Jack's back wheel skidded and almost broke loose as he made the turn onto the bumpy dirt track. There was no sign of them ahead. His pulse raced as he slowed to watch either side.
With a rising sense of alarm, he passed untended bushes and scrub, trees dirt, rocks and not much else. Then, off to the side he caught sight of a cabin. Out front were the bikes and the Camaro. He killed his engine, stopped and leaned the bike on its stand.
The wood cabin was small, maybe two rooms, and it was old and rickety. From the scrub surrounding it, it didn't look like it as in regular use. The ground out front was overgrown, so no vehicles parked there regularly.
Hearing his own motor tick, he crouched low as he approached. On the way he spotted an tin can and he picked it up. He watched the cabin. Nothing moved. Back by his bike, Jackson took off his suit coat and tore the arms off his shirt.
He stuffed one arm into the can and packed it with stones and dirt. Reaching in below the bike's fuel tank, he flipped off the gas tap and disconnected the fuel line. With the end of the line in the top of the can, he turned the tap back on to run gas in to soak the shirtsleeve.
Then he soaked the other sleeve and twisted it as tight as he could. He shoved the end of the sleeve in the top of the can, then folded and flattened the open mouth over the sleeve. With no tools to hand, it wasn't a perfect seal, but it was all he had time to make. He hoped it would work.
Keeping as low and as quiet as he could, Jackson circled wide around to the far side of the cabin. He kept low and made a quiet approach until he was near enough to hear the rumble of voices inside. There wasn't much sound.
Jackson dug a shallow trough in the dirt with his hands to bury the can, and packed it tight with dirt and rocks. He trailed the protruding shirtsleeve as long as it would go. It wasn’t long. He’d have to move fast.
With his brass Zippo lighter, he lit the end of the shirtsleeve, scurried around the front of the cabin and crouched by the door. Almost as soon as he was there, a loud, satisfying explosive CRUMP from out back was followed by the sound of showering stones.
The door flew open and a man dashed out. Wiley had on shades and he was carrying an AK47 rifle. Jackson rose as he jerked his fist in a jackhammer up into Wiley’s jaw and he snagged Wiley's leg with his own. As Wiley fell forward and splayed on the deck, Jackson snatched the AK47.
As he pressed the barrel on Wiley’s neck, he heard the slide and click of a pump-action shotgun from inside the cabin. Hendricks’ voice followed it. “Sage, if that’s you, lemme hear your voice and I won’t have to start shooting.”
“Hendricks.” He called back, “I wasn’t expecting to see you quite so soon.”
“Come on in then, and don’t have a weapon in your hand.”
“I’ve got Wiley’s AK, but I’ll hold it by the barrel.” He bent down to Wiley, still flat on the decking, keeping the barrel at his neck. “Wait up,” he called back to Hendricks. “I’ve got his Glock, too.”
From inside the cabin, Hendricks said, “Okay.”
“Oh, and his Sig Sauer. Wait, and a blade, looks like it’s for gutting a whale. Hendricks, are you expecting the cartels of Medellin? Is there something I should know?”
“You know Wiley loves his toys.”
“Okay. I don’t have anything to secure him with. I’d probably need a crane and a tree anyway. I’m going to have to bring him in and keep the AK on him. Okay?”
“Yeah, okay. Just keep it pointed down.”
Jackson told Wiley, “You know I have to do this.”
“Yeah, it’s alright. I’d do the same.”
“You got any more weapons I need to know about?”
“I ain’t going to shoot you, Sage.”
So he knew he was looking for another gun. He found a nine millimeter stuck in Wiley’s boot.
Jackson couldn’t resist a smile, “That it?”
“I got a Swiss Army knife. You want that?”
“No. You can take a radio apart or scale some fish if you want. Let’s go.”
Wiley groaned. Jackson said, “I know you’d do the same for me.”
Jackson packed the handguns into his belt. He couldn’t think of a safe way to carry the three-foot knife so he left it outside on the deck.
Wiley groaned when Jackson prodded the gun into back of his neck. Jackson chuckled as he said, “I know you’d do the same for me.” Wiley crawled on his belly into the cabin.
Hendricks sat on a chair on the far side of the cabin, near the only other door. The door was closed. He kept the pump action pointed at Jackson as he came in. “Just a formality. Since you’re holding an AK.”
Two more rifles were propped by the side of him, along with what looked like a box of grenades.
Jackson asked him, “How did you know it was me, Hendricks? Were you expecting me, or did you see me on the road behind you?”
“Both. But the hastily improvised explosive device was the clincher.”
“Maryette here?”
Hendricks inclined his head towards the door. “Probably under the cot, after all the noise.”
“She here of her own free will?”
“Go in and ask her.”
“I think I’d better keep a bead on Wiley. Just till we get clear.”
“You were always good, Jackson.”
“So. Why is she here?”
“It’s a place the DA doesn’t know about. There’s an idea in the club that he may want to talk to her. Before McGhee’s hearing. It would be more convenient if he didn’t have that opportunity.”
“She under a subpoena?”
“Nope. Far as I know.”
“OK, no problem.”
Hendricks said, “Well, aside from you knowing that she’s here. If the DA asks you?”
“I’d have to tell him. Is that likely to happen?”
“Probably not.”
Jackson thought. “Maybe you should give me your cell number now.”
“Will you use it to let me know if the DA asks where Maryette is?”
“I couldn’t do that, Hendricks. But I told you there was something I wanted to talk over with you.”
Hendricks held his gaze. Jackson went on, “Maybe I’d call in the next couple of days.”
Hendricks nodded, “Before the hearing?”
“Or maybe it could wait until after.”
Hendricks nodded. “You could be taking a chance.”
“I hope not.”
“Good enough. You want to see Maryette before you go?”
Jackson look down at Wiley. “Would I be taking a chance?”
From the ground, Wiley said, “Nah. You’re good.”
Hendricks told Jackson, “You should probably hand him back his trinkets before you leave, though.”
In the other square room, Maryette sat on the cot by the window. Jackson was immediately relieved. She’s obviously not being held captive, he thought, Hendricks would never leave her alone in a room with a window if she was.
Her smoky voice curled into his head, almost too quiet to hear. “Have you come to save me?” His heart thumped.
“Do you need saving?”
“No.” She looked up at him, “I might like it though.”
“Are you being held here against your will?”
“What will you do if I say, ‘yes’?”
“Don’t play games with me, Maryette.”
“You’re no fun.”
“I just wanted to make sure you were safe. And I can see that you are.”
She stood and slowly crossed the floor to him. “Is that all you wanted,” she said, close, looking up at him. The warmth of her body was unsettling. His throat was dry, “Are you sure that’s all, Jack?” she lifted an eyebrow as her teeth teased her red lip.
A strong surge of sensation cascaded through his chest and his stomach. His blood pumped so hard he heard it beat. His cock stiffened so fast it jammed, still pointed downwards and his pants tightened awkwardly around the top of his leg. He had to get out of t
here. Even if he were to follow the throb of his physical instinct, a cabin with Hendricks and Wiley in the next room wasn’t going to be the place.
Chapter 10
They were all back in Judge Hooper’s courtroom, Bishop included, for the hearing on McGhee’s arson and trafficking charges. The evidence was compelling and plentiful, and McGhee had offered Jackson nothing of any use in the way of mitigation.
Turned out Gracey hadn’t cared too much about losing the original charge. When McGhee had been languishing in the state pen awaiting trial for the later indictments, Gracey had offered him a plea bargain on the Treacher case. DA Bishop was none too pleased about it though.
Treacher then made a sudden and miraculous recovery from his injuries and said that he was unwilling to testify. It was shortly after that when he had an equally sudden setback leaving the hospital. He emerged out of a seventh-floor window.
No amount of energetic defense on Jackson’s part was going to make a difference and Judge Hooper was relaxed and businesslike handing McGhee five for the arson and two to ten for trafficking.
All of the easy money and the good money in criminal law was in defending. Jackson knew that. The prosecution has to get more or less everything right. One hole and they’re sunk.
Effective use of the presumption of innocence meant that for most of the time a competent defender only had to get enough right for reasonable doubt. He also knew that he wasn’t entirely comfortable with the easy money, nor with its sources.
Not when it meant defending the McGhees of this world. Those thoughts led him again into thoughts about his father and that left him torn. Jackson wanted to believe that the connection between he and Karl was purely biological. That it was finished nine months before he was born.
He’d like to have thought that he and Karl had nothing in common. That they didn’t share anything more significant than markers on a chain of DNA.
‘A man’s entitled to a fair trial and a good defense,’ Karl would say. Jackson’s response would be, ‘Sure, but when he’s guilty, he ought to be a man and say so, not hide behind lies, technicalities and confusion.’
Jackson’s way of solving the contradiction was, for now, to hone his legal skills while he worked defense and keep his options open to crossing the floor later on.
Chapter 11
Late on a hot Thursday evening, Jackson was in the office grinding through a brief with a bottle of bourbon and Foo Fighters for company. He was pretty sure everyone had left, he’d already had the evening’s banter with Ella Mae, the cleaner.
Even over the guitar grind on the Zeppelin speaker, he heard her heels from the first click at the far end of the corridor. His heart banged in his chest and he stopped moving. He couldn’t think how she could have even got into the building.
He tried imagining that it wasn’t her. It was someone else. Or something else. It could have been someone pulling a flight bag with a clicking wheel. It could have. But he knew that it wasn’t.
Her hazy silhouette filled the frosted glass of Jackson’s office door and as she reached out for the handle he said, “What is it, Maryette? Why are you here and how did you get in?”
Her scent drifted in ahead of her. The light was behind her as she opened the door and stepped inside. Then she leaned back with her hands behind against the door her to close it.
“Good to see you, too, Jackson.” She looked at his hand on the tumbler. “Thanks, don’t mind if I do.”
“I didn’t offer you a drink, Maryette.”
“I’m minding your manners for you, as it seems you misplaced them.” With her hips tilted forwards and her feet apart, she looked down at Jackson.
“Why are you here, Maryette?”
“You mean apart from the atmosphere and the welcome?”
He scraped his chair as he stood. It rattled behind him. He opened the file drawer and reached in for another glass.
He splashed bourbon into the tumbler and pushed it across his desk. “Yeah, apart from those. And the view, of course.”
She moved to the desk to pick up the glass. His stomach hardened and his mouth dried. His blood beat in his chest. Jackson realized that the effect of her scent, the effect of her, was showing at the front of his pants.
He could think of no way to hide it that wouldn’t be a dumb and obvious attempt to do exactly that, which would defeat the point. If there was a point.
“I’m not going to wait ten years for McGee, Jackson. I’ve told him.”
“That must have brightened his day in Clark County Detention.”
“He didn’t send a card.”
“Oh, how did you tell him? By text?”
“Jackson, do you want to talk about McGhee some more?”
“Okay, no. What do you want me to do about it?”
“We both know the answer to that, Jackson.”
Jackson’s toes clenched as he chewed his lip. She tapped one foot as she took a bite of the whiskey.
“What is it about you, Jackson Sage? Why am I constantly running into you?”
“Maryette, I think you want to run into me.”
“I do, Jackson. I wasn’t saying I don’t But, why? I’m a congenital outlaw and you’re a goddamned lawyer.”
The chair scraped on the floor as he stood. “Maryette, it’s impossible. Frank Gracey has made it so there would always be a doubt about whether I had an interest in McGhee going to jail.”
“Jackson, do you really think anyone cares about that? He didn’t have a chance and nothing you could have said or done would have made the slightest difference.”
He bit the inside of his cheek as he looked at her. Her eyes flashed, “That isn’t what this is about, Jackson.” She looked hard at him and her green eyes made his heart race.
His chest was hammering. She said, “I know what I want, Jackson. Do you know what you want?”
When he didn’t move, Maryette began slowly to unbutton her shirt. “Stop that!” Jackson crossed the floor in a stride and he was on her.
“Jackson, I thought you weren’t interested.” Her buttons were open, all the way down. “Why do you care if my shirt’s done up or not?” She wasn’t wearing a bra. He watched her breasts rise and swell.
She turned and looked over her shoulder as she lifted the hem of her skirt, “Can you see if my seams are straight, Jack? I think it looks so slutty when your seams are all in a mess.”
He grabbed her shoulder and spun her back around. Her eyes were down and she said, “Oh,” as her body crashed into his. Her leather skirt pressed against his swelling cock.
When she looked up his eyes were blazing. She whispered, “Is it time for you to tell me how bad I am, Jack? Are you going to punish me now?”
He seized her hair and yanked her head back as he planted his lips on hers. Her thighs spread wider as her pelvis rubbed against his. Her mouth was open and her breath filled him. Her soft breasts pushed against his shirt and her hardening nipples rubbed his chest.
Hard Core: Biker MC Motorcycle Club Menage Steamy 3 Story Bundle Set (Hot Tales From a Hard Road Book 1) Page 18