by A Parker
Around the side of the garbage was a pearl white Range Rover.
Caroline stalked toward it like a bird of prey. With my head on a swivel, I brought up the rear. As we got close to the SUV, two men got out of the front seats. One opened a back door, presumably for me, while Caroline stopped in front of the driver’s door. She accepted a pair of black leather gloves from one of the men while I stood at the back door.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
He merely gestured for me to get in.
I eyed the interior of the car suspiciously. For all I knew, I wouldn’t be able to get out once I got in. From my time as a Ranger, I knew for a fact that the best advice for staying alive as a woman was to never get in the car with someone you didn’t trust. Once you got in that car, your odds of getting away alive were greatly reduced.
And yet I needed to get in that car. I needed to talk to Bates. I needed to get the ball rolling.
With a heavy sigh, I stepped forward.
Something slammed into my back. I yelped in surprise and stumbled forward, tripping over my own feet. I landed hard, half my body in the back seat of the Rover, and smashed my nose on the side of the back seat. My eyes burned with tears as someone grabbed hold of a fistful of my hair and dragged me out of the car and back into the lot.
Caroline released me with a shove before winding back and slapping me hard across the face with the back of her hand.
I reeled and pressed a palm to my stinging cheek. “You bitch,” I hissed.
Caroline grinned as she tugged her gloves higher up her wrists. “Show me what you’re made of, Ranger.”
I rolled my shoulders.
She wanted smoke?
I’ll give you fucking smoke.
Chapter 15
Jameson
The Assistant Director blinked at my badge sitting on his desk. “What the fuck is this, Jameson?”
I removed my gun from the holster on my hip and set it down, too. “I quit.”
“You what?”
“I quit,” I said again, this time through clenched teeth.
Abraham, my director, pressed his large, scarred hands to the top of his desk and stood up. He was only fifty-one, but he had the body of a much older man. His youth had been eaten away by working as a Ranger himself, and he’d acquired dozens of injuries, some of them life threatening, in his relentless and fearless pursuit of justice.
For the longest time, I’d wanted to be just like him, and I’d seen his career trajectory as a path for myself.
All that had gone up in smoke, though.
“You can’t quit,” he said. “This shit is in your blood. You’re a Ranger. Put your fucking badge back on and pick up your gun, son. I’m in no mood for fuckery today.”
He didn’t understand.
How could he?
This wasn’t a choice. Fuck. Nothing in my life felt like a choice anymore. I was being run out of town—pushed out by a fat bastard with no sense of honor. He’d threatened my family when I went after him. He’d sent files to my house full of black and white photographs of my mother at the grocery store, my father on his back in the driveway working under the old Jeep, my sister waiting in line outside the cinema with her boyfriend.
They were so much more important than my badge.
“This isn’t fuckery, Abraham,” I said. I never called my boss by his first name, and it made his already furrowed brow crease even more deeply. “I quit. I’m done.”
“Did you get an offer from somewhere else?” He grasped at straws. “Tell me who poached you. I’ll match whatever they’re offering. You’ve just made a name for yourself here, Jameson. Don’t throw it all away for some opportunity from a pompous ass in a fancy office.”
“There isn’t another job.”
“Then why are you walking away? Where are you going to go?”
I shrugged. “Anywhere that isn’t here.”
He massaged his still furrowed brow. “Is this about a woman?”
I almost smiled. “No.”
Abraham fell back into his chair. It creaked under his weight as if crying out for help. “This doesn’t make sense. If there was a woman, I’d tell you to cut her loose. No woman is worth throwing it all away for, no matter who tells you otherwise. Believe me, I did it. I got the girl and the house and the kids, and you know what? She fucked me. Took me for half of what I was worth because I was spending too much time here. The job is the love of my life, son. And I know for a fact it’s the love of your life, too. You’re making a mistake.”
Abraham had been a good boss to me, but I’d never believed he was a good man. He had an edge to him, and he had his vices. He stayed late at the office gambling on online games four days a week. He drank too much vodka, even on the job, and rumor had it he’d been caught evading paying his taxes for years.
Still, he’d been a pillar in my life for almost a decade, and there was a part of me that was flattered he was trying so hard to change my mind.
“It’s not about the job,” I said, “or a girl, or you. I just… I know when it’s time to walk away, and that time has come.”
“You can come back anytime you want.”
His words stung because they weren’t true.
I could never come back. I’d sealed my own fate the night I walked into O’Hare’s warehouse and let him know I was onto him and his seedy business deals. I knew about the drugs he smuggled on passenger airlines out of the city. I knew about the guns he shipped in cargo trains. I knew about the three hookers he’d murdered, the mail order bride he’d brought to Austin from Russia only to beat the shit out of her and leave her for dead, and the cocaine.
I knew everything, and I was going to bring him down.
Turned out, I wasn’t the only one good at digging. He’d looked into every corner of my life and found all the possible leverage he could to get me off his tail. I hated letting a criminal get away with it, but he’d taken away all my options.
If I moved on him, my family would die.
If I passed the file I had on him to any other Ranger, my family would die.
If I so much as looked in his direction again, my family would die.
Leaving was the only way I could guarantee getting him off my tail. O’Hare would know I was no longer a risk if I was thousands of miles away, and my family could continue living their blissfully ignorant lives, knowing nothing of the danger that was nipping at their heels because of my mistakes.
“I’m done, Abraham. Really done. Throw my badge in the ocean done.”
He sighed heavily. “Fine. So be it. You want to run? Run.”
I turned and made for the door.
“You won’t tell me where you’re going, will you?” he asked.
I paused at the door and shook my head. I didn’t know where I was going yet. “I’m just going to hit the open road and see where it takes me.”
“You’d like Montana,” he said. “It would suit you.”
I didn’t know what that meant, and I didn’t ask, so I just thanked him and left.
Nobody looked up from their desks as I made my way through the office. They had no idea I was leaving, and I wanted to keep it that way. I’d never been very good at goodbyes.
I was better at driving away.
My folks would be pissed. My sister, too. They wouldn’t understand. But I’d decided it was better that way. I never wanted them to feel the kind of fear I’d felt when I realized the danger I’d put them in. If I could spare them that, then leaving without a word was the right call. They deserved a normal life free from the weight of knowing what kind of evil lurked in the shadows at the end of their own streets. Sometimes I wished I was that lucky, but as Abraham said, this shit was in my blood.
Danger always had a way of finding me.
Or I found it.
Outside headquarters, I got on my bike and revved the engine. A few women shot me curious looks and flirty smiles, but I ignored them and tore away from the building, leaving everything I’d
spent the last fifteen years of my life building behind me.
Maybe I’d find a new life in Montana. Maybe I’d fall in with the right people.
Or maybe I’d just find trouble all over again with a new name and a new face.
I sat up in bed and rubbed at my chest where I used to wear my badge.
I hadn’t thought about Abraham in a long time, and now there he was, visiting me in my dreams. I rubbed at my eyes and shook off the lingering nostalgia of the dream. Austin had never felt as far away as it did then.
With a sigh, I settled back under the covers, rolled toward Carrie’s side—and found it empty.
“What the fuck?”
I sat back up and looked around. My ears strained as I tried to listen for her moving around in the apartment. Maybe she’d gotten up to go to the bathroom or grab a glass of water. But the place was silent.
She was gone.
“That woman,” I growled as I threw the blankets off and hunted in the dark for my phone. I’d left it in the living room. I punched out an angry text demanding she tell me where she’d gone off to at this hour. It was damn near four in the morning.
What was she doing running around behind my back like this?
Was this the first time she’d snuck out?
Had Jackson been right all along? Could she be trusted? Was she playing me?
Fuck.
Had I been so easily distracted by sex that I missed all the red flags?
No, I told myself. Carrie wasn’t sneaking around behind my back. She was working.
She was trying to catch a big fish, but she had no idea how unprepared for the fight she was.
Chapter 16
Carrie
Caroline’s red lipstick blended with her bloodied nose. She licked her upper lip and her tongue came away stained in red. She didn’t spit. She swallowed.
I wanted to lean forward and brace my hands on my knees to catch my breath. I wanted to drink a gallon of water and nurse my injuries. Caroline was a fierce fighter, but she’d underestimated me. I was not Suzie. I was a trained Ranger, and I could take a hit just as good as I could give one.
I forced myself to smile. “Are you done yet?”
Caroline threw her head back and laughed.
Meanwhile, her two guards, who I’d mentally nicknamed Meat and Potatoes because they looked like thick-skulled dimwits who were good for nothing besides knocking skulls and eating carbs, stood beside the Rover with their arms crossed over their thick chests. At Caroline’s laughter, the taller of the two shuffled his weight from side to side and looked at his feet.
I had to admit, it was an unsettling sound.
Caroline dragged her hand under her nose, and her knuckles came away stained in red. “You know, I have to give credit where credit is due. You know what you’re doing, Hart. I underestimated you.”
My guard shot up. “I prefer when you don’t compliment me.”
“I’m not a one-sided bitch, Hart. Sure, I’m a ruthless businesswoman, but I can appreciate skill when I see it. You’re still alive for a reason. Now that reason is starting to make a little more sense.”
“I hardly think you can call yourself a businesswoman.”
“What would you call me, then?”
Skank. Criminal. Bitch. Master Manipulator. Murderer. Con Artist.
“Something more colorful,” I said.
Caroline laughed again. “Get in the car.”
“Uh, no thank you. The last time I tried that you sucker punched me.”
“I was testing you, and you passed.”
I narrowed my eyes at her.
Caroline threw her hands in the air. “Fine. I’ll get in the car. Boys, you too.” She swirled her finger in the air and the men got in the car, one behind the wheel and one in the passenger seat, leaving the other seat in the back beside Caroline open for me.
Grudgingly, I inched forward and peered inside while she put her seatbelt on.
“My father doesn’t have all night,” Caroline said. “Do you want to talk to him, or don’t you?”
Here goes nothing.
I got in the back seat beside the woman I trusted less than anyone I’d ever met, put my seatbelt on, and tried to take deep breaths to recover from the fight.
It had been ruthless.
Caroline fought like a feral cat, but I figured out her tactics fairly quickly. She liked to use my own momentum against me. She’d get me off balance, and as I teetered or leaned one direction, she’d come slamming toward me. It only worked a handful of times before I caught onto her and shifted how I was fighting. Instead of letting her lead, I forced her to react. Unpredictable movements that didn’t result in landing a hit confused her, and while she tried to figure out what I was playing at, I managed to kick her in the ribs, slam the heel of my hand into her nose, and drive my elbow into her spine.
It was enough to slow the fight down enough that we were evenly matched.
I didn’t know how much time passed as I sat in the back of that SUV trying to act calm, cool, and collected while I was screaming inside. My body hurt. I was terribly tired. All I wanted was to climb back into bed with Jameson, but that seemed like a far-off pipe dream at this point.
We arrived at the estate shortly before five in the morning. Over the roof of the sprawling house, sunlight painted the sky dark blue instead of black. Security cameras hummed on swivels as we approached the front door. A little red light blinked and followed me as we moved inside.
We passed through a wide foyer with an iron chandelier overhead and moved down a massive corridor that broke off to several rooms of the house like a lounge, formal sitting room, and what appeared to be a grand ballroom of sorts set up for some sort of training like fencing.
Peculiar, I thought.
Potatoes opened the back door and held it for me. I stepped out onto a cobblestone patio surrounded by solar lights around the edge. A large fountain with an eagle in the middle bubbled and a violin played from a speaker mounted on the outside wall.
I smelled Bates’s cigar before I spotted him standing on the other side of the fountain.
Instinctively, I stopped walking, but Caroline put a hand between my shoulder blades and pushed me forward, leading me all the way around the fountain and out in front of her father, whose cool blue eye left its target of the full moon in the starry night sky.
His lips spread in a smile and his cigar dangled precariously out of the corner of his mouth. “Miss Hart. What a pleasure it is to see you again. You’re in much better shape than the last time we ran into each other. Well, sort of.” He reached for my cheek, which I was sure was either bright pink or beginning to bruise from Caroline’s first strike.
I recoiled.
Bates seemed to like my reaction because his smile stretched. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid now, Miss Hart. You were the one who came looking for me, remember? I’m merely accepting your invitation to discuss our situation.”
“You mean the Devil situation?” I asked, trying to sound sly. I wasn’t sure if it worked. My voice sounded hollow and scratched my throat as I spoke.
The last time I’d been face to face with the man, I was sure I was going to die.
Mason had been beside me, bleeding out on his carpet, and Suzie had been locked in his fridge to keep her safe from the spray of bullets. I remembered the way Bates had looked at me as I knelt in front of him and he balanced on the balls of his feet. He’d been smoking a cigar then, too. He’d blown smoke in my face and liked the way it made me choke. When I tried to stop him from hurting Mason more, he almost burned the inside of my wrist with the burning ember of his cigar.
If Mason hadn’t been there, I would have the scar to remind myself of that night on my wrist right now.
“Yes.” Bates sounded like a man on the edge of a release. “The Devils.”
His hatred for them ran deeper than I could ever fathom, and bloodlust burned in his single blue eye while his other milky white one dared me to look into its depths.<
br />
I did not.
Bates slid a hand in the front pocket of his navy blue suit jacket and withdrew another cigar. He used a cigar clipper from his pant pocket to chop the end off before twirling it neatly in his fingers and holding it out to me.
“Care for a smoke?” he propositioned.
“No thank you.”
“I insist.”
I looked from the cigar to him and wondered if there was danger in accepting such a thing from him. Could it be laced with something? Was he going to try to poison me or get me high? If he did, what would his end game be? Use me however he wanted while I was out of it, or spare me suffering and murder me while I was unconscious?
My stomach did a somersault.
Bates chuckled and lit the fresh cigar while his still simmered between his lips. He exchanged the one he’d been puffing on for the new one, inhaled deeply to show me it was safe, and handed it back to me. “Smoke.”
Backed into a corner, I lifted it to my lips and drew the smoke into my mouth. It tasted like dirt, blackberries, and something musky.
“My father let me smoke my first cigar when I was thirteen years old.” Bates turned his back on the moon and gazed into the fountain. No coins glimmered beneath the surface. It was cold and sterile. “He told me I was a man then, and a man knew how to smoke a cigar without being a pussy. ‘Course, when you’re thirteen and have cleaner lungs than an Olympic athlete, it’s going to fuck you up. I inhaled right into my lungs and coughed and sputtered like a fool.” Bates chuckled at the memory and surprised me with the rest of the story. I marveled how he could find humor in it all. “He beat the shit out of me. Told me to toughen up. Act like a man. And he explained you don’t inhale cigar smoke. Funny thing, don’t you think? Now I can’t stop puffing on the damn things.”
“Sounds like a trauma response to me,” I said.
He barked with laughter. “You’re a peculiar woman, Miss Hart. You know that?”