The Ringer (14 page)

The temperature wasn’t frigid. It was timid, much like the snow that wanted to burst free from the clouds above. Gloves weren’t even necessary. She pointed the weapon, staring down the sight of the muzzle.

“I’m perfectly okay skipping target practice,” she murmured.

Exhausted and just plain war-worn, she tried to piece together where everything had gone wrong. In a notebook, she’d recorded anything suspicious or strange from the time she met Parker to the time she left him. The futile exercise in discovery drained her almost more than her short-lived marriage.

She blew the hair out of her eyes and took aim at the line of cans on the fence.

“Good, Lane, focus. There will be recoil, but as long as you keep a tight hold on the grip, you’ll be fine.” Underlying excitement laced his voice.

“Sorry.” She dropped her shoulder and pointed the automatic at the ground. “I’m not up for this.” She turned the pistol around and tried to hand him the grip.

“Come on, try,” he encouraged her. It may have been the patronizing smile on his handsome face that set her teeth on edge. Or it very well could have been his condescending manner. Either way, she wanted target practice to be over.

Since she wasn’t quite sure which pissed her off more, she flipped the gun around and fired. She knocked each one of the cans straight to the ground.

“See,” she hissed at him. “Lesson over.” She dropped the weapon in the freshly fallen snow and stalked off, murmuring under her breath.

“Lane!”

She glanced over her shoulder. Jax was close behind. She quickened her pace to lengthen the distance between them. A gust of wind smacked her straight on. Trying to hurry, she lost traction and would have crashed face first into the snow, but he managed to catch her.

“What gives?” he asked, yanking her close to him.

“Don’t try to shrink me.” Jax helped turn her upright. “Yeah, I did my homework,” she answered the surprised look on his face. “People tell lots of things when their guards are down.”

“Such as?”

Lane wanted a good knock-down, drag-out fight. “LuLu in Miami, the one who almost cracked my jaw. She may have mentioned how smart you are. A degree in psychology?”

“If you wanted my rap sheet you should have asked.” A puff of breath accentuated his words while his pink cheeks began to ruddy from the cold.

“Sure, just like you got the details about my first shooting in my juvie file. I bet you read it the first night we met.” His eyes opened wide at her accusation. “I’m not stupid, Jax, this target practice is rookie shit,” she fumed.

“Why don’t you tell me about it?” Warmth softened the color of his hazel eyes, causing Lane’s blood to boil. She would have liked nothing better than to give her problems wings and crawl into his embrace, but she wasn’t a fool. Instead, she pulled from his grip and stomped off.

Once they worked this mess out they would go their separate ways. She would be left with as much as she came in with…nothing. If she learned anything about her sorry marriage, Parker taught her to trust no one, and Jackson Thornbird wasn’t exempt.

Night blanketed the cabin at an amazing rate. Within hours, the elements whipped into a frenzy, causing chaos outside the window. Jax hunkered down in the office and rearranged the puzzle in front of him.
Just one piece
. He worked in his head and took a drink of red wine. A few bottles from his parents’ prized Cabernet collection sat on the kitchen counter. The rest had been boxed up and sent off to their California retreat. He had faith every one of them would be down his gullet shortly.

After his big blow up with Lane, he decided to give her some space. He wanted to grouse and complain about her unwarranted attack on his good gesture. But truthfully, she couldn’t have been more right. To think a couple of rounds of ammo would get her to open up about her deepest, darkest secrets of childhood had been beyond patronizing.

Tired of reading the same reports over and over again, he pushed his glasses onto his forehead and rubbed his eyes. Without the weight of Lane’s full breasts against his chest, his sleep would definitely be restless. Not to mention how the thought that Parker Lockland had caused her sadness irritated him.
The vicious ass only wanted to marry her for some hinky reason. That just plain ol’ pisses me off
.

Jax rubbed his eyes. One last check of his email then he’d check out the fridge.

Important
the email from his father read. He clicked the mouse and opened the link to a news story. “Iowa Teen Goes Missing on Class Trip to Chicago.” A bright-faced teenager filled the computer screen. He flipped his glasses back down and counted how many weeks had gone by while the kid’s mom agonized over his disappearance.

His heart raced.

Matthew Szohre, nineteen, vanished June twentieth. The school chaperone assumed Matt had returned to his room the previous evening, which meant his disappearance had not been discovered until hotel check out the next afternoon. The teen was considered a runaway. An official investigation for the whereabouts of Szohre hadn’t started until forty-eight hours later. Perhaps this was the break he needed. He forwarded the email to Raff and shut the lid of his laptop.

Somehow Lane’s marriage, the John Does, and his police department were tied together. But he believed the homeless deaths were the key to the whole thing. It was clear all those files on everyone’s desk had gotten lost in the shuffle for a reason. No reports meant no paper trail, and the same would go for the missing person cases.

Last summer fate or dumb luck had brought the homeless man’s complaint to Jax desk. The guy had wanted to report his friend’s death. He would have never come across any of this if it hadn’t been for his devotion to his missing pal.

A small part of him wished he had never laid eyes on the man, but the part of him that craved answers and justice silently thanked him. No matter what was at stake, he didn’t want to be associated with a corrupt police force.

Tired beyond belief, he guzzled the last bit of wine straight from the bottle.

***

A big, full moon lit the furiously falling snow aglow. Wrapped within a blanket, Lane watched the frighteningly beautiful sight of nature raging beyond her balcony. At a scant twenty-five degrees, the elements fought against the fire roaring inside the fireplace.

The difference between hot and cold, along with her wine, stroked her imagination. Good versus evil was an age-old concept and something she was dealing with. Love, hate, and all that delicious historical stuff played on loop in her head.

She ran her tongue over her lips, licking off the sweet taste of berries. The alcohol raced through her veins and warmed her body. Naked under the Navajo blanket, she had a wisp of a thought to find Jax. It entered her mind then blew right out once she imagined how pathetic she would appear.

“It’s cold.” Jax joined her on the balcony.

“No.” she countered. “It’s just right.”

“Get warm.” His gruff tone implied he wanted to be inside of her.

“Peaceful,” she murmured.

He pushed her hair from her shoulder and brushed his lips over her bare skin. She leaned into his body. The girly part of her wanted to stay mad at him, to keep up the pretense of anger, but the needy part of her wanted his touch. Denied physical contact along with emotional for far too long, she had no desire to continue that particular tradition ever again.

Unencumbered by inhibition thanks to the wine, she allowed the blanket to fall on to the balcony floor leaving her stark naked. He groaned, standing behind her still fully clothed.

He moved his warm lips down her spine, causing tingles within her. She went along with the flow of his hands tracing the curve of her body and stopping at her rear. He tapped her round behind with his palm before he gripped her butt cheeks. Enjoying every bit of it, she tipped her head back and moaned.

Drunk on lust, she allowed him to overwhelm her senses. Butterflies twisted in her stomach at the jingle of his belt buckle hitting the ground with the rest of his pants. She bent over the railing to allow him easy domination over her body. Seconds later, he shoved inside her. A whimper got stuck in her throat. Jax began to ride her from behind.

He gently circled her nipples with his fingers. When he bit her shoulder, she almost fainted. Everything played into her emotions while he moved in and out of her. The fast, slick snow fell to the ground. Accompanied with the warmth of his breath and the heat between her legs, she cried out, permitting the wave to a hard and beautiful climax to consume her.

A warrior’s grunt of satisfaction from him soon followed. Minutes ticked by. Lane didn’t think she could move again, but it was too cold to stay outside. Still limp from her orgasm, they managed to find their way inside and crash in front of the fireplace.

She lay on a furry, plush rug. Snuggled deep into the embrace of his strong arms, she studied the fire roaring in the grate. Tenderness from their lovemaking still nestled deep within her, but the euphoria from the wine began to dissipate.

Trust didn’t come easy for her. In this moment, she decided to let go while she could and share with him the one thing from her past she kept firmly tucked away.

“After my parents died.” She swallowed, afraid of the words before they came out. “I bounced around from relative to relative. No immediate family, all distant cousins of some sort. No one wanted another mouth to feed, but the money they got from the state often changed their minds whether to leave me in the system or take me.”

“It must have been rough.”

Unsure he’d even been awake, Lane took comfort in his response and soldiered on. “You get used to the lack of structure. The unknown becomes a state of being.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered in her ear. Jax’s hold around her waist tightened. Overwhelmed by his sweetness, a lump formed in her throat.

“My guardians did get a check from the state…uh, well, they were my mother’s cousins. The husband was a mean drunk of a man.” Memories rushed her, along with dark undertones of hate she didn’t want to remember. “Charmaine, my mom’s cousin, wasn’t much better, but they had a little girl, a perfect doll.”

“You don’t have to,” he told her.

“Yes, I do.” She’d held it in for too long. She needed this out of her soul. The file he’d read on her didn’t give all the facts, at least not the emotional ones that mattered. “My whole day revolved around the baby girl. When her parents got into big fights or black-out drunk, I would take her into the back room. We’d sing a lullaby or read stories. After a few hours, usually the whole thing blew over.”

“Were they violent?”

“To each other,” she admitted. “I never stuck around long enough to see if it would spill over toward me.”

“And then, one day it did.”

“Yeah. The father came home one night, high as a kite. Charmaine had already passed out on the couch earlier that afternoon….”

Jax rubbed her arms. She could see the whole thing as if it had happened yesterday.

“He snatched the baby girl from my arms and threw her across the room.

“Did he try to rape you?” he asked, in a soothing but stern tone.

“I don’t think that’s what he wanted. He just resented having me in the house. He wanted more money for being stuck with another body in the trailer.”

She remembered the mean drunk. He hadn’t been a big man, but big enough to beat on a sixteen-year-old girl. “I took one good hit from him. I think after the first hit, I blacked out. Not passed out like go to sleep, but more like forgot everything. My father never h-hit m-me, uh…umm.” She was caught in the memory of how loving her childhood had been before her father’s death. “But he, my dad, did teach me how to shoot. About a mile away from the trailer is where the cops picked me up. I shot Dennis. Not dead or anything just….” She swallowed. “Wounded him.

“Honestly, I don’t remember where the gun came from. At some point, my cousin swore on her husband’s behalf that he never laid a hand on me and claimed I hurt the baby. She wanted me locked up, but no one believed the town drunks so….”She wiped away a tear. “They put me into foster care until the age of eighteen. Once I received my inheritance, I left the state.”

The crackling from the fire mesmerized her while she eased away from the past and back to the present. “Pathetic, huh?” she muttered.

“Not from where I’m looking.”

“But I made it easy for Parker—”

Silencing her with his touch, he tilted her head toward him. “Parker capitalized on an opportunity. You can’t beat yourself up. With no family and the right bone structure, you were too good to pass over.”

Strangely, his words loosened the ball of stress knotting in her stomach. Another wrong turn in her life, one more mistake. All of it could have been avoided if she wasn’t so damned impulsive.

Even if she was the target of a crazy murder plot, at least something had come of it.

She had met Jax.

Lane reached her hand around his head to bring his lips to hers. 
A silver lining
.

Heaven
. Lane sighed at the snow piled as high as her knee. She stomped through the frothy white mess with childlike abandon while the sun beamed down upon them. Chicago went without a decent storm for over a year. Never more than a few inches, the lack of snow made winters in the city an urban blight to look at. Out in the wide open, she had not witnessed something so beautiful since childhood.

“You are not a nanny. Stop all that insufferable twirling and grab a log,” Jax hollered across the backyard.

Snow snob
. She sniffed and continued to spin. The cabin had several gas fireplaces, but the main hearth needed wood—plenty of which had already been cut into pieces, thanks to the family’s handyman. But he still would have to hike them up the hill.

One more good spin and she would fall into the white abyss. Unfortunately, the sticky stuff worked better as a pillow and not whipped across her face.