CHAPTER TWELVE
LONDON
“Admit it,” Em said, narrowing her eyes at me. “I was right about the color.”
I looked down at my feet and wiggled my toes, which were now painted hot pink. I wasn’t a hot-pink kind of person, and the toe bling was almost beyond my comprehension … but I had to give her credit.
“You were right,” I admitted. “It looks fantastic. I always go for the traditional look. Never would’ve tried it if you hadn’t bullied me into it.”
She grinned and I laughed, taking a drink of my iced coffee. Me, Darcy, Em, Dancer, Marie, and Sophie had all taken off for the mall after breakfast in search of the perfect pedicure. Surprisingly, Maggs Dwyer had met us there—apparently she’d been Bolt’s old lady for years but had dumped his ass recently. I got the distinct impression he’d done something horrible to her. The women were all clearly pissed at him, but they didn’t offer any details and I didn’t ask. Ignorance is bliss and all that, because I still had to work for the guy at Pawns.
I wasn’t totally comfortable with my brightly painted nails, but if nothing else they were fun and playful. My toes looked like they’d been dipped in a vat of flamingos. Make that flamingos on fire, with bright red accents and brilliant sparklies.
Shiny.
“Ladies, this has been fantastic, but I’d better get going because I have to work this afternoon,” I said reluctantly, standing up from the table we’d taken over in the food court. “I just hope I don’t gack my nails while I’m at it.”
“Pisser,” Em said, pouting prettily. “I was hoping we could go shopping until the men finish their Top Secret Important Biker Business.”
“Maybe tomorrow?” I asked, flattered that she’d invite me along. Em sighed.
“It’ll have to be another time,” she said. “I think we’re headed home this afternoon. I’ve been cramping a little—no big deal—but Hunter’s all worked up about it. He’s terrified I’m going to break or something.”
She rolled her eyes and we all laughed. Then I waved good-bye and headed out to my van.
The first hint something was wrong was the open driver’s-side window. I never left my van open. (Not that I had anything valuable in it, but I carried enough equipment and cleaning chemicals in the back that I worried some little kid might get in there and get hurt. My insurance agent had spent forty-five minutes three years ago explaining the concept of business liability to me, and I’d been irrationally nervous ever since. The man was a sadist. He should’ve worked as a high school guidance counselor, because not one of those kids would’ve been brave enough to have sex after a sit-down with him.)
The second red flag was a business-size manila envelope sitting on the seat. A white mailing label had been stuck to the front, but instead of an address, one word had been printed in large, black letters.
“Open.”
In a movie, this is where the bomb squad gets called out. But it didn’t look big enough for a bomb, and I lived in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. We’d already used up our entire town’s annual drama quotient on my house. I reached down, my fingers trembling, and picked it up. A black smart phone slid out.
It came to life—a Skype request for videoconferencing.
I fumbled for a minute, then managed to press the accept button. Jessica’s face appeared on the phone, her eyes swollen with tears. A purple bruise darkened her cheek. Oh shit oh shit oh shit …
“Loni?” she asked, her voice tight and strained. I leaned heavily against the van, my legs turning to Jell-O.
“Jessie, what’s going on?”
“I’m in some trouble,” she whispered. “Mom’s friends are here with me and they want to talk to you. Please listen to them. I think they’re going to hurt me more if you don’t.”
With that, someone grabbed the phone out of her hand and jerked it away. The image swayed, giving me glimpses of concrete and men wearing dark masks. Then it stilled, focusing on Jessica’s arm. A man’s gloved hand held it down, spreading out her fingers across what had to be a butcher block. Then a giant knife came into view—no, that thing was more like a machete. It flashed down and then Jessica’s screams came pouring through the phone’s tiny speakers.
A terrible fist clutched my chest, cutting off my breath and stopping my heart.
They’d sliced off her little finger.
I could see it sitting right there on the block, and it wasn’t attached to her body anymore!
Blood was gushing and Jess was screaming and somewhere in the background a man laughed, but my eyes would only focus on that little pink hunk of flesh, complete with sparkling gel nails that had recently been filled. I had a sudden, discordant vision of Jess and Amber getting manicures together. Laughing. Maybe grabbing something to eat before they came home and Amber handed over her beautiful daughter to a f*cking psychopathic madman! I had no f*cking doubt this was Amber’s work.
What kind of animal cuts off a child’s finger?
The picture abruptly disappeared, switching to audio. I put the phone to my ear, wondering if I’d imagined the whole thing. My body felt distant and shaky. Shock? I needed to breathe. I managed to climb into the van’s seat and drop my head down over my knees as a man started speaking.
“Next time it’ll be her hand,” he said, the heavily accented words laced with menace. “Then maybe I’ll cut that tube right out of her head, see what it looks like. Always wondered how they wire up retards to make them look normal. She’s cute, so I’ll probably f*ck her before I kill her.”
“What do you want?” I whispered. “Please, she’s just a girl—let her go. We won’t tell anyone about this.”
“If you want to keep her alive, you’ll do exactly what I say, because I own you now,” he said, his voice dark and low and radiating so much evil I could cry. Wait. I was crying. “I want you to go through Picnic Hayes’s house and find papers for me. Anything you can that looks like it might be business related. Lists of names. Schedules. Take pictures with this phone and I’ll access them. You’ll do the same at Pawns and The Line. You’ve got until Tuesday to get it done, but I want to see progress along the way. If I don’t get something from you every day, her hand’s back on the block. We can cut off a lot of pieces before she dies—it’s all on you.”
I swallowed, wishing I could afford to play dumb, do something to buy time, change it somehow because this couldn’t actually be happening, could it?
“She’s more susceptible to infection than other kids,” I said desperately. “That shunt keeps her alive, and if it gets blocked or infected, it’s very serious. It could even kill her. Please—if she spikes a fever, get her to a doctor. She might need surgery if things go wrong. I saw a bruise on her cheek, which means someone hit her. Jessica can’t take trauma like that. She’s not a normal kid, it could kill her.”
“You should worry about me killing her. But if you do a good job following my directions we won’t have to hurt her any more. Start going through the house. Text me if you find something and I’ll download it. Be careful, because if he catches you, he’ll shoot you and then Jessica will die, too.”
“What about Amber?” I asked quietly, wondering if I really wanted the answer. “Does she know what you’re doing to her daughter?”
He snorted.
“That cunt’s dead. Unfortunate accident, couldn’t be helped. Let’s hope we don’t have any more of those, sound good?”
“Sounds good,” I whispered, closing my eyes as he ended the call.
Wow. Just … wow … How was this happening?
Amber. It always came back to Amber. I wanted to strangle her, but then a wave of guilt hit me because she was already dead. God, I’d hated her so much over the years, but I loved her, too, and the thought of her bloodied body being dumped somewhere filled me with agonized sorrow.
Detach. DETACH. You can do this. You have to do this. Doesn’t matter how much you like Reese, he’s just a man and your girl needs you. Life is about choices.
I knew what my choice had to be—the same one I’d made six years ago.
Jessica was a child of my family.
Saving her had to come first.
Things got weird after that.
There’s an understatement for you.
I considered calling Nate. I considered telling Reese. I considered driving to California with a gun and shooting people until they gave me back my little girl.
In the end, I decided to do what he told me, because Jessica’s life was at stake. End of story. There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do to save her. I’d beg, borrow, steal, kill … I’d give every one of those men the best blow job they’d ever had, if I thought it would make a difference.
But they didn’t want me—they wanted Reese’s papers, and I’d find them if it killed me.
I’d do it because I was Jessica’s mother. The only real one she’d ever had. F*ck you, Amber. F*ck you all the way to hell. I’d become Jessie’s mother the hard way, cradling her tiny body in my arms in the NICU, holding her as she cried after her first boyfriend dumped her.
Dragging her out of the Reapers clubhouse in the middle of the night.
Jessica was a pain in my ass and she’d screwed up plenty, but this? This was all on Amber. Beyond that first burst of involuntary pain, I refused to let myself grieve for her. That bitch was lucky she was already dead, and that’s the f*cking truth.
Because life is surreal, I still had to work that afternoon or people would’ve gotten suspicious. This turned out to be a good thing. There’s nothing like hard, physical labor to clear your mind. One of my crew leads had the day off, so I found myself cleaning a local attorney’s office downtown. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the assassin who worked for the club. I’d bet there were all sorts of interesting papers in that guy’s office, ones that might buy Jessica some time.
We also cleaned Pawns that night.
Usually Bolt was in the back room—so far as I could tell he slept on a cot in the storeroom half the time. I’d assumed he was just crashing there out of convenience, but based on our conversation at the mall, Maggs had thrown him out.
He wasn’t actually at the store that night, but I decided it would be stupid to break into his office and search for papers. The whole place was probably wired up with cameras—it was a pawn shop, for God’s sake, which meant it was full of valuable, portable merchandise. The real question wasn’t whether the cameras were there, but whether they would still work if the power was cut.
Something to think about, because if I f*cked up, they’d chop off another piece of Jessica.
Reese had asked me to come back out to the Armory that evening after I finished my jobs, but conveniently I didn’t get done until after ten. That meant I wasn’t lying when I told him I was too exhausted. I drove out to his house instead, fingering the black smart phone thoughtfully. If I got lucky, I’d have most of the night to search. I couldn’t imagine he’d be home any time soon—maybe he’d even crash at the Armory. God, I hoped so. I wasn’t sure I could look him in the face without giving anything away.
We’d slept on the couch last night, the same couch where—
Shit. If he slept at the Armory, who would he be sleeping with? Could I really trust him not to cheat on me with so many willing, available women running around all the time? A wave of jealousy hit me, but I squashed it because that was f*cking crazy. I was doing my best to betray him and the people he loved most to an evil stranger who liked to cut fingers off young women.
So far as I could tell, that sort of trumped the jealous-girlfriend bit.
God, I would miss him …
If we both lived through this, I’d be lucky if he didn’t kill me himself. Not an idle concern, either. I’d heard the rumors—I knew what the Reapers were capable of. But I’d also heard that they didn’t take out anyone who didn’t deserve it.
Unfortunately, from their perspective I’d probably deserve it. They wouldn’t be entirely wrong about that, either.
Shitty to be me.
The Hayes house blazed with light when I pulled in the driveway, and two bikes were parked out front. One looked familiar. The other I’d never seen before. Neither belonged to Reese.
I let myself in the front door to find Melanie sitting next to Painter, his arm draped loosely across the back of the couch over her shoulders. She was buried in a quilt with only her eyes showing. They were glued to the TV screen, where a chainsaw-wielding man was about to cut a woman’s hand off.
I threw up a little in the back of my throat, grasping the door frame for support.
Another young man leaned back in the lounge chair, feet propped casually on the end of the coffee table. He had short dark hair, heavy stubble, and eyes so cold and dead he could’ve been holding the chainsaw. It was hard to see in the dim light, but it looked like tattoos completely covered his arms. Handsome and unnerving—a very dangerous boy, I decided.
Painter paused the movie, standing up slowly. I glanced between him and Melanie, shaking my head. Couldn’t believe I’d fallen for his shit—apparently this was International F*ck Over London Armstrong Day.
“London,” he said quietly.
“Painter,” I replied, wondering if we were starting some kind of standoff. I guess we were, because he’d promised to stay away from her, yet here he was. Although to be honest, my perspective on that whole issue had changed in the past twelve hours, what with watching Jessica’s finger get cut off. Somehow Melanie’s virtue wasn’t seeming quite as important in comparison.
“We’ll talk in the kitchen,” he told me, then jerked his chin toward the scary young man. “This is Puck. He’s a prospect with the Silver Bastards. Pic asked him to stay out here tonight. Said it wouldn’t hurt to have some extra security, given how many people are in town right now.”
Panic closed my throat. Extra security? That didn’t make any sense—they must know something. Painter was going to take me into that kitchen and kill me for betraying the club.
Shut up! My brain snapped. Chill the f*ck out, because there’s no way they could find out so fast.
Good point. I took a deep breath and tried smiling at the young prospect. He just studied me, crossing muscular arms in front of his chest. He really was extremely attractive. Black hair, dark eyes, dusky, thick eyelashes—near perfect, except for the scar running up one cheek, along his nose and into his forehead.
Damn. Looked like someone had tried to cut his face off.
Not that it hurt his looks at all. If anything, it kept him from being too pretty. Dark skin said he came from a mixed background. Maybe one of the local tribes? Or Latino … Hard to tell, and not really any of my business anyway.
“Nice to meet you,” I said, then looked back at Painter. “I assume you got him settled upstairs?”
“It’s covered,” Painter replied. “Let’s talk in the kitchen.”
I nodded, pausing to give Mel a quick squeeze on the shoulder. She seemed to be operating on the theory that no murderers or monsters would be able to get her so long as she stayed under the covers. Clearly she wasn’t willing to risk that safety for a hug, which made me smile sadly.
I was learning the hard way that nothing can protect us from the real monsters.
“What’s up?” I asked Painter once we reached the other room. He caught and held my gaze, his expression focused.
“I didn’t lie to you about Melanie,” he said. “I won’t do anything to hurt her. She was just scared of the movie. Puck and I had no idea she’d be so frightened, and she didn’t say anything ahead of time. Otherwise we would’ve watched something else. Pic didn’t want her out here alone, and I knew you’d be pissed if I took her back to the Armory.”
I would’ve felt extremely relieved to hear that if I hadn’t been so completely focused on keeping Jessica alive.
“Good to know.”
“I’ve f*cked up before,” he continued. “I’m a dick and an ass-hole. But I promise you—I’m not gonna screw her over. Okay?”
“Okay.”
He nodded, as if something important had been decided. I wasn’t even close to understanding what was going on behind those eyes of his, and it didn’t matter. All that mattered was saving Jessica.
“You wanna watch the rest of the movie with us?”
I have my own horror movie playing on a loop in my head. But thanks for asking.
“No, I think I’ll get to bed,” I told him, smiling weakly. “Nice to meet your … friend? Brother? I don’t know what to call him.”
“Call him Puck,” he said, giving me a charming grin. “You might want to get used to him, too. I think Pic plans to have him stick with you for the next week or so. Security.”
Well. That was inconvenient. I decided I’d think about it tomorrow, because I’d burned through the last of my energy when I’d come home to find the living room full of young bikers I was pretty sure were capable of killing me without blinking.
Painter—apparently oblivious to my terrible tension—ambled toward the fridge and pulled out a beer.
“Want one?”
I shook my head.
“No, I’m going to bed. Ready for this day to end in a big way.”
Nothing.
I lay sprawled in the center of Reese’s bed, staring up at his bedroom ceiling and trying not to cry. It was four in the morning. He’d texted me at two saying not to wait up for him, so I’d made the most of the opportunity, going through every drawer, every box, every inch of his bedroom looking for anything that might be valuable to the sadists down in California.
Not a goddamned thing.
Although I knew a lot more about Reese now. For example, I knew Heather had written him a beautiful letter saying good-bye right before she died. She told him to be happy. She said that when her girls got married, she wanted him to give each of them a diamond pendant, set in silver, from her. She called them “something new” for the big day.
She also told him she didn’t want him to grow old alone.
According to Em, I was the first woman he’d really let in since Heather died. “Guilty” just wasn’t strong enough to describe how that made me feel, given my current plan to betray him. At least I didn’t need to worry about him knowing I’d searched the room. I’d been incredibly careful, taking pictures of his things before moving them, so I could put them back exactly where they’d been before. Realistically, there wasn’t any more that I could do, but I couldn’t sleep, either.
I rolled over and turned off the light, wishing I were better at praying. Now would be a real good time for it …
Big hands slid under my shirt.
I sighed and shifted, confused. Reese caught my breasts and squeezed lightly. Then I felt his lips touch my stomach and I squirmed, heat pooling between my legs.
“Missed you last night,” he said, his voice low. I opened my eyes, but the room was still dark. Must be very early morning, right before dawn.
Then I remembered. F*ck. Oh, f*ck. Jess was in danger, Amber was dead, and I had to screw over the first man who’d made me feel anything real in years. Maybe ever.
“Sleepy,” I murmured, which was true. It was also a great way to get out of conversation, because I hadn’t had a chance to figure out the proper etiquette one uses when destroying a man’s life. His fingers burrowed under the fly of my jeans, and then I felt him opening them. Wow. I hadn’t even gotten undressed last night.
I didn’t remember falling asleep at all.
My jeans opened and then he tugged at them, murmuring for me to lift my hips. I obeyed without thinking. He slid them down, along with my panties, and tossed my clothing across the room.
Then I felt his lips on my stomach again.
Instead of teasing me, this time they moved steadily downward, and then his hand caught at my inner thighs, pushing them apart. His tongue felt like fire on my skin and I shifted restlessly. A finger slid along the edges of my labia, pushing in just enough to collect some of the moisture growing there. He rubbed upward, finding my * as it started to swell, circling it and teasing. I wiggled under him.
“Did I mention I missed you?” he whispered. “Probably a hundred bitches out there tonight, half of them ready and willing, but all I could think about was getting home to this.”
“Do you really have to call them bitches?” I asked, trying to focus. “Seems kind of ugly.”
“Just a figure of speech, doesn’t mean anything,” he said. Then I felt him shake his head, and he laughed. “No, guess you got me on that. We call ’em bitches because they aren’t that important.”
“Sharon seemed important enough to you,” I muttered, wondering if I was losing my mind. Why would a woman interrupt a man about to go down on her—or at least I assumed that’s what this was leading up to—to argue about what he calls someone else?
“You wanna talk semantics or get your * sucked?”
Hmmm …
“That second thing,” I said. His mouth opened on my stomach and he made a huge raspberry noise. I squealed because it tickled, and then he was tickling me with his hand, blowing raspberries on my stomach over and over until I screamed.
“Stop! You have to stop it!”
He stopped, sliding up to cover me with his body, holding my hands prisoner on either side of my head.
“Now give me a kiss and let me know you’re happy to see me,” he said. “You wanna talk about other women, we can do that tomorrow. Right now’s about you and me.”
I lifted my head and met his lips. Despite the tickling and playing, this wasn’t a teasing kiss. It was hard and fast, nipping and dueling until I felt faint from desire.
Or maybe that was lack of air?
He pulled away, and we both gasped.
“Now. What would you like me to do?”
“Um, you could …” I trailed off, squirming. I still wasn’t so great at the explicit talk in front of him. Why I felt so inhibited I couldn’t imagine. I’d always assumed that I’d have things figured out by my thirties. Not even close.
“What did you say? I don’t understand,” he asked. I couldn’t see his smirk in the darkness, but I knew it had to be there.
“You could go down on me,” I said, the sentence ending on a squeak. “I think I need more practice talking about sex. It feels really weird.”
“Yeah, sort of picked up on that,” he whispered into my ear, nuzzling at it. “Kinda hot when you get all embarrassed.”
“I’m not embarrassed,” I insisted. “I just don’t have a potty mouth.”
He stilled.
“Did you seriously just use the phrase ‘potty mouth’?”
I giggled. “I think I did.”
“Okay, let’s try this again. Tell me what you want me to do.”
“Will you suck my *, Reese?”
“Why, yes, London. I’d be happy to suck your * for you.”
“Gracious of you,” I muttered, but at least he was moving back down my body. His fingers found my folds again, and then his mouth caught me, hot and wet and completely amazing as he attacked my most sensitive place.
Within minutes I was moaning and squirming under him. When he started thrusting two fingers inside me, sliding up and along my inner wall, I lost the power of speech. Fortunately that didn’t matter, because I didn’t need words to scream when I blew apart into a thousand pieces.
I also didn’t need words to express my approval when he pushed into me hard and fast a minute later. Instead I wrapped my arms and legs around him, savoring the feel of him deep down inside because it was beautiful.
He was beautiful.
And he was wrong about using dirty words, too, because this wasn’t something dirty and it wasn’t f*cking.
We were making love.
Under the circumstances, I’d rather f*ck. The only thing worse than destroying the man you care about is destroying him after he makes heartbreakingly beautiful love to you.
I was still going to do it, though.
I didn’t have a choice.