Billionaire Misery (2 page)

The entire state had a major drug problem, and crime rate was soaring daily. They had to get to the big men, the ones at the top, to really get a handle on it, and the only way to do so was to start in the middle. There, the biker crews were intermediate ground. They knew the lower-ranked dealers, and they bought from the higher-ranked dealers. It was the high-rolling dealers who would lead her to the real men in charge.

Not that she was learning anything about any of that right then.

Currently she, Nate, Katie, Craig, and the rest of Nate’s higher-ups were holed up in a small house on the outskirts of town, trying to figure out how to use the file on Wilkes to prove that Morgan and his Orphans Motorcycle Club hadn’t murdered that small and ragged crew that they were accused of killing.

Craig walked out of the living room. Katie watched him go then said, very softly, “Nate, I don’t know if I really want him here. I’m not sure that we can trust him.”

Jessie stayed silent while Nate spoke to Morgan’s girl. “You can’t trust anyone, Katie. First rule of life.”

Jessie sighed inwardly. She’d been with the crew for long months now and, while the arrests were piling up, she was less than happy about it. She admired Nate and his guys, a dangerous thing to do in her line of work, and she was often torn between the growing loyalty she felt for them and her job.

Craig came back and Katie said, “I need some air.”

Jessie considered her options. Going after Katie now and directing a few seemingly innocent questions at her wouldn’t raise any eyebrows, and it might give her something she could use. She stood and stretched hard as she moved beside Katie. “Yeah, me too.”

She didn’t miss the way Craig’s eyes went to her body, and stayed there. A flush of heat ran through her, leaving desire in its wake. Her heart beat faster, and her pulse raced as his eyes traveled across her face and then his gaze locked onto her, a challenge clearly visible within the hazel depths.

She turned away, reminding herself again that, no matter how hot he was, he was also a clear danger to her, and to everyone else he knew as well. He was the last guy she needed to get mixed up with.

Katie headed for the back door and Jessie followed. They stepped out onto the small rectangle of patio and grass, and Katie sighed, her shoulders slumping. “It’s been a long few days.”

Jessie’s sympathy stirred, but she squashed it immediately. Katie might very well be facing her own prison sentence for breaking into the Wilkes Corporation, and Jessie might be the one to have to arrest her for it.

That thought bothered her. If Blake Wilkes truly had had anything at all to do with the murders of those men, his wealth and position would probably protect him. The men who’d run Morgan off the road were still not talking, and they had no visible ties to Wilkes, but one of the state’s most powerful attorneys had shown up and posted their bail. That troubled Jessie, and it made having to arrest Katie for stealing that file and her involvement in all the rest of what the Orphans had done feel unfair.

But she wasn’t there to be fair. She was there to make cases.

Jessie inhaled a long, deep breath and let it out slowly. “Yeah, I don’t imagine tomorrow will be any shorter.”

Katie laughed ruefully. “No, probably not.”

“So how did you end up ditching your daddy and his crowd for one slightly dirtier and less prim and proper, anyway?”

Katie half smiled before she gave a tiny shrug. “I fell in love. Pretty simple I guess, at least on the surface.”

“Everything’s simple on the surface,” Jessie muttered as another pang of guilt went through her. “So...Craig...” She’d meant to ask a few pointed questions, ones that would lead her to something she could give to her bosses, but Katie broke in.

“It’s not all his fault! Nobody will admit that, though. The Orphans exiled him, but they’re still holding to their code. Maybe they just feel sorry for him. Hell, I felt sorry for him, even after he kidnapped me.”

Jessie considered what Katie said. “What’s that all about, this kidnapping? That makes me think this is all his fault.”

“It’s... it’s complicated.” Katie blew her bangs off her forehead. “I don’t even know if you would consider it a kidnapping. Yeah, he took me against my will, held a gun to me, but it was strange. He brought me here. It wasn’t an awful kidnapping, exactly. In fact, it was downright odd; he just wanted me out of Morgan’s house.” Katie seemed to be holding something back; Jessie just couldn’t figure out what it was. The whole situation seemed very odd. Katie continued, “It’s just...well, after Morgan told me about Lisa...” her voice trailed off.

A pang of jealousy shot through Jessie, startling her. She kept her voice neutral and asked, “Lisa?”

“She was in the foster system with Craig and Morgan. It’s a long story. Craig was crazy in love with her since they were kids. She OD’d last year, and he went a little wild. The guys sort of gave him a few passes because of it. This was her house, well, it was the house Craig bought for her.”

“They were married?” Again, a bolt of jealousy ripped through her.

“No, she didn’t...” Katie broke off. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. It isn’t my story to tell.”

She didn’t have to tell Jessie the rest of the story. Craig had been in love with a woman who hadn’t loved him back. Empathy flooded in. She knew that feeling all too well. It was the most painful feeling in the world.

Katie sighed and rubbed her temples. “So what made you want to be in a crew anyway?”

Jessie smiled. “My dad ran a crew in Florida.” She stopped smiling. The words hadn’t been ones she’d meant to say, and even though they were true, and part of her cover story, saying them always brought up memories she didn’t really want to have in her head. Or heart.

“You grew up like this?” Katie stared at her with wide puppy-dog eyes.

Jessie had to laugh. This girl was born and bred with big money. She was hard around the edges, something her life experiences had probably created, but a biker girl? Jessie had a hard time seeing it. She pictured Katie in a three-bedroom house, with white picket fence and kids running in the yard. “Yeah,” she said getting back to Katie’s question, “it isn’t so bad.”

Katie put a hand on her belly, a protective gesture that Jessie didn’t miss. Was she pregnant? Another pang of guilt. Katie was already on her case list. She could go to jail, and if she was having a kid... These were real people, not criminals outright. This undercover job was getting tougher and tougher to sort the black and white. Everything seemed to be turning gray.

The door behind them opened and Craig poked his head out. “Nate wants to talk to you, Katie.”

Katie gave her an apologetic smile, and left.

Craig came out and stood next to Jessie, so close she could feel the heat of his magnificent body. “Nice night,” he offered.

“Yeah.” She didn’t dare say anything else. Craig aroused not just passion in her, but rage as well. She had grown up in a crew, and she knew what loyalty looked like. And betrayal. Craig had betrayed his crew, and she knew what a betrayal like that could cost.

But was she any better? She rode with the OutKasts, and she was one of them, or at least as much as she could be, given her prospect status. She had every intention of betraying all of them.

Craig sighed. “So I guess we’ll just have to see how it all goes down tomorrow. It’s going to be interesting in that courtroom for sure.”

She blinked. “You’re going?”

He grinned. “Yup. No fuckin’ way I’d miss it. Morgan’s my brother.”

You were exiled, remember?
“You’re crazy as hell. They’ve probably got you on every cop’s desk. You know that, right?”

“I might have been stupid enough to get myself exiled and all that, but that doesn’t mean Morgan isn’t my brother. I need to be there.”

She studied his face and said, “You’re either incredibly gutsy or utterly stupid. I don’t know which.”

“Depends on who you ask, I guess.” His teeth gleamed in the darkness, and he turned his head to look back at the yard.

Jessie stared at the yard for a moment, the moon lighting it up with shades of bluish-gray. “Nice house you got here.” She knew she was digging, and that she might lose him, but she had to do it. She couldn’t stop herself. She had to know how deep his love for the woman who’d once lived there still ran, even as her head told her she was going too far, and to back off before she really did do something idiotic, like kiss those lush lips or lean a little closer just to feel his body press against hers. Just the thought of being closer to him made her shift to try to release the sexual tension building deep inside her.

“Yeah, it is.” His face closed like a fist. He turned and walked off, leaving her standing there alone, cursing herself for her stupidity.

Stars twinkled and winked overhead, and she fastened her eyes on them. She had to be careful, and she knew it. Katie had almost made her break cover once already. That handy cover story about being an escort would only hold so much water. It had held so far, thanks to the cooperation of a very scared madam there in the city, but it was tissue-thin, and she knew it.

She sighed. It had all made so much sense. Once.

She’d joined the DEA because her father had been killed by a rogue DEA agent who had infiltrated her father’s crew, and then shot him for a few hundred grand. That was old news, and now that part of her life story had helped her get into the OutKasts. They thought she hated cops, and in a way they were right.

She hated
dirty
cops, and she’d thought by joining up and being a good one, she could make a world of difference. So far she hadn’t made much of a difference. Being undercover with these bands of outlaws seemed the perfect opportunity. “Damn it!” she hissed at the night sky.

She hated the crews that ran the hard drugs, and the ones that had forgotten that the real reason they existed was to ride, to be free. Drugs had wrecked her father’s crew, and then her and her mother’s lives.

After her father’s death they’d been left homeless, penniless, and alone. The men from the crew had turned their backs on them. They hadn’t even spared a moment’s thought for Big Red’s kid and wife. They’d divvied up whatever was left, named a new crew leader, and rode on, leaving Jessie and her mom coughing in their dust and exhaust. The kid left standing to pick up the pieces had sworn she’d get even.

She had.

That crew was the first she’d taken down.

She’d smiled confidently that day in the courtroom as she’d watched the man who’d told her mother that he owed her nothing being led into a courtroom in shackles, his face pale above his bright orange jumpsuit.

He had owed them nothing, and she’d owed them nothing. That was the way she saw it. She’d made an airtight case against them, and she’d watched them go down in spectacular flames.

Not that it mattered really.

Her father was still dead and her mother too. Her mom had worked three jobs, all menial, because she had to put food on the table for her and Jessie. One night, when Jessie was fourteen, she’d fallen asleep at the wheel of her car and crashed it into a tree, dying instantly.

Those two years, the ones between twelve and fourteen, had shown Jessie exactly how little loyalty there was in the world. It also showed her the only way she could ever get revenge on the ones who’d taken her family from her.

Become a cop and make sure no dirty cops rode in her outfit, then take down the disloyal bastards that had caused her and her mother to be turned away, empty-handed.

Only, the OutKasts and the Orphans weren’t her father’s old crew. Loyalty ran high here. She knew that the men sitting in jail right now had done something to make sure that their wives and children were cared for, and the ones who were still out and hiding were too.

Those men followed the code the men on her father’s crew had forgotten in their lust for money, drugs, and wild partying.

She was growing more and more conflicted by the day, and being around people like Nate and his crew, people she’d come to respect, had brought up memories of her father and his constant refusal to cooperate with the law, or to live inside of it. Katie had said that the Orphans were still treating Craig by their code. That code was something she understood all too well. She’d grown up with it. She knew it by heart.

And betraying a brother was the lowest thing a person could do.

But she was going to do it anyway.

Because it was her job.

She took a few long breaths and stared up at the dark sky, pricked through here and there with the hard gleam of stars and the toenail slice of moon. She could walk, now, and say she couldn’t get close enough. That her cover was about to be blown, or she was in danger. Roger Fields, her pompous boss, would love to hear those words. He was dying to send in a few guys he thought could do a much better job than she was.

She pushed her shoulders back and rolled her head side to side, trying to get the tight muscles to relax. Director Fields believed women were weak. Maybe he was right... in a way. He believed women let their emotions get in the way of their jobs.

She wasn’t going to walk.

There was too much at stake. She would find a way to infiltrate, and find out the truth here. Those who had broken the law were going to get caught. No matter who they were.

Wilkes, for instance.

Her mind turned toward Katie’s father. Blake Wilkes was a player in the largest sense. The billionaire was dirtier than motor oil. He had his fingers into everything, from international drug smuggling to prostitution, all of it whitewashed through his global corporation.

Katie had seen papers that were proof of his money-laundering. If she had seen them, Jessie had a feeling that Katie had them. Katie was a smart girl. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that.

That proof on paper alone could be huge. Big enough that Jessie could ‘lose’ the evidence she already had on Nate and his crew, and nobody would care. Taking out a couple of crews would be small potatoes in comparison to taking down Blake Wilkes.

Shoving her hands into her jean pockets, she headed back inside.