by Evie Monroe
I felt a stab of pain in my heart. He was a good man. He’d always looked out for me. He deserved a better woman than I was.
I turned away, half-glad that I wouldn’t have to have this conversation with him now. I wanted to get it over with, but I was too exhausted. And I didn’t want to hurt him.
By the time I lifted my phone from my pocket, I realized it was after three in the afternoon, and I’d had a few texts from Jet.
The first one made me smile and almost forget about Jet not being right for me. I can’t stop staring at that pic of you.
The second one made me shake my head with annoyance. Going out for a bit. My brothers need me for a job.
What kind of job? What exactly did they do? Knowing the things my father had been involved in, it probably wasn’t legal. I bet it was dangerous as well. Plus, hadn’t his doctor—um, me— expressly told him he needed to stay in bed and rest for at least the next week? Evisceration was still a definite possibility if he hit things too hard.
Of course, I hadn’t cared about that when he was pumping into me last night. He’d tested his injury out pretty well, and the staples had held just fine.
I guessed he was fine.
Still, I didn’t want him leaving my house.
I wanted him home when I got back, to welcome me.
For the last time, he’s not right for you! I reminded myself as I went to finish my rounds. It’s a good thing he won’t be there when you get home.
My head understood that, but try telling that to every other part of my body I thought. I dreaded going back to an empty house and the boxes that were waiting for me. I really did need to stop living out of them, but it just made me want to go avoid them all the more.
I quickly typed in: Will you come back? Then I erased it, because it sounded so pathetic.
But what if he didn’t come back? What if this was over? What if he’d used me for what he wanted from me, and now I was just another notch in his belt?
Good, my head said. My heart screamed, No. No. No!!!
I finished my rounds, and my shift was over. I finished filling in the staff on the rest of the patients, then started to walk back toward the doctor’s lounge to get my things. As I was heading down the hallway, I heard a noise coming from one of the unoccupied rooms across the hall. I peeked my head inside, wondering if the hospital had mice, and as I reached for the switch to turn the lights on, a hand grabbed me, yanking me inside.
I fell forward into pitch blackness, the forward motion of my body slamming me against a wall of muscle. Hands wrapped around my wrists as the door closed behind me, and I was pushed up against the wall. The stench of cigarettes and taco breath hit me hard. I yelped as a big, callused hand clamped over my mouth.
“Hey, sweet thing,” a voice said into my ear as I trembled. “We know you.”
It was the Fury. Somehow, they’d gotten inside. A cold shot of fear raced up my spine as another voice—how many were there? —hissed, “Yeah. You’re the bitch who got Nash out of the hospital the other night.”
Muscles tense, I tried to move, but they held me there impossibly tight. A hand came up over my breasts, circling my throat. I started to gag as he said, “Is Jet Nash plowing you? I don’t believe it. That kid has charm. I don’t think there’s a single girl in town he missed.”
The other man laughed. “Ain’t that the truth. That shithead’s legendary. Women see him coming, they start droppin’ their panties from miles away.”
He sounded familiar, like the obese guy I’d seen down in the lobby, but I couldn’t be sure, because my heart was pounding so hard and my blood was rushing at full-volume through my ears.
The other man snickered, leaning in so close that his stubble tickled my ear. I felt his hand fall down between us, scrabbling at my knees, and then, to my horror, he started to lift up my skirt. “What about you. You still got yours?”
With all my might, I shoved my knee up against him, connecting with his crotch. He let out a howl.
“Bitch!” he shouted. I didn’t see his hand coming out of the blackness, but I felt it. Oh, God, did I feel it. When his ringed knuckles slammed against my cheekbones, it sent stars through my vision and made my eyes water, and my head slammed back against the door, doubling the pain. My skin burned as if it had been lit on fire, and my sense of balance went off-kilter.
He snaked a hand up around my throat again, squeezing harder. “Don’t do that again, or I’ll make you sorry, lady,” he said. My eyes were adjusting, and I could see his eyes, narrowed in hate. I could see the other man behind him, smirking.
“What are you gonna do to her?” he said.
“First, she’s gonna tell me where she took her little lover boy,” he said, his eyes scraping over me. “Go on.”
I clamped my mouth shut.
“I don’t hear an answer,” he said, tilting his ear toward me. “What about your boss? He tell you what they did with Slade?”
Slade? Who’s that? He jiggled me a little, and that hand below returned, lifting up my skirt. “I’ll make you a deal. The sooner you tell us, the nicer we’ll be to you.”
I just stared at them, trembling.
“All right. You want to play it that way?” His hand tightened on my throat, and he grabbed me by the neck, whirling me around. He shoved me backward, and I fell against the empty hospital bed. Then he reached for my chest, grabbing the material and ripping it. Buttons flew everywhere, exposing my bra, as he grinned at me. “Mmm. Nice tits.”
He advanced on me as I pulled myself up against the bed. I sat down on it, intending to scramble over it, but the obese man anticipated and fumbled around the other side of the bed, grabbing my wrists. I thrashed around, my hair, wet with tears, flew across my face as I let out another scream.
“Cover her mouth!” the first one growled, and then a giant paw that smelled like motor oil covered the bottom of my face as the other man scrabbled at my thrashing legs. He took me at the knees and wrenched my legs apart, hiking my skirt up my hips.
I pushed and struggled once more, but got nowhere. I was done.
Oh, my God, I thought, This is really happening. I’m going to be raped and murdered for what I did.
I retreated into myself, closing my eyes and saying a silent prayer.
The next thing I knew, the lights flipped on. “What’s going on here?”
The man leaned in and barked at me. “We’re not done, sweet thing. We’ll get the info we want, one way or another. We always do.” Then, the pressure on my mouth and legs loosened. I blinked in the sudden bright light and saw a white-coat-clad figure in the doorway, as the two Fury barreled him down, racing for the exit. “Call security!” the man in the doorway said as he fell to the ground.
I recognized that voice.
It was Michael.
Breathing hard, I pulled my coat over my torn blouse as he came into the room and lifted me onto the bed. I was shaking so hard, I couldn’t stop. He wrapped his arms around me. “Are you all right? Did they hurt you?”
I couldn’t make my mouth form words.
“Nora?”
I blinked up at him. Michael. “What were . . . those men?”
“Don’t worry,” he said, smoothing my hair. “We’re calling the police. They’ll take care of it. I don’t know how they got in here. I thought the police were guarding the place. I’ll have a talk with the commissioner about this . . .”
He went on, announcing his intention to bust some balls down at headquarters, but all I kept thinking was that everything was so wrong. Michael had absolutely no idea what was going on. He had no clue how to deal with these assholes. So the more he spoke, trying to calm me down and make me feel safe, the more anxious I felt.
“I don’t know what those lowlife scumballs were thinking, coming after you like that,” he whispered as I tried to lift my head from his shoulder. “What is it that man said to you? We’ll get the info we want? What info could you possibly have that—"
“Stop, Michael,” I
murmured, tearing myself away from him. “Just stop. I’ve got to go.”
I jumped off the bed and rushed out of the room. It wasn’t his arms I should be in.
I wanted Jet.
As I burst into the hallway, a crowd had begun to gather. Hugging my coat tight over my chest and swabbing at the tears in my eyes, I rushed to the nearest bathroom and locked myself in a stall. I took my phone out of my pocket, and, with trembling hands, found Jet’s number.
If they were looking for him at the hospital, it meant that wherever he was, they hadn’t found him yet.
My nose was running. I grabbed some toilet paper and blew it, then dabbed at my eyes, trying to collect myself. I called, and he answered immediately. “Hey, sweetheart. Home yet?”
“Jet,” I cried, and the tears started to fall again.
Chapter Fourteen
Jetson
Drake picked me up at Nora’s house a little after noon. “Well, how the fuck are you?” he said as I slipped into the front passenger seat of one of Hart’s clunkers.
“Good. Where’s your bike?”
He laughed. “You fucking with me? This place is swarming with Fury. They’re looking all over for you,” he said, pulling out onto the main drag that headed out toward the ocean. “Besides, we got a little job to do.”
“A job?”
He nodded. “Ferrari. Out at the Bistro on Sunset. I called it into Cullen, and when I told him I was coming to get you, he told me to have you tag it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yep. You ready? You’re okay, right?”
“Perfect. Let’s go.”
This was good news. At least I felt like the guys were glad to have me back. Like they needed me. They weren’t just letting me tag along because I was Nix’s brother.
Yeah, the stomach still hurt. The guys kept asking me if I was okay, and I kept telling them it was no sweat because the last thing I needed was for them to think I was any more of a pussy. Nix was up to his same old shit, trying to shield me from the hardest and worst of the jobs, and I didn’t need the rest of the guys doing the same.
As usual, when it came to boosting cars, I was the tagger. It was a job I liked to do, because what could I say? I liked using my charm. I usually operated in broad daylight, scouting out the car, pretending to admire it, then clamping on the tracking device when no one was looking so that the men could lift it later.
Nix told me I was good at it because I had the baby-face. I was the guy who could do no wrong, so people didn’t suspect me as much as the rest of those scary-as-hell motherfuckers I called my brothers.
But truth be told, it was the least dangerous of all the work, with the least chance of getting caught. The other guys? They were in charge of actually picking the car and getting it back to the warehouse. Nix? That was his thing. He was a pro at it. The best.
Had he shown me what he knew?
Hell, no.
He always made excuses. But I knew what it was. Protecting me, like he had done all his life. Nix never forgot his promise to our mom before she died. Wrap me in bubble wrap. Don’t let me get too close to the action.
I knew it’d get worse now, after the gunshot wound.
But goddammit, sometimes I wanted to shake him and tell him to let me do my own thing. Fail if I wanted to fail. I didn’t blame my getting shot on him one bit. It was my choice. And I was fine with it.
“So tell me,” Drake asked with a sarcastic lilt in his voice. “How’s your surgeon?”
“Good,” I said. “Really good.”
“You like surrounding yourself with people a lot smarter than you,” he said with a grin. That was our running joke. I was always calling him doctor because he’d been one in another life and ragging on him for knowing more than the average asshole. “Maybe she and I should talk shop one day.”
“Yeah.”
Drake swung his head around and tilted his sunglasses to look at me. “That’s it?”
I shrugged.
“What’s wrong with you? Usually, when I ask you to talk about your latest conquest, you won’t shut up.” That was true. He was my wingman, and so he heard all the sordid details of my nights out. But I hadn’t met Nora in a bar. I’d met her on the operating table. “What . . . your stomach okay?”
“Yeah. Fine.” I pressed on the bandage.
“Wait…don’t tell me. Do you like this girl?”
I snorted. “Nah. You know how it is. She’s . . . different.”
“Different as in, serious?”
I didn’t miss the shock in his voice.
“No fucking way. And I can’t tell you the details because fuck if I can remember. I’ve been strung out on drugs for the last few days. Plus, I mean, she saved my life. Doesn’t feel like I should be going off on what a hot fuck she is after that.”
“But you have fucked her?”
I turned up the radio to a Rolling Stones tune and looked out the window, drumming my fingers on the door.
He grinned. “That’s a yes.”
“It’s a ‘no comment’,” I shot back. I seemed to remember that he’d gone gaga over a girl just a week ago, and I hadn’t said shit about it. And I wasn’t going gaga. I just wasn’t done with Nora yet. Most girls, I was done with after one night. Less than one night. But occasionally, I wanted to stretch that. So what if I’d been with Nora for more than a few nights, and now I wanted to be with her more.
Didn’t mean shit.
All I knew was, I couldn’t let the guys know. After the shit I gave them over their girls, I’d never hear the end of it.
Luckily, Drake let it drop. He tilted the visor back and motioned with his chin. “There it is.”
I followed his line of vision to a sweet ride in the parking lot of one of those vegan bistros all the yuppie assholes seemed to like. It was definitely up our alley, but there was a problem. It was parked right in the entrance to the place. Not exactly out of sight.
Didn’t matter. I liked the challenge. “Pull over here,” I said, pointing to the curb.
He did, reached into his pocket, and pulled out the tracking device, a little circular disk about the size of a quarter, one of Hart’s little specialties.
I opened the door. “Swing around and pick me up on the corner over there.”
I slammed the door and made it across the street, dodging four lanes of traffic without making it obvious I was holding my gut. When I got to the parking lot, I smoothed my hair back and looked around. The place was empty. I peered through the front windows of the bistro but couldn’t see much through the closed shades; no one in there would see me.
I walked up next to the sleek black sports car, pretending to admire it. Looking around one last time, I stooped to find a place to plant the device that would be out of the way, then reached my hand out to attach it to the back wheel well.
As I did, the door flew open, and a blonde in a really tight tank top and shorts came bounding out. She noticed me right away. “Hey. You looking at my car?”
I wasn’t worried. I’d been caught with my hand in the cookie jar before. I nodded slowly. “Sweet ride.”
Whatever anger was on her face drained away as she looked me over. I realized she was young; probably just got her license. So Daddy had bought her a Ferrari for a first car? Jesus. Some people were privileged. “It is nice, isn’t it?” she said, running an appreciative eye over it. “I just took it off the lot.”
And I’m gonna just take it off your hands. I smiled at her. I could tell the exact moment when she was mine, hook, line and sinker. “A little girl like you know how to handle a beast like this?”
She leaned into me and said, “Well, actually, I’m learning.”
She was underage. But that didn’t stop her. She wanted me. “What’s your name? How old are you?”
“I’m Summer. I’m seventeen.”
Yep. Jailbait for sure. “You want someone to teach you?”
She glanced at the front of the restaurant and sighed. “Um. Well. Not righ
t now. My parents are . . .” She pointed to the restaurant. “But I’ll give you my number?”
“Sure,” I said to, handing her my phone.
She typed her number in, a number I’d never call, and I took it upon myself to study the car a little closer. And plant the GPS device securely on the back of the wheel well, out of sight. Easy as pie.
“Thanks, baby,” I said, winking at her. “I’ll definitely be calling you.”
She giggled.
I waved at her and jogged around the block, to the corner where Drake was waiting. As I slipped in, I said, “This’ll be easy. Girl’s young and trusting.”
“And you got her number.”
I held up my phone. “I did.”
“Jesus. She was hot for you, I was surprised she didn’t blow you right there. Let me guess. You’ll be tapping that later.”
I shook my head. “Nah. Jailbait.” Besides, after Nora, that little thing felt like a step down. “Can you imagine, getting a Ferrari as your first car?”
He whistled and shook his head. “Fuck. Really?”
I rolled down the window and lit a cigarette. “Yep. Who’s tracking?”
“Nix.”
The idea was for the tracker to follow the target until the time was right. That was the beauty of Hart’s device. Once home, if the target’s key fob was anywhere nearby, it’d pick up the information. All Hart would have to do was press a button, and he could remote start the car from anywhere, allowing Nix to go in and drive it away. Most of the time, it worked flawlessly.
Most of the time.
“All right, that’s done,” Drake said, lifting his phone to call Hart. “Want to get some tacos?”
I nodded.
Hart got on the line, and Drake told him the tracking disc was in place. Now Nix would go into action and nab the car. We’d done our part. I took a drag on my cigarette and breathed out, long and slow. Fuck, I’d missed smoking.
As we pulled into the taco place, my phone rang. I thought it was Nix, confirming the target, but then I saw Nora’s name on the display. It was after quitting time for her. I expected she wanted me back at her place.
Truth was, I hadn’t planned on going back.