Bad Boy Criminal: The Novel (14 page)

I
allowed myself a long
, deep stretch, and sighed for the second or third time. In spite of it all, this really was the life. In some ways, Izz and I were lucky. We were running from the feds, and both had sentences hanging over our heads now—but we were still luckier than a lot of other poor sons of bitches out there. At least we had each other.

On the other hand, you’ve got to live carefully, meaningfully, when you have something worthwhile to lose. You can’t just drift around, fucking off out of sheer boredom, when there’s a good woman depending on you to be a good man.

The responsibility weighed heavily on me now. I’d never felt it before. Never felt so naturally indebted to a woman before. As if I owed her dignity and respect. She deserved a man of whom she could be proud. Any woman worth anything at all deserves the same in return—and she deserved it all. All you needed to do was look at her to know that. Those warm, lilting hazel eyes. How she sacrificed for the things she loved. Her kindness. How gentle she was. She was leagues away from me, but…maybe that was a good thing. Maybe it was good to be inspired to be better.

Starting with freeing the chains hanging over my head.

She didn’t deserve to wait for her lover to only be available at conjugal visits, after all.

And sure as shit, somebody had shot Jared Wayne.

It just wasn’t me. It was a set-up. That gun had come from somewhere, and yeah, the ballistics matched. It was a death sentence. But the gun wasn’t mine. I’d never seen it before in my life; I know my guns like I know my motorcycle, my jacket, my tattoos. You can’t trick me when it comes to those. So the question wasn’t how.

It was why.

It was who.

Damn.

I got lost staring into the dark ceiling, thinking about all the people I’d crossed in recent years.

There was Larry Rosco; what had transpired between us wasn’t terribly bloody, but it was certainly personal. I’d
incidentally
engaged in a ménage-a-trois with his girlfriend, Caroline, and his sister, Alexandra. I hadn’t known it at the time. Well…I’d known that one of them was his sister, but I hadn’t even been sure which one. And I hadn’t known that one of them was seeing Larry! That’d been about three years ago, not long before Jared Wayne met his maker. Rosco was a fellow member of Hell’s Ransom. But did he have the motive to take out the president of The Valiant?

As far as I was aware, Rosco was a small player in Hell’s Ransom politics; he was a devout mechanic and had a spiritual devotion to his mileage, which he called “mecca.” I could see why Caroline dug him, in all honesty, and no, I couldn’t picture him getting a fellow member of Hell’s Ransom convicted of murder—committing murder in order to frame him for it, no less—just seemed rather…stupid, and petty, for Larry.

I discarded Rosco. Okay. Next?

There’d been Nick Stafford, who wasn’t loyal to any particular biker club. We were supposed to go in on a gun deal worth several thousand together, and I’d backed out at the last minute; Dom had all but disowned me. He wasn’t a big fan of my illegal shit, though he was no choir boy himself. Anyway, Nick may have lost out on a few grand, and that may have consequently preempted his eviction. But none of that was my fault… It’s a man’s prerogative to change his mind. Nick may have been desperate, and one of the dimmer bulbs I knew, but he wasn’t a killer.
Murder…
it just seemed like such a foolish and useless thing to do. It was heavy-handed and out-of-key with my offenses.

Okay. Probably not Nick, though he was easily influenced, prone to panic. Maybe he’d killed Wayne for someone else—trying his hand at contract killing, perhaps—and then panicked and stuck it on someone he vaguely disliked: me. But…then…how had he known I was in Moab? He wasn’t in deep with The Valiant or The Hell’s Ransom. I was straying too far from the few leads I had.

Someone I’ve wronged…probably over something stupid…with connections to Hell’s Ransom.

There’d been Russell Estaban, Mickey Dannell’s cousin. Mickey was a member of Hell’s Ransom, but not Russell. Russell was just an oily old dude who’d done too much acid in the nineties and could never quite dry out again. It hadn’t been personal between us; he was an enemy of Dom’s. He had been skimming cash and drugs off Hell’s Ransom for years, and Dom had had enough of it, so when I was initiating, it was my final test: Russell’s fingers. I had to take Russell’s fingers.

I
reached
the convenience store with a loopy gait; I think anyone who peered closely could have recognized that I’d recently orgasmed out my ears. The parking lot was washed in sickly greenish fluorescent bulbs. No cars. Inside the store, an overweight woman was behind the counter, leafing through a gossip magazine.

I stepped inside and grinned at her. “Good evening,” I piped, in an even better mood than usual, even though we were less than an hour from border patrol. Soon, though. Soon it would all be figured out, and I was starting to feel as if that meant more than passionate farewell sex.

As I contemplated my future with Ash, unusually effervescent and optimistic, I hunted for the hot food section of the store, locating an eerie incubator filled with thick burritos.

“Excuse me, miss?” I called to the woman behind the counter. She gazed up from her magazine balefully, then her shoulders sagged with acceptance. Yes. She would have to do some work now.

While she stood and sauntered over, I smiled idiotically at my reflection in the translucent oven’s glass.

Soon, I might be able to re-introduce Ash to Bill and Hope, not as some fugitive, not as some stranger, but as—

“Which one you want?” the woman behind the revolving burritos asked.

I gazed up, the words “bean, beef, and cheese,” on my tongue, and then froze with a horror.

Mounted behind the attendant was a miniature television on mute, and the face on the screen was my own.

Shit.

A picture of me on Turner Dairy, looking so sunburnt and merrily out-of-place, was juxtaposed with Ash’s mug shot.

Shit.

The scrolling marque beneath our pictures noted that I had been kidnaped. Which meant, at least, that Agent Harrison hadn’t divulged his insider information to the regional news.

The screen flipped to an interview with Bill and Hope. Bill, so dour, stood stoic at her side, reminding me of that famous painting,
American Gothic:
the one with the unsmiling old couple in front of the farm. Hope, beside him, was a study in opposites. Her hair was a mess, and her face was bright pink and shiny with tears that would not stop falling. When she addressed the reporter, she seemed to be staring right through the camera, into your soul—into
my
soul.

Please, Isabelle,
I could hear her in my head.
Please come home.

I winced as a pang sang through my chest.

“HELLO?” the attendant barked at me. “Do you want one of these burritos or not?”

The screen had flipped again, now to a shot which panned across the letter I had left the Turners in the rescue shed.

I glanced behind myself and saw that a small line had formed. Two people were both watching me as I stared wildly at the television. I could only hope that neither of them were particularly astute when it came to connecting dots. Maybe they would think to themselves,
She looks kind of like that girl on the television,
but they wouldn’t think any further than that.

“MISS?” the woman snapped again.

I tore my eyes away from the line lingering behind me, certain I already looked painfully suspicious to everyone present. This woman, at least, was too self-centered to wonder if anything was wrong. She was just glaring at me in absolute and unprovoked hatred, having been asked to relinquish her stool and fish a burrito from the incubator for me. “I SAID—”

“Yes,” I interrupted her. “A bean, beef, and cheese, please. In fact, uh, I’ll take all the bean, beef, and cheese burritos.”

The woman rolled her eyes—if I was capable of being shocked anymore, her rudeness might have done it—but she scooped out five burritos and wrapped them in napkins before dumping them into paper bags and sidling back to her precious chair and magazine.

She drummed a few numbers into the cash register and turned to me, shoving the warm, greasy bag across the counter half-heartedly. “It’s going to be eight dollars and ninety-six cents,” she grumbled.

I handed her the twenty, and she made the change. “Thank you,” I said, by habit more than forgiveness, but the woman still didn’t respond.

Luckily for her, I was too numb to care anymore. I took the bag and the receipt and the change and turned to mill through the narrow aisles of brightly colored snacks and sugary beverages, toward the exit door. I glanced at the line of patrons which had formed behind me—three people—and they were all staring back at me. Dammit. So much for being inconspicuous. All I needed now was for Beyonce to fall out…

How long has that picture been running? How long have people been looking for me now?

As I fell into the swinging glass door, allowing my weight to push the door open and expel me into the warm summer night, I didn’t see the traffic trudging along on my side. I didn’t notice the dark, idle cars which had pulled into the lot since I’d arrived. I was a million miles away—or, more accurately, I was about three years ago, lost in the recollection of how mindlessly grateful I had been when the Turners scooped me once and for all out of foster care.

I’d been seventeen years old, and I’d been forced to relocate after witnessing one of my friends—Sofia Moss—brutally murdered by her drugged-up, jealous ex-boyfriend, who also had gang affiliations in the city. Hell, it was because of Marcus that I’d been shot once before, even if it was accidental. He’d been the one to set me up with running stolen guns around the city. Well. Stolen guns, and pills, and even fake positive pregnancy tests. Marcus was a con artist to the highest degree. He made Ashton Carter look like a Boy Scout.

I stepped out of the harsh green lights of the parking lot, still holding the plastic bag of burritos, and into the shadowy brush which lined either side of the sidewalk, leading back to that old abandoned house where that golden-tongued devil had just mouth-fucked my brains out.

As much as I adored him, helplessly, foolishly adored him, I felt cold just now, even in the warm Las Cruces breeze. What had I done? What had I done to Bill and Hope, the saviors who had snatched me up from such a dark and grim future?

And was that the same future I faced now, if I remained with Ash?

W
hat time was it
? The list of men and women I’d wronged in my life wasn’t a short one, and I shouldn’t have been able to sift through all of them, considering and discarding, before Isabelle even had a chance to return with our dinner. Hell, it was only a couple blocks away. She’d said to give her fifteen minutes. What time was it?

I sat bolt upright and rifled through my pants pockets for that other burner phone, the one that Arlo had given me. Shit, shit, shit. Where was it?

Finding the bulky piece of crap, I lit its faceplate and saw that Izzy had been gone for almost an hour.

Shit, shit, shit!

What if she’d been snatched up by that psychopath, Harrison? A part of me had always admired his clean-cut, pressed-suit demeanor, but the more I thought about it, the more patently insane a man with his hairline maintained at a perfect right angle must be.

What if a member of The Valiant had found her? What kind of shit would they do to such a pure, innocent woman as her?

I thought about her full, perky breasts in conjunction with the tantalizing sweep from her waist to her hips, and I knew exactly what the men of The Valiant would do to such a pure, innocent woman as her. Men who took no issue with damaging an entire row of Hell’s Ransom members’ bikes would relish in the opportunity to strip one of our women of their dignity.

Or what if—what if she’d…come to her senses and left me?

Pursing my lips, I opened the front door of the abandoned house and flew across the porch, scanning the two-lane road beyond, partially obscured by flora, and the cracked sidewalk which ran past the house, empty of pedestrians.
Shit!

I galloped further out into the yard, and hesitated to swing right and left, examining my options. The whole world felt like the open sea to me just now: rippling and vast, endless in any direction I turned. Where could she possibly
have
gone? I could even see the lights of the convenience store from here. Fuck!

I took off running toward the store with no regard for how exposed my face remained, how suspicious my behavior. I was at the store in two minutes, exploding from the scraggly foliage and onto the concrete of the parking lot. But nothing… Not even any cars. Just pumps. The windows which lined the convenience store could have shown me if she was inside. No. Just a lone woman with a tabloid at the register.

Shit!

I took off running down the sidewalk again, back toward the abandoned house. I could get into the backyard and take the bike out onto the street. I could look for her that way.

Shit, shit, shit!

Izz should’ve been back in TEN minutes! Not fifty! And me, me… How could I have let this happen? How could I have been so brainless, when I said that I cared about her—well, I had thought it to myself, anyway—and then, to just…? I should’ve
realized
she had taken too long half an hour ago, instead of thinking only of myself, idly flipping through my thoughts, losing track of the time like some child straying to pick flowers. I was supposed to be the man, and being the man meant being on top of these things! It meant protecting Izzy! It meant…

I bolted through the yard and was up the porch, into the pitch black house, and halfway to the back door when I slowed, thoughtful.

You can’t protect a woman from making up her own mind, though. You can’t protect a woman from realizing she is too good for you after all.

Shit.

What if… What if she’d left? Earlier today, those soft hazel eyes had been staring down a federal agent from the other side of a handgun. Earlier today, she’d become a felon with me. What if she didn’t want that? What if she missed the simplicity and predictability of her parents’ place? Hadn’t even I come to enjoy it in my brief time there?

Pulling the burner phone from my pocket again, I used its glowing faceplate to find my way. Now that I’d slowed, I’d lost my sense of orientation in the dark…and even my sense of urgency in finding Isabelle. Suddenly, it seemed obvious to me. How could someone from The Valiant have found us? Only Jade and my brothers knew where we were, and they knew not to talk about it anymore, even with other members of Hell’s Ransom. And Harrison had been stranded in that bathroom, miles from here…

The green light from the burner phone fell across a scrap of paper I didn’t remember noticing before.
Oh, my god, I was right,
I thought breathlessly. It was a piece of stationary from The Sandy Castle. Was it a note from her? Now the shoe was on the other foot, and I was hyperventilating as I snatched the paper from the scuffed countertop.

Jesus Christ, she really had left me.

It was in that moment, aching like an addict without a hit, an addict whose supply had dried with no hope of re-upping, that I realized I loved the damn girl. I loved her in a way I’d never loved any other woman, except maybe my own mother. I…needed her.

With trembling fingers, I unfolded the paper.

It was Isabelle’s lovely handwriting. So feminine and delicate. Always too good for me.

But all it said was:

Jade

011-52-656-227-5555

I sagged, both relieved and disappointed. Well, she hadn’t left me a Dear John, but then, where was she?

I looked at the phone again. No missed calls. It’d been over an hour now, and my blood pressure must’ve been through the roof.

My head dropped, and I crumpled The Sandy Castle memo in my hand.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

I hoped her ass memorized at least one of our goddamn phone numbers.