by Claire Adams
“Nope, definitely not.”
We finished up quickly and then climbed back into bed. I pulled the comforter off the bed first as I had remembered seeing a story about how dirty those things were. At least the sheets looked clean.
“I hope tonight goes well,” I whispered as I cuddled up against Chase.
“Get some rest. It will be fine.”
He held onto me. I closed my eyes as I felt the safety and comfort of his arms around me.
Chapter 25
Chase
This was it. We stood at the edge of the park and waited for Ramos to come to us. The plan was simple. We would show Ramos the book I had stolen from Escabar. We would show him that he had names of police and FBI agents that he appeared to be meeting with and working with.
Ramos would go off and take care of Escabar for betraying their confidence, and we would get out of town and let things calm down a bit. The plan was simple – if everything went as we had planned.
“You stay back here, Jordan. There is no reason for you to come out here. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she said.
I didn’t want her to get mixed up in the exchange with Ramos. If anything went wrong, I wanted her to be in an area where she could get out and get to safety.
“I’m serious. No matter what, don’t come out of here.”
“I heard you, Chase. I know. I’ll stay here. If anything happens to you, I’ll go straight to your father’s house. I’ve already got it programmed into my GPS.”
My plan seemed pretty bulletproof, but you just never knew what might happen. I didn’t want Jordan to get injured if Ramos decided to go after me. He didn’t even need to know she was there at all.
“Is that him?” she asked quietly as she pointed to a man with three others walking behind him.
“I think so. Stay here.”
I took a deep breath and started to walk toward Ramos on the other end of the park. I still had a feeling that we were being watched, but we hadn’t seen anyone around to prove that theory.
Slowly, I walked toward Ramos and tried to keep myself as calm as I could. I didn’t want to look like a total amateur, but I also didn’t want to look like some sort of professional. Ramos couldn’t be threatened by me, either. If he felt threatened by me, the whole plan wouldn’t work, at all.
“Mr. Foster, I hope this is really good information you have for me,” Ramos said as he stood in front of me.
I tried to decide if I should reach my hand out to shake his hand or not but decided to follow his lead and keep my hands in my jacket. It was dark outside, and I suspected at least one of the men behind him had their hand on a gun in their jackets. I did not have a gun. In fact, I had no way of protecting myself at all if Ramos decided he wanted to hurt me.
“I believe you will find my information very useful.”
“You better hope that I do,” he said to me.
Then, there was a noise coming from where I had left Jordan. We both looked back there, but it was too dark to see what was going on. I just hoped that she stayed where I told her to and didn’t come out.
“I stole a black book from Escabar because he threatened to kill me.”
“Yes, I heard about that. Stupid move, if I must say so myself.”
“Well, inside that book I happened to see that Escabar has been feeding information to the feds and had several contacts in there.”
Just then, there were footsteps behind me and we all turned to look.
It was Escabar with Jordan held in front of him. He had a gun to her head.
“Chase, I really thought you were smarter than this,” he said.
“Nice of you to finally join us, Jose,” Ramos said.
My heart sank. I had not planned on Ramos and Escabar working together. I didn’t expect that Ramos would have been fine with Escabar giving information to the police.
“You see, Chase, Ramos can understand the benefit of sharing information with the feds. Your little plan to sell me out didn’t really work, now did it?”
I couldn’t talk at all. I stood between Ramos and Escabar in disbelief over what was going on. Ramos didn’t strike me as the kind of man who would be willing to work with the feds on anything. I really had no idea what was going on.
“Let the girl go,” I finally managed to say.
“I followed you to the park when you met up with Salina and Salvador, Chase. I knew they would sell me out in a second. I decided to go straight to Ramos myself and tell him what I had been working on.”
“Jose, let the girl go. I have no use for her,” Ramos said.
“I don’t think we need her around anymore, and it would just kill Chase here to watch her get hurt,” Escabar taunted me.
My eyes locked on Jordan’s, and I knew I had to figure out a way out of the mess I had gotten us into. Somehow, I had to get her to safety.
“Chase, let me see the book you are talking about,” Ramos demanded.
I was in no spot to argue with him, so I reached into my pocket to hand him the book. But just as I was about to hand it to him, Escabar reached over and took it from me.
“I’ll take that,” he said.
“Jose, give me the book.”
“You already know what’s in there, why do you need the book?” Escabar replied.
Jordan and I were standing right between the two men as they argued over who was going to have it. I suspected that Escabar had not told Ramos exactly what was in it.
“I’m sure he’s just afraid you’ll see his notes about his plans to kill you and take over the organization,” I said firmly.
Escabar’s face turned pale as he started to back away from us. I hadn’t seen anything specifically saying that he had such a plan, but the look on his face made it seem like I had said something that was very true.
“Get him,” Ramos said to his three guys.
Escabar threw Jordan onto the ground and turned to start running away. He shot at the men as they chased him and the men shot back, ultimately striking Escabar. We saw him fall to the ground.
One of the men grabbed the black book from his hands and brought it back to deliver it to Ramos.
He flipped through the book for a minute and then turned his attention back to me. By that time, I had helped Jordan up and she stood near me in absolute terror as she trembled and held onto me.
“Why did you want him dead?” Ramos asked me.
“I didn’t want him dead. I just wanted out of his web.”
“Does anyone else know about this book?”
I was in no position to lie to Ramos. I figured the only way I would get out of the situation alive was going to be telling him the absolute truth.
“The Atlanta police know. I tried to go to them to protect me from Escabar. They refused and sent me away. Said I didn’t have enough evidence. They looked through that book, though, and I’m pretty sure they made a copy.”
“Is there anything else you think I should know?” he asked me.
I contemplated if there was anything else that I could tell him that might spare my life. At that point, I really didn’t know what he planned to do with us. I had come to him and given him the information he needed to get rid of a mole in his organization. My hope had been that he would be grateful and wouldn’t kill us.
“No, sir. I just want to live a good life with my new wife. That was my only reason for getting involved.”
Ramos looked at me and then looked at Jordan. He waved for his men to grab Escabar and then the group of them walked away. He didn’t say another word to me, but just as he was almost out of sight into the darkness of the light, Ramos turned toward us and waved us out of the park. He motioned for us to leave, and just like that, we turned and left.
He had let us live. Ramos, the head of the Mexican drug cartel, had let us live.
Epilogue
“Welcome to Miami International Airport,” the pilot said as our private jet landed.
I didn’t think flying could get
any better than first class, but Chase certainly proved me wrong, by flying me to Italy right after everything went down with Jose Escabar and Ramos. We spent a week with his brother there. And then, Jackson insisted on coming back to the States with us to help find Ana.
“Babe, it’s time to go,” Chase said as he held my bag.
I had been distracted looking out the window at all the planes and how close we were to them. I couldn’t imagine ever getting used to flying on a private jet all the time. It seemed so surreal to me.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” I teased as I finally got up from the lounge chair I had been in for our flight.
“You two lovebirds coming or what?” Jackson asked from the front of the plane. “I don’t want to have to come in there after you two.
“We are coming,” Chase hollered back at his brother. “My lovely wife, let’s go find Ana.”
He pulled me up and kissed me gingerly, as his arms held me tight against him. It had been a month since Ana had left Liechtenstein and no one had heard a single word from her. I was certain that something horrible had happened.
While we were in Italy, Jackson had asked around and tried to find out who Gordon really was. He got a few leads but nothing turned up, until the day we were getting ready to leave. That was when Jackson heard that Gordon was really Stephano Copal, a big trafficker in the sex trade. Jackson’s contact was pretty sure that Ana was still in Miami, but that she was probably getting prepped to be sold.
“Hello, my lovely husband,” I replied to Chase as we kissed. “Do you think we should get going before Jackson gets mad?”
“Oh, Jackson is too even-tempered to ever get mad.”
He grabbed my hand and led me off of the private jet to the waiting car, which already had Jackson in it.
“Let’s go find your Ana,” Chase said as he opened the door.
Chase got into the vehicle with me, and I instantly cuddled up against him. My hand held onto his thigh. Our lips moved together as the car pulled away and we made our way toward the city.
“Are you two lovebirds ever going to stop kissing?” Jackson asked.
Chase just flipped him off and continued to kiss me. We were happier than we could have ever imagined.
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Jackson -The Complete Romance Series
By Claire Adams
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 Claire Adams
PART 1
Chapter 1
JACKSON
It was nice seeing my brother again and his new wife was adorable, but I really needed to get back to work. My self-imposed sabbatical had lasted well over a year. And as beautiful as Italy was, I was ready to get back to the real world.
“You two lovebirds coming or what?” I asked Chase and his wife.
Jordan was a beautiful brunette from Liechtenstein, who my brother had met online. It certainly wasn’t how I thought my billionaire brother would meet his future wife, but then again, who was I to question love? I was 36 years old and single.
Chase and Jordan had come to me to help them investigate where her friend Ana could be. They had an address and some contact information, but none of it seemed legit. Normally, I would have said no to such a low key job – my work life was typically much more exciting than a young Liechtenstein girl getting mixed up with the wrong crowd.
But as I started to investigate the man they called Gordon, I learned he might just be the person I had been looking for over the last four years.
My research had turned up that Gordon was actually Stephano Copal and he had in fact been in Qatar four years prior, when my entire life was turned upside down. I needed to discover if he was the person responsible for all the carnage I had endured. I wanted to find out if it was him who had broken me into pieces that cool fall day.
“Are you two love birds ever going to stop kissing?” I asked as I stepped back onto our private jet.
“We are coming,” Chase said as he helped Jordan up from the chair.
“Well, it’s about time. We need to keep things moving if we want to catch this guy off guard.”
“Are we going to catch him tonight?” Jordan asked.
Her innocence was very endearing. We had flown together from Italy back to Miami and I couldn’t find a single thing about the woman that I didn’t like. She was tough, yet sweet. Naive, yet knowledgeable in other areas. I could certainly see why my brother had fallen in love with her.
“No, darling, but we need to keep moving forward and staying out of sight if we are going to have any chance at all.”
“Do you know where we should start?” Jordan asked as her innocent, wide eyes looked at me. I could tell it was going to be very difficult to have her there with me while I tried to investigate what was going on.
“Chase, do you want to get Jordan settled into the hotel and we can talk about it in private?”
The place I wanted to head to first wasn’t really the kind of place a young guy like Chase should be bringing his new bride to. I had tracked down the money end of Stephano’s business, and it all funneled into a strip club in Miami called Feather Kitty. It was the most reasonable place to get started. We wouldn’t likely find him sitting there counting his money, but we certainly could find some real clues that could lead us on where to look next.
“Why can’t you just talk in front of me?” Jordan asked like any true newlywed would.
I loved that Chase had found himself a wife and Jordan seemed like a really nice girl, but Chase shouldn’t have brought her with us. Now that she was there in the middle of everything, it was essential that she stay out of the way. Her emotions about her lost friend could certainly put us all in danger.
“Well, we need to go to a pretty dangerous place and I didn’t think you needed to be involved in the planning of everything.”
“So, I help take down one of the most dangerous men in Atlanta, but you don’t think I can handle a conversation about saving my best friend?”
I looked at Chase to rescue me from the emotional mess that was his wife. I wasn’t equipped to deal with women, well, most women. I didn’t like to sugar coat things, and I certainly couldn’t tell what they thought when they didn’t come straight out and say it to me.
“Jordan, this is going to be dangerous and Jackson is trained for all this. We can’t get in his way. Let’s just get settled into the hotel and then we can offer him whatever assistance he needs.”
“God forbid we would include a woman in the plans!” Jordan said as she stormed off the plane and over to the waiting vehicle.
I just rolled my eyes. Emotional women were not my thing. It baffled me how they could get angry about absolutely everything and nothing all at the same time. Luckily, I had an even temper and didn’t fall prey to the mood swings of women.
“Sorry, she’s still a bit wound up from everything in Atlanta. We will stay out of your way. I promise.”
“I’m fine with you coming along, Chase, but I don’t need any women getting in my way. They are way too emotional for this line of work.”
“I understand.”
Chase didn’t understand at all. He had never worked as a private investigator. The whole base of our business was being able to keep a level head and gather information. Plus, I needed to be invisible when I went into the strip club. If Jordan came along, it would be impossible to keep a low profile. My job wasn’t to arrest people or even to prove if they were guilty or innocent. My job was to gather the necessary information and then hand it over to the people who hired me.
In this case, I would find out where Jord
an’s friend Ana was and get that information to the local authorities so they could rescue her. I might have to take care of Stephano on my own before the authorities came, though, if I found out he had anything to do with the murder of my Rose. She meant more to me than any other woman had ever met, I was going to make sure the man who took her from me paid. No matter who it was, he would pay for what he did. Rose had been such a beautiful woman, so peaceful and pure; there would have been no reason for her to be killed. No reason at all for that monster to take her away from me.
We all got checked into our hotel rooms, and I looked through my research to remind myself of the faces of people I needed to find. This job was about more than just doing a favor for my brother. There was so much more than that at stake. I couldn’t walk into the Feather Kitty and look like an amateur by staring at all the faces. I needed to look like any normal guy who was just at the club to enjoy himself for the evening.
After I had finished with my information overview, I headed over to Chase’s room to gather him and head to the strip club. I still didn’t think it was the best idea for him to come along, either, but it was better than all three of us heading into the club.
“Hey, are you ready?”
“Yes, Jordan is in the shower. Let’s go before she gets out.”
“Deal.”
“I love her to death, but no way are we going to take her to a strip club.”
“Chase, I know, man. She wouldn’t help us lay low, that is for sure. She seems really tired, anyways.”
We made our way to the Feather Kitty strip club and tried to blend in as much as we could. It was a high-end joint so it wasn’t going to be too difficult to blend as long as we had cash.
“Did you bring the cash?” I asked Chase as we waited to get through the front doors.
“Yeah, I have five thousand dollars in twenties.”
“That should certainly get us some answers. Now, just follow my lead and don’t pay too much attention to the girls. We don’t want to draw attention from the bouncers.”
