Bad Boy Criminal: The Novel (3 page)

I
couldn’t decide
if I was relieved or disappointed to see her go.

On the one hand, she herself functioned like a painkiller. Those thoughtful hazel eyes; the way her cheek naturally curved upward, as if smiling was just part of her genetic makeup; the way she had helped me when she didn’t need to—when I could feel her hesitancy to trust me. And Christ, she was right. I wouldn’t trust me, either. If I’d been anyone else, I could have seriously hurt her, or her family.

On the other hand, the past twenty-four hours had been a whirlwind, and I was grateful for the room to breathe again.

It had only been that morning that I’d been in a standard issue jumper, neon orange, shackled up in the back of a bus, on transfer to another penitentiary; this one would have security equipped to deal with scum like me, or so I’d been informed by the previous warden.

Then, an accident on the road. The prison transfer bus I was in, losing control and spinning into a ditch. My MC brothers surrounding it on their Harleys, with Dom, my real brother, front an center in a beaten down truck.

“We need Ash Carter, send him out,” my buddy Hawk bellowed.

Then a prospect climbed into the bus, a young kid I didn’t recognized. Pointing his gun at the guards, he pushed them out.

“Ash, get out of there,” Dom yelled.

Slowly, I rose, realizing what was happening, grinning from ear to ear like a birthday kid who’d just been presented with his favorite toy. My MC was breaking me out. My older brother was breaking me out. I knew he’d come through, but still… This was all a little overwhelming, yet there was not time to get all sentimental.

“Shit, bro,” I managed in a choked voice, extending my shackled hands in front of me. It’d been too long since my hands had been unbound in a field not surrounded by barbed wire fencing. “I’d hug you, but you know…” I trailed off.

I caught a sudden motion out of the corner of my eye and heard a scream—I could’ve sworn it was a woman—

“Dom, watch out!”

We dropped to the ground, and I saw Hawk slamming the butt of his handgun into the back of the shooting guard’s heads, knocking him to the ground.

I didn’t feel a thing. Just a warmth, an uncomfortable warmth, like a bee’s sting, and numbness, but that was all.

It was only when I tried to get up that I even realized I’d been actually shot. But it was okay, I kept telling myself. It was all going to be okay. It was a hell of a lot better than being in transit to a maximum security prison for something I didn’t fucking do, wasn’t it?

“Good news, I got the keys,” Big Red, one of my MC brothers, pronounced, throwing the keyring to us.

Dom unshackled me and looked at my wound, muttering “Shit!” under his breath.

“I’m a nursing student, let me help.”

There
was
a woman there. A cute one too. What the hell was she doing with my MC brothers? I was about to ask this, when the pain tore through me again and I almost barfed.

The girl gave Dom one of those looks, letting me know that she was head over heels into my brother, and I had to smile. Still, why did he bring a broad to a prison break gig?

She inspected my wound carefully and pronounced it a “simple flesh wound,” promising me and my brother that I’d survive.

Dom visibly relaxed at the news. “Let’s get him to the truck. Hand in there, little bro, I’ve got you,” he mumbled, helping me up into the cab.

Then we fled the scene, heading to Dom’s warehouse. There wasn’t much time. I was hardly any safer outside of that truck than in it, and I hated to think about where they would send me if I was caught again. More maximum than maximum? That would have to be ADX Florence, home to some of the most unsavory motherfuckers you’ve ever seen.

But the first step was just to get out of the orange jumper.

What time had that been, then?
I wondered, staring out of the rescue shed window; it was dark outside now. Isabelle must have been gone for the past hour, at least. I wondered what she was having for dinner, and if she’d really bring me some tonight. I thought of it melting in her mouth...

As soon as we were in the warehouse, I wanted to talk to Xander, my other brother and Dom’s twin.

Dom grudgingly handed me his cell. “He’s gonna meet up with us at the warehouse. He’s bringing some money for you, just to tide you over till we find a better hiding place.

I pushed Xander’s name on the display.

“Hey, big bro.” I smiled into the phone.

“Ash? Shit, Dom did break you out, huh? I thought he was half kidding when he told me of the plan.”

“Yeah. We’ll tell you all about it. Hey, he said you’d bring me some cash so I can disappear. I was just wondering when you were coming because I don’t feel like staying in the same place for long.”

That much was still true. It would probably be true for the rest of my life, wouldn’t it? Would I ever be able to settle down somewhere like Turner Dairyfarm? A real home, for the real family I might have someday? Would I ever be able to spend a sunset relaxing, instead of glancing out windows, into rear view mirrors?

Or was that all as much of a fantasy as a science fiction novel now?..

“Cops are going to be everywhere soon…and I need to get the fuck out of here,” I’d told Xander.

“Where are you?”

“Dom’s warehouse…the one used by the club.”

“Don’t you think the cops will look there?”

“That’s why we need you to hurry the fuck up.”

Xander wasn’t the kind of guy I would normally tell to “hurry the fuck up,” but he found the movement of the police motivation enough, and he arrived with a change of clothes for me and five hundred dollars in cash.

Only a few minutes later, Jade had called. What time had that been? I wondered at the moon. Could it have really been only, what, one o’clock? Two? The moon and I both knew the truth; it only takes one breath for the trajectory of your entire life to change. From jailbird to fugitive… It wasn’t a huge step up, but I’d take it.

Jade said she’d made good on her promise to dig deep and had discovered proof of my innocence. Her spider-like fingers, always blurring gracefully over some or other cryptic keyboard, were rat-tat-tatting in the background as we spoke. “It’s like the tattoo says: ‘These chains are strong, but so am I,’” she’d boasted. “But you’ve gotta come to me, man. You know that. I can’t travel, not with all those warrants after my ass.”

And that meant one thing and one thing only: road trip.

Road trip over the border. Juarez…Mexico, where Jade was currently in hiding. Ten hours, if we made good time.

In what car? With whose money? And which fucking identification?

I’d figure it out, I told my brothers. I’d already gotten them both with aiding and abetting—not that I had asked anyone to do that. I wasn’t looking to see them arrested with me. I would go alone. I would go alone, and I would figure it all out.

“You’ll need more money,” they’d said. “We’ll be back in a few hours.”

But I left on foot, with nothing but a bullet hole in my shoulder, a blade in my boot, and five hundred dollars, cash, in one pocket. I was probably still in shock at the time.

I
wondered
if Ash liked meatloaf. Even though we lived in one of the more liberal and northern states, Bill and Hope had a lot of pride in a lifestyle best described as “country.” They wouldn’t take too kindly to the suggestion that meat was murder.

As my lips drifted over my fork and pilfered a small bite from its tip, I only slightly relished the rich beef melting away on my tongue, salted and spiced to perfection. Normally, I spent the early minutes of dinner praising the chef, and would only lapse into thoughtful silence after expressing my irritation with every ornery creature on the farm.

But, on that particular night, only one ornery creature was on my mind.

My eyes tilted toward the window. It was too dark outside to see the yard; he’d be able to see me perfectly well, if he was looking. Not that it mattered. I didn’t even know the guy.

I forced my eyes away from the window.

I didn’t care if he liked meatloaf. He could eat or he could not eat. I’d left my inner-child behind a long time ago, and since then, I’d forgotten how boy-crazy she was.

But the story was a fake… I was certain of it…

Has anyone ever told you a story, and as hours go by, the more and more it falls apart?

If he’d been shot by a hunter, the wound would have been harder to stitch. If he’d been shot by a hunter, he would have wanted to report the incident to the police. And if he’d been shot by a hunter, the blood would have been fresher, unless he wandered in our woods for hours. That was possible. And, if he’d been shot by a hunter, I would have heard a gunshot, wouldn’t I? Maybe he was just one of those guys who didn’t like to turn people in. I was like that, too.

Except…the wound should still have been harder to stitch.

I couldn’t shrug off that one.

“Isabelle?” A soft touch on my shoulder drew me from staring hard at the blackened window to my left. I flinched and swung my eyes back to Bill…Dad.

I had to remind myself to call him Dad, still. And Hope, Mom. It was hard to train myself to call them the two things I’d grown up believing were almost fantasies.

“Isabelle, is anything the matter?” Bill asked. His large eyes, elegantly enfolded with wrinkles, seemed much older and wiser than his forty-seven years.

I smiled. “No—sorry,” I said. “How do you get your meatloaf so moist, Mom?” I asked, turning to Hope.

She, too, had always seemed much older than she really was. We had first met when she had only just turned fifty. Her hair was thick and long, but it had prematurely grayed, which she refused to attribute to genetics but to an abiding worry for each and every loved one she had (followed by the world at large). She wore glasses, but the eyes behind them were as sharp as a hawk’s.

“You know the answer to that,” Hope told me, her tone shrewd; she, too, was scrutinizing me. How had they come to learn all my tricks within only three and a half years? “You don’t include the egg whites.”

“Right.” I smiled and forced another forkful into my mouth. “I remember now.”

Even if Ash was a liar, I thought as I dutifully demolished the plate (it would be the only way to truly stifle this low-key interrogation), I couldn’t criticize the practice. I had enough skeletons crowding my closet, as unsavory as any skeletons of his. The strange places I had known. The terrible people. I was almost ineligible for adoption by the time I met the Turners. I’d been in jail a few times, then. The hospital, too. I was no stranger to begging someone not to call the police myself, was I?

I glanced at the black window again and decided to let it go, turning back to scrape together the last of my green beans and spear them, idly clearing the tray. I would bring him some leftover meatloaf after I did the dishes tonight. He would sleep, and in the morning, I would give him a ride into town. That would be it.

I stood, strangely saddened to see the outline of the next twenty-four hours before me.

“Are you done?” I asked, coming back into myself. “Can I take your plates?”

Hope and Bill glanced at each other. Something silent passed between them. They may have been fosters who didn’t find their daughter until later in life, but they had the sharpened instincts of any birth parent.

“Sure, honey,” Hope said. “All done.”

“Me, too,” Bill agreed. They both passed me their plates. “Say, Isabelle, you want me to brew us up some coffee?” he asked.

“No, thanks,” I said, not looking back at him after turning with my arms full of dishes. “I’m going to bed early tonight, I think.”

I didn’t need to look over my shoulder to see the look they were giving each other.

“It has been a long day,” Hope agreed after the pause. “I’m just going to go check on the chickens, and then, I think I’ll call it a night as well.”

I was just scooping the remainder of the meatloaf, still marinating in its own juices, from out of its pan and into a Tupperware container, the dish washer churning in the kitchen, when a yodel of shock punctured the air. It was absolutely Hope, and my heart seized, turning to ice beneath my ribs. I knew before having any evidence that she had found Ash—or had he found her? Should I have trusted a mysteriously wounded and unidentified man to stay on their property?

I bolted to the dark window, scouring the yard, but I couldn’t see her or him. Dammit! How could I have forgotten! The chicken coop was right next to the rescue shed!

Bill bolted past the dining room, his rifle at the ready. The front door flew open and I heard his boots clamber down the front steps.

“No!” I cried, vaulting after him. “Dad!”

M
y chest heaved
and my head spun and my wound, in spite of all the bird pills, was burning into me like the evil eye. I was sprawled shirtless on the dusty floor; thank God for the bandaging Isabelle had given me earlier. I must have fallen asleep…hadn’t meant to…

And then, my bleary eyes focused on an older woman with an indignant stance and a puckered mouth. “What the heck do you think you’re doing, boy?” she demanded, as if she was talking to a nephew or a neighbor’s kid. As if I was eight.

Glaring up at her, I wondered at how to get myself out of this situation. My sleep-addled brain had spilled out its memories of Isabelle, and I was alone in this hostile world. They’d want to call the cops. Old people always want to call the cops. She was unarmed, so that was good for now, but it meant nothing. The shed itself was full of weapons. I didn’t have a gun…but I did have a switchblade in my boot…

I frowned at my bare feet. When had I done that?

The door to the shed exploded inward with such force that its hinges relinquished their grip, and my mouth went dry. Another silver-haired avenger loomed before me now, and this one was pointing two thick barrels straight at my chest.

This was how I was going to die. I was going to be executed like broken-legged livestock, in a dilapidated shed somewhere in rural Colorado.

“Hope!” the man barked. “You all right?”

“Dad!” I heard a distant female voice pleading. “Dad, wait! DON’T SHOOT!”

The man lowered his rifle and turned to the approaching woman. Then, like fireworks, she came streaming and sparkling back into my mind. Isabelle Turner. Of course. My painkiller.

“This is all my fault,” she rambled, pushing past the couple with as much familiarity as any rebellious daughter. Had her legs been so damn gorgeous earlier, or was it just this angle? I rested on the floor again and gazed at her appreciatively as she spoke with them. Suddenly, I felt kind of lucky to be sprawled on my ass. “I met him—found him—earlier—in the woods—he’d been shot—and I brought him here—”

The older woman, Hope, turned her eyes on me, and I lurched up, tearing my eyes off of her daughter’s shapely thighs.

“He’s been shot?” she repeated breathlessly. There was an undertone of criticism there. “He’s been shot, and you don’t even know who he is? Oh…Isabelle.” She looked at Izzy with disappointed concern. Her expression reminded me of some kind of stuffed animal, its eyes glassy and fake with sweetness. How could Izz stand it?

If she was anything like me, she would be longing to break free.

Hope turned back to Isabelle. “We thought you were past all this,” she whispered.

Isabelle’s jaw dropped. “Mom! I didn’t—I don’t know this guy! He just
wandered
onto the property!” Now it was Isabelle’s eyes’ turn to be huge and watery. Except, when Isabelle gazed back at Hope with such sad eyes, hers looked real. “Don’t you believe me?”

Hope didn’t answer. It was the man who answered. “Of course we believe you, dumpling,” he said. He rested his gun against the frame of the shed door. “You just worry us. You put yourself in danger. That’s all.” His eyes shifted warily toward me. “What’s your name, kid?”

Jesus Christ, they were both going to talk to me like I was eight goddamn years old.

“Ash,” I said, my voice unusually sharp. I didn’t like people talking to me like this. “Ashton.”

“Well, Ashton, let me take a look-see at your arm there,” Hope said. She didn’t look any more amicable to me than she did a second ago, but at least she was civil. “Just want to inspect my daughter’s handiwork.” She offered a small smile of consolation to Izzy. “I didn’t mean to doubt you,” she whispered to her. “It is the right thing to do to help a man in need, even if he is a stranger.” Then she turned back to me. As she did so, her eyes shriveled up into lemons again. “You’d better stay in the main house with us,” she begrudged. “I can’t have your wounds getting infected on my property, now can I?”