Bounty

by Kristen Ashley

  “He could still know you,” she replied quietly.

  “He didn’t know me.”

  “Justice—”

  “I’m falling in love with him, Joss,” I told her bluntly and listened to complete silence on the line.

  So I kept going.

  “I was born into this life,” I told her something she well knew. “I learned the lessons of Luna right along with Dad, and we both did it the hard way. Deke…” I looked beyond my deck to the trees, knowing what lay beyond was the town of Carnal, and shook my head. “No, not just Deke, these people, they’re real, Joss. They know Dad. Some of them even knew me. And they’ve pulled me in. Made me one of their own. Took care of me when shit was extreme. For the first time in my life, everyone I meet, everyone around me is not about the Lonesome. I’m safe. I’m safe with them. And most of all, I’m safe with Deke.”

  She didn’t reply immediately.

  Then she did.

  “Mr. T introduced himself as Bill?”

  I drew in a calming breath, hoping I was getting in there, and informed her, “Before he left, Mr. T said that when the foundation of Dad was pulled out from under me, he was glad I found a safe place to land. He was talking about these people looking out for me. Staying up all night to stand guard over me. Pitching in to work on my house to make it so I’d soon have a home. Showing at my place to keep me company. But most of all, he was talking about Deke.”

  “I’d like to meet him,” she said.

  “And I want you to meet him,” I replied. “Though that isn’t going to happen soon, Joss, because me and Deke are just starting out, getting to know each other, doing this without Anc’s psycho casting a pall over it and we need time to do that.”

  “Jussy, you gotta know, your mom and stepdad are not gonna be good with hanging tight while you get in deeper with some guy we’ve never met.”

  Okay, shit.

  This was bad. Or a new kind of bad, maybe worse than Joss thinking Deke was what she thought he was.

  This was bad because Joss was my mom and my best friend. That was a double doozy in the “look a guy over” business.

  No way she was going to be easy to put off.

  And when I shared how things were going with Deke, Lacey would be the same way.

  So I had to nip this in the bud.

  Immediately.

  “And Joss, you gotta know, I’m thirty-four, not eighteen. I know what I’m doing and when it comes to Deke, I know what I’m doing.”

  The careful left Joss’s tone altogether. “Justice, seriously. You’ve just told me you’re falling in love with some guy I’ve never even clapped eyes on.”

  “Joss, if this works, it isn’t you who’s going to be falling asleep at his side every night. So you can clap your eyes on him when the time is right.”

  “The tone of your voice, the time is right right about now,” she declared.

  “The time will be right when I say it’s right,” I retorted.

  “Girl, you hadn’t even reached the age you could vote, not even close, before you declared every guy I dated had to have your stamp of approval.”

  This was true.

  Shit.

  “You’re my mom,” I returned.

  Lame.

  She caught the lame and ran with it.

  “And you’re my daughter,” she snapped.

  “When I did that, I’d learned my lessons from the nightmare of Luna,” I stated.

  “Yeah, I learned my lessons from that too.”

  Her point was well made.

  Shit.

  “Joss, I’m asking you, give us some time. Maybe come out for Christmas,” I suggested.

  “Are you high?” she asked, her voice rising.

  Maybe I was. High on Deke. I knew no way Joss was going to wait three months to meet Deke.

  “Thanksgiving,” I bargained.

  “Jus, stop.”

  I stopped.

  “Marco is heading my way and he doesn’t look happy. Since he has goons that are less Kenzie Elise bodyguards and more just plain goons, and they’re following him, I think it’s time to cut this chat short.”

  Too late for that.

  And I got an alternate kind of shiver thinking about Marco, Kenzie Elise’s manager. I’d never met him but Joss had a lot to say about him and most of it was creepy, but some of it was just plain scary.

  “Okay, I’ll let you go,” I said.

  “I’ll talk to Rod. We’ll see when we can pay you a visit.”

  At that, I sighed and requested, “Can you at least give us a few weeks? Deke and me time, and by then, my house might be set up to have guests.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Joss was the coolest mom ever.

  But still, like any mom, her “we’ll see” totally meant “no.”

  I heard the door to the deck open and turned my head that way to see Deke coming out with a man I’d not yet met.

  But he was clearly known by Deke, which meant he was a local, which meant his tall, dark hotness was off the charts.

  And he was all those things, specifically tall. He was nearly as tall as Deke, though not as beefy.

  “I gotta go too, Joss, I have company. We’ll talk later.”

  “Right, baby, later. Your momma loves you.”

  “And I love you too. ’Bye.”

  “’Bye,” she repeated after me and rang off.

  I said all this with my gaze going between Deke and this new tall drink of hotness at the same time taking my feet.

  “Babe, this is Jacob Decker,” Deke said, getting close and claiming me with an arm around my shoulders, doing this then turning to face the man who was my private investigator. “Deck, this is Justice,” Deke finished up the introductions.

  I shoved my phone in the back pocket of my jeans, stuck out an arm, eyed him up as best I could without looking like I was trying to imagine him naked (it didn’t take much to imagine, he’d be magnificent naked) and muttered under my breath, “Totally bottling the water out here.”

  “Sorry?” Jacob Decker asked, taking my hand.

  I gave him a smile. “Nothing. Just cool to meet you,” I said. “And cool to have the opportunity to thank you for all you did.”

  He nodded, giving my hand a firm squeeze before letting it go.

  “Cool to meet you too, Justice,” he replied.

  “Jus, please,” I invited on a smile. “Feel free. All my friends call me Jus or Jussy.”

  “Thanks, Jus,” he muttered, looking between Deke and me like something was amusing.

  Deke allowed him to have his moment of entertainment but it was only a moment.

  When he was done allowing this, he prompted, “You came with somethin’ to say, man.”

  “Right,” Deck said, still muttering. He looked at me. “You got a minute?”

  “I got a lot of them,” I said on another smile.

  “I don’t,” Deke put in. “Not to be a dick but got rooms to paint so let’s hit this.”

  I looked up at Deke and asked impatiently, “Can I at least offer the man a seat?”

  Deke looked down at me and grinned. “You can do anything you want just as long as I can get back to my paint and soon.”

  I fought an eye roll, lost and then threw out a hand to indicate the deck furniture. “Make yourself comfortable. I don’t have coffee made but I could offer you water, Coke or Fresca.”

  “I’m good, Jus, thanks,” Decker told me, moving to the loveseat which was opposite the fire pit to the loveseat where I had been sitting.

  He sat.

  Deke adjusted us and he also sat, pulling me down with him so close to his side, if it was possible, my hip and thigh would have fused with his.

  But after my conversation with Joss, and getting over the hit of another mountain man hot guy, it was dawning on me Jacob Decker was here and that might not be a good thing.

  So I asked quietly, “Should I brace?”

  He shook his head immediately. “No, Jus. It’s a
ll…” He hesitated which took some of the meaning out of his finishing, “Good.”

  I didn’t say anything, just held his gaze.

  He took that as indication to keep going, thankfully, something he did.

  “Okay, yesterday, a lot of shit went down with what happened at your friend’s place.”

  I nodded.

  Decker continued, “This bein’ the fact that they got in touch with Anton Rojas in Costa Rica. He expressed alarm and concern about what happened at his girlfriend Bianca’s apartment and shared that he and your friend would cut their vacation short so they can assist the police in any way. They’re returning tomorrow.”

  So it was official.

  Bianca and Tony were together.

  And they were coming back home.

  To a murder investigation.

  “Oh boy,” I whispered.

  Decker shook his head. “Nothing to worry about, Jus, seein’ as the police know Rojas’s MO and knew this wasn’t it so they started expanding their search. This included them getting a warrant to search several properties of a known enemy of Rojas. They got a big beef and it hasn’t been quiet. These searches bore fruit. They found a gun that’s a ballistics match on the slugs pulled out of Caswell.”

  “Holy shit,” I murmured as Deke’s body got tight beside me.

  “This enemy of Rojas, he also known to be stupid?” Deke asked.

  Decker looked to him.

  “No idea,” he answered. “Just know this guy also had a beef with Caswell. So this could be two birds with one stone, we just don’t know who threw the stone. This guy orders the hit of Caswell to set up Rojas or mess with his woman to get to Rojas, or Rojas does the hit and sets up this guy. Doesn’t matter. Rojas and Constantine both have solid alibis. Rojas’s maid said they were at his place at the time of the murders, best she knows. She says they were watchin’ TV when she went to bed at around eleven thirty. The timeline matches, plenty of time for them to have gone to his place after Rojas was seen entering Bianca’s apartment.”

  Decker paused, like he was waiting for that to sink in, before he carried on.

  “That journey from Bianca’s to Rojas’s takes an hour. The maid is live-in and her rooms are by the garage. She says if one or the other left, she’d hear. She didn’t hear anything and even though they had time to get back there within what the ME says was the time of death, it’d be tight. This guy that’s in custody does not have an alibi, so he has motive as well as opportunity, there’s a reason why he’d do the hit where it was done and the police found the murder weapon in his possession. He’s been charged and the case is strong. His attorney is already talking about a plea.”

  “So it’s done,” I said.

  Decker’s attention came to me and he nodded. “Yeah, it’s done. Talked to Chace, DNA sample you gave is gonna have results tomorrow. LA’s already sent theirs to the local lab here. They’ll do the compare and Chace and me figure that’ll draw a line under it.”

  I wanted to be relieved and I was relieved.

  Kind of.

  The part that made it only kind of was that this was way too neat.

  Who murdered someone and kept the gun on his property?

  Then again, what did I know? I wasn’t in that life. Guns were expensive (I guessed). You probably wouldn’t throw one away indiscriminately.

  Then again, you committed a murder with one, that would be a discriminate time to unload it and do it in a hurry.

  Deke gave my shoulder a squeeze so I tipped my head back to look at him, seeing his eyes on me.

  “You okay, gypsy?” he asked quietly.

  “It’s too neat,” I whispered my reply, not meaning to leave Decker out, just feeling freaked about saying it out loud.

  “It is,” Deke agreed. “And it’s also what you said. Done. That’s all that matters to you. The rest is not your shit.”

  I stared into his eyes, thinking that since we became friends, Bianca’s shit was my shit. That was what being a friend was about.

  But at the same time, Deke was right. When a friend’s shit nearly got you strangled to death and someone got dead that might be the line in the sand of friendship that you didn’t cross no matter how much you loved someone.

  “The rest is not your shit, Jussy,” Deke repeated on another shoulder squeeze, undoubtedly seeing my thoughts on my face, bending his neck so his face was closer to mine. “It’s just over. Take that and move on.”

  I nodded like doing that could settle that idea in my head.

  I also repeated after him with the same idea.

  “Take that and move on.”

  At that point, Deke stared into my eyes.

  This didn’t last long before he announced, “Your girl gets back, reaches out, I get you’ve been carrying worry about her for a while. But gotta say, babe, straight up, I need you to tell her to stay distant. She made her shit your shit and whatever happened after that, it’s over for you. But her shit was serious shit and she made that yours. So I’m not gonna be real receptive to her showin’ and lookin’ me over because I already know it’s gonna take a while for me to look at her and like what I see.”

  At that, I bit my lip, not only at what he said but also at my earlier conversation with Joss.

  Deke watched me bite my lip and through it muttered, “Fuck.”

  “Deke’s got rooms to paint,” Decker declared and we both looked to him to see him rising from his seat. We did the same, me giving him an apologetic smile that we’d left him out of the conversation as he finished, “And I gotta get back to my wife.” He came our way around the fire pit, lifting his hand when he got close. “Nice to meet you, Justice.”

  I took his hand, shook it and replied, “You too. And, you know, for your efforts—”

  “Thurston’s covering that,” Decker replied.

  Mr. T always did.

  “Great. Good to know,” I said. “Thanks again. It…well, just knowing, however crazy it is, that Bianca’s doing okay, it means a lot.”

  He gave me an intent look but simply said, “Yeah.”

  “Walk you out,” I offered and Decker shook his head.

  “I’ll find my way. Take care.” He looked to Deke and back to me. “And maybe we’ll meet at The Dog, throw a few back not talkin’ about hitmen, drug dealers or cartel members.”

  Cartel members?

  Did that mean Tony belonged to a drug cartel?

  Holy shit!

  “Set that up, brother. And thanks for comin’ out,” Deke cut in. “Tell Emme she gets bored, she can come and help me lay Jussy’s floor.”

  Decker gave Deke an annoyed look which, incidentally, made him no less hot (in fact, it made him hotter). “That’s not gonna happen, man.”

  “She crawlin’ the walls, pregnant and you sittin’ on her not lettin’ her do shit?” Deke asked.

  “She doesn’t need to do shit except take care of herself and give me a healthy baby boy,” Decker returned.

  “True enough,” Deke muttered, his lips twitching.

  I listened to this exchange wanting to meet Emme.

  “Right, gotta hit it,” Decker stated and looked to me, the irritation sifting out of his eyes. “Again, good to meet you.”

  “You too,” I replied. “Take care.”

  He nodded, gave me a small smile, Deke a chin lift then he turned on his mountain man uniform boot and walked to and through the door to the house.

  I watched him through the windows as he made his way to the front door the millisecond Deke gave me to watch this before he shifted so his big bulk blocked me, putting him smack in my space.

  I looked up at him.

  The instant he got my eyes, he asked, “You on the phone with your mom when we came out?”

  Deke didn’t miss much.

  “Yep.”

  “Let me guess, you filled her in about us,” he stated.

  “Uh…yes,” I replied.

  “And that look you got earlier is about your mom comin’ out here to giv
e you her feedback before you get in deep with me.”

  I blinked.

  “Um…how did you guess that?” I asked.

  “’Cause you told me that shit went down with your girls and you talk about your mom like she’s one of your girls and she knows about us so I figured one, the other, or both of them would be out to look me over.”

  Nope.

  Deke didn’t miss much.

  “I think I’ve delayed her,” I assured him.

  “How long?” he asked.

  “Maybe twenty-four hours,” I said hesitantly, only half joking.

  He lifted his eyes to the heavens and kept them there.

  I pushed closer, pointing out, “Deke, we are where we are, you’re eventually gonna meet both of them.”

  He lowered his eyes back to me.

  “For the record,” he began, “just in case you missed it, which I figure you haven’t but layin’ this out anyway, you’re already in deep with me. I don’t give a shit about them lookin’ me over as long as I know you know that’s where we’re at.”

  I suddenly was having trouble breathing mostly because I wanted to laugh, cry, shout and maybe do a girlie happy jump all at the same time and the effort of not doing one (or all) was winding me.

  So it sounded breathless when I said, “I know that’s where we’re at.”

  Though my response was more truthfully, That’s where I was hoping with all my poet’s soul that was where we were at.

  Deke stared into my eyes. It took a moment before his warmed.

  But when they did, he murmured, “Good,” bent and touched his mouth to mine but didn’t move too far away when he finished doing that. I knew why when he asked, “You okay with all Deck said?”

  “Do I have a choice not to be?” I asked back.

  “You can be anything with me,” he returned.

  At his words, I melted into Deke.

  “And because of that, honey, I’m okay with what Deck said.”

  His arms gave me a squeeze.

  I kept talking.

  “But for the record, if I had the chance to look over Anca’s guy and knew he was a member of a drug cartel, my feedback would be negative to the point of taking action, such as kidnapping and brainwashing just in case she didn’t feel like listening. And I say that even liking Tony.”