“Ryder?” Short, portly and balding prematurely, Punch pushed himself to his feet. “It’s my mom. I should go with Ice.”
“Your mom or her husband probably ratted us out,” Rex growled. “I want to keep you out of it. Ryder won’t dip his dick in the drug trade, but he’s got no problem with weapons. He and Ice will get the job done.” He nodded at James. “You’ll need a hockey bag and a place to store the weapons. I don’t want them on Hades’s turf.”
Damn. The weapons cache in the clubhouse would have been enough to trigger the raid, but Rex knew the law and was always careful to keep the clubhouse clean.
James’s stomach churned. No doubt the DEU had just heard about the arsenal over his wire. If they decided to confiscate the weapons—which they had done once before on the basis they couldn’t condone leaving illegal weapons in the hands of known criminals—he would be put in a difficult position. That time, James had been able to explain away the loss of a few guns, but the entire arsenal? When Rex called for their return, what would he say?
“You sure you want to send Ice?” Bones said. “Last time you put him in charge of weapons he let them get fucking pinched.”
James drummed his fingers on the arm of the couch, feigning irritation, although on the inside every muscle was locked tight. Bones had been watching him too closely over the last few months. Every job, every pickup, every errand Rex asked him to do, Bones had an excuse to be nearby. Meeting his handlers was becoming a challenge. If the DEU didn’t raid soon, Bones could become a serious threat to his cover.
“It happens,” Rex said dismissively. “If I didn’t trust Ice, he wouldn’t be in my inner circle. Are you questioning my judgment?”
Bones raised his hands and backed off. “Of course not. I’m sure he’ll tuck them safely away.”
Rex and Bones shared a glance and then Rex moved on to the next order of business. He ordered Diesel and Punch to go out trunking to raise some extra cash. Short and stocky, barrel-chested and foul-mouthed, Diesel and Punch could have been twins save for the fact Diesel had a woman’s face tattooed on the back of his bald head and Punch sported dreads that would make even a Jamaican jealous.
James breathed an inward sigh of relief at not being sent out with them. Trunking involved snatching off the street underworld characters with known wealth, locking them in the trunk of the vehicle and driving around until someone paid their ransom…or they died. He had done it a few times and once had almost called for backup when the drug dealer’s family initially refused to pay.
“Got another deal going down in a couple of weeks.” Rex leaned back and dropped his feet off the desk. “We got serious kilos coming in by helicopter. I’ll give you the details later.”
James’s heart pounded. This was it. The break he had been waiting for. The DEU would be able to take down the inner circle and probably a large contingent of full-patch members. With the wiretap evidence he had collected over the last two years, they should have enough to shut down Hades for good.
It would all be over.
Until then, he just had to keep Lana away. And he had to stay focused. Keep his thoughts on the assignment and not on the beautiful woman with liquid green eyes, kick-ass curves and sass to match.
Simple.
Chapter Five
“Chip?”
Jackie held out the chip bowl and Lana shook her head. Jackie knew better than to bring fattening junk food to Lana’s apartment, especially when Lana was emotionally distraught. She was the one who had pulled Lana out of her James-induced doldrums by suggesting they start working out and go into business together. The work involved in merging their PI practices had given Lana the kick she needed to get out of bed and into Jackie’s morning strategy sessions at the local gym.
“I lost over twenty pounds pining for Heartless Bastard over the last two years,” she said. “I’m not about to gain it back now that he’s seen the new, svelte me. I want him to suffer. I want him to regret the day he walked out my door.”
“Chip?”
Lana grabbed the bowl. “Did you bring any dip?”
Jackie shook her head. “I was trying to be sensitive to your new healthy-eating regime when I picked up the snacks on my way over here. Chips, yes. Dip, no. Soda, diet. Oreos, mini.”
“Very thoughtful.” Not that Jackie ever had to worry about what she ate. Utterly gorgeous, tall and tan, Jackie could have held her own on any runway or movie screen. Her hair was a sleek, smooth black curtain that had never seen a tangle. Irritatingly and perpetually slim, she had all the right curves in all the right places and a metabolism that meant her svelte figure could not be destroyed by multiple packages of Oreos or weekly chip binges. Lana did not begrudge Jackie her beauty because her striking blue eyes hid a kindred wild child and thrash enthusiast, and more secrets than Lana had curls.
Lana delicately nibbled her chip. Only one. She would eat only one chip and give the bowl back to Jackie. “Now, if only I could find a boyfriend who cared as much.”
A curious expression crossed Jackie’s face—part longing, part regret—but it disappeared so quickly Lana wondered if she had imagined it.
“From what you told me on the phone earlier, sounds like you found not one, but two, at the sex club the other night,” Jackie said.
“I don’t consider evil, scary biker dudes who threaten to kidnap me and take me back to the clubhouse to do God knows what, to be particularly thoughtful.”
Stretching out on Lana’s worn velvet couch, Jackie sighed. “I think you should call Angel, give her back the deposit and move on. Rex saw you. If he is after you, then not only are you compromised, you also have a professional conflict.”
Lana finished her chip and then ate another, and another, and another. Damn addictive chips. She shoved the empty bowl in Jackie’s direction. “I can’t leave Angel in the lurch. She wants out of the biker world and she wants to protect her daughter. Rex threatened to fight her every step of the way if she ever tried to divorce him, so she needs to get her evidence together before she files her divorce papers. I just need one picture of him doing something wrong—infidelity, drugs—anything that makes him look like a bad father and a bad husband. Problem is, I’ve been following him for a week and he’s been squeaky clean.”
Jackie refilled the bowl from the bag of chips on her lap and handed it back to Lana. “Well, if you won’t drop the case, you need to get closer, maybe even into the clubhouse.”
“As a matter of fact, I have an invitation.” Lana shoved a chip in her mouth and savored the crisp saltiness on her tongue. “From the high king himself.”
“So what’s the problem?”
Lana sighed. “I might have acted a bit rashly.”
“You?” Jackie widened her eyes and grabbed at her heart. “Rash? I can’t believe it.”
“Sarcasm is the weapon of the weak.” Lana glared, but Jackie just laughed her off.
“So is self-delusion.”
Lana’s shoulders sagged. “Heartless Bastard does it to me every time. He makes my blood boil faster than anyone I’ve ever met. I really don’t want to go to the clubhouse. But Rex invited me to the barbeque and almost immediately Heartless Bastard said no. Then Heartless Bastard called me this morning—he still has my number, although his showed up as unlisted—to warn me away. That just got my back up. I mean, it’s the perfect way for me to get the evidence I need, and he didn’t even open it up for discussion.”
Jackie rolled her eyes. “Uh-oh.”
“Can you imagine?” Lana shook her finger at her friend and lowered her voice to a deep, menacing James-like growl. “‘You are not going anywhere near that clubhouse’, he says to me. ‘No fucking way.’ He swears a lot now that he’s a biker. I mean a lot. He said ‘fuck’ more times in our two meetings than I heard him say in the six months we were together. And his hair is deliciously long. And he wears hot biker clothes. And he has a mouth-watering bike.”
A grin spread across Jackie’s face. “You’d think af
ter going out with you for almost six months he would know he was pretty much waving a red flag in front of a bull by telling you how it is.”
“Actually, we never talked that much when we were dating. He was always busy, and I was busy, and when we got together we usually had wild sex and then went to sleep, and then one of us would have to leave to go to work in the morning.”
“Sounds rough. Where can I get some of that?” Jackie’s eyes dimmed for a heartbeat, and then she looked away.
Lana immediately regretted bringing up James. Although Jackie always had men panting after her and took a fair number to her bed, she couldn’t sustain a relationship. Something had happened to her during her years on the streets that made her run whenever she thought things were getting too serious. Lana had tried to drag it out of her, but Jackie had always kept that vault firmly closed, hiding it, like her other secrets, behind her infectious exuberance and outgoing personality.
Lana handed over the chip bowl and rolled her eyes as Jackie nibbled on a crumb. “We don’t have to talk about him. I mean, you must be sick—”
“So you told him you were going?” Jackie cut her off with an admonishing eyebrow, and then licked her lips as if she’d just eaten a family pack of chips instead of a fingernail-size morsel.
Lana shrugged. “Of course I did…for Angel’s sake.”
Jackie snorted. “Sure. For Angel’s sake. Even if I did buy that line, what’s the problem? Go to the barbeque. Get the pictures. Stare at Heartless Bastard’s leather-clad ass. Case closed. Move on.”
“I don’t think I can do it.” Lana’s voice dropped to a hoarse rasp. “I haven’t been in a biker clubhouse since I escaped from Levi. After I cooled off this morning, I almost had a panic attack. What if someone recognizes me? What if I freeze up? What if my heart explodes from terror?”
Jackie sat up and squeezed her hand. “I can’t even imagine what you went through. Bad enough that Levi abused you, but to let the other bikers beat you…” She choked on her words. “I don’t know if a person can ever really recover from that. But I do know you haven’t really dealt with it. If you had, you wouldn’t still be jumping at every shadow, wondering if one day he’ll come for you. And you wouldn’t mistrust every man who shows an interest in you.”
Lana cringed. Jackie was right. She still shuddered when she heard a certain timbre of voice, and froze when she heard the roar of a motorcycle. She had dated since James, but the minute her dates expressed an interest beyond a casual fling, she broke it off. James had been the only person who had ever made her feel safe.
Grabbing a whole chip, Jackie continued. “I never told you this, but after we hooked up and you pulled me off the street and I pulled your sorry depressed ass out of the ice cream tub, I went back to the area in East Van where I used to hang out. I walked down the streets. I talked to the people I used to know. I sat in the place where I used to beg. I found the people who used to harass me and I showed them the new me. I faced it down.”
“Jackie…” Lana’s voice broke.
Jackie swallowed and shook her head, cutting Lana off. “After that day, I wasn’t worried I would wake up one morning and find myself there. I could see I’d changed. Maybe going into the clubhouse will do the same for you. Think of it as…therapy.”
Lana snorted her derision. “I was outside the clubhouse with James wrapped around me and his tongue halfway down my throat. Can’t get much closer to a biker than that. Do I look healed to you?” She stuffed a handful of chips in her mouth then washed them down with diet soda and an Oreo chaser.
Jackie’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline. “First time you’ve used his name since I’ve known you. I was beginning to think maybe his momma had christened him Heartless Bastard.”
“Slap me next time I slip up. I don’t want to start thinking of him as anything but the heartbreaker he is.”
A heavy thud on the door rattled the windows. Lana shot out of her seat and shared a wide-eyed glance with Jackie.
“Were you expecting anyone?” Jackie twisted her long black braid around her finger, her trademark stress move.
Lana shook her head. “Except for an enraged Heartless Bastard, no one. Go look through the peephole. If it is him, I don’t want him to know I’m here.”
Jackie walked across the room and peered through the tiny security window. “It’s a biker. He’s facing the other way. Dang nasty patch. Three evil-looking dogs.”
Heart pounding, Lana ran to the window, almost overwhelmed with the need to escape. She opened the catch and pushed against the glass. “Describe him.”
“Tall. Broad shoulders. Longish hair. Kinda like a rock star. Very sweet tight ass,” Jackie whispered. “Oh. He’s turned around. Sweet mother of hotness. He’s got the rough, grizzled thing going, but he’s one hell of a looker. Blue, blue eyes. One of them is staring right at me.”
“Lana. Open up.” The rough edge to James’s voice sent a shiver down Lana’s spine.
“It’s him,” Lana rasped. “Heartless Bastard. Get over here and help me with the window. If he comes in, he’ll find a way to stop me from going to the barbeque, but once I’m there he’ll just have to roll with it.” She tugged on the window. “Damn. It’s stuck.”
Jackie looked back over her shoulder and gave Lana an exasperated toss of her hair. “Just be quiet and I’ll tell him you’re not here.”
“Who is it?” Jackie yelled.
“I need to speak to Lana.”
Jackie giggled. Lana shot her a glare. “Don’t laugh. You’re not supposed to know who he is. A strange biker is at the door. Do you laugh or threaten to call the police?”
“I can’t help it,” she snorted. “It’s like a bad movie. Your ex is at the door and you’re trying to escape through the window. Who does that? Come on. Pull up those big girl panties and tell him where to go.”
“Just tell him I’m not here.”
Jackie took a deep breath. “She says she’s not here.”
“Jackie!”
“Sorry. I can’t think straight,” Jackie whispered. “I’m running on a junk food high after that chip.” She turned back to the door and yelled, “I mean she doesn’t live here anymore. She moved after some two-bit loser ripped out her heart.”
“That’s good. That’s exactly how I felt.” Lana pounded her fist on the window, but it wouldn’t budge. “Tell him I also felt betrayed.”
Shaking her head, Jackie called out, “It was the worst kind of betrayal. She never recovered. Last anyone heard she was living on the streets.”
“Too much.” Lana made a chopping motion with her hand to silence her friend.
“Lana, open the fucking door.”
“Bad language. Just like you said.” Jackie gave her a wicked grin. “He’s a feisty one, and in that badass jacket… You sure you don’t want him to come in?”
Lana frowned. “How many weekends did you sit here with me, eating ice cream and watching B-rated sci-fi movies? You know what he did to me. How could you even suggest I let him in? And how will I face down my fears if he stops me from going to the clubhouse?”
Jackie gave her an apologetic shrug. “I only met you after you guys split up. I never got to meet him. But after hearing what happened in the field and seeing your cheeks all flushed, I’m thinking you should let him in to talk. He looks anxious, not angry. I don’t think he came here to hurt you. Maybe he’s worried you’ll go to the clubhouse alone. Do you think he’ll go away?”
Lana gave a bitter laugh. “Ironically, except for walking out on me, he’s not the going-away, giving-up type. But he’s not coming in. I don’t want to see him.”
“You should.” Jackie’s face softened. “If only to get it all out, once and for all. Then you can move on, whether to the barbeque or another guy. At the very least, all the things you wanted to say won’t be burning a hole in your gut.”
“Babe. Last time. Open the fucking door or I’ll break it down.”
Jackie’s eyes widened. “He’s li
ke the big, bad wolf. Would he really break down the door? I thought he was a cop. Aren’t they all about restraint and obeying the law?”
Lana sighed. “Not when it comes to me. For some reason, I make him overreact. And he is a man of his word. So the answer to your question is yes, if he’s pushed enough, he will break down the door.”
“I’d like to see that,” Jackie mused.
“Well, I wouldn’t.” Lana’s hands found her hips. “I don’t have the money to pay for—”
Crash. The door flew open, smashing against the cupboard before it dropped to the floor. James stormed into the apartment, his leathers creaking as he strode over the splintered wood. Jackie raced to the kitchen and then peeked around the corner and whistled her appreciation.
Lana tried to hold his gaze, but her eyes wouldn’t stay fixed on his face. She drank in the smooth planes and ridges under his snug black T-shirt as he stalked across the floor. Her eyes skimmed past the belt just resting on his lean hips and then down over his long, powerful legs rippling with muscles beneath his black denims. Well over six feet tall and powerfully built, his physical presence had always been intimidating, but with the leather biker jacket hanging off his shoulders, he was sex personified.
She dragged her eyes away and looked at the pile of lumber on the floor. “You broke it,” she said lightly, as if they were discussing a china vase and not a heavy, three-inch-thick safety door with a Guaranteed Impenetrable sticker on the back.
James’s eyes focused on her like laser beams. “I wanted to come in.”
His answer was oddly comforting. Two years later and he was still incontrovertibly direct.
“Most people would take the closed door as a refusal and not an invitation.”
He kicked aside a few splinters. “I took it as a challenge.”
Everything below Lana’s waist tightened. “Like when you saw Rex with me in the club?”
James stopped in front of her, so close she could feel the heat radiate off his body. “That was a disaster waiting to happen. You’re lucky I arrived when I did.”
Barely Undercover: Legal Heat, Book 2 Page 5