Bad Boy Criminal: The Novel

by Olivia Hawthorne

  Isabelle only glared harder, as if this was some kind of a sick joke, but I forged ahead. I had to tell her. It was obvious she didn’t realize what had been happening on my end for a surprisingly long time. I’d tried to deny it, tried to push it away, but it was the only conclusion which made any sense.

  “Think about it, Izz,” I whispered to her. “After all…you demanded that you come on this insanely dangerous road trip with me, some stranger, a girl I hardly knew, a huge liability. You could’ve turned me in for reward money, for publicity, or for shits and giggles. But I brought you along in spite of all possible logical reason; why? For sex?” Isabelle hesitated, her eyes limpid and receptive, but she nodded at the suggestion. “And then,” I went on, “even after getting your old man’s truck and some of his money, I could’ve bailed on you. Hell, I had Jade set up the exchange with Arlo. I had a new gun, a new bike, and you were sleeping away the morning at that motel in fuck if I remember.”

  “The Sandy Castle,” she reminded me shakily.

  “Right,” I said, my heart softening to her vulnerability. “I could’ve just never come back. But leaving never even occurred to me.” I stepped forward and took her face into my hands again, cradling her cheeks, letting my eyelashes kiss across her forehead. “And then, when I’d thought you left…what other explanation could there have been for my panic? Even before that—when Cantrell pointed his gun at your head—I surrendered like a fucking idiot. My fate would’ve been maximum security prison with no hope of acquittal! But I did it anyway, because Cantrell had this girl I hardly knew in his crosshairs. Except…” I opened my eyes and peered into Isabelle’s, solid, hoping to impress upon her my certainty. “I felt like I did know her. I felt as if I’d known her my whole life. And just been waiting to meet her.”

  My mouth captured hers, fully and firmly, and I hoisted her into the air. She returned the pressure of my lips with salty desperation, her fingers digging through my hair and her heels pinning against my lower back. Even though the get-up of Adriana Rey looked nothing like the Isabelle Turner I knew and loved, I was thankful for it, and shoved the flexible skirt up to her waist, revealing Izzy’s tan, muscular hips.

  I knew we didn’t really have the time, and that it was entirely possible some hidden camera in Jade’s apartment was catching us on film at this very moment, but I couldn’t stop myself. Maybe I was a romantic after all…a big old softie…because I needed to express this feeling moving through me, and I didn’t think it was just coming from my body. It was coming out of my soul. I needed to be with her. Deeply.

  I removed my belt and unsheathed my cock from my boxers; he sprang up like a leaky metal pipe between Isabelle’s thighs, and I hooked my finger into her panties, moving them to the side so that I could slide in. As always, there was a sharp intake of breath, a quiver of anticipation, and then, the all-consuming relief of being inside her. Suddenly, completely, I was not alone, and everything would be okay. Suddenly, completely, I was home.

  I cried out with each thrust into her body; she seemed to enwrap me tighter and tighter, or perhaps it was I who was bulging and throbbing harder and harder. Isabelle joined me in my ululations, and I drove her up against the wall of Jade’s apartment. It felt like we were going to crack the plaster any minute.

  “Oh, Ash,” she whimpered, eyes rolling back into her head. “I love you too, Ash. I love you too.”

  Again, and again, and again, and again, I drove into her mindlessly, gratefully, and then burst and flowed into her like a dam breaking, a deluge which left us both shuddering and damp and electrified. I couldn’t even move; it felt as if we were welded together, as if we had slammed so hard into each other, our bodies had molded into one shivering, sweating conglomeration of nerve endings.

  I was still inside her, holding her up against the wall, when a sharp series of knocks banged and we hurriedly returned to our senses. Isabelle unwrapped her legs and touched them to the floor, shoving her skirt back into place, and I zipped my pants and walked—unsteadily—to examine the peephole.

  Four familiar Hell's Ransom members peered back at me through the warped glass.

  Juan and Drake, the respective leaders of the Utah and New Mexico chapters, and their prospects, Woody and Nacho. “Let us in, old boy,” Juan called, his voice heavy with seriousness. “We got a call from Dom, directed us down this way. Need to talk to you. You still in there?”

  I shared a significant look with Isabelle—here we go, babe, hope you’re as ready as you think you are—and wrenched the door open for our company.

  “Hey kids,” Juan greeted, stalking into the apartment. “Jesus H., look at this place.” He didn’t seem to notice how my cheeks felt a bit flushed, or how Izzy’s hair was all over the place. If they did notice, no one mentioned, which was very adult of them. “Anyway, man, got here as soon as we heard. Dom had a real serious talk with Arlo, and learned that Mickey’s got a place here in Juarez, too… We knew it was Mexico, somewhere. Now he knows it’s Juarez. How about that. And, get this, he got up in Mickey’s chapter and nobody has seen homeboy for the past several days. Road trip, they said. Where to, no one could say.”

  “To Juarez,” I answered.

  Juan put a finger on his nose and pointed to me. “Bingo. So, Arlo says he had no idea that Mickey was going to go after Jade… Dom’s mulling that over. In the meantime, we’ve got a vengeful Hell's Ransom brother and the missing friend of another Hell's Ransom brother; I think we can connect the dots ourselves, right? Let’s get the fuck over to Mickey’s place and just have a look around. How about it, boys?”

  I reached behind me and took Isabelle’s hand. “Boys,” I said, “and girl.” I looked over my shoulder and we shared a secret smile between the two of us. “Izzy’s coming.”

  “You think so?” Drake looked over to Isabelle. “You want in on this action, little girl?”

  “I have to,” Isabelle answered him plainly. “I can’t just stay here and do nothing.”

  “Well, all right. Let’s party.”

  As the six of us trooped back out the apartment’s front door, Nacho commented, “Smelled like sex in there.”

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Isabelle

  When our bikes all arrived at the street address, we drifted to the side of the road and hid our vehicles behind dumpsters and overflowing bags of trash. I would’ve preferred if we were able to use brush to hide the motorcycles, and could’ve climbed out from behind foliage instead, but that wasn’t really an option in Juarez. Instead, I straddled a fat plastic bag of trash and swung my leg over it, grimacing. What a dump this place was.

  “I’m sorry, mi amor,” Juan whispered to his bike, kissing his fingers and pressing them to the bike before abandoning her amid the trash.

  Surrounding us were rundown houses and a smattering of apartment complexes, where it appeared that no one actually lived. The streets were empty, and many of the windows on these buildings were broken. Far in the distance, the sound of a siren echoed out into the sky, huddled low with a smog the color of peach, even though we were nowhere near sunset.

  “House is coming up on the left,” Juan instructed us. “Now…we need to stay out of sight of any of those windows, guys. They won’t be expecting us. Drake, you and me—Nacho, Woody, you come with us—should go around the front. We’re Hell's Ransom members. Senior Hell's Ransom members. He needs to show us some goddamn respect, so let’s go be direct with the son of a bitch. But Ash…he can’t see you. He’d panic, get defensive, and might do something crazy with Jade. So you slip around the back. We’ll be distracting Mickey plenty up front, I gather. And Izz? You still want in on this?”

  “More every second,” she answered shortly.

  “You can watch his back with your little lady, Beyonce.”

  “Sounds like a dream come true.”

  Ash surprised me by snatching up my hand and giving it a quick squeeze.

  “All right, there’s the place,” Juan said, gesturing toward a two-story buil
ding with grim, cement walls. It looked like the kind of place where a kidnapping and some drug-running would generally take place. “Let’s head over. Everybody ready?”

  The four Hell's Ransom brothers trooped toward the house over the sidewalk, as if house calls were quite common in the motorcycle club—even house calls which crossed the border—but Ash hung back and turned to me.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” he whispered.

  “For the rest of my life,” I whispered back.

  He kissed me once more, briefly but completely, and then departed toward the back of the house, slipping through the overgrown grass of the median between this busted-up street and the next one. I crept after him, cursing Adriana Rey for not owning a more sensible pair of shoes.

  As we approached the patio, from which we remained separated by a chain-link fence, a sliding glass door in the basement rolled open, and none other than Alex fucking Cantrell sauntered out, carrying himself as comfortably as any old roommate would…or as comfortably as a brother. My blood began to boil at the insult that this was to the Hell's Ransom name—and if I was mad, I imagined that Ash was fucking enraged. He was probably coming outside because Mickey had gone to answer the door and seen that they were his “brothers” knocking.

  Ash vaulted up over the chain-link fence and approached Alex with all the haughty confidence I really wished he didn’t have just now. I hunkered down in the tall grass and extracted Beyonce from where I had holstered her to my side, beneath the silk blouse of Adriana Rey. I took aim and kept her focused on Alex. I took deep breaths, in and out, in and out. Focus. I knew I couldn’t just shoot him for talking to Ash. I would have to keep a cool head. That was the difference between a self-defense verdict and a verdict of manslaughter, or even murder. I would have to keep a cool head…but—

  “Hey, fucker,” Alex called to Ash, his already beady eyes narrowing. “I figured I’d have the severe displeasure of seeing your ass again. Where’s Bonnie?” he asked, meaning me, I assume. Right behind you, fucker, I retorted acidly in my head.

  “You know how it is with road warriors and women,” Ash replied smoothly. “She was good to me for a while, but…started being more trouble than she was worth. I think you might know what I mean when I say that, right?”

  Ash passed in front of my line of fire and I pulled the gun up; I couldn’t get a clear shot anymore.

  “I think I do,” Alex sneered. “You’d think, without that little bitch stuck between us, our business would be over, though, right? Yet here you are.”

  “Here I am,” Ash agreed. He was trying to get a better look inside the house. “And here you are. What are you doing at Mickey’s place, huh?”

  “Oh, Mickey and I go way back,” Alex assured him, hooking an arm around the back of his neck and dragging him forward, through the open sliding glass door and into the darkened basement. “Why don’t you come on in and say hi. We’ll all catch up.”

  “Dammit,” I hissed under my breath. Now I couldn’t see anything. Even their shadows had disappeared—I didn’t even think they were in the basement anymore… I holstered Beyonce and came to a low stand, swinging my legs over the chain-link fence and darting across the desolate yard of dry, brown grass. I ran to the sliding glass door and peered inside: nobody. Sliding the door just an inch open, I pressed my ear to the open air: nothing.

  Sliding the door open further still, I removed my high heels and slipped inside.

  Chapter Sixty

  Ashton

  “Hey, Mickey!” Alex called, dragging me up the steps from the basement to the ground floor. Still, I wasn’t particularly nervous, because I knew that the other Hell's Ransom members were here—and would Mickey really do something so drastic as hurt one of us, unprovoked, at the behest of a Valiant? That kind of short-sighted idiocy would get a brother killed. “Look what I found outside!”

  We came around a twist in the wooden staircase and were deposited onto grimy, yellowed linoleum in a kitchen which had the chemical odor of cooking hard drugs. Fantastic. One could only guess.

  Mickey, a skinny and proud piece of trash with missing fingers and missing teeth, was sitting in the next room—the living room, which was openly connected to the same kitchen where the basement emptied out—except he wasn’t sitting. Only Hell's Ransom brothers were sitting. Mickey remained standing, which seemed odd. He towered over them with a kind of dominance, and Juan’s eyes flashed to me thoughtfully. He’d wanted to try to talk to Mickey peacefully about this, I could tell—and he had faith in the hierarchy of the brotherhood. He’d expected that Mickey would explain and apologize and no one would get hurt unless they absolutely had to…

  But he hadn’t anticipated that a member of the Valiant would be here. That was worrisome. I wasn’t sure if I should pull my gun yet, or wait.

  “What’s that fucker doin’ here?” Drake demanded. Drake was a big guy, even bigger than Juan; I could see how he was used to talking that way to people, especially wrinkly twigs like Mickey, even in their own homes.

  But Mickey was an idiot. Everyone forgot that part when they talked to him. It was the first thing I’d realized when we’d met, and it was the first word I’d choose to describe him still.

  “That’s the same fucker who—”

  Alex was quick to draw weapons—one from within his shirt, and the other tucked into the back of his jeans—and train one on Drake, and one on me. Juan started to get up, but Mickey’s piece flashed out at him and held him—as well as the dumbfounded prospects—still.

  “What the hell are you doing, Mickey?” Drake demanded, eyes wide with shock. “You’re supposed to be one of us!”

  “Yeah, well,” Mickey sneered, “that’s always been true, ain’t it? I was always supposed to be one of you…but I never have been. Even after initiating, it didn’t mean shit. Still had fuckers being sent after me, fucking with me… Nobody cared. None of y’all did anything! If you did do anything, it was blame me—make it worse—hell, Dom’s little brother got sent to mangle me after I was part of a bad deal in Albuquerque! I can’t help if the guy got suspicious when the bags were light!”

  I cleared my throat. “The bags were light because you skimmed from them,” I reminded him gently. “That almost got two other Hell's Ransom brothers killed, and they can’t do business in New Mexico anymore, period.”

  “Sounds like it’s not my problem,” Mickey said, shoving the barrel of his gun in my direction next. Juan’s eyes ticked between us.

  “That’s exactly why I was sent for your fingers, Mick,” I said. “Dom wanted to make it your problem, so you’d think about it next time.”

  “Yeah, well, I made it his problem, then, didn’t I?” Mickey retorted nonsensically.

  “Um. What?” I had to ask.

  “I made it his problem by making a problem for his little brother.” Mickey glowered at me. “It was the closest I could get to that son of a bitch.”

  “Shut up, Dannell,” Alex whispered hoarsely. “You talk too much.”

  “I got shit to be proud of!” Mickey boasted. “Think about it, man. You got The Valiant up your ass now that Jared Wayne’s out of the way.”

  My eyebrows dropped into a deep scowl.

  “And I got revenge for how many fucking years I wasted, thinking the Hell's Ransoms were my brothers,” Mickey went on.

  “The Hell's Ransoms were your brothers,” Juan insisted angrily.

  “You got Jared Wayne?” Drake wondered incredulously.

  “You set me the fuck up?” I shrilled.

  “Technically,” Alex intervened, forgetting his command that Mickey shut up, “I’m the one who got Jared Wayne.”

  “You’re a fucking whore,” I told Mickey emphatically. “And I really mean that, dude, from the bottom of my heart.”

  Just then, headlights swept through the living room window, followed by the sound of an engine cutting and the slamming of doors. Somehow, with no logic whatsoever to my thoughts, I assumed that the police had arrived
to liberate us from this situation. But when have the police ever shown up at the right damn time?

  A thunderous knock came at the door, and Mickey yelled, “Come on in, brothers!”

  The door burst open and in sauntered three strangers—but I knew them anyway. I knew them by the faded angel wing patches on their jackets and vests.

  “You’re a fucking whore, dude,” I reiterated, my voice roiling with loathing for Mickey Dannell. At least Alex was a piece of shit from birth onward, but Mickey had actually fooled Dom into thinking he was a good-hearted, harmless idiot. He wasn’t. He had just enough charm to get by, and underneath that thin layer of grease was nothing but avarice and laziness. “You’re a whore for The Valiant, and you’re a whore for anyone else who’ll take you.”

  I punctuated my decree with a spit to the ground, then looked back up and grimaced. I should’ve known there’d be three more fucking guns in my face.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Isabelle

  I followed Alex and Ash through the basement, but had to stop after they ascended the stairwell and left me behind to eavesdrop. Breathless, I pressed myself to the wall and held Beyonce at the ready. Up above me, I could hear their muffled voices rise and fall. Alex trying to quiet Mickey—Mickey raging about his mistreatment in Hell's Ransom…and bragging about the murder of Jared Wayne.

  Off to my right, I heard the sound of a soft clatter, like a box falling off a shelf, and it drew my eyes away from the wedge of stairwell on which they had been trained.

  There was a narrow plywood door, closed tight, on my right. It looked like little more than a closet…but it sounded as if a fairly large animal, like a dog, was tied up inside.

  A dog…or a woman?

  Scooting silently over to the right, I tried the knob and found it resistant. Locked.