Dirty Ties

by Pam Godwin

  He stared at his shoes, his face smeared red. “Once our parents are found guilty, all control and voting rights within Trenchant will be passed to me. I may or may not keep the company, but I want to be the one to make that decision.”

  Kaci nodded, and I touched a knuckle beneath her chin. “I want to strangle you for slipping off that elevator.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  I shook my head. “You don’t want to run Trenchant?”

  Her jaw tensed beneath my touch. “I want you.”

  Three words, and she owned me. Hell, she owned me the first time I saw her at the finish line.

  She placed her fingers on my face. “We’re so close, Logan. The fourth option. You and me.”

  Reckless, maddening, perfect woman. A sigh pushed past my lips. “There’s an incinerator in the basement. Let’s start there.”

  An hour later, the bodies were burned to ash. We’d taken turns in the shower, and Kaci and Collin sat side-by-side on the couch, deep in conversation.

  I stood in the kitchen, gulping coffee and psyching myself up for the final lap. But I couldn’t shake the atrocities of the night. Collin’s near-death by a father who wasn’t his father. The dragging of bodies to the basement. The smell of cooked flesh. The mopping up of so much blood. I was fucking tired, and I hadn’t even begun to think about all the shit with my mother and her sister.

  Yet as I listened to Kaci and Collin’s conversation, they spoke only of the future, making plans for Trenchant, his visits to Italy, and his relationship with Seth. It was like a door swinging open, and beyond it waited a stretch of road. One that led forward, toward endless possibilities, toward my future with her.

  I dumped the coffee in the sink, gave the old church one final glance. Then I grabbed our helmets and strode to the door. “Ready to race?”

  She jumped up, and her smile gave me a bright fucking glimpse of what I was racing toward.

  Three minutes till race time. I was trying to be cool. Laid back. Not freaked out. Cool. Cool. Cool. But the engines of several dozen racing fanatics vibrated the asphalt beneath my boots. Money exchanged hands along the starting line. Cat calls whistled through the air. And every pair of eyes for two blocks strained to get a look at my bike, the chrome-finish on my helmet, and the black racing leathers with the silver-mirrored stripes that I borrowed from Benny.

  No one knew that under all this gear, I was a Trenchant executive, Evader’s lover, Collin Anderson’s wife, and that tonight, I’d killed a man. As I waited at the starting line, the MTT Turbine rumbling between my legs, hopefully no one knew I was seconds from puking in my helmet. Definitely not cool.

  Beside me, Logan leaned into his forearms on the gas tank of his sleek BMW S1000RR, his boot kicked up on the frame slider, his black helmet cocked toward nothing and everything. Now that was cool.

  And sexy. My God, I would never tire of looking at his ass in tight leathers, his muscular legs straddling the black-polished frame and his broad shoulders as wide as the damn handlebars. His body was built for that bike.

  Beneath the dim glow of the streetlight, he and the bike were trim, smooth, and mysterious in mold and operation. From a glance, it was difficult to make out where the bike ended and he began. The strong definition of his back through the jacket, the bulge of his biceps stretching the sleeves, the creases of leather that led around his hip to the size and shape of him between his legs.

  My body knew every inch of his, and it heated in memory of how passionately his hips moved when aroused, how delicious his lips tasted, and how full I felt when he was inside me.

  “You’re staring, baby.” His syrupy voice dripped through the speaker in my helmet. His head was angled away, but I knew he was watching me in the rear camera.

  Reluctantly, I turned my helmet forward. How could I not stare? “It’s hard not to.”

  “I will be hard if you don’t stop.”

  I shivered and drew in a deep breath. If he’d said that in his synthesized voice, I might’ve climbed onto his lap and ruined the whole I’m-here-to-kick-your-ass charade. But he’d turned off the distortion, as well as the external speakers on our helmets so our conversations wouldn’t be overheard.

  “How do you do it?” I turned my head just enough to see him through the side of the visor. “It’s one minute before the race, and you’re all casual and cool.”

  He unfolded from his forward recline and rubbed gloved hands on his thighs, his visor pointed toward the road ahead. “I’m terrified.” He dropped his boot to the ground and adjusted his stance above the bike. “I don’t know what’s waiting for us at the finish line, but you can not deviate from the plan. Promise me.”

  The plan where I followed the map to the DuPage County Airport, no matter what happened to him, during or after the race. I wouldn’t leave on that plane without him, but I’d follow his instructions to the point of departure. “I promise.”

  The starting line faced the entrance ramp onto I-355. We would race on the outskirts of the city, all highway, no turns. Logan designed the racing map to minimize as much risk as possible. There would be no dark alleys to hide traps. No sharp turns to slide the bike. His protectiveness of me, however overbearing, warmed me to the very deepest level.

  A man with a thickset body and shoulder-length blond hair strode to the crosswalk in front of our tires. Standing on the curb beside us, he held a black flag low to the ground.

  We’d only been waiting five minutes, but my lungs released a huge breath at the sight of that flag. Dozens of people had gathered. The cops would be rolling in soon.

  With the map illuminated at the edge of my visor, I leaned forward, hands on the grips, eyes straight ahead. “Thermal.”

  The world bloomed into a rainbow of colors. The buildings and streets brightened into blue and green. Red and orange concentrated on faces and torsos and the engines of purring motorcycles.

  At my side, Logan’s fiery silhouette lowered into a crouch over his bike. This was it.

  My heart thundered, and the flag went up.

  I opened the gas and shot forward. The jet turbine engine whined as it launched me with enough torque to rattle my teeth. I reached ninety miles per hour in three seconds, dusting everything in my wake.

  Except Logan. He held at my side up the entrance ramp and weaved around me as we cut through interstate traffic.

  Within six seconds, I cracked two-hundred mph, and with no more pedestrians to worry about, I tucked close to the gas tank and turned off the thermal imagining.

  Cars and billboards blurred into normal range of color under the black sky. The wind battered my jacket and pulled on my arms as I whipped on and off the highway’s shoulder and squeezed between lanes of traffic. Adrenaline fired through my arteries. My hands slicked in the gloves, and my body shook with the force of the engine. My heartbeat was somewhere in my stomach. Fucking amazing.

  “Goddammit, Kaci. Slow it the fuck down.” His voice muffled above the scream of the motor.

  He was right. If I wiped out at this speed, he’d have to scrape me off the pavement, piece by piece. I slowed to one-sixty, a pace I was used to on the Ducati, and focused on the openings in the heavy flow of cars.

  The rear camera image showed him maneuver behind me. His body tucked so low only his wide shoulders and the top of his helmet rose above his aerodynamic windshield. Just ten more miles to the finish line, and we would be on our way to the plane, where I intended to wrap that body around mine for the entirety of the ten hour flight.

  “I miss your braid.” His rumble caressed my ears just as his bike passed mine and slipped in front of me.

  The braid was there. I’d just tucked it out of sight in the helmet. “I miss your electronic voice.”

  “This voice?” His timbre morphed into the sexy, computerized overlay I remembered from the first night I met him.

  I veered around a Greyhound bus and caught up with him on the other side. “Definitely that voice.”

  Sirens sounded in t
he distance. Cars honked. Chase vehicles and motorcycles with mounted cameras zipped onto the freeway. And Logan and I gave them a show.

  I dodged and swerved and fishtailed the bike. He tore up the shoulder, cutting too damned close to the guard rails and gliding between cars as if they weren’t there. And the entire time, he told me all the dirty things he planned to do to me, his modulated voice wrapping around me and trembling my thighs.

  As we exited the interstate a mile from the finish line, he let me take the lead to make the race more convincing. I bolted away, my heart pulling to stay beside him, the air in my lungs burning with each foot of distance that separated us.

  “I’m going to pass you at the finish line,” he said without distortion. “But Kaci, I will follow you forever, and I will love you even longer.”

  I sucked in a breath as a heavy, glorious feeling filled my chest. God, I loved him. I pressed forward, pinned the throttle, and smiled. “Love you, too.”

  The finish line stretched over a couple blocks, bikes of all makes and styles lined up along the sides of the street. A moment later, Logan whipped past and sped over the final marker a second before I did. Swarms of people lined the street, their cheers and applause deafening. I tried not to focus on the celebration. Any one of them could’ve bet on me and could be plotting my death at that very moment.

  We carried Glocks in the back of our waistbands, and I felt the weight of mine now as I zipped through the crowds and followed the map to the exit.

  I broke free from the congestion of bikes and people just as a stream of squad cars veered around the corner. Logan appeared beside me, and I wasn’t sure I breathed for the next ten miles.

  I’d argued the wisdom in leaving the race together. Too much suspicion would arise. But he was spectacularly bullheaded about this part of the plan and refused to leave my side until he was certain of my safety.

  A half-dozen cops chased us down busy streets, through sleepy neighborhoods, and up the ramp to I-88 as we headed west toward the airport. They couldn’t match our highway speeds, and eventually we lost them in the thick flow of traffic.

  I loosened my fingers around the grips and rolled my shoulders, keeping pace with the bike at my side. “Jesus, that was close.”

  “Take the next exit.” His voice strained, his helmet aimed at the silver SUV beside him.

  My pulse quickened. “What’s wrong?”

  Oh God, he pulled his gun out. “Stick to the plan.” He held the Glock against his thigh, his visor still pointed at the SUV on his other side.

  We turned off the interstate and flew down the exit, entering a quiet industrial area. The SUV followed.

  Chills licked down my back, and my mouth dried. “Who are they?”

  “Poor losers, Kaci. Trying to collect their debt.” He slipped in behind me, his bike and his rigid posture bent over the frame, all poised to protect me. But what would stop them from shooting him?

  It was so damned dark away from the lights of the city, the streets remote and barren of life. This was the part of the plan that made my stomach twist and turn.

  I followed the map on the visor, cranking the bike to two-hundred mph and breaking away from Logan. My throat thickened, and my heart banged in my chest.

  Approaching the brick building that matched the location of the dot on the map, I watched Logan through the rear camera. His black silhouette slowed as the SUV gained speed. He raised the gun, angling backward, his bike fast and steady.

  I rounded the corner of the brick building as shots rang out.

  OhGodohGodohGod. I slammed on the brakes, my head spinning and my blood frozen in my veins.

  “The plan, Kaci.” Logan’s voice in the helmet chased away my momentary fear and spurred me into motion.

  I shot forward, around to the back of the building, and found Benny in the prearranged spot behind a trash dumpster. She stood beside a blue Hayabusa sportbike and held out a blue helmet, her body covered in leathers identical to mine. I skidded to a stop and jumped off the bike.

  Ten seconds later, she raced away on Lady Silver’s MTT Turbine, wearing the chrome-finished helmet. Turning left on the street, she raced in the opposite direction of the DuPage County Airport.

  The rumble of a speeding car approached, and I crouched down beside the Hayabusa, hidden behind the dumpster and peering around the corner.

  A Mercedes zoomed past, headed in Benny’s direction. Right on its tail was Logan, his arm raised, gun in his hand.

  My throat swelled, and the backs of my eyes burned. I hated, hated, hated this part of the plan. As the decoy, Benny would lead gamblers, gangsters, FBI, whoever would be chasing Lady Silver to Aurora airport. There, a plane in Logan’s name would take off, without passengers, headed to Mexico.

  Logan would protect Benny, I had no doubt. But who would protect him?

  I shoved the blue helmet on my head and instantly despised its lack of technology. I didn’t need the map to DuPage Airport flashing in my face. It was a straight shot from here. But I mourned the loss of communication I had with Logan. God, it killed me that I couldn’t talk to him, that I didn’t know if he was safe.

  Suck it up, Kaci. You knew the risks.

  I climbed on the Hayabusa and followed the plan.

  Twenty minutes later, I parked the bike beside the Gulfstream private jet and removed the helmet, the shriek of the nearby jet engine ringing my ears. Walking toward the stairs of the aircraft, I stared numbly across the vast parking light and searched the inky horizon for Logan.

  I’d maintained the speed limit. Shouldn’t he be here already? My insides coiled into a ball of jittery nerves. What if he’d been shot? Killed?

  Collin stepped out of the cabin and sprinted down the stairs. His arms came around me, his lips pressing against the top of my head. “He’ll be here.”

  I nodded, my boots rooted to the asphalt, my arms clinging to his dependable strength. “How are you doing with all this?”

  He kissed my forehead. “I’m ready for it to be over.”

  My anxiety, my emotions, the lingering adrenaline, all of it bubbled up in a sudden outpour of words. “I’m sorry for keeping so many things from you. God, I’m so sorry for not warming to Seth.” I blew out a breath, my fingers curling into his jacket. “I was so jealous of your relationship, but I think… I now realize that maybe Seth came along at the right time.”

  He stared down at me, his dark brows pulling together.

  “You had Seth, and”—I shrugged—“that forced me to find what I was looking for.” I scanned the dark depth of the parking lot, my fingers shaking and my wound-up heart banging for a sign of Logan.

  Collin held me against his chest and attempted to distract my thoughts by detailing his plans for our parents, the company, Seth, and the billions he now had in an offshore bank account. His enthusiasm held me upright, his steadfast love kept me from falling apart as the minutes passed. Too many minutes.

  I wasn’t sure how long we stood there, but when a pair of headlights emerged in the distance, I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move.

  The car sped toward us, some kind of cheap model hatchback, and stopped beside the Gulfstream.

  Logan climbed out, and the air whooshed from my lungs. His body was still gloved in black leather, his helmet gone. His hair stuck up, messy and tousled, and his grin erased the painful distance between us. He made it.

  Collin’s arms fell away as Logan strode toward me with purpose and speed. He didn’t limp, didn’t favor any part of his body.

  “You didn’t get hit? No injuries? Bullet wounds? Blood—”

  “Kaci.” He laughed. “I’m fine.” He picked me up, an arm under my back, the other beneath my knees, and buried his warm mouth in my neck. “But I kind of left a path of destruction. We need to go.”

  Then we were moving, up the stairs and into the cabin, with Collin trailing.

  I combed my fingers through his hair. “Benny?”

  “Safe.” He set me on a long couch in the eigh
t-passenger jet, knelt at my feet, and buckled my seatbelt. “We’ll hear from her in a couple weeks. She has a few things to wrap up.”

  I slipped my hands behind his strong neck and gripped his shoulders. “She’s shutting down the underground racing network, isn’t she?”

  He cupped my face, his touch as soft as his eyes. “And disposing a limo and sixteen motorcycles, among other things.”

  I leaned my forehead against his. “No more Evader. Your fans will be so disappointed.”

  Not that I would ever regret stealing him away and keeping him all to myself. He was mine, and that notion was no longer a fantasy. It was as real as my smile, as powerful as the breaths we shared.

  “I’ve found a better race,” he murmured against my lips. “Something more important to fight for.” He kissed me, his tongue caressing the seam of my mouth. “A sexier prize to win.”

  He shifted closer, his chest resting against mine and his hips settling between my legs. I loved how his body pulled toward me so easily, the same instinctual way I gravitated toward him, as if this was the way it was meant to be. Nothing between us.

  I kissed his bottom lip. “What are you fighting for now, Logan Flynt?”

  He trailed kisses over my jaw, down my neck, and pressed his lips against the breast of my leather jacket, directly over my heart. “Your happiness.”

  All I wanted was him, just like this, his honesty, his fire, his love. “You already fought for my happiness.” I lowered my face to the top of his head, inhaling his masculine scent, his soft hair tickling my nose. “You earned my forgiveness. Everything I have to give is yours.”

  He looked up, and the intensity of his smile and the fierceness in his eyes warmed every molecule in my body. “When I wake tomorrow, I’ll fight for it again. And the day after. And the day after that. Every day, Kaci.” He captured my mouth, hard and determined, and pulled back. “Every day, I’ll fight for you.”

  His sincerity vibrated off his skin, glowed in his gaze, and powered every breath in his gorgeous body. “But we need to go.” He kissed me again and stood, his attention on the cockpit. “Be right back.”