by KB Winters
Chapter Three
Jag
“Your girl has brass balls man. Titanium. If she hadn’t laid it all out like she did, we would’ve all been completely fucked.”
All of us, the entire Reckless Bastards organization owed Rocky a debt of gratitude. She’d saved our asses and made sure none of our brothers left the world before their time.
“Anything she needs.”
Lasso looked at me with a grateful but exhausted grin as he slumped in a cafeteria chair, his eyes going to the elevator every fifteen seconds since Rocky had kicked him out of the room for the next hour, demanding some privacy for herself and rest for him. “Rocky’s not exactly the asking for help sort,” he said with a snort and a laugh.
“Maybe not but she is pregnant as hell which means she’s got disgusting midnight cravings, weird needs or whatever. Trust me, I learned more than I ever wanted to about the craziness of pregnant women. Mom spent years as a nurse in the maternity ward and she never spared me the details. Mom thought it was the best form of birth control.”
That pulled a laugh from Lasso. “I’ll be sure to let her know.”
“No need. I’m just telling you because she’s your woman. And because I don’t think she’ll cash in all that good will she deserves.” If possible, Lasso had met a woman more stubborn than him. Rocky was smart as hell and twice as stubborn, which went against Lasso’s natural tendency towards chivalry.
“Probably not but I’m not opposed to it.” His blue gaze scanned the cafeteria. “Stitch all right?”
“Hell yeah. He’s eating up all the attention from the Reckless Bitches, getting massages and sponge baths and shit. Eating it up.” The kid had made it through a tour and a half in the desert without catching a bullet only to take one at a whorehouse on the outskirts of Las Vegas and he was giddy. “The bagged tacos for Rocky were from Stitch.”
“Then why is it that it’s my woman and baby hooked up to monitors upstairs but you look even more worried than me?”
Damn, I didn’t realize I wasn’t doing a good job of hiding my emotions. The past few days had drained me, physically and emotionally. The appearance of Vivi compounded everything to keep me uneasy and anxious as fuck. “Remember that girl I told you about? NextGen? She showed up the night the shit hit the fan.”
Lasso let out a long, low whistle. “No shit? She say why?”
I shook my head because that was the motherfucker of it all, wasn’t it? “Nope. I didn’t give her a chance with all the shit going on that night but she left me her number.” That had been a couple days ago, though. “She’s probably long gone by now.” I didn’t know what to think about her just showing up. “I haven’t talked to her in more than a decade.”
That didn’t mean Vivi was ever far from my thoughts, she wasn’t. When Mom was killed, I wanted to reach out to her, let her help me with my grief but the sting of rejection combined with said grief had me doing the only thing an introverted loner could. I withdrew into myself. But I couldn’t deny that when life was hard—basic training, my first tour, special ops—she was the first person I’d thought of and wondered about.
“I mean it is suspect that she showed up when she did but it sounds like a random fucked up coincidence. Are you gonna call her?”
“I have no clue, man. I mean between all the shit that went down and then seeing her for the first time ever in my whole fucking life it was like a fucking nuclear shock. I couldn’t even fucking speak. My thoughts alternated between you and Rocky and why Vivi was on my doorstep. Even now I can’t process her being here. In Vegas.”
“Call her.”
“It’s probably too late. She said she’d be in town for a couple days and that was two days ago.”
Lasso shrugged and stood, his dry hospital cafeteria cheeseburger all but abandoned on the plastic tray. “Aren’t you some bad ass computer hacker dude?”
“Allegedly.” But the fact was that if Vivi had kept up with it, she was likely miles ahead of me in skill and talent. Even with my covert training. I sighed. “Maybe it’s better if she’s already gone.”
We walked back to the elevators in silence, both of us lost in thought before Lasso finally spoke. “You know, if Rocky had thought I was some jerk who wouldn’t care, she wouldn’t have ended up on my door step and I wouldn’t have her in my life now.”
“You were always going to find a wife and make a bunch of ankle biters, man. That’s what your big Texas ass was built for.”
“Yours, too, even though you refuse to believe it. I’m happy to argue that with you another time but for now, something must be wrong for her to finally decide it was time to meet you in person. If you can turn your back on that, maybe you’re not meant for those connections you hate so much.”
I sighed. “I don’t hate them, man. It’s just that some people aren’t built for that shit. Just look at the string of broken connections in my life for proof.”
“Bullshit. I’m still here and so is Gunnar and the rest of the Bastards, which proves your little theory dead ass wrong. But that’s okay, you do what you gotta do brother. I’ve got a pregnant wife to hover over until she screams with annoyance.” He flashed a smile that told me exactly how much he loved it as he pushed inside the room. “Thanks for the food, clothes and company, man.”
“Anytime, brother. Take care of our girl.”
“Always.”
I watched him go, smiling the moment his gaze landed on Rocky. Even though her hair was messy and she was pale and bruised, he looked at her like she was the beginning and end of his world. That was real, true, honest to goodness love. The kind that had been ripped from my own mother when my dad interrupted a junkie trying to stick up a convenience store and caught two in the chest for his efforts.
I’d leave that kind of shit to Lasso and the rest of the boys falling like dead weight into love with some pretty incredible women. But that didn’t mean I’d leave Vivi to flounder on her own. If she needed my help I’d give it to her.
***
“Not exactly what I pictured when you said you had a place to stay.” After tracking her phone and then double-checking the data, I hopped on my bike and drove forty-five minutes outside the city to some rundown campsite filled with what looked like homeless people. People who no longer fit into society—along with those who didn’t want to—set up their homes there.
I wondered what it said about Vivi that she had set up her brand-new camper there as well.
“What are you doing here Jeremiah?” She sounded annoyed but not surprised to see me.
“You gave me your number. It was easy.” It took me less than five minutes to pinpoint her location.
She glared, her gray eyes hard and stormy. “It wasn’t a challenge. When you didn’t call me, I took the hint and moved on.” She leaned against the open door. She’d stepped out when she heard me roar up outside her camper but I could tell she had a tight grip on the handle. Cautious and defensive. “So, what are you doing here?”
“I should be asking you that. What brings you to Vegas?”
She shrugged like it was nothing but Vivi couldn’t hide the tension in her body for shit. “Just passing through.”
Vague enough to be true but not nearly the entire story. “To where?”
“Haven’t decided yet. When I get on the road soon, I’ll figure it out.” She was being purposely vague. I didn’t know if she was trying to see if she could trust me or she just didn’t want to tell me.
“Where you coming from?”
“Back east. New York,” she offered up, probably because it was easy enough to verify.
“And you decided to look me up because?”
She shrugged again and I was getting damn tired of that shrug. “You were on my mind when I hit Chicago and I did a little surfing and decided to finally get that face to face we never had.” The words were incongruous for the woman standing in front of me. The black tank top and leather cuff watch screamed badass, but those gray eyes looked vulnerable. War
y. Even scared.
“Have lunch with me.” Something was clearly going on with her. Her eyes glinted silver in the late morning sun as she looked me over. Her gaze was long and thorough but there was no heat behind it. No hate either so I guessed that was a good thing.
“Sure. When and where?”
A smile spread slowly across my face. “My day is free. I’ll wait for you.” It took all the restraint I had not to laugh at the way her jaws clenched at my answer.
She stared at me for a long moment, opened the door wider and sighed. “Fine. Come inside and don’t touch any of my shit.”
I took a seat at the smallest goddamn dinette I’d ever seen, barely able to move to look around. “Other than the fact I’m stuck in this tiny thing, I won’t touch a thing.” She laughed, and I took my time checking her out.
I’d imagined her a thousand times over the years. I imagined her Asian most of the time, with colored hair and maybe a few piercings. But the blue hair wasn’t bad, neither was the pale freckled skin or the sleeve of tattoos. It was sexy as hell. She was sexy as hell, in a slightly sarcastic and annoyed way. “This thing looks new.”
“It is,” she said behind a half closed door that looked like a bedroom. “Cheaper than a decent hotel and easier to check out.” Her words were light but she couldn’t hide the tension in every syllable.
“Sounds like you’re on the run from something.”
“Yeah well it seems like maybe you should’ve been when I rolled into town.” She stopped at the table, giving me a good long look at her tits. They were perfect. Perky. “Get a good look?”
My eyes crawled up her body until they got to her face. “Not good enough but it’ll hold. For now.” I gave in to the impulse to finish my perusal of her body because I needed a good close look at her shapely legs. She wore jeans that had to be painted on because I could see every muscle, every dip and curve. Up close they were even better. They slid into… “Cowboy boots?”
“They’re cute and comfortable. Breathable in this heat. Let’s go.”
“No tour?” I stood, towering over her with a smile. Vivi was definitely tough but she clearly still spent too much time on her own because she had a shitty poker face. And she couldn’t hide the fluttering pulse at the base of her throat.
“Come on, playa.”
The laugh erupted before I could do anything to stop it. “Vivi, that shit is right up there with homie.”
She sucked in a breath as the memory came to her. “I am the hippest chick on the planet, thank you very much.”
“I’ll let that one slide only because you let me look at your tits.”
“I wouldn’t say let, you dirty old man.”
I laughed. “Aren’t you like three months older than me? That makes you a cougar.”
She waved me out of the camper and locked the side door. “Give me the address and I’ll meet you there.”
“I don’t think so, babe. Hop on the back of my bike.” I smiled and looked around the campsite. “Where’s your bike?”
“Someplace safe. And I don’t take rides from strangers.”
“Fine. Mayhem Diner. See you there.” I wasn’t worried. I knew she would show because she knew I would track her down. Again. And again if I had to. And five minutes after I took a seat, she walked in with attitude radiating off her in waves.
“Vivi. So glad you could join me.”
She flashed a fake ass smile as she—reluctantly—took the seat that put her back facing the door. More proof that she was in some deep shit. “Jeremiah. You made me drive that big ass camper over here so tell me, what’s up?”
So we were gonna do small talk. “Quite a lot, actually. But nothing you really care about.”
She opened her mouth to say something bitchy I’m sure, but our waitress Myrna stopped to take our order. “What can I getcha?”
“I’ll have the garden salad and a cheeseburger with grilled onions. A tall glass of ice water and an iced tea, please.”
“A girl with an appetite and a figure like that? Where’d you find this one, Jag?”
“She found me, Myrna.”
“Smart girl,” she said and flashed a wink at Vivi. “What’ll it be, Jag?”
“Steak sandwich and fries. Extra cheese. Thanks.”
“No problem. I’ll be back with your drinks.” She winked one last time, always trying to play the role of matchmaker.
“Don’t mind, Myrna. She thinks we’re all her children. She’s sweet and firm, always has a piece of advice you didn’t ask for but needed anyway.”
“You like her.”
“She’s great.” Myrna brought the drinks and Vivi took her time, arranging both glasses until they were perfect. She was hesitating. “Vivi you sought me out. Why?”
She sighed and took a long sip of her iced tea. Under the harsh diner lights the colors and shadows of her tattoos looked ominous. Foreboding. She didn’t want to answer. Either that or she was trying to figure out which version of the truth to tell me. “Like I said, I was curious.”
“You never were before.”
She winced at my tone, nodding absently. “I figured that’s how you saw it even though it’s not the truth. Doesn’t matter now, though, does it?”
“How else should I have seen it?” If she didn’t want to talk about why she’d come here, then she could tell me why she didn’t want to meet with me so many years ago.
“Maybe you should have considered that I was all on my own and worried about everything. I was worried you wouldn’t like me because I was flat-chested and I had shitty clothes. My place didn’t have much furniture, just a big ass sofa, a TV and plenty of computer equipment. I was embarrassed and afraid.”
“Here you kids go.” Myrna’s appearance with the food did nothing to break the tension.
“You’re right, I probably should have realized all that. I didn’t.”
“Of course you didn’t. You were a kid too. We were just too damn smart to realize how little we knew.” One side of her pink mouth curled into a grin. “Anyway, I’m sorry Jeremiah. You were my only friend for a long time and you deserved better.”
What was I supposed to say to return the sentiment? I shrugged because it was all I could do in that moment. Maybe I did owe her some type of apology but I wasn’t ready to forget the rejection I felt at her hands. “Vivi I know you’re in trouble. If you want my help, tell me.”
She nodded around her burger. “I’m still trying to decide if I need your help.”
At least she was honest. “I don’t have time for games. Either you want my help or you don’t.” I should have known it wasn’t the right way to go about things with her. Vivi had always been prickly and I imagined her life hadn’t done much to change that.
Her demeanor changed in an instant. There was tension coiled tightly through every inch of her as she slowly nodded her head. She moved in deliberate moves as she picked up the napkin and wiped her mouth before dropping it beside the plate. “Good to know.” Her words were quiet. Deadly cool as she stood and dropped a fifty on the table. “See you around. Jag.”
I had to smile at her as she walked away and not just because of the fine ass swaying back and forth but because of the dig. She’d used my given name before because that was how she knew me. Now, she didn’t know me at all.
Or so she thought.
Vivi had showed up in my life for a reason and I would find out.
One way or another.
Chapter Four
Vivi
Lunch with Jeremiah reminded me why I kept my profile low and my life solitary for the most part. People were unreliable. Just when you thought you knew someone, they did something to betray you or, if you were lucky, just reminded you that people couldn’t be trusted. In the case of Jeremiah—now Jag—they changed altogether.
It didn’t matter. In the end he’d done me a favor by reminding me that I was much better on my own. I returned to my campsite and then moved to another one before I got back to work. Diggin
g into the encrypted data that had started this mess was the first step to trying to end it.
I’d found a few things that I wasn’t looking for the first time around, starting with the name of the asset. Some of the file creator data called him Jonas but that was likely an alias. As I went back through the backups of backups I went back to the photos. Five in total, two were of Governor Blaise and Angela, his seventeen-year-old girlfriend. They were holding hands in one and she was straddling his hips as they made out passionately on the beach in Miami in the other. My money was on Blaise because he was deep into his second term and people were already whispering the one word that would make these photos a dream killer.
POTUS.
The other three photos were clearly of a gangster. If not because of his Italian last name then because of the leather vest he wore and the bandana around the lower half of his face. In all three photos he was with the same two men in suits, definitely federal agents. They were in a park in one, a diner in another and outside a cheap motel in the final picture. It was pretty obvious the man was an informant.
Whoever it was, I was clearly fucked six ways from Sunday because none of it made sense. Most of the data, especially the photos, were out of context, and assuming someone knew Jonas—whoever the fuck he was—they still had a lot of damn dots to connect before they got to me. That was why I figured Blaise had done it; he might have access to someone with access to the right information.
Either that—or Bob was dirty.
Digging into any politician was dangerous, simply because I never knew who else I might run into while searching. But there was also the whole criminal act part that I had to ignore because survival was my top priority. Blaise made it easy to dig into him because his work and personal devices were one and the same. One laptop. One phone. One tablet. He had a great security set-up, most government agencies thought they were invulnerable, but hacking into his shit was easy for a geek like me.
That made it easy to find everything he tried to wipe and a few things he probably thought no one would ever discover. There was a bigger skeleton than his young side piece, so I uploaded everything I had on him to several different sources because backups came in handy when dealing with shady motherfuckers.