by A Parker
She had no idea we were parked just ten or so paces behind her.
Confidence is dangerous, I thought to myself. I’d lost men in Syria because they’d been too cocky for their own good. Hell, that might have been William’s undoing, too. Maybe he truly believed Bates couldn’t lift a finger against him. Maybe he thought he had the win in the bag.
I still hadn’t been able to bring myself to ask any of the others exactly how William had died. Part of me wanted to know, but the other part knew I just wasn’t ready for those answers. Still, the questions swirled around in my mind.
How long did it take for him to die? Did he suffer?
Was he alone?
Did he see it coming?
“We didn’t think this through,” Tex said, pulling me from my thoughts. He rapped his knuckles on the gas tank of his bike. “We’re going to have to leave the bikes here and take her car.”
“I’ll send Chips and High Roller back for them later.”
Caroline was closing in on her Range Rover. She’d taken the wad of cash back out of her purse to count it, and while we got off our bikes and kept an eye on her, she took several bills out of the pile and tucked them into her bra.
Tex and I moved out of the shade into the searing heat of the sun. The heat rising from the asphalt broke me into a sweat almost immediately. We came in behind the SUV as she opened the driver’s door and got in.
Then we made our move.
Tex ducked around to the passenger side. I strode up the driver’s side of the vehicle, closing the distance between myself and Caroline in four easy strides. Just as she reached out to close her door, I pulled my pistol from the back of my jeans, caught the door with the other hand, and pointed the gun straight into her face.
Caroline’s blue eyes narrowed on me.
“Good morning,” I said. “Don’t try anything stupid.”
Tex opened the passenger door and slid into the seat. Caroline hissed like a feral cat when he opened her glovebox, grabbed her gun, and trained it on her.
“You two have no idea what you’re doing,” she said scornfully. “When my father catches up with you, he’s going to skin you alive.”
“We’ll see,” I said. “Now be a good girl and follow instructions, and nobody has to get hurt. Get out of the car.”
Caroline did as I said. She got out and let me maneuver her into the backseat, where I joined her so I could keep my gun on her while Tex got behind the wheel, locked the doors, and pulled out of the lot.
Caroline folded her arms over her chest and glared down the length of my gun at me. “The infamous Black Jack. We meet at last. I’ve heard a lot about you, you know. And I have to say, you’re terribly disappointing. Based on all the rumors I’ve heard, I assumed you’d have the balls to shoot me if you had the chance.”
“Maybe I like to play with my food first.”
“And maybe you’re too much of a coward to kill a woman,” she said almost dismissively.
Tex caught my eye in the rearview mirror.
Games. She’s playing games.
I could let her do that. Our first priority had been accomplished. Now all we needed to do was get her to Grant’s shop.
I pulled a kerchief out of my back pocket and handed it to her. We couldn’t risk her seeing where we were going or where one of my boys lived. “Tie this around your eyes.”
Caroline looked at the kerchief in my hand. “Fat chance.”
I pressed the barrel to her temple. “Put it on.”
She did as she was told, and I made sure she couldn’t see and pulled the fabric down over her cheeks.
We arrived at Grant’s in less than fifteen minutes. Tex and I had discussed cruising around town to try to confuse her so she’d think we’d driven farther and wouldn't be able to give her father a radius if she ever was returned to him, but we concluded driving around in her very obvious car was a bad idea. The Wolverines would know her Monday routine, so if they saw her detouring off course it might cause suspicion. We didn’t need Bates out looking for her. Not yet. With any luck, he’d assume she was collecting payments all day and wouldn’t realize she was missing until tonight.
Grant opened the gate into the backyard when we arrived. We drove straight through and parked her Rover in the shop. We closed the shop doors to hide the vehicle, got her out of the back seat, and sat her down on a shop stool surrounded by my entire MC.
She still had the blindfold on.
I looked around at my men, who looked steadily back at me.
Let’s do this.
I pulled the kerchief down from her eyes. Caroline looked wildly at us. Her blue eyes fixed on each one of us in turn before finally settling on me as I stood back and folded my arms over my chest.
Then, to the surprise of us all, she started to laugh.
Knox got in her face and grabbed her chin in one hand. “I suggest you stop laughing, bitch. You’re in hot water here.”
She spat in his face. Still, amusement danced in her eyes.
Knox wiped her saliva with the sleeve of his shirt and grimaced. “Classy broad.”
Caroline grinned at all of us. “You fools. Do you really think there’s anything you could do to me that would scare me more than my father scares me?” She threw her head back and laughed like a woman possessed by an evil spirit. Knox took a step back. “You all ride around this shithole like you think you have power. But you know in your hearts that my father owns this town, and he owns all of you, you pathetic, worthless, washed-up nobodies.”
Knox looked to me, and soon, the others did too. I could see the question in their eyes. What do we do now?
Caroline sensed their unease, too, because she looked me square in the eyes as she crossed one long leg over the other as if she were perched on a chair in a classy lounge somewhere. “I presume you want me to tell you everything I can about my father and how you can stop him. I’ll save you some time. I won’t say a word about my father. He covets his power more than anything else and if I betrayed him? Well, let’s just say he’d do far worse to me than whatever you lackluster morons could.”
“That’s just fucked up,” High Roller breathed.
She flashed him a smile. “Yes, it is. But you know what? I don’t care. Because when my father is gone, guess who steps into his shoes? Me. And then I will own you and the fucking ground you walk on.”
“A few days locked up in here will loosen her tongue,” Grant said.
She cackled. “If that’s your plan, you might as well execute me right now. I’m not talking.”
Did she really believe her father would kill her if she betrayed him? Did he value her less than his position, status, and power? Was this all a ploy?
“She’s baiting us,” Gabriel said.
She winked at him. “You only wish, handsome. I will not be the reason my father’s empire falls. He will do whatever he has to in order to get what he wants. And if he can’t have it?” She paused, letting her words hang around us like a veil of sickening smoke. “He’ll destroy everything to stop others from having it.”
Chapter 19
Samantha
“Napping, my ass,” Morgan muttered as she and I tied off garbage bags to be brought out to the dumpster behind the bar. “You have way too much of a pep in your step today for you and Jackson to have just been napping together last night. Besides, I doubt Jackson is a ‘take a nap at eight o’clock at night’ kind of guy.”
I dragged one of the final bags to the door and she helped me toss it out. “He’s had a lot going on. What’s wrong with a nap?”
“Oh, come off it, Sam!” Morgan planted her hands on her narrow hips. “Just tell me the truth! You screwed him, didn’t you? I’m not judging. Cross my heart and hope to die, I am not judging. I want details, Sam. Details!”
Laughing, I shook my head at her. “We curled up on my sofa together.”
“Yeah?”
“Fluffed up some pillows.”
“Yeah?”
“He put
his arm on my waist.”
Morgan clasped her hands together and stared at me over her knuckles with wide, excited eyes. “Yeah?”
“And then we closed our eyes and fell asleep.”
She groaned. “You’re so full of shit. You’re on your own with those bags.”
“So you were only helping me because you wanted to know if I had sex with Jackson?”
“No,” she corrected me as she marched down the hall to the kitchens. She paused and looked over her shoulder at me. “I was only helping you so that you could tell me what it was like. What he was like.”
“Morgan!”
“What?” she asked innocently. “It’s been a while since I had any action, and Jackson is by far the hottest commodity in this town. You can’t blame a girl for wanting the inside scoop on what he’s got in those jeans of his, and if he can use it, can you?”
I sighed and rolled my eyes at her. “Go on. I’m sure you have tables waiting on refills.”
Morgan stuck her nose up in the air and marched off, leaving me to drag the bags from the hall out into the lot. There were seven in total, not uncommon for our restaurant, and it took me some time to carry them all to the dumpster. Each one weighed about thirty pounds. One at a time, I hauled them up over one shoulder so I could hurl them over the edge of the blue dumpster. Each time one landed, a puff of stench flowed out of the bin.
The heat didn’t make it smell any better.
I retreated once I’d got them all in and gagged on the hot air. I bent over, bracing my hands on my knees, and caught my breath, pulling deep gulps of hot but clean air into my lungs.
“You can’t blame her for being curious about Jackson,” a male voice said from behind me.
I spun.
A man stepped out from behind the blue dumpster. It was Jim.
Shit.
Without hesitating, I turned and made a dash for the back door, but there was another man there—the same tall, gangly, rotten-tooth bastard who’d come in the other night with Bates. What was his name again?
He gave me a mean smile and waggled his fingers at me. “Hello sweet thing. Look at those tits bounce when you run.”
Jim, now standing behind me near the dumpster, chortled laughter. “Not a bad sight from the back, either.”
Trapped between them, my head turned on a swivel. I didn’t know which one to keep my eyes on. Jim was mean, violent, and could probably crush my skull in one hand, but he was also slow because of his size. I could escape him, I was sure. But the tall skinny guy? Maybe not.
Then again, I might be able to put up enough of a fight to scream for help.
“What do you want?” I asked. The foul smell of the garbage burned my nose and felt heavy on my tongue when I spoke.
Jim seemed oblivious to the smell because he leaned one shoulder on the dumpster. It creaked but held his weight up. “You hear that, Hitch? She wants to know what we want.”
Hitch. Right.
Hitch, the skinny one, spat on the asphalt. “And Bates said she was cleverer than she looked.”
“Apparently not,” Jim said.
Me. They want me.
I hadn’t really needed to ask the question. Bates had promised that he always got what he wanted, and he’d made it known that I was a top priority on that list, along with Reno’s Well. I’d figured he’d at least have the balls to come collect me himself. Instead, he sent his two goons to do his dirty work.
Had he told them not to lay a hand on me in the process?
Or had he told them I was theirs until they delivered me to him?
Or worst case, had he told them I wasn’t worth the trouble and given them permission to do away with me just so he could finally sink his teeth into my business?
Suddenly, I felt lightheaded.
“Oh, you’re not looking so good, girlie.” Hitch snickered.
Jim pushed off the dumpster and took a few lumbering steps toward me. “Is it the heat, sweet thing?”
Hitch rolled his neck. “I doubt it’s the heat. The bitch knows the jig is up and it’s time to pay up. Pick up those feet, Lye. You’re coming with us.”
My hands shook and little black dots speckled my vision. At first, I thought they were flies swarming out of the garbage, but I quickly realized I was on the verge of passing out. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
Jim had gained on me, and he now stood only a few feet away. When he laughed, his whole stomach jostled over his belt, and the chain jingled against his meaty thigh. “It’s cute that you think you have a choice. Either come with us quietly, or risk messing up that pretty face of yours.”
My stomach went cold.
Would they hurt me? Would Bates let them? Had he told them not to harm me or to bring me to him in whatever way was necessary?
I decided I did not want to take my chances.
I closed my eyes and exhaled as a tightness formed in my chest. I remembered what Jackson had said about me almost having a panic attack, and I didn’t want to experience that again, not here and now with these assholes salivating over me and whatever prize they would win for bringing me to their puppeteer.
Jackson had encouraged me to breathe. To slow down.
So as Hitch took me by my elbow and led me to a blacked-out SUV parked a few spaces behind the dumpster, that was exactly what I did. I breathed deeply and slowly, one breath for every fourth step, and told myself over and over that Jackson had promised my safety.
It would only be a matter of time before my staff noticed I was missing. Someone would say something. Eventually, word would get back to Jackson, and he would know what to do.
I had to believe that.
Hitch put me in the back of the SUV and slid into the seat beside me. He reached across to do up my seatbelt, but I slapped his hand like there was deadly venom on his fingertips, and he withdrew with a sheepish smile.
“Spicy,” he said.
“Don’t touch me.” I put on my own seatbelt and faced forward, trying to ignore the stench that followed the men into the car. Apparently, the dumpster hadn’t been the only foul rotting smell in the vicinity. Hitch stunk too.
I hoped it wasn’t his teeth.
I almost gagged as the car lurched forward and Jim pulled out of the parking lot behind the bar. We hooked a right and drove through the parts of town that were falling apart under Bates’s rule. Boarded-up businesses told stories of families that couldn’t survive under the weight of his cash collections. Graffiti on doors and the sides of buildings showed pictures of Wolverines, most likely left there by some group of local youths paid off by Bates to deface public property with his sigil.
A different picture caught my eye as we drove past an old antique shop. It was closed now, but my mother and I used to go in all the time when I was young, looking for affordable pieces of furniture to spruce up our homes. My mother had a good eye for that kind of thing, especially antiques, and she always found some little treasure in the shop to bring home and gush to my father about.
Even though he hardly understood a word of what she said when she went on and on about the piece she bought, he supported her.
The picture on the side of the antique store was done in graffiti too, but it was not a tribute to the Wolverines.
It was a picture of a devil’s skull surrounded by black and red shamrocks.
I grinned.
“What the fuck are you smiling about?” Hitch spat as he twisted in his seat to look over his shoulder. But it was too late. We’d already passed the building.
“You missed it,” I said.
“Missed what?”
“She’s baiting you, Hitch,” Jim said from the front seat. He met my eye in the rearview mirror and I faltered under his stare. He smirked. “You’ve got courage now, sweet thing. But when we bring you to Bates? I wonder how long this tough little act of yours will stick. Something tells me you’ll be on your knees for him in minutes.”
I tried not to think about the implications of his words as
we drove out of the poverty and toward neighborhoods with lush green lawns and gated estates. My heart raced wildly but I focused on my breathing, and when we pulled up to a wrought-iron gate at the edge of a private property with plenty of DO NOT TRESPASS signs, I managed to keep my composure.
Jim drove us through the gate, which closed automatically behind us, and even though it truly felt like the walls were closing in on me now, I still had faith that Jackson would get to me in time.
Chapter 20
Jackson
Caroline sat with immaculate posture on the mechanic stool in Grant’s shop. She hadn’t asked for a damn thing in the near seven hours we’d held her—not a glass of water, a bite of food, or a bathroom break. Any time one of us tried to ask her questions, she’d sit there slowly blinking at us like we were dimwitted dogs begging for treats.
I stepped out of the shop around six in the evening to take a break, and bumped into Knox leaning up against the exterior of the building kicking gravel with the toe of his boot.
He glanced up at me and sighed. “Any luck?”
“She hasn’t said a word,” I said.
Knox groaned and closed his eyes as he leaned his head against the siding. “We’ve been at this for hours. If she hasn’t cracked yet, who’s to say she’s going to crack at all?” He opened his eyes and watched me. “You heard her in there, Black Jack. She’d rather take her chances with us than her old man. That’s some scary level of fucked up.”
I had to agree with him. “We’ll keep trying.”
“Do you think she was serious? Do you think her own father would really hurt her if she spilled their secrets to us?”
“Yes.”
Knox shook his head in disbelief. “When we put him down, she should be thanking us.”
“When we put him down, she’s going to step into his shoes. We might have to get rid of her, too.”
“We don’t hurt women,” Knox said stiffly.
“No, we don’t. But there are exceptions to every rule.” I closed a hand on his shoulder. “I don’t like it either. No decisions are being made right now. I’m just thinking out loud.”