” Jax answered, chewing on the side of his cheek. A nurse friend of theirs was keeping them in the loop on the sly, seeing as neither was family and didn’t actually have the right to know about her recovery. “Caro said they’re keeping her sedated with plenty of good drugs so she’s not in too much pain.”
“Well, that’s at least something,” Hunter said, risking a brief look at Jax. “Want to go take a look? See for ourselves how she’s doing?”
“No,” Jax said brusquely. “We need to fucking find Dimas. He has $5 million of our money. If we don’t catch him soon, we’ll lose it all. Besides, I told you, Zoe is better off without us.”
“I get that,” Hunter snapped. “I don’t need you schooling me on what’s important. But only getting the bare minimum of information on Zoe’s condition is driving me crazy, you know? And if you were being honest with yourself, you’d admit that, too. Instead, you’re funneling all of your rage, fear and frustration into the search for Dimas.”
“Yeah, well someone has to keep us focused on the real details. Zoe is better off where she’s at, which is the exact opposite of our money. Get it?”
“Don’t get the wrong idea, I care about the money,” Hunter said. “But I don’t know, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.”
“That sounds dangerous.”
“I’m being serious.” A long moment of silence passed between them until Hunter continued, “You know I never believed in love at first sight and all that bullshit but if that doesn’t exist…why do I care so much about Zoe?”
Jax shoved away from the table where he’d been sitting, not interested in this conversation. Hunter was only voicing the same questions he’d been asking himself but it didn’t help that he’d been avoiding the simple truth for as many days. “What’s the fucking point of all this?” he demanded. “It’s not like we’re cut
out for the kind of life Zoe deserves so who fucking cares what the answer is. Maybe in the biggest cosmic joke of the century, we just happened to find the perfect woman for us — as if that were fucking possible — and she just happened to be the most incredible woman on the planet but none of that matters, right? Because we’re not good enough for Zoe and you know it. So who fucking cares about the answer!”
He stalked away and slammed the door behind him, leaving Hunter to shake his head with fatalistic understanding. Yeah, Jax was right. What a fucked up situation. They never thought they’d find a woman like Zoe, equally attracted to them and not the least bit hesitant or shy about being loved by two men, and so they’d buried deep that burning spark of hope. But Zoe had somehow unearthed the spark and fanned the ember into a raging fire that he wasn’t sure how to stomp out.
Who was he fooling? He didn’t want to stomp it out. He wanted to feed it, watch it grow and see what would happen if they allowed it to consume them all.
***
Zoe blinked through the haze of medication that kept her halfway to Zonked-Out Land and nearly to I-Don’t-Know-My-Own-Name Land and fought the lethargy that came with heavy doses of narcotics. She was in bad shape, that much she knew but she didn’t like this zombie-out feeling. She’d rather writhe in agony with perfect lucidity than languish in pain-free nothingness. Maybe she was weird that way. Wouldn’t be a huge surprise if she were.
One thing she did know was that Jax and Hunter had abandoned her when she needed them the most. Who was she kidding? Why did that knowledge hurt so much? It wasn’t as if they’d pledged some kind of commitment to her. If she’d been able to properly work her mouth, she would’ve barked a short laugh at her stupidity. Bad boys were bad for a reason — because they weren’t good. Good men didn’t dump their injured lovers off at the hospital and disappear. Yeah, preaching to the choir, snarky Inner Voice of Captain Obvious. Tell me something I don’t know. She shifted in her bed, having the wherewithal to wince. So, that was it. She had her epic fling of a lifetime — a brief, glorious, insanely dirty and wild love affair that she could remember fondly into her dotage — and now it was time to get back to real life. Honestly, what had she been thinking was going to happen between them? Who fell in love with two of the most unattainable men in their entire zip code in epically rapid time? A dreamy-eyed girl whose version of Prince Charming had tattoos and a rap sheet, apparently. Were they supposed to ride off into the sunset together? Throw motorcycle rallies and take turns playing house so no one caught on that she was actually the girlfriend to both men? Imagine the scandal around the Homeowner’s Association table! ‘Dirty whore’ would become her new nickname in civilized circles. She certainly didn’t relish that idea. Why did people have to poke their nose into the business of others, anyway? Hellllllooo pot calling the kettle black. Sticking their noses where it didn’t belong was the bread and butter of every journalist. It was dangerous and reckless, particularly when she’d just been unceremoniously dumped, but she couldn’t help but wish that if things were different, she and her bad boys actually could find their happy ending together. She never imagined that it would feel natural to be sandwiched between two men, both physically and emotionally, but it really did. Almost as if they’d been born to find one another. Ah crap, Zoe, romanticizing again! Stop it, already.
The reality was whatever she’d had with Jax and Hunter, it’d run its course. Time to focus on putting the pieces of her life — and body — back together again. After she’d recovered, she’d find a good man, probably someone who was financially responsible who drives a car listed in Consumer Reports as a sensible investment and she’d resign herself to vanilla sex because the trade-off was fair. Maybe it was the meds but she saw things very clearly. Maybe she’d been chasing the wrong dream. McMurphy was never going to give her a fair shot at something better; he was too comfortable in her specific role as a fluff feature girl and she was naïve to think that even if she’d managed to pull off the story on Jax and Hunter that he’d ever see her as anything more.
But she wanted more — in every facet of her life.
She wanted more professionally and she definitely wanted more in her personal life.
Time to change everything. Time to dump all the contents of her life onto the kitchen table and start sorting out what to keep and what to toss.
McMurphy and the cramped creative cage he’d put her in — definitely toss.
That was an easy decision.
The hard one? The one involving her stubborn heart.
She knew the right decision was to walk away from Jax and Hunter as surely as they’d walked away from her but it hurt more than she imagined. Hurt more than her broken bones.
And there were no meds for that particular pain.
Put your big girl panties on and just deal, Zoe. Just deal.
***
A week after Dimas pushed Zoe off the catwalk and split with their payday, Hunter burst into the club office with news. “Someone’s seen Dimas.”
Jax perked up, instantly on alert. “Yeah? Where?”
“He’s hiding out with a cousin of Paula D’Ann’s. The word is he’s been waiting on a fake passport and I.D. so he can skip the country, likely Mexico but Dimas didn’t plan on his counterfeiter getting picked up and now he’s sweating it out until the guy gets let loose.”
Jax smiled, the first ray of hope splitting his heart. “Well, let’s go pay our friend a visit before he says goodbye.”
Hunter paused, surprising Jax when he said, “Maybe we ought to call Bent. Let him take care of the shit.”
“Why would we do that?” Jax queried in irritation. “Dimas is our problem. We’ll handle it.”
“Because if we kill Dimas, Bent will know it was us and no amount of money is going to do us any good if we’re sitting in prison on a murder charge.”
Jax barked a mocking laugh. “Look at you, all domesticated all of a sudden. Bent can only pin a murder charge on us if there’s evidence tying us to the crime. So the easy answer is…don’t leave any fucking evidence.”
Hunter’s mouth seamed in frustration before he said, “Look, hear me out. I have a plan that might just get us the money and off the hook for Dimas. You want to hear it or do you want to go fuck yourself for a little vengeance? We’ve come too far to play it stupid at the final moment. Just hear me out, okay?”
Jax didn’t want to listen; he wanted blood. But as he stood there, muscles flexed and ready to do some damage, Zoe’s smiling face in his mind cooled his temper and he found himself assenting to Hunter’s question with a reluctant nod. “Out with it, then,” he growled. “But if your plan doesn’t work, I’m going back to my original plan and I’m going to fucking kill Dimas with my bare hands.”
“Fair enough. If my plan doesn’t work, I’ll be right there with you. We aren’t blood, but you’re my brother and I would do anything for you, man. I just don’t want to go to jail if we don’t have to.”
A smile found Jax’s mouth. Amen, brother.
***
They found the squalid little shack Dimas was holed up in with little trouble once they knew where to look. Hunter wasted no time with knocking and simply kicked in the flimsy door, busting the doorjamb sending splinters of wood flying. Dimas, startled by the sudden shock, scrambled for the gun but he’d fucked up and it wasn’t within grabbing distance. Jax grabbed Dimas’ gun first and then the sorry shithead had two guns pointed at him, one of those being his own.
“Heard you’ve hit a stretch of bad luck,” Hunter said coldly, his heart freezing over so he didn’t feel the pain of his friend’s betrayal. “Word of advice, friend…if you’re gonna skip town after stabbing your buddies in the back, best to plan an airtight getaway or else you’re gonna get fucked. Like right this minute.”
Dimas held his hands up, visibly swallowing, his dark hair oily and lank as if he hadn’t seen a shower in a week, and had the balls to try and convince them that he hadn’t tried to royally screw them. “Guys,
you’ve got the wrong idea…I was coming back for you. I was! There was too much heat within the club. If they knew about this job…they’d skin you for it. You know that! I was just taking off the pressure, you know?”
“And Zoe? What exactly was that for?” Jax queried softly. When Jax was really dangerous, he got quiet — real quiet. Judging by Jax’s tone…Dimas was a walking dead man but Hunter knew that already.
“C’mon man, you’re gonna let a snooty bitch like her come between us? She was bad news! She was gonna bring us all down! I did you a solid by pushing her off that catwalk. Loose the baggage, you know?”
Jax smiled thinly. “C’mon Dimas, you know us better than that. No one messes with what’s ours…especially our women.”
“I did it because I care about you, man,” Dimas pleaded, starting to sweat. “Don’t you see how that chick is changing you? Somehow she took your balls and tucked them into her little purse. We can’t have that happen to our leaders, you know? I had to make a bold move for the club and for my oldest friends.”
“I’m not you’re friend,” Jax told Dimas with a flicked glance at Hunter for confirmation. “And he ain’t either.”
“We’ve got history,” Dimas reminded him, almost desperately. “Doesn’t that mean nothing?”
“Before you screwed us…it meant everything. Now you’re just like anyone else who tried to bury the knife — dead to us,” Hunter said, removing the safety. “Where’s the money, Dimas?”
“Can’t we talk this over? You gotta understand…the money…it did weird things to my head. I wasn’t thinking straight. I’m actually glad you’re here to take it off my hands. It’s evil, man!”
Jax laughed at the absurdity. “The only thing evil in this room is the piece of shit in front of me. Now, where’s the fucking money?”
Caught, with nowhere to go, Dimas pointed to the bedroom. Jax left Hunter with Dimas and moments later returned with a giant black duffel. “How much you spend?” Jax asked. “Every dime not accounted for will be taken out on your miserable hide.”