Unfiltered & Unlawful (The Unfiltered Series) (12 page)

Mutely, she shook her head.

“How many?”

“Just me,” she admitted. Her face flushed in guilt as she added, “I couldn’t walk away from it. They had no idea how much money it was worth, and I don’t think most of them had any connections to sell it, and…”

“And you’re an addict who was faced with a huge temptation,” Adam finished when her words faded. “Seeing that much coke in one place had to have been hard.”

“I only had the one line, though,” Sasha said.

“And nothing since,” he added.

He knew her, knew that she wasn’t using anything now. He’d seen her and Tommy both enough when they were high to know exactly what she was like when she was using. She and Tommy had cut open the brick and spent the night high and naked. Adam knew that without having to hear her admit it. That was the glue that kept her with his cousin: drugs and the way Tommy used them to lure her back when she got free of him.

He pulled out the article and handed it to her, stopping any chance of hearing the admissions that would be a knife to his gut. “Here.”

She read it to herself, stopping after the first few lines to glance at him but otherwise motionless. When she was done, she said, “Do you think they’ll find the people who did it?”

Adam had thought about it enough to be able to answer promptly. “No. He wasn’t important enough, and with his record, they’ll assume it was because of a drug deal gone bad. No one cares about criminals killing criminals unless it spills over to the rest of the town.”

It wasn’t a pretty answer, but in the real world, police were overworked, understaffed, underpaid, and if some punk with a gun was going to eliminate another bad seed, it wasn’t necessarily a priority investigation. First came crimes against the taxpayers who supported the police or any co-ed whose injury or absence would make national news
or
hurt enrollment at ASURV. The university brought jobs and revenue. Crimes against small-time dealers weren’t a priority.

“So do you think the police will do anything about the other guy? The one who died at the Cave?” Sasha asked.

Adam shook his head. “The only way that would happen is if someone there talked or the body turned up where there’d be bad press if they were ignoring it.”

“The body won’t turn up.”

“You can’t be sure of—”

“It was cremated,” she interrupted.

For a moment, Adam was speechless. “No body. No money. No drugs. What about the car?”

“Someone got rid of it.”

“So unless that's found and somehow tracked back to the shop, no one at the P.D. should come looking for you. They’re not the problem.” He glanced toward the darkening desert sky outside the house. “But almost one and a half million dollars and two kilos of cocaine? Someone’s going to be looking for that.”

He pulled Sasha close so she was nestled against his side. Adam tried to ignore the warmth that radiated from her body and did very inappropriate things to his imagination.

“We wait it out, Sash. I can keep you hidden for as long as we need,” he promised her. “We start over. A new life away from there, and we watch the papers to see if anything happens to any of the others.”

“I don’t know all of their names.”

“So we write down what you do know so we don’t forget. It could be months or years or never until this is all resolved.” Adam stroked her back, trying to help relax her.

“It seems like there should be something else we can do,” she murmured. “Tommy
died
because of this.”

That was it, the opening he couldn’t resist. Gently, he told her, “No. He died because he cut the coke and tried to sell four kilos. He got greedy and tried to add a con. He died because he was… who he was.”

She stared at him with tears shining in her eyes as he told her what he knew, and when he was finished, she said, “He wasn’t ever going to stop, was he?”

Adam shook his head. “He wasn’t a bad guy, but he wasn’t ever going to be the one to give you that little house with flowers in front and road trips to Coachella or the music festival at Telluride.” He stroked her cheek and added, “You can still have those things, though.”

He didn’t add that he wanted to be the one to give them to her, but he hoped she would figure that out when she was ready.

I jotted down what I could remember from the night of the shooting. Some people were easier. I knew them and worked with them. A few others were regulars.

• Cass: barista, motorcycle fan (speed not Harley; in debt; not likely to talk).

• Dillon: voice of an angel (minds his own business; low risk).

• Drunk co-eds: Callie? Sally? Allie? (drunk; high risk) and Violet (funeral home; got rid of body; low risk unless someone asks questions because of body).

• Blake: ASU Rio Verde Jock (incentive not to spill; seemed decent).

• Senator’s Kid (incentive not to spill; would not take blame though; publicity fears; mid risk).

• Lauren: co-ed, uses the shop wi-fi (no idea of risk here).

• Hope: religious, guilt issues. (High risk because of guilt; prob wouldn’t out us though).

• Jess: pulled the trigger; studies a lot. (Guilt? Risk similar to Hope).

• Hippie: medium risk (issues with authority, but got rid of the car somewhere).

• The guy who didn’t talk much, no clue what his deal is (Risk).

Adam read it, suggested I hide it, and then we went about living together in our rental house, hoping that trouble didn’t follow us along the highway to this little outpost in the desert. It wasn’t a perfect plan, but short of turning everything over to the cops and hoping they could keep us safe, there wasn’t a better option. I didn’t know whose drugs and cash we had, didn’t know the name of the dead guy, and didn’t know who killed Tommy—or if it was tied to the murder or Tommy’s trying to con whoever he was selling the coke to. I thought about the things that had happened, but it left me worried and stressed so I tried to forget Rio Verde and everything about it.

Except Adam. He was unforgettable and at my side constantly. I was relieved that I hadn’t had to leave him behind, but I wasn’t sure how long I could live with him without my feelings for him boiling over into something I couldn’t handle right now.

Despite everything, the first few days living together went well. But by the end of the second week, I was starting to feel trapped. I wrote up my notes from the shop, and Adam and I picked up two burner phones so we could reach one another if necessary. Aside from a few short hours when he worked, there wasn’t much chance of needing them. We were together most of the time. There wasn’t a lot of tattoo work in Joshua Tree, and I hadn’t looked for a job yet. I’d gone out to the grocery store once. I’d gone for a few walks, and I’d read almost the entire stack of novels that were at the house.

“I can’t do this,” I announced as I walked into the main room to find Adam working out
again
. Seeing him doing crunches and push-ups every day wasn’t doing much for my resolve. There was just something sexy about a man exercising… or maybe it was sexier because it was
Adam
exercising. He was already on the verge of being more defined than most sculptures in a museum. He was just as untouchable, too.

When he stopped at whatever ridiculous number he was at, he sat and looked up at me. “Can’t do what?”

“This,” I said. Words were too hard suddenly. Maybe I needed to pretend that it was just like with sculptures: There were security guards and alarms that would sound if I gave in to the urge to trail my fingertips over the sharp lines of his body. Smothering the moan that threatened to spill out, I shoved my traitorous thoughts away and made a point not to look at him as he finished his set of push-ups.

“This… what? Can you be a little more specific here, Sash?”

I flopped down on the sofa. He’d folded the bed up every day so the room wasn’t any smaller than it already was. Still, my body tightened at the thought that I was on what was essentially his bed.

“Sasha?”

My gaze dropped to him. Sweat trickled down his throat and disappeared under his shirt. I stared like I’d never seen him working out. I had. I’d seen it far too often lately. I swallowed and forced my gaze upward.

That wasn’t any better.

He was watching me intently, and I knew I couldn’t even try to pretend I wasn’t ogling him. “Oh, come on, Adam! You know you’re eye candy. What am I to do? Pretend you don’t look like”—I gestured vaguely at him—“
that
?”

He grinned. “I didn’t say a word.”

“It doesn’t mean anything that I look,” I muttered. “Anyone with eyes would look.”

His lips twitched, but he didn’t say anything. He stood, pulled his shirt off and walked to the door to the bathroom. It felt like a challenge or an invitation, but I couldn’t accept either one. My resolve was just weakened by being in the tiny house with him all of the time.

Adam was off limits. He had to stay that way… which meant that all I could do was watch. He was hot, muscled, tattooed, and wearing only a pair of shorts. I was suddenly sure that it might be cooler outside in the mid-morning desert sun than it was in the house. It was criminal that he looked that good, and I couldn’t do anything about it.

I looked away. I was starting to think the alternative was to surrender any and all common sense.
Friends. Friends. Friends.
I chanted the word in my head. It was what I needed to remember. We might be hiding away in the desert, but we were friends. I knew it was a bad idea to cross that line when we weren’t in a small house together, and I had to be able to remember it was a bad idea here. I listed all of the facts in my head: He was my friend; he was Tommy’s cousin; he wasn’t going to stay with me forever; there were a lot of girls he’d been with, but none of them lasted for more than a few days; he deserved better.

The facts did nothing to ease the need to touch him.

Then he spoke. “Sash?”

I looked over my shoulder to where he stood in the doorway.

“I like that you look.” His eyes swept me from top to bottom slowly. “I look at you, too. I have for a long time.”

I swallowed; all of my reasons suddenly seemed hard to remember. With effort, I said, “Get your shower. I want to get out of the house.”

He stared a moment longer and then turned away.

My heart felt like it was beating faster than it should, and I thought about him naked under the water. I wondered, not for the first time, if he touched himself when he was in there.

I wondered what he thought about if he did.

Guiltily, I hoped it was me.

‡

When Adam walked out of the bathroom, he looked like an invitation to all the sins I wanted to commit. He had a towel slung around his hips and water droplets slid over his abs and vanished under the towel.

“Put on your fucking pants.”

“You’re in my bedroom,” he reminded me. With no further warning, he dropped the towel.

“Christ, Adam!” I snapped, turning my back to him—but not before I caught a glimpse of his cock, which even at rest was a beautiful sight.

“If it makes you feel better, you can walk into my bedroom naked too.” His voice was the only sound in the room, and the silence made it more difficult to erase the brief glimpse of him that was now seared into my mind.

Naked. Wet. Beautiful. Tattooed.

My eyes were closed as if that would make the images vanish.

“Sasha?” He zipped his pants, the sound far too loud for my already screaming lust. “I’m ready.”

It could’ve been my ridiculous level of need, but I felt like he was saying he was ready for a lot more than heading into town. I turned and took in the jeans he’d pulled on. “It’s too hot for jeans.”

“No shorts on the Harley, doll.” He shook his head. “As much as I like seeing your legs, you need them covered unless you want to take the truck.”

“Jeans. I have jeans,” I said hurriedly.

“Boots too, babe,” he said as I darted into the bedroom.

In a matter of minutes I’d rifled through my drawers, found a pair of skinny jeans, tugged on a pair of tall black leather boots, and grabbed my purse. When I walked into the main room, Adam had laced up his heavy boots and had a leather vest over his shirt.

He surveyed me and announced, “If you’re going to ride with me, we need to get you a little more protection than t-shirts and clubbing boots.”

“Says the man who refuses to wear a helmet.”

“My bike, my rules, sweetheart.” He motioned toward the door.

After I stepped outside, the desert heat seemed intense enough that I almost reconsidered the bike. The Explorer had air conditioning. That sounded pretty good right now.

Then Adam climbed on the Harley, and a moment later, I heard the engine growl. He looked back at me, raised his brows questioningly, and any thought of air conditioning vanished.

But I couldn’t move. Adam was sitting in front of me, waiting for me, in front of the house we were sharing in the desert. There were some pretty serious threats back in Rio Verde, and the man I’d been dating on and off for two years was dead. I didn’t deserve to feel any happiness.

I felt guilt wash over me because I
did
feel a moment of happiness. I wanted Adam, and he was here with me like a bodyguard, friend, and caretaker all in one. I was safe with him at my side. I hadn’t ever wanted anything to happen to Tommy, but I couldn’t give up on happiness because it had. Two weeks had passed, and although I still felt horrible for what happened, I was starting to admit to myself that while Tommy had loved me, I hadn’t loved him.

Not that I loved Adam either.

We were friends, and I cared about him, and heaven help me, I wanted him more than I could handle lately.

“Climb on, Sash,” he ordered.

I swallowed my guilt and nerves, walked over, and straddled the bike. I wrapped my arms tightly around him and leaned close. I raised my voice a little, “Adam?”

He glanced back and met my eyes.

“Make me feel better,” I asked.

For a moment, he stared at me, our gazes locked. Then he said, “Hold tight.”

And we were off. The needle tipped far enough that I felt a thrill at the speed we were traveling. Out here, beyond stoplights and pedestrians, there was a freedom that I needed.