This.Case.Is.Massive.
And once the DEA’s done dismantling the Il Sangue Cartel and the Gypsy Brothers MC, they’ll toss us all aside like garbage. As it is, they’re not even offering protection to us, hence having to keep moving around every fucking five minutes.
I like to think I’m a pretty easygoing guy, but even I have my limit. And I’m afraid to say, I’m just about there. I’m so ready to walk into the DEA office and start shooting.
The only reason I don’t is because they’re the best shot any of us have at making it out of this mess alive.
Almost on cue, my cellphone rings. At first I don’t recognize it as mine, because we’re always changing our goddamn cellphones to evade being tracked. I’m standing in the shitbox kitchen of Jase and Juliette’s apartment, watching as a fat cockroach makes its way up the wall. I tilt my head to the side, taking a newspaper from the dining table without breaking my gaze.
Thwack! I smash the dirty little fucker with the end of the rolled-up newspaper and smile, victorious. If only killing the rest of the Il Sangue Cartel was that easy. I hear movement behind me and spin around, the dirty bug forgotten as a gun is pointed at my face.
“Jesus!” Juliette says, lowering the gun to her side. I resist the urge to crack a joke, because her eyes are puffy and it’s obvious she’s been crying her fucking eyes out. Again. Is it bad that I’m secretly hoping her vengeful, kick-ass bitch side returns? Because this weepy girl with a vacant stare is not doing it for me.
“I almost shot you,” Juliette says, placing her gun on the dining table.
“Jase asked me to stop by,” I say, spreading my arms wide. The girl looks like she needs a fucking hug, and about sixteen fatty cheeseburgers injected right into her veins. Her jeans and black t-shirt are hanging off her slight frame, her cheekbones jutting out, her skin pale. She’s a garish caricature of Juliette and Samantha, with her natural green eyes and her decidedly not natural nose and chest.
She doesn’t hesitate. She tucks herself in underneath my chin, wrapping her skinny arms around my waist, and I squeeze her, not enough to take her breath away, but enough so that she knows she’s being hugged. I’m a great hugger. I pride myself on my ability to hug-tackle women all over the country. Ha.
“How you doing, J girl?” One of my old nicknames for her.
I hear her draw in a hiccupped breath, and my face falls. She’s crying. She’s always crying. I’ve never seen her like this.
“Hey,” I whisper, stroking her bright red hair with one hand, still damp from the shower she was taking when I arrived and Jase bolted. I’m still not used to the color, bright red and garish, but I guess that’s the point. She looks nothing like the tanned brunette the Gypsies are searching for. As far as appearances go, I’d say she’s fitting in just fine to the seediest stretch of Miami highway.
She disentangles herself from my embrace and wipes her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she says, composing herself. “You must be so sick of seeing me like this.”
“It’s getting kind of old,” I say, winking at her. She laughs, and that makes my heart happy.
We haven’t been together for almost four years, but yeah. I’d do just about anything to bring the light back into this girl’s green eyes.
“Jase gone?” she asks, staring at the door. I nod, taking her elbow and steering her towards the crappy sofa that looks like a breeding ground for lice and bacteria. It smells like wet dog in this apartment, and I can’t help but wonder why they chose this dump to stay in after the palatial mansions they’d been accustomed to hiding out in.
Blending in, Jase told me. And he has a point, I guess. All of us—them and us—have survived and managed to stay hidden longer here than we have anywhere else.
“I brought you coffee,” I say, handing Juliette the unmarked decaf latte from the tray on the coffee table in front of us. She’s so amped up, she doesn’t need a drop more adrenalin in her veins. Don’t want her giving me attitude for it either, so it’s secret decaf.
“Thank you,” she says, taking the cup from me and drinking from it like it’s the nectar of the gods or something. Seriously, she chugs about half of the Venti latte while I’m dumping packets of sugar in my own black coffee.
She stops to take a breath and smiles. “Decaf?”
She’s too fucking smart. I feign shock. “I would never.”
“Ha ha,” she says, setting the cup down in front of us. “Did Jase say where he was going?”
I shake my head. “Something about needing to meet with Fitz?”
Agent Fitzsimmons is our DEA handler. He’s the one running intel between Jase, Julz, myself and the agency. Tommy’s been pulled off the case and relegated to a desk job somewhere in the northwest, punishment for letting Juliette kill Dornan and Donny instead of arresting them and bringing them to trial. He didn’t even try to stop her, and they know that. So, no more Tommy. We have this Fitz dude, or as I like to call him, “Fitzfucker”.
Juliette’s smile is gone now, replaced with a blank stare. “I haven’t left this apartment since we arrived,” she says. “I know he’s just trying to protect me, but it feels like …” She trails off, her eyes widening as if she’s afraid she’s said too much.
“Feels like what?”
“Nothing,” she says, “Never mind. How are the girls?”
I nod. “OK, considering.” Amy’s suffering from her own case of claustrophobia, but at least the place we’re staying at doesn’t have roaches the size of my fist crawling the walls. The house we’re staying at is actually pretty nice, except for the part where we don’t dare leave for fear of being shot on the front steps. Luis is there with the girls now, because I’m just like Jase—I refuse to leave them alone for one millisecond. It drives Amy nuts—strait-laced, career-driven, independent Ames is dying inside four walls. She’s patient, though. She understands. After the terrifying forty-eight hours that Dornan held her and our daughter captive in Furnace Creek, Amy’s willing to bear the frustration of me watching her like a hawk around the clock.
I still remember the way my gut twisted when the Gypsy Brothers took my girls. My little Kayla wasn’t even three years old. Amy, as a psychologist employed by the LAPD, was used to sitting and listening to cops talk about discharging their guns, or seeing dead bodies. That kind of shit. She got to sit in an air-conditioned office and listen to the good guys unburden their secrets and fears, and then she got to go home at night to a safe place.
I took that safety away from her when I got involved with Juliette’s vendetta against Dornan and his club. She became a target. That’s on me.
Grandma hadn’t been answering her phone, and my gut told me something was up. Then somebody burned my fucking tattoo shop on Venice Boulevard to the ground, somebody working for Dornan. I took that as a sign. Packed Amy and Kayla up, got them into my car, and hightailed it out of LA. The moment I’d seen the ashes of my tattoo shop, I knew why Grandma hadn’t been picking up her phone. Because she was already compromised. Because she was already dead.
We drove to Nebraska. Kayla was freaking out—she was so little, so scared, and suddenly we were running. I forgot to pack her fucking teddy bear, and she cried and cried, for hours. I hadn’t even packed food, or milk, just a couple of liter bottles of water for the three of us. Amy had some animal crackers in her handbag—I’d grabbed her straight from work after I collected Kayla from the sitter—but Kayla was beside herself after a few hours of driving.
I stopped at a gas station near Grandma’s house to get her milk and a new teddy. I was out of the car for thirty seconds when they pulled up and stole my car, stole my girls from the parking lot of a Quik Stop.
I still remember how I dropped the carton of milk on the ground, the way it exploded at my feet. I dropped the teddy bear, too, in a puddle of oil, just as my car disappeared into traffic.
Dornan Ross had my girls.
I got them back—after an excruciating couple of days—but I didn’t make it to Grandma in time, and e
ven though the little voice inside my head blames Julz, I’m the one who fucked up.
“Where do you think he goes?” Juliette asks me. “Do you think he’s meeting Fitzsimmons?” She looks so young, her face scrubbed of any makeup, her eyes full of everything that troubles her. And there are so many things. She’s like a ghost of two girls—Juliette Portland and Samantha Peyton—because she’s both of those people, and she’s neither. She’s what was left behind after the fall.
“Sure.” I shrug, tiny alarm bells ringing in the back of my head. “Where else would he be?”
She just stares straight through me, chewing on her thumbnail.
“He still won’t tell me what happened to him while I was in Nebraska with you all those years,” she says finally. “He won’t tell, and I know it was bad. I wish he would tell me. I wish he would trust me.”
I shift awkwardly, and she catches my expression with lightning speed. “Did he tell you?” she asks. “Do you know?”
“Whoa,” I say. “Steady on, cowgirl. While you were—” Jesus, how do I even put it? “—missing, Jase told me a couple things about his time in the hole. Nothing concrete. No details. Just that he was down there for a very long time, and you already know that.”
He told me more. Not a lot more, but more than I’d be willing to tell Juliette right now. I love the girl, but he trusted me with his secrets, with his shame, and I’m not about to break that trust. Some fucked up things happened, and he should be the one to tell her, not me. She’ll just have to ask him herself. And keep asking, until he tells her.
“He must have told you something,” Juliette says, chewing her bottom lip.
“Julz.”
“El.”
I sigh, remembering the shaky way Jase had recounted his own captivity as we searched for Juliette together. “He told me it was dark. That it was always dark.”
She breathes in sharply, covering her mouth with her palm. Her eyes spill over as she holds the other hand to her flat stomach, folding over onto herself until her face is pressed up against her knees. She’s saying something over and over again, but I can’t hear what the words are, because she’s saying them into her knees, and the sound is muffled.
I frown, focusing on the words, putting my hand on her back when I finally figure out what she’s saying.
HeLeftTheLightsOnForMe
Hate rises in my throat, bitter and raw, as I try not to imagine what she went through. What they both went through. One in the light, one in the dark.
Dornan might be dead, but he’s still managing to fuck with these two—with all of us—from the grave.
CHAPTER EIGHT
JASE
So I wasn’t meeting with Agent Fitzsimmons. I lied to Elliot when he asked where I was going. I’m blocks away, pacing in an alleyway as I speak to Tommy on my burner phone.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this motherfucker, Tommy,” I say, eyeing off the crumbling red bricks in front of me. I make a fist. Think briefly about punching the wall. Decide, reluctantly, that I don’t need the questions my bloodied knuckles might raise. God, I can’t even take out my rage on an inanimate fucking object without being hassled these days.
I.Am.Suffocating.Here.
I fucking hate this place.
“You and me both,” Tommy replies. “My gut says he’s dirty.”
I roll my eyes. Our DEA handler might be dirty, but until we can prove something, we’re at his whim. One wrong move—one attempt to move without their permission—and Juliette and I will be thrown in jail, the murder rap the CIA brought upon us reinstated automatically. The DEA are helping us stay hidden, and for now that’s the lesser of two evils. Juliette cannot go to prison. My grandfather’s cartel will have her killed in her cell before she so much as tastes her first prison meal.
“Where are you?” I ask Tommy. “Why aren’t you here, man?”
Tommy snorts. “I’m in San fucking Fran, dude. Don’t tell Fitzsimmons you know that. I’m meant to be off the grid.”
I kick at the broken asphalt with my boot tip. Too fucking hot in Miami to wear jeans and boots, but it’s kind of hard to conceal a Glock in shorts. I wipe the thin sheen of sweat from my forehead, and it springs back instantly. I hate this place so goddamn much. I’d gladly suffer through the dry Californian heat any day, but this humidity shit is fucking ridiculous. It feels like I’m being dragged through quicksand every time I step out of that shitty apartment.
“San fucking Fran? What the hell kind of crime even happens there? iPad theft?”
“Ha ha,” Tommy says dryly. “You’d be surprised. We’ve got our own drug cartel to deal with up here. Fucking Russian pricks. Seems your granddaddy has associates in Frisco.”
“Really,” I say. “You know people there hate it when you call it Frisco. Or San Fran.”
“No shit,” Tommy says, chuckling. “I called it GeekTown in a meeting the other day. Should have seen their faces. I can’t help it if I’m a badass biker from Venice Beach.”
“Right. So, can you get me anything on this Fitz guy? I’m gonna have to shoot him if he keeps fucking around.”
I hear a spitting noise. “Do NOT shoot him!” Tommy says.
“Relax, brother. I was joking.” It’s funny how neither of us are technically Gypsy Brothers anymore, because he’s MIA and I’m being hunted down, but he’s more of a brother to me than any of my flesh and blood brothers ever were.
“Ahh, shit, man!” he says. “I just spat coffee all over my fucking MacBook! It’s a gold plated one. Do you know how long I had to stand in line to get this?”
I roll my eyes. “Are you sure you’re not gay, Tommy? No judgement here. But really. A gold MacBook?”
I hear him sip his coffee again and decide it can’t be that bad.
“I’m not gay,” Tommy says, and I hear him rummaging in the background. “I met a lovely girl, I’ll have you know. She’s a massage therapist.”
“She give you a happy ending?” I quip, not to be an asshole, but because it’s so fucking refreshing to just talk to somebody half normal.
“Not until the second date,” Tommy replies. “She said I had the softest feet.”
“I don’t even know what to say to that, Tommy.”
He laughs. “Right. I gotta go. This laptop is all I’ve got to watch Busty Brazilian Beauties on, and you’ve just sizzled the fucking thing.”
“Stick it in a bag of rice or something,” I say dismissively, ending the call. We’re talking about getting murdered here, and he’s worried about spilling coffee on his shiny new laptop. Still, at the same time, his flippant nature makes the burden of my existence a fraction easier to bear.
Once I get back to the apartment, the momentary lapse of constant tension is shattered—along with Juliette, who looks like she needs a paper bag to breathe into and some Xanax to calm her the fuck down. Hell, a shot of vodka. Anything. She’s sitting on the couch with Elliot, and when I open the front door, she’s pointing her gun at me.
I raise my eyebrows, and she puts the gun down, wiping her eyes with her fingers. I immediately regret leaving her after I fucked her on the bed, but I needed to get away before I did something I seriously regretted. Like tried to choke her, or tied her up and spanked the shit out of her, or pushed her down to her knees and fucked her mouth until she begged me to stop. I can’t do those things to her, because she’s my girl, and I love her, and I shouldn’t want to do those things to her. It might be okay to other people—fuck, there are entire lifestyles built around dominating somebody sexually—but it’s Juliette, and after what my father did to her, after what all of them did to her, I can’t be rough with her. I can’t bring violence to our bed, to our relationship. I see the way Elliot is with her—effortlessly tender, gentle, patient—and I have no fucking idea how to be that person. I try. I try so fucking hard to be the man she needs me to be. But it’s getting harder. I’ve got this rage inside me that never lets up, and I need somewhere for it to go.
“What’d
I miss?” I ask, looking from Elliot to Juliette.
Elliot shrugs. “Just Netflix and chill, you know?”
I snort. “You know what that means, right?”
Elliot laughs. “Yeah. Just wanted to see the look on your face. You look like you could use a laugh or two. You’re gonna get wrinkles if you keep frowning like that, you know.” He scrunches his face up dramatically and I shake my head. I don’t know how Tommy and Elliot can be so fucking cheery all the time. Even when we’re at what seems like the world’s end, and even though Elliot’s got a kid in the fray, he can still crack jokes as fast as I can blink.
“Hey, if we could get Netflix on that piece of shit TV, I’d move in permanently.”
“Well, you missed an excellent episode of Sally Jesse Raphael,” Elliot responds cheerily, gesturing to the rerun flickering on the tired television. “You’re just in time for Oprah, though.”
I grab a beer from the kitchen and pop the lid off, tossing it in the trash as I take a long gulp. I hold the bottle up at Elliot, and he shakes his head. Deflated, I take one more gulp and tip the rest of the beer down the sink. I can’t be slowed down. Man, how I’d love to just relax and drink a fucking beer, but there’s not much point in trying to breathe in this hellish existence we’re in the middle of right now. I need to be sharp. On my toes. Twenty-four-fucking-seven.
“What’d I miss?” I repeat, my focus flipping between them. Julz shakes her head and wipes her eyes again. Elliot shrugs. I fight the urge to roll my eyes and walk past them, heading out to the tiny balcony where I can smoke.
Yeah. I’m smoking again. I haven’t smoked in years, but it’s something to do with my hands, something to occupy the idle hours. There’s something so raw and satisfying about burning yourself black from the inside out, and so yeah, I’m smoking again.
Zero Hour (Gypsy Brothers #8) Page 3
