Bad Boy Criminal: The Novel (23 page)

T
he five of us
—Juan, Drake, Nacho, Woody, and me—were forced to our knees at the gunpoint of five Valiants, or, rather, four Valiants and one spineless, gutless, brainless Hell's Ransom member named Mickey Dannell. I wished I could see down into the basement from this angle, and get word to Isabelle, if she was still hunkered down by the fence out back, but…we were assembled uniformly with our backs to the stairwell leading down.

“Hey, Alex,” Mickey called from behind me. “You wanna run down to the basement and grab some of that rope on my workbench? I’ll stay here with the boys…” He nudged the back of my head with his gun, and my nose curled with absolute disgust. “Keep an eye on things.”

I wanted to call out to Izz if she was down there and make sure she was hidden, but I couldn’t blow her cover if she was. I’d have to trust her…so I pursed my lips and listened to the sound of Alex’s boots thunk, thunk, thunk down the stairs.

I listened carefully to the echo of movement in the basement, but it became too muffled and soft to follow. I didn’t hear any shouts or crashes, though. That had to be a good sign…and, a few minutes later, Alex ascended the stairwell again, gripping a thin length of rope in his hands. “Found it,” he announced.

I regretted more and more letting Isabelle come on this insane mission with us. I knew it’d been important to her, that I accept her for who she was and believe that she could be part of my world, not some princess who was above it and wouldn’t ever be integrated…but still. I said it before and I’d say it again. I didn’t want to be the reason she ended up in the hospital, or jail, or the cemetery.

The Valiants—I couldn’t help but think of Mickey Dannell as one of them, now—tied our hands behind our heads and tied our ankles together. All our confiscated guns were moved into a pile of booty, and the Valiants began discussing exactly what to do with us in a kind of lazy way, like a bunch of kids who realized that their homework assignment was due tomorrow, and they were going to need to start collaborating now to get it finished…but no one wanted to actually do it.

“I don’t know, man,” one of the Valiants said. “That’s a lot of bodies to figure out how to hide.”

“Well, that’s why I have a house in fucking Juarez,” Mickey snapped. “You think I snatched this shit up because of the property value? No, son. We could sell these fuckers organ by organ and never get caught. Not here.”

I was seriously so tired of the bitchy bickering, I was about to tell them to just fucking do it, either put me out of my misery or get me a beer, when it seemed that one Valiant had the same exact notion. “I’m going to the kitchen for a brew,” he muttered. “Anybody want one?”

The Valiants drifted in and out of the kitchen for the next few minutes, everyone chugging beers in shifts while one would stay behind and watch the rest of us sit on our knees, tied up, with our backs to the basement stairwell. It wasn’t until all of them had regrouped in the den, each with a cold beer (their seconds, thirds, and fourths), and someone had flipped on the damn television (porn, naturally—I couldn’t see it, but I could hear the high-pitched, theatrical and repetitive whinnying), when I felt a tug at the ropes biting into my wrists and knew, without averting my eyes from the couch full of blazed Valiants (someone had whipped out a glass-blown bowl to pass around, packed to the brim with a combination of marijuana and cocaine), that Isabelle had braved the stairs and crept silently into the living room, using the hedge of Hell's Ransom bodies as a shield from view.

I wanted desperately to turn around—to ask her if she was okay, to tell her to find Jade and go—but I knew that to do so would be the death of us all. There was the light sound of a blade scraping, and I felt the bonds come loose on my wrists. I held my arms behind my back as if nothing had happened. I shared a sideways glance with Juan and determined, by the crest of a little lavender-and-teal-dyed head, that Jade had been loosed, and she was working at Juan’s bonds. Thankfully, both girls were much smaller than any of us, and wouldn’t run the risk of being seen unless someone got up from the couch and came around to the back of us. Which seemed increasingly unlikely. It was almost like they’d forgotten entirely—and their weapons were not at the ready any longer. There was one gun on the table…the rest had holstered their arms.

I felt a steel heaviness laid into my palm. A Gat. Beyonce. Isabelle had disarmed herself and transferred the piece to me. That was a lot of responsibility…but it would probably shock the Valiants long enough to allow the untied Hell's Ransom brothers to get to their weapons stash and reclaim their firearms.

I shared a tense sideways glance with Juan. Our next steps would be crucial ones.

And, to be totally honest, I really wanted to shoot Alex. If I shot Alex, it would throw the Valiants into an even wilder state of alarm. Not to mention the personal appeal of pegging Alex Cantrell with a bullet. I couldn’t think of a son of a bitch who deserved it more—except Mickey Dannell.

But Mickey had never kidnapped Isabelle and tied her down to a cot. Mickey had never held a gun to Isabelle’s head…twice.

Whipping Beyonce forward, I had the first shot—and the second shot—fired into Alex’s shoulder and knee before the Valiants could even react. It was an incredibly satisfying sight, to see his face squeezed and engorged with blood, to hear the cry of pain struggling its way out of his closing throat. He collapsed to one side, and the Valiants sprang up and went for their holsters, but it was already too late. I kicked the table between us, sending half a dozen empty and half-empty beer cans flying into the air (as well as two guns and a bag of drugs), and serving the Hell's Ransom brothers as a shield against the impending fire we would take.

I dove behind the overturned table, and saw Juan lunge for the stack of discarded firearms to grab his own piece. Nacho and Woody scrambled for the guns which had fallen to the floor in all the commotion, arming themselves with dirty Valiant handguns. The wood of the table splintered and some of its chunks flew into the air like shrapnel. I ducked to the side of the table and squeezed off few bullets in the general direction of the couch, which had also been overturned.

The sound of Juan crying out distracted me from the exchange of fire, and he collapsed behind the overturned table again, grasping his arm. “You all right?” I cried, diving around the table to send another few bullets into the Valiant.

“It ain’t that bad,” Juan cringed. “Just my arm, man.”

The chorus of cries from the overturned couch were louder and more anguished than Juan’s, so I figured we were still ahead—

Jade crawled next to Juan and pulled his shirt up to examine the wound.

“Just a flesh wound,” she announced.

“Jade!” I cried, sharp relief swelling in my chest.

“Sup bro,” Jade breathed. She winked. “Your girlfriend’s all right.”

“Here, man!” Drake shoved another gun into my hands. “It’s a Valiant piece, but dammit, it still fires!”

Our hail of bullets moved through the living room until the sound died down, and there was nothing else. Just a couch, and a rain of fluff, and the groans of Valiant bikers. Drake, Nacho, Woody and I jumped over the destroyed table with the same lengths of rope that Jade had untied from our wrists, the same lengths of rope that Isabelle had sliced in half. The Valiant and Mickey were no threat, as the couch had served as less of a shield than the table had, and it was easy to pull their slack, wounded limbs into position and tie them up. They cried out, but we ignored them. “You did this to yourself,” Nacho reminded Mickey.

“We’re parked at the dumpsters on the corner,” I informed Jade. “You want a ride?”

“Fuck to the yes,” Jade groaned. “Let’s get the hell out of this dump.” With a swift kick to Mickey’s side, she called over her shoulder, “Maybe we’ll call you pricks an ambulance…if you’re lucky.”

J
ade wedged
herself onto the back of Ash’s new bike, and gave us directions to a safe house where we could stay until everything settled down. Her cousins were out-of-town for the rest of the summer, and they lived in a nice cozy rancher outfitted with all the technological bells and whistles of a maximum security prison. “Huh,” Ash murmured as we entered the foyer—after Jade unlatched about a dozen different locks of varying complexity on the front door. “Guess it runs in the family. Why didn’t you just stay here?”

“Yeah, that’s glamorous as shit,” Jade agreed sarcastically, “shacking up with your cousin and his wife and their new baby. Man, nobody wants my ass around their kids until my name gets cleared,” she reminded him. “I’m sure you know what that shit is like.”

Ash cleared his throat and cast his eyes toward me uncomfortably. “I guess you’re right,” he admitted. “Speaking of that…” He collapsed onto the nearest chair and looked between Jade and I. “I saw the condition those sons of bitches left your apartment in. I guess, uh, they were probably looking for that evidence you said you had for me…and I guess they got it.” He grimaced, anticipating the worst.

I felt heartsick at the thought. I hadn’t suspected that Ash had been the reason someone had ransacked Jade’s place; from the looks of this city, and what I knew about Jade, it seemed just as likely that some other crime or criminal had been the cause of the break-in. But maybe that had just been wishful thinking, because I didn’t want to confront the reality that Jade wouldn’t be able to help Ash anymore. That all of this was for nothing. That Ash could never leave Mexico and return to the United States, or live a normal life, with a normal girlfriend and a normal family, ever again.

“Maybe they did get it,” Jade confessed, her eyes never losing their optimistic shine. “I won’t know until we get back there. It was on my computer, so it depends on whether or not that bitch is total dust, now, or if they may have left some of its parts intact—I’d downloaded security footage from the night of the murder.”

“From…the…alley?” Ash asked.

“Nah, man, from BBU, the night of the murder,” Jade reminded him. “Looks like your ass forgot…and I’m sure you didn’t save any receipts or tickets or stamps or anything…and none of that would hold up in court, anyway. But you know what does hold up in court? Footage.”

“What is BBU?” I interrupted, feeling lost between the two of them.

“Ahem.” Ash refused to meet my eyes. “Bad Bitches United.”

“The club he was at,” Jade went on.

I surveyed Ash with amusement. “And you wondered why you weren’t meeting anybody worth taking home to Mom,” I murmured knowingly.

“Shh,” Ash replied, smiling at me. Then he turned back to Jade and regained his more serious composure. “Look, girl, I hate to tell you this, but your place was destroyed, and I mean, including the electronics. It was nothing but gears and screws all over the floor. Whatever, wherever you had that footage…” He winced. “I’m pretty sure it’s gone now—and I’m fucked, fucked, fucked.” He reached over and took my hand, giving it a squeeze. I smiled back at him appreciatively. I didn’t care if he did end up at Florence ADX for God knew how long. I’d wait for him.

“But listen, dog,” Jade went on, still grinning, “that ain’t all. Mickey Dannell, did he ever strike you as the brightest bulb?”

Ash gave Jade an incredulous look. “Not even remotely,” he answered.

“Exactly. So, he kidnapped me, right. Just blew holes through every lock on the door, blah, blah, blah, a total simpleton, and snatched me up, gagged me, tied me, blah, blah, blah, but he didn’t think to…ya know…frisk me?” Her grin widened. “And I had my cell phone still. I figured I’d be able to use it, eventually, to call for help…but y’all showed up before I even needed to take it that far. However, phones, being the handy devices they are, come with all kinds of apps…like, say, voice recording.”

“Oh, my god,” Ash breathed. “Did you get a confession out of him?”

Jade extracted the cell phone that was still in her pocket and pulled up an audio file. “You tell me,” she said, tapping the play button.

“…
Hated that uppity son of a bitch,” Mickey’s now-familiar voice came snarling over the audio. “Not Ash, really; don’t get your panties in a wad over that pretty boy. For everything he got, he was a screw-up, and I can’t hate on a screw-up, man; I feel it. But Dom? Fucking Dom? God damn, man, it was enough to make me want out. So I’m out for drinks and run into Cantrell… Cantrell is a good guy, you know that? He’s smart. Nobody gives him enough credit for how smart he is, just like me. Nobody gives him enough credit...
”

Ash rolled his eyes. “Damn, man, only Mickey would think Alex Cantrell was smart,” he muttered.

I grinned and nudged him affectionately.

“…
And Alex had his own issues with Wayne, turned out, just like me and Dom…he wanted to move up in the Valiants, wanted some more freedom, and we started talking about making a deal. Maybe we could help each other out. He could get rid of Wayne, take over the Valiants, and let me in…and I could pin the murder on Dom—but Dom was too secure, you know. It was too hard to get to him and plant anything…but Ash was letting it all hang out most of the time. It was easy to slip the evidence into his shit. He didn’t even notice, his head was all over the place, nothing like Dom. And, you know, it worked as revenge on Dom, in the end. It was his little brother, after all…
”

Ash’s jaw clenched. “It,” he reiterated. “Like I’m not even a goddamn person. Like he wasn’t ruining my life, just because he wanted out of Hell's Ransom. All he had to do was go!”

“Focus, babe,” Jade chirped. “This is time-stamped, with video. The courts will consider it. They have to.”

I
zzy
and I crossed the border back into the States the very next morning. We knew there was no time to lose, although I had to admit that it went against every instinctive fiber in my body to submit myself to the law again. It felt wrong. Still, Izz insisted that it was the only way, and it would only be temporary.

“Shame it’s such a beautiful morning,” I murmured as we idled at border patrol, awaiting our turn at the giant booth. We’d taken off our helmets and were very slowly creeping toward the front of the line, my blood pressure ticking up another ten points for every foot. Because this time…we were going to use our real identification. No more Rey and Carmichael. Carter and Turner, now.

“You just think that it’s such a beautiful morning because we got to bang under a fancy mirror ceiling last night,” Izzy chided, digging her chin lovingly into my shoulder and cuddling against my back, her arms bound tight around my midsection.

“Maybe,” I allowed. Jade had taken her cousin’s bedroom…and we’d taken the guest room…and there had been another room, which didn’t have anything in it—except a Jacuzzi. All in all, it was a grand evening. Not at all the way I would have imagined that a standoff with the Valiant might end. “But consider the possibility that we are traveling beneath an objectively beautiful sky this morning.”

We looked up together into the pale blue sky, laced in pearlescent clouds and hazy mid-morning light.

“Maybe,” Isabelle parroted, smiling at me knowingly. “Maybe.”

We reached the booth, and a border patrol officer asked us for our identification. Isabelle handed over her real license, and the woman behind the desk entered the information and then stared at Isabelle with a kind of wide-eyed, panicked face.

“I don’t have any ID on me,” I reluctantly explained. “It was confiscated from me when I was taken into custody by the Colorado state police.”

The woman didn’t even say anything; she just rushed off and, within minutes, we were surrounded by the bright lights and soothing sirens of border patrol.

I sighed. “Shit.”

Izzy took my hand and gave it a strong squeeze. “We knew we would have to do this,” she reminded me. “Don’t worry… I have Jade’s audio video file. It won’t last for long. I’ve got Carson’s number, too. I’ll give her a call. You’ll still be in holding by the time she gets to you; I’m sure she’s still in Las Cruces, or thereabouts. Even if she’s not…this could be a definitive case for her career, you know. It’s kind of a big deal, when your partner drugs you to steal your perp, and then new evidence comes into your hands, showing he was framed from the beginning.”

“Perp?” I wondered dotingly.

Isabelle blushed. “I used to watch a lot of crime dramas,” she explained.

Border patrol officers circled our vehicle, and I grimaced again, hoping that Izz would be okay, that the bike would be okay, and that all the other motorists were enjoying the goddamn show.

“If I don’t see you again,” I said, twisting to face Isabelle on the seat, “I love you, okay?”

Isabelle touched my face, and the vague commands of border patrol—something about hands in the air, blah, blah, blah, as Jade would say—they all faded away into oblivion.

“You will see me again, crazy,” Isabelle promised. “Good luck getting rid of me.”

She placed her palms on either side of my face and pulled my lips to hers, kissing me fully and passionately on the mouth. I wrapped my arms around her, and I’m sure the people behind us in line enjoyed that part, too. Not only was the biker in front of them being surrounded by border patrol, flourishing their guns, but then he’d given his babe one last scorching kiss.

This was my life, and I was completely lost in Isabelle Turner. Those sirens could’ve just been background music, as far as I was concerned. I cradled her firmly in my arms and, when we finally separated for breath, her dazed hazel eyes focused slowly on mine. “You’ve got to go,” she whispered. “I love you too.”

I stood off the bike and extended my hands into the air. Border patrol swarmed between us, a flood of guns and helmets and shouts and uniforms, but it all passed in a wash. The only thing I could see, still, were Isabelle’s warm hazel eyes, trained sadly on mine, as I was handcuffed and pulled away from her.