Bad Boy Criminal: The Novel (6 page)

“
W
ell
, if you do see anything suspicious,” Agent Harrison had prompted me, offering a thick white paper card between his fingers, “don’t hesitate to contact this tip line. Have a good evening, miss.”

I’d numbly taken the card and closed the door, silently thanking the heavens that Bill hadn’t been home when the FBI had come knocking, looking for Ashton Carter. Their truck pulled into the driveway less than half an hour later.

I’d been in the kitchen when they arrived, berating myself for my terrible instincts. What woman in her right mind lies to government agents in favor of the convicted felon she happens to be harboring? Convicted
for murder?
What had I been thinking? What if, when Hope had stumbled onto him the other night, he’d drawn a weapon and killed her, too? How
dangerous
had it been for me to take him in? And I’d
known
it, too. I’d been willing to risk it. That was all. I’d known that there was no sense in allowing a man with a bullet wound and a terrible cover story—who refused to go to the hospital—to stay in the house…but I had wanted to believe him so ardently. Why?

Was my gut on point this time, or was it just his rich emerald eyes? Not to mention the colorful mural of tattoos spanning his chiseled torso.

Dammit. I wanted to believe that Ashton was simply trustworthy, and he was lucky enough to be my type, which made me so weak and foolish—

“You two are awfully quiet,” Hope suddenly interjected, drawing me from my self-immolation. “Feels like somebody died right before dinner.”

Ironic,
I thought caustically. Agent Harrison had mentioned the name of the man Ashton supposedly murdered. Jared Something… It was all still a blur.

“Izz? Is everything all right?” Hope interjected.

“My name is Isabelle,” I reminded her sharply.

The past was still a tender subject for me, even though I’d been living on Turner Dairyfarm, the adopted daughter of Bill and Hope Turner, for over two years now. Izz and Izzy had been the loving monikers given me by my old friends—gun runners, dope pushers, and the like—back in my run-down, broke-ass home city. Conscious of this, Bill and Hope had made a regular effort to refer to me as “Isabelle” alone. Until now.

Ashton’s presence seemed to have shaken the memory of my old nickname loose.

“Sorry, honey,” Hope murmured, her eyes trained on her pasta. “I didn’t mean anything by it. You know that.”

But did I?

My eyes shifted to Ashton and hesitated there. I caught the look on his face, and the way he continually seemed to be trying to shrug something off his shoulder that just wouldn’t go. I wondered if he needed some more Doxycycline. As he moved, his face pinched uncomfortably.

Hope stood from the table and went to the old record player in the corner of the room. Unlike many record players today, hers had yet to develop its film of dust. Hope had a strict side, and she could be very formal about business, but she also loved life. She loved hot, homemade food—preparing it, or just eating it—and she loved tending to the animals and the earth, and she loved the clear, almost organic sound of a good vinyl under the needle. Her body was worn and ragged now from a lifetime of deeply and honestly living through it.

As the finger of the record player dropped into the grooves of the black disc, a mournful and gentle jazz number began to play. A rich female voice accompanied the instruments, relating the tale of her last kiss with her first love, who had then gone off to a war from whence he had not returned. It was one of Hope’s favorites, betraying her well-hidden romantic side.

“Come dance with me, Bill,” Hope coaxed. She let down her thick silver hair and shook it out, winking at him. For just a flash, I saw her as a girl again. “This ain’t a mausoleum, you know.”

Dragging her reluctant husband to his feet, Bill and Hope joined each other, framed by the dark window peering out into the world beyond, and their hands kissed together. They swayed to the swell of saxophone, and I observed how both Ashton and I fell away from their conscious minds. How the world fell away, and was filled with only the two for the space of the single song. How they shared in this slow dance like a slow burn, gently soldering them together piece by piece.

“Hey,” Ashton’s husky whisper called me from my unabashed staring at the older couple. My eyes broke away and turned to find him standing, his hand stretched out to me. “Come on.”

I blushed and grasped his hand.
Am I so obvious?
He pulled me to my feet, and I saw him wince for the third time, but I let it slide. He was a grown man; he didn’t need to be mothered.

His arms came up around me and drew me further from the table, so that we, too, could sway without bumping into any chairs. We shuffled in a vague circle, and Bill and Hope fell away; the cooling dinner on the table fell away; even the stoic and somber Agent Harrison fell away. For a moment, Ash smiled down at me, soft and tender, and I felt a fragile wall rise around us, encapsulating our dance from the invasion of reality. For a moment, we became Bill and Hope…

But, when my eyes tilted to the older couple for confirmation, I saw their bubble wasn’t as impenetrable as I thought. We had popped their bubble by joining them in the dance, and now, they both stared at us with sour glares of disapproval, as if we weren’t allowed to dance.

And their stares made me question my decision-making. They were staring at us as if I was dancing with a—a murderer.

God damn it, then why did I like him so much?

Was I just the worst judge of character in the world?

Was my alarm system so poorly wired that the only man to seriously attract me in over two years just
had to be
an escaped felon?

Glancing back to Ashton, I saw that he had not joined me in scrutinizing Bill and Hope. His eyes were still trained, still tender, on me.

“Hey,” I said breathlessly. I kept my voice low, certain that Bill and Hope would be eager to reprimand any gesture of goodwill at this point. “Do you need some more Doxycycline? You seem…to be…in pain.” I hesitated, but forged onward, “Maybe we shouldn’t be dancing with each other quite yet.”

“It does hurt a little,” Ash answered. “But I’ll be all right.” He smiled down at me in consolation, but even the smile was pained. His emerald eyes fluctuated with a glimmer of remorse. “You’re right,” he allowed. “I’d better go rest.” He stooped to skim my cheek with his lips, but the kiss didn’t quite connect, and all I felt was a small rush of air on my face. “Thank you for the dance. It was…nice.”

His arms left me, and the song ended; another one abruptly trumpeted through the speaker, this one fast and abrasive and something about speakeasies and gangsters. Hope went to the record player to select something else, but it didn’t matter to me. I wasn’t going to dance again, was I? No. I was just standing there. In the middle of the dining room. Alone. Staring after the doorway through which Ash had passed. Feeling like such a fool.

“I’ll go check on him,” Bill offered, stepping past me and through the dining room door.

I
ducked
out of the farmhouse altogether, praying that the sound of the screen door shutting behind me was too quiet to alert Izz. The last thing I needed was to explain to her why I was hurriedly packing all my things. I’d been on the fence about staying one more night—almost entirely because I wanted to get some use out of these condoms before bailing on Boulder—but Bill made up my mind for me by shoving a wad of ten twenties into my hand, and clapping me once on my good shoulder. “Good luck, kid,” he’d bade me, though I was somehow certain he did not mean it.

Most of my things were still out in the shed. When Hope had awoken me from my slumber on the cot, everything had happened so quickly and with such shock—the rifle pointed at me, Izzy’s terrified screams, Hope’s unexpected charity to offer the guest room—I’d forgotten completely about my jacket, my wallet, and, most importantly, my lock pick. I was certain that would come in handy.

I threw on the jacket, jammed the almost completely useless wallet into my pocket, and wondered if I should leave on foot…or go ahead and begin the inevitable string of auto thefts on which this bolt for the border would subsist. Starting with one of the Turner vehicles.

Isabelle flashed through my mind, her gaze darkened with heartbreak, but I shoved it away just as quickly. I didn’t have the time, and I didn’t have the energy, to worry about hurt feelings, especially of some girl I didn’t even know. “We only kissed twice,” I grumbled, trying to convince myself that she meant nothing, as I stepped out of the rescue shed.

In the pasture over my right shoulder, Rosie mooed plaintively, as if reprimanding my pragmatic judgments.

“Shut up, Rosie,” I muttered, not looking back.

I was halfway between Bill’s truck and the rescue shed when a flash of farmhouse light spilled into the yard for a moment…and then, I heard the clatter of a screen door slam.

Dammit.

“Go back inside, Izzy,” I commanded Isabelle firmly. I was running out of time, and she didn’t need to see this. The few moments we had had together illustrated for me how she had been heartbroken before. She must have had some scar tissue on her heart, even if Bill seemed to think she was still a porcelain doll. The last thing she needed was to watch me as I did exactly what she knew was coming. It would be better for her if she just heard the engine rev, and went on ahead and called the police like I knew she would. I’d at least get a head start that way.

“I just have one question,” Isabelle said, her voice oddly tight and too loud. She was upset. Grimacing, blinking slowly, I turned to face her silhouette. Confrontation radiated off her like summer heat. “Did you do it?” she snapped.

Shit.

My shoulders sagged and my eyelids lowered with exhaustion.

“Do what?” I asked, certain that we both knew the answer to that question.

“Did you kill that man,” Isabelle answered me. Her eyes gleamed hotly in the moonlight, almost as reflective as a cat’s eyes.

I sighed. “Izz…I’ll tell you, like I told the cops, and the jury, and my lawyer,” I muttered. “And you’ll believe me just as much as their asses did. But…no. I did not kill Jared Wayne.”

Isabelle hesitated, and then drifted a step closer to me. Didn’t she know that I was a convicted killer, no matter what I said? Didn’t she think that stepping closer to me might be dangerous? But then again, how long had she known who I was? Had she known about Jared when I’d pulled her into my arms for a slow dance?

“Then why do they say you did,” she whispered up to me, taking another step closer.

Did she actually
trust
me? Why did she continue to whisper to me, when anyone else would have shrieked and ran inside for the phone?

“It was a set-up,” I whispered back. I was too tired to fight. “They say I was at that bar, and in that alleyway, and the cops, they found the gun on me, but—babe—you’d be surprised. You ever ended up in court?”

Her face was too dark to read, but I thought I saw the ghost of a smile.

“You’d be surprised,” she retorted.

Damn, I liked her spunk. She was sweet and spicy together: mango habanero.

But it didn’t matter, I told myself again.

“They didn’t try too hard to gather evidence before they convicted me to a goddamn murder sentence,” I hissed, forgetting her sweetness as my own bitterness surged up again. “All they needed was a ‘witness’, a ballistics match, and they felt like they had enough to finish me. They were only halfway looking for answers in the first place. Getting a guy like me off the streets… They figured it was a win-win, even if I might have been innocent. Case closed.”

There was a pause as Isabelle took all this in—but every second she paused, I was counting.

“So, you’re just going to keep running and running and running?” she asked me.

I shook my head, but then nodded. “Running to the border,” I explained. “Running to Juarez.”

She paused again, but god dammit, the clock was ticking. If she knew that I was wanted for murder, how long would it be until Hope and Bill knew? I was somehow certain they wouldn’t be as gentle and curious regarding my incarceration. I’d probably find myself at the tip of Bill’s barrel again.

“What’s in Juarez?” Izzy asked. She took another step closer. Now, she was close enough to touch me. I was close enough to touch her.

What was she playing at?

Could she really be dumb enough to think I was worth the risk?

“Evidence,” I answered, sucking my lower lip into my mouth. It was my poker tell, too. “My buddy, Jade. The girl who’s a friend—she says she got a hold of something. She promised when I went in. Promised to get me acquitted.”

“And you just have to go all the way to Juarez to see her,” Izz went on doubtfully. “You’ll forgive me for saying that it doesn’t sound
crazy
smart.”

“Yeah, well. Story of my life, Izz. I don’t exactly have a plethora of options. Jade is kind of my last hope.”

“If she’s got your back to the
N
th degree, why can’t she just come here?”

“Well, babe, Jade is kind of…wanted. By the FBI. And the NSA. And the CIA. And the DEA.”

“Sounds like you two have a lot in common,” she murmured jealously.

At this, I cracked a wry smile. The women in my life had always been jealous of Jade—until they eventually realized that she was a ravenous lesbian. “Yeah, man, that’s a true story. So, before I can get to her, I’m going to need a few things.”

“Oh? Like what? A fake ID? A sticky mustache?” Izz asked, her voice hard and sharp.

“It’s not that simple, but yeah, basically. I need to get a new identity. Ashton Carter hasn’t really been working out so hot as of late.”

A
s I peered
up at Ash’s shadowed face, the bubbling pot of my brain frothed over. Convicted of murder, but swears he’s innocent… Has some female friend who “promised” to get him acquitted, says she has evidence in Juarez, but she’s wanted too… Needs an entire new identity before he can cross the border… Agent Harrison and Agent Carson, knocking on my door… Bill and Hope’s sour, judgmental faces as they peered over at him… The rescue shed where I’d sewn him up just like one of a hundred wounded animals in the past two years…

“You’ll never make it by yourself,” I told him.

I didn’t want to be a downer, but Boulder was already being canvassed by the FBI. Ashton didn’t exactly have a forgettable face, either. He was being reported on TV. He needed more than just a fake ID and some woman in Juarez who said she could clear his name. He needed me. He needed me now, just like he’d needed me after he’d been shot in the shoulder…

“You weren’t really shot by an out-of-season hunter, were you?” I asked suddenly, although I had known the truth, deep down, for almost two days now. “You weren’t really chasing some wounded deer, either.”

My eyes hardened as I beheld him. We had a natural and immediate chemistry; I’d give him that. There was something unspoken between us. We were kindred spirits, both wild and ruined but whole-hearted and, deep down, aching for another chance. In spite of all these things, I had my doubts in him. He’d already been caught in so many lies. He didn’t want to go to the hospital because he had no
insurance?
Yeah, right.

“What would you have done if I’d told you the truth, straight from the jump?” Ashton wondered. “If I’d told you that I’d been shot by a warden for fleeing a transit vehicle on the interstate?”

I exhaled, long and low. He had a point. “I guess I would’ve turned you in,” I confessed. And if I would do it—so would anyone else. He needed a companion. A go-between. Someone who could represent him to the motel clerks and the gas station attendants between Boulder, Colorado and Juarez, Mexico. There were lots of stops on the way. Lots of hold-ups. “You need someone to come with you,” I went on.

“And I suppose that someone’s got to be you?”

I could hardly see Ashton’s face in the darkness, but his voice sounded like he was grinning.

“Well, it’s got to be someone,” I flared defensively. “Who else is going to protect your ass while you undertake this brilliant ten-hour road trip on fucking I-25?”

“Can’t think of anyone better, shortcake.” He was still grinning, the cocky bastard. “You must be bored as hell on Turner Dairyfarm to risk a shoot-out with this son of a bitch here.”

“No one is going to shoot me, Ashton,” I informed him with a low, conspiratorial voice. “From a distance, I’m going to look like a hostage.”

“God damn, girl, because that’s just what I need, another five years—”

“No one will know the truth until it’s too late, and you’re acquitted,” I hissed. “Then, I can tell the world that I was always there for you, not because of you.”

Ashton paused for a long time before finally responding to the notion, of which I was strangely proud.

“We’re going to have to take your dad’s truck.”

We?

“Have to?” I clarified. I hated the thought of robbing my adoptive parents as I fled the country with a known felon. Their little hearts would just shatter.

“I’m out of options here,” Ashton answered. “You know that. I mean, you have to know that, babe, before we go anywhere together. It’s called ride or die, not ride for a while, and then change your mind and agree to sell me out to the feds for a reduced sentence.”

“
Reduced sentence?
”

“Izz… Harboring a fugitive? Aiding and abetting a felon? Accomplice?” He hesitated, then went on, “Grand theft auto?” Another beat, another crime I’d have to commit for him: “Fraud?”

“I’m not going to ride for a little while, and then bail,” I snapped, making the decision as suddenly and completely as I’d ever made any decision. “We can take Bill’s truck.” I just couldn’t bear to call him Dad, and know I was plotting to steal his car with Ashton. At the same time, I knew Ashton was right: we had to do it. And I believed in him innately. He was no killer. He could get acquitted—with a little help from his friend… No… With a little help from his friends. Jade. And me.

“Just let me go do one thing first,” I asked of him. “I’ll grab some stuff and be right back. This will be much better than just stealing the truck. This way . . . They’ll think I just went into town or something. It’ll buy us a few hours. Okay?”

Ash paused before he answered, and his hesitation was all the answer I needed. “Okay,” he said finally.

“I’ll be right back!” I hissed, rushing into the rescue shed and grabbing Blue Jail’s cage.

It’d been two days since I’d last checked his splint. He was probably ready to fly.

And weren’t we all.

I snatched up the cage and headed out the back of the rescue shed with it, alongside the pasture and out into the thickening brush. Blue Jail, excited by the sudden motion, awoke rapidly and began to chirp, though he still could not move with the bandage on his wing.

“I think it’s time, little bird,” I whispered, sliding the door to the cage open and fishing him out.

I unraveled the bandage and Blue Jail’s wings immediately pounded at the air, desperate for release.

With a sympathetic smile, my hands came away from him, and Blue Jail tore off into the sky, disappearing almost as quickly.

“Good luck, little Jail,” I called to him under my breath, returning to the rescue shed for my backpack and some supplies.

Spotting a pen and a pad of paper on the workbench, I tore off the most recently used sheet—some simple equations meant to measure Blue Jail’s dosage of Doxycycline—and leaving behind a blank sheet. I put the pen down onto the first line and just let my mind carry it the rest of the way.

I knew I should’ve been sad, or scared, or maybe I shouldn’t have been leaving with him at all. But goddamn, I wanted to. Excitement sang to the tips of my fingers as I scrawled out my farewell letter on the pad.