TRIGGERED: A Romantic Suspense Bundle (5 Books)

by Evie Nichole

  “You’re holding yourself together pretty well, all things considered, Red. You’re tougher than you look.”

  I gave him a small smile and nodded. “That’s where Snake always went wrong. He underestimated me. I’m not just going to cry and let this life happen to me. I’m not going to let him happen to me.”

  Jack nodded. “And you’ve got a pretty strong army behind you now.”

  He closed my door and got in on his side. “Do you need anything before we head home?”

  I shook my head. “Food and a bed. And a shower. Maybe a beer.”

  “Can do.”

  He drove through a fast-food place and ordered dinner before driving through a liquor store and getting a six-pack of beer. Then, he drove us to the guesthouse and walked in with me while I gathered my stuff.

  Staying with him wasn’t the best idea I’d ever had, but it beat staying alone knowing that Snake would be in Memphis soon, if he wasn’t already.

  I didn’t take the time to look around once we were in Jack’s house. I just let him lead me straight to a bedroom. I took a steaming hot shower and dressed in a set of jogging pants and an oversized T-shirt before joining Jack in the kitchen. He’d lined our food up with a couple of beers and was already starting in on his burrito.

  His hair was wet from his shower and it piqued my interest in a dangerous way to know that he’d been showering while I was. I couldn’t stop my mind from gathering illicit images of him naked and sudsy.

  “You look like you tried to boil your skin off.”

  I looked down at my red skin and nodded. “The hot water is amazing. My apartment didn’t really get hot water.”

  He pushed my beer closer to me. “That doesn’t sound like a place I’d enjoy.”

  I gripped the beer cap with my teeth and easily pried it off. “You mean you don’t want to visit my tiny apartment in Jackson? Color me surprised.”

  “I do own a bottle opener, you know?”

  “I didn’t need it. I’ll let you know if that changes.”

  I dug into my food and ate like I’d never seen food before. I also easily made my way through three of the beers. I never drank anymore, so I was a little more than tipsy by the time I finished them. “I have to put myself to bed.”

  Jack finished his third beer and nodded. “Sounds good to me. If you need anything, just yell.”

  I stared at him for longer than necessary, thinking about all the things I could need from a man like Jack. “Sure thing.”

  Before I could get myself into more trouble than I was already in, I stumbled off to my new bed. I needed to be put away for the night so I didn’t try to steal another woman’s man. It wasn’t my style, and I wouldn’t let beer change that.

  Chapter 15

  I felt like I’d been asleep for all of ten minutes when Jack’s rough shout jarred me from my sleep. I sat straight up in bed and looked at the door to see his large form outlined by the hallway light. “What?”

  “Get up. Grab your stuff and meet me downstairs. Snake somehow found Brent’s house and sent a fucking Molotov cocktail through his living room window. We’re getting you away from here, just in case.”

  I jumped from bed and yanked my pants on. “Is he okay?”

  “Yeah, he got out and ran here. Hurry, Red.”

  I shoved the few things I’d grabbed earlier back into my bag and raced out after Jack. My heart was whirling away in my chest like an airplane engine. I nearly fell down the last few steps, but Jack was there to catch me. He righted me immediately and ran the rest of the way to the kitchen. I watched as he strapped himself into a bulletproof vest and then shoved a gun in a shoulder holster.

  “Why do you look like you’re going into battle?”

  Brent stepped out of the bathroom off of the kitchen and nodded at me. “You ready?”

  I looked between the two of them and frowned. “What’s happening?”

  Jack pulled on a black hat and then tucked a large knife into the side of his boot. “You’re going to the office with Brent. It’s the safest place in Memphis for you. I’ll meet you there in a little while.”

  “Where are you going?”

  He gave me a hard look and I felt frozen in that moment. The Jack I knew was hardened, but this man before me was pure stone. His eyes held none of the heat my Jack usually possessed.

  My Jack? I mentally slapped myself.

  “Chances are Snake and his men are still hanging around. I’ve got a group of men coming in. We’re going to try to find him.”

  Brent picked up my bag and grabbed my arm. “Come on, Red. We don’t know that my house was the only stop on their trip. We’ve got to get you out of here.”

  I pulled away and tugged at Jack’s hand. “It’s not safe. He’s crazy, Jack.”

  He pushed me into Brent’s arms and turned away. “Get her to the office, Brent. Now.”

  I’m ashamed to say that I struggled against Brent’s grip on my body as he pulled me toward the back door of Jack’s house. I had an insane amount of anxiety flowing through my body. I was terrified that Snake was close and that he was going to kill Jack.

  Brent grunted as one of my flailing elbows caught him in the ribs. Then, he shook me like a doll and pushed me against the side of the house. “Stop fighting me, Raelyn. Jack knows what he’s doing. If you keep fighting and drawing attention to us, though, he’s going to have to fight off a whole bunch of bikers in order to keep you safe. You want that?”

  I went still. “No.”

  “Then come on. No more fighting. Jack will be fine.” He pulled me the rest of the way to Jack’s truck and then shoved me inside. As soon as he got in, he started the truck and crawled toward the main road with the lights off.

  “He’s trained to do shit like this. If I didn’t think he could handle it, I’d be back there with him.”

  “Why aren’t you doing it? You love this shit.”

  He pulled onto the main road and turned the lights on. When he saw that the coast was clear he gunned the motor and raced toward the office. “I think I’m offended. You’d rather have me out there, putting my neck on the line, than Jack?”

  I shot him a dirty look. “That’s not what I meant, at all.”

  “I’m kidding. I know. Jack wanted to do it. This is his case. He gave the orders and I followed.”

  I turned to face him. “Is your house… Is it okay?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  I heard the tinge of sadness in his voice and frowned. “I’m so sorry, Brent. This whole thing is my fault. Carly…your house… Who knows what will happen next.”

  “It’s not your fault. It’s Snake’s. And he’ll pay for it.” He pulled onto the highway. “All of my pictures of Madeline and Josie are in that house. All of the pictures of our parents, too.”

  “Madeline and Josie?”

  “My wife and daughter.”

  He didn’t say anymore, and I felt like the subject was closed. I didn’t get a good feeling about it, and I was afraid of upsetting him. “He’ll pay for it.”

  Brent nodded. “Yes, he will.”

  When he got to the office, he parked underground, and then he pulled out his gun as he led me to the elevator. He punched in a code and instead of moving higher, a door I hadn’t even noticed at my back opened. Brent pulled me through it, and then it slid closed seamlessly.

  “I didn’t notice that before.”

  “That’s the point. Come on.” He led me down a narrow hallway and then punched in a code at another doorway. “We designed this place to meet any and all of our needs. This part is something that only a handful of people have seen. It’s a safe place. Kind of like a safe room, only a lot bigger and better. We could survive a bombing in here.”

  “Well, hopefully that ends up being a waste of money.” I looked around and winced at all the concrete. It was cold and made me feel slightly claustrophobic.

  “Find a seat somewhere and relax. Jack should be here soon.”

  He wanted me to
relax. Yeah, that’s never going to happen. I paced around the large room we were in, and then eventually ventured off into the rooms that branched off of it. There were several bedrooms and multiple bathrooms. A storage room shelved enough food to last almost a lifetime. The place was ready for whatever came its way. Brent had disappeared into a big control room with lots of monitors and fancy-looking equipment.

  I made my way into the control room and sat down next to Brent. “It’s been a long time. Where is he?”

  “It hasn’t been that long, Raelyn. You’re going to give yourself a heart attack if you don’t relax a little.”

  “How am I supposed to relax? We’re in this big steel bomb shelter, while Jack’s out there, possibly getting hurt by Snake. We should’ve stayed and helped. What if the men didn’t get there in time?”

  “It seems like you’re a little more attached to Jack than you let on.”

  I started pacing again. “I just don’t want anyone else hurt because of me. Jack helped save me all those years ago, and he was just as willing to jump right back in and save me again when I got here. He doesn’t deserve to get hurt because of me.”

  “Want to tell me more about how this all started with Jack and everything? He was pretty minimal on details.”

  I looked at the monitors and sighed. “You’re sure you can’t, like, see him or something?”

  Brent pulled me into a chair. “Talk to me.”

  So, I did. I told him about how I’d ended up with Snake and how he’d treated me. I told him about stripping and trying to get myself killed when Jack saved me.

  “You wanted to die?”

  I shrugged and looked away. “I didn’t see why not, in that moment. I would never have hurt myself, but to let someone else do it for me… That didn’t seem so bad. Jack tackled me to the ground, though. Then, he made the other cops leave me alone. He told me I could leave and offered me a ride to the women’s shelter.”

  “How very ‘white knight’ of him. He was still looking at the world through rose-colored glasses when he was in the DEA.”

  I thought of the fast smirks he’d had on hand and ready that day in the clubhouse. “I don’t know if they were exactly rose colored, but he was warmer then than he is now. What happened?”

  Brent looked behind me and grunted. “He can tell you himself. It’s about time you got back here. Little Raelyn here was about to work herself into a panic worrying about you.”

  I turned and spotted Jack. He was leaning against the doorframe, his clothes more ruffled than before, with a cut over his eyebrow bleeding. I was on my feet before I realized I was moving. “Jack, are you okay?”

  He nodded. “I’m fine. I didn’t get Snake, but I got two of his men. They’re locked up in one of the interrogation rooms now. Hill and Jordan are watching them now.”

  Brent stood up and stretched. “I’d love to have a chat with them about my house.”

  Jack nodded. “Go on up. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  Brent patted his brother on the back as he passed. “Good job.”

  “Not good enough.”

  I moved closer to Jack. “Let me take care of that cut?”

  He stared down at me for a second and then nodded. Without speaking, he led the way to one of the bathrooms and grabbed a first aid kit from under the sink. “Where do you want me?”

  I stopped myself from giving the answer I really wanted to give, which was anywhere. I pointed to the toilet. “There, so I can reach you.”

  He sat in silence and didn’t talk again until I was dabbing at the cut with an antiseptic wipe. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m not the one with a nasty cut over their eye. I should be asking you that question.”

  “I’m fine. This is nothing.”

  I noticed that he winced, so I leaned in closer to gently blow on the cut. “Doesn’t seem like nothing. Is it burning?”

  He shrugged one shoulder and then met my eyes. “Are you okay? I’m sure tonight was scary for you.”

  “It was. I didn’t want you facing them alone. I wanted to stay and help, but Brent made me leave. I was worried that Snake would get you.”

  Jack captured my hips in his hands and a small grin tilted his mouth. “I meant with Snake being so close to you.”

  I realized that I’d exposed too many cards and sighed. “Well, yeah… That was scary, too.”

  He tugged me closer. “I was worried about you, too. I didn’t like leaving you to Brent, even though I knew he would take care of you just fine.”

  I finished cleaning the cut over his brow and frowned at it. “What happened here?”

  “One of Snake’s men slammed his gun into my face. Thankfully, it jammed before that happened, or I would’ve been a goner.”

  My chest tightened and I gripped his shoulders in my hands. “You’re serious?”

  Jack didn’t answer. Instead, he handed me a butterfly bandage and checked his watch. “I need to find out where Snake is staying. Then, we can go and find him. I want this over. I don’t know how he found out about Brent’s house, but it easily could’ve been my house, and you could’ve been hurt.”

  “We? I get to go with you this time?”

  He winced again. “I meant ‘we’ as in Brent and me, Red. It’s too dangerous for you to go. If we fucked up and got hurt, he could snatch you away.”

  I put the bandage on his face roughly and turned away. “So, I’ll just stay in this concrete hole and that’ll be that, right?”

  Jack sighed. “For now. It could be worse, Red.”

  I happened to catch my reflection in the mirror when I started to leave the bathroom. My hair was a wild halo of curls surrounding my head that made me wonder if it could, indeed, be worse.

  Chapter 16

  Jack left me alone in the safe room right after that. I’d been paying attention when Brent was working in the control room, so I easily worked my way through the camera controls to see where he went, though. I followed him, through the monitors, to another hidden doorway on the first floor, and then into a hallway. It led to several different rooms and I was starting to see just how different of a place Stone Security was. It definitely didn’t appear that they ran things one hundred percent by the books.

  Jack entered one of the rooms, and then I lost him. I sat there, telling myself that I was going to stay where they told me to stay for a while, but then, I just couldn’t stay still anymore.

  I’d watched Brent push in his code, so I easily used it to leave the safe room. I took the elevator up to the first floor and then entered the hallway where Jack disappeared. As soon as I entered the hallway, I could hear the sound of flesh hitting flesh. I recognized it clearly from spending time in the clubhouse.

  I crept toward the fourth room, the room I’d watched Jack go into, and pressed my ear against the door. I wanted to know what was happening, but I didn’t want to just burst in.

  “Where the fuck is he? Tell us and this ends here.” Jack’s voice was rougher than normal and quickly followed by more flesh on flesh hits.

  “Fuck you. There’s no way we’re going to tell you where he is. He’d do worse to us than you could ever do.”

  I recognized the voice immediately and pushed the door open. Sal Taylor was sitting next to a big guy known only as Tank. They were tied to their chairs and spitting blood. They both looked like they’d already gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson.

  Jack and Brent turned to me at the same time, with very different expressions. Brent looked amused, while Jack looked beyond frustrated. Jack had his sleeves pushed up and was covered in a thin layer of sweat. His eyes looked a little wild, the pale blue darker and slightly more sinister.

  Sal spit out more blood and scowled at me. “Here she is, the bitch causing all the trouble.”

  Jack landed a hard punch to Sal’s stomach. “I suggest you watch your mouth.”

  I moved closer. “It’s okay, Jack. Sal here doesn’t know how to talk to women. Or how to please them. I heard plenty about
you, Sal, while in the clubhouse. The girls hated you. If they’re going to have to fuck a disgusting biker, they at least want him to be hung and know something about the female body.”

  He tried to spit at me but it landed a few feet short. “Shut up, bitch, or I’ll show you what you’ve been missing all this time.”

  “Which would be what? A limp dick and a big case of disappointment?” I rolled my eyes. “You think that Jack can’t do worse to you than Snake can, but you’re wrong. I know what Snake does. I watched it. I was even there for your own punishment a few times.”

  His eyes widened just a touch, and I knew I was going to win. “We should’ve finished your friend. It would serve you right. You’re not worth all of this trouble. Snake should’ve let us hold you at the clubhouse. We could’ve worked you in right.”

  I worked my teeth together and forced myself to nod. “Fine. Be that way.”

  He laughed. “That’s right. You’re weak, bitch.”

  “Jack, we need a metal bucket, a blow torch, and couple of rats.” I turned a glare at Sal. “I remember specifically that you screamed like a little bitch before the rat ever even bit into your stomach.”

  Tank rattled his chair as he moved away from Sal. “I ain’t getting that shit, man. Tell them where the fuck Snake is. He’s probably already gone by now, anyway.”

  Sal lunged for Tank but Brent put a foot to his chair and tipped it backward. “This a good position for what you have in mind, Raelyn?”

  “You’ll need to pull his shirt up. Snake always liked to put the bucket over the belly button. It gave the rats something to start with.” My stomach rolled, but I turned to Tank. “You never got the rats, did you? You were always such a good little errand boy for Snake. He’ll be sad that he wasn’t the one to take your cherry.”

  Brent reached for Sal’s shirt, but Tank started screaming out a location. “We’re all staying at a clubhouse outside of town.”

  “Which clubhouse?”

  “Mad Dog. They’re friends of Snake’s.”