Billionaire Misery (12 page)

Craig grinned. “I
am
watching.”

He was the most infuriating and tantalizing man she had ever met. “Blake Wilkes isn’t going to let us get away with this. It isn’t a joke or time for a fuck.” She stood and fixed her dress, reality settling back in as the afterglow dissolved. This had been a mistake. A big one. “There’s a coffee machine if you want coffee.”

“I could use a whiskey. And a smoke.” When she didn’t laugh, he cleared his throat. “A coffee would be great. Thanks.”

She busied herself making it. The penthouse came equipped with fancy cups and coffee service, something she was sure she could get used to if she had to.

They sat again, this time she sat on the sofa and he took the chair across from it. They didn’t talk. Jessie studied his face, and her heart ached as she realized she was memorizing it, trying to imprint it on her memory forever.

He was the right man, for the right place and time. But he was the son of a man she could never stop hunting, and she knew that she would never be able to look past that. Their life would never be happy, and she would always harbor some secret resentment, maybe hatred too. She would hurt him, and all because she couldn’t let go of what had been done so long ago. She sighed. “Secrets covered with the truth.”

Craig blinked at her. “What?”

“This, all of it. Me, you, this whole situation. All of us. We all learned how to keep everyone looking just at the surface, and we told each other just enough truth to make us seem like whole people.” Her throat closed and she took a long drink of the coffee, trying to clear it.

Craig held his coffee but didn’t drink it. “Is that what you really think? I never had any secrets until that man walked into my life. I was an open book.”

“Me too.” The words were a whisper.

Craig set his cup aside but he didn’t reach for her or get up to move closer. “Jessie, what would make it enough? If he was dead, would that be enough?”

Was he suggesting he would kill Blake Wilkes for her? Her face paled at the thought. “I don’t need you to kill him.” She could have killed the man tonight, told the DEA it was self-defense, but they’d talked her out of it.

Craig sat back. “Would it be enough?”

She shook her head. “No. Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t know how to let go of it all, Craig. I just don’t. I’ve spent exactly half my life plotting how to take him down. I don’t even remember what my life was like before he destroyed it.”

He leaned forward yet again, his hands between his outstretched legs. “Don’t you? You ride. I bet you didn’t learn that in foster.”

She smiled, a trembling little thing. “My dad used to put me on his bike when I was barely old enough to walk. My mom used to freak out; she was sure I was going to fall right off the side.” A grin bloomed and she started laughing. “I did fall off once. I fell asleep back there and he turned a corner, and I landed in some really prickly bushes. Dad didn’t notice I fell, but one of the other guys did. He hauled me out of the bushes and put me on the front of his bike, then chased Dad down. It was just a nice slow run about town that day, so it was easy to catch up to him.” She felt her eyes water at the images in her mind. “I remember, exactly, the look on his face when he looked over and saw me grinning and waving at him from another bike.” Her laughter was met with a smile from Craig.

Craig shook his head. “What did your mom say?”

She shook her head. “He never told her. She would have died. She loved my dad, but she was always afraid of the bikes. Sort of like Katie. She’d ride when she had to, and she was like a bear when it came to me and my dad. She would have died to protect us, but the idea of going fast on a bike was enough to send her to the rosary.”

“Catholic?”

She nodded, “My mom was, yeah. My dad was an atheist. He believed that all we can ever know is what we know right now. He thought if there was an afterlife it was made up of memories, and the only way to get enough of those to get him through an eternity of not having life was to live as fast and hard as he could, and to take as many memories as possible with him when he went.”

“That sounds like a good way to look at things,” Craig said. “I have to say I’m jealous.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “Why?”

“Because you grew up with someone who could teach you to ride who loved it. You had the gift of knowing what it was like to find that when you were a kid, and enjoy it.”

She looked down. The carpet was a thick plush pile that invited her to sink her now-bare toes into it, or make love right there on it. She pushed the thought aside. “You don’t...you don’t remember your parents at all?”

He shook his head. “No. They put me away, and I didn’t ever really know them. I’m sure if I thought long and hard I could distinguish between the boarding schools and the group homes, but I either can’t or I don’t want to try it.”

“I’m sorry.” The words tumbled out.

He shrugged. “Me too. I should have told Morgan. I should have told you. It came at the worst time of my life, and I was...I wanted it, you know? I wanted to be rich and powerful, and part of a family that was too. Hell, that’s every foster kid’s dream, isn’t it? That one day your parents are going to breeze in with this story of why they dumped you, and it’s always for your own good, and then whisk you out of there and into a giant shiny car, and take you home to a fancy mansion where you’ll be for the rest of your life.”

“That wasn’t exactly how it happened though,” she pointed out.

He shook his head. “Nope. He showed up when I was angry, and he knew exactly who’d sold Lisa that dope. That crew. He also wanted me to ride with him, in a figurative sense. I had no idea he was grooming me for a murder setup. I also was too stupid to know that all the things I was doing were to try to please him. In some sick and weird way, I started doing a lot of sales and so forth on my own, trying to prove to him that I was as good a drug-dealer as he was. And I had no idea how stupid that was because I had no idea how big the scope of what he does is. I also had no idea that that crew got the dope they sold to Lisa from him, and that he knew it was tainted and had it put out on the streets anyway. He snowed me. Fucking blindsided me.”

Jessie sighed, hating the pain on Craig’s face. “He did that to everyone. He’s one of the most powerful businessmen in the country, and nobody bothers to look past the suit and tie to the thug.”

“You know what’s funny? Nobody looked past the patches and the leather and the bikes to see what kind of men they’d just tossed in jail. You can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys just by their looks.”

“I know that,” she said waspishly. “You think I don’t?”

“No, I don’t.”

The pity on his face was too much for her.

They didn’t say anything else.

D
aylight came not soon enough. Morgan and Katie went to get Morgan’s bike, and then headed out of town toward a small motel on the highway. Morgan refused police protection for him and Katie, even when Jessie insisted. They left early, before any police arrived at the hotel. Craig wasn’t even sure where or when the cops would come. Jessie wouldn’t tell him anything.

He and Jessie took the car Morgan had left them, and they drove to Lisa’s old house. He and Jessie got their bikes too, and then he’d followed her to a crappy little storage unit place. He had no idea what Jessie wanted there at first, but as soon as she opened the locker door, he understood.

This was the base of her operations. It was clever, and devastatingly well-organized. He stared up at the walls, at the photos of him and his guys, of Nate. Of Wilkes. Everyone he knew and so many he didn’t. Craig shook his head. This wasn’t a storage unit. It was an office. A fucking huge one full of secrets. He asked, “How long have you been working this case, Jessie?” He felt sorry for her. He was pretty sure the woman he fell in love with didn’t even exist.

“Years.” Her voice was quiet and sad. “Years and years.”

He turned to her. She was staring at the walls with something like horror on her face, and there was something else there too. “Too long,” he stated simply. Like Lisa never being able to let go of wanting what she had lost, Jessie had done the same thing... just in a different way.

Jessie began pulling a few pictures down. “They’re coming. Help me, Craig.”

He shook his head. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

Her face was peaked and scared. “I can keep you out of this, maybe. I didn’t send in all my reports. They didn’t push me to do so; this was all way too sensitive for that. We can hide stuff. Or torch it all. Or...or something. Help me, Craig.” She turned to him with a pleading look in her eyes. Like a scared rabbit. Like Lisa.

He sighed. “Jessie, it’s too late for that.”

Sirens screamed, coming closer toward them. It sounded like they were right at the gates of the facility. Jessie stepped out of the locker, and he followed. She stared down the rows of industrial gray and hideous orange-painted buildings. “Go,” she whispered. “If you love me at all then go. Don’t make me arrest you, Craig.”

He stared at her. He couldn’t think of anything to say. He searched for words, and when he finally found them they were thick and strained with the force of the emotion behind them. “No. Don’t do it, Jessie. Just arrest me and forget about me.”

She shook her head. The sun gleamed in her raven-hued tresses and her eyes held his. “No! Go, Craig. Please just go!”

He took a step toward her, “Please don’t. If you love me, then don’t ask me to do that. I’ll get caught sooner or later, and I don’t mind going down now. I just can’t take you with me. Don’t throw it all away, Jessie.”

Tears tracked down her face. “Fuck, Craig! You don’t get to tell me what to do. Go, before I shoot you for being stupid.”

He chuckled. He didn’t doubt she’d shoot him again. It just made her that much more sexy and fucked up, like he was. “Shoot me then. I’m not letting you destroy your career. I’m also not letting you go renegade and end up in prison for it.”

Jessie looked into the building. The years of hard work hit her. How much had she given for this?

Too much.

She’d given up everything to take down Wilkes. While Craig admired her for that, and loved her, he had to wonder again when it would be enough—or if it would ever be enough. Even now she didn’t know how much she had let fall by the wayside in her quest for vengeance.

But he did. He understood. Six months, hell, six weeks ago, he would have been just as hell-bent on his own. But something had happened to him between the time he met her and right then.

He’d realized that the only thing revenge would net him was losing everything and everyone he cared about.

Did she finally understand the same thing?

Craig wanted to reach for her, to embrace her and hold her tightly, but he didn’t dare. She couldn’t spend her entire life being a fugitive just to be with him. He wouldn’t let her. Nor was he going to run. It was time to be responsible for his actions. Morgan and he had always stuck by a code. He had lost sight of that, and it was time to man up again. Orphan brother or not, he would live by that damn code.

He spoke quietly, “You have to do it, Jessie. You have to arrest me.”

She swallowed and whispered, “Fuck, Craig! Can’t you just go?”

“No. And you aren’t going either. I never thought I would regret anything, but I regret a hell of a lot. I regret the shit I pulled that got Morgan fucked up, and the others too. Even more than that, I regret that I hurt you, and that I put you in this position. I love you, and I’m not willing to see you go down for something this big. Give up everything you’ve worked for just to be with me?” He shook his head. “I’m not going to let that happen.”

“Damn it!” she said fiercely. “Why did I have to fucking fall in love with you?”

“Handcuff me, Jessie.”

She shook her head.

“Damn it, don’t make me cuff myself!” His shout was laden with rage and heartache. Shit! He wanted everything to be different. He wanted to be a better man. He wanted this to have worked out better. He wished she wasn’t a cop, and that they’d been able to start off with no lies between them.

He could see the police cruisers making their way toward Jessie’s unit. “If you don’t cuff me they’re going to shoot me. I’m not running and I’ve got a gun. Handcuff me.”

She wiped tears with the back of her hand and scoffed, “I thought you might be kinky.”

He roared laughter. In the midst of such awfulness she could still make him laugh. He held his hands behind him, the gun still tight in his fingers. Jessie pulled out her cuffs and moved behind him. Cold steel snapped around his wrists just as the first cars screeched onto the scene.

“I love you,” she whispered to his back, and then she took the gun from his hands.

The agents running toward them were shouting, but he heard nothing. His ears rang with the words she’d said to him.

She loved him.

He knew she loved him.

She’d been willing to go to jail or on the run, or both, for him. She’d been willing to blow it all just for him.

He’d never been shown that kind of love from a woman, and it hit him, hard, that what he had felt for Lisa hadn’t been love at all. It had been real, but it wasn’t love. It had been pity, and loyalty, but it hadn’t been love.

Two agents rushed toward him and pulled him away from her, hustling him toward a car. He didn’t resist but looked over his shoulder to see Jessie handing over the files, and a smile lifted his lips. She was beautiful. Undeniably, impossibly, beautiful and strong.

If he had to go down, and he was, he couldn’t think of anyone better to go down for.

J
essie’s heart broke as she watched Craig being stuffed into the back of a car. He’d go to prison, and he would never get out. She was partly to blame. She should have destroyed the files. She could have, or she could have omitted his name. Erased it long ago. She had done none of those things, even though she knew she was falling in love him.

She knew she was falling in love with him, but had been afraid she would have to give up her career, and the whole year that she’d put into the bloody and terrible investigation.