Jailbait

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  Ignacia said nothing.

  “Ma’am, we’re going to have to ask you to leave,” my nurse said.

  “Are you two really together?” Ignacia asked, shaking the woman’s arm off.

  Just as I was about to roll my eyes and say ‘no, he hates me,’ Trick placed his hand on my neck.

  “Yes. We tried dating other people to see if it was a fluke, but it’s not. We’re in love,” Trick lied, his hand tightening around my neck.

  I would’ve laughed had he not placed his hand over my face and pushed it down into his crotch.

  I squeaked in protest.

  “That’s just disgusting.”

  And for some reason, I had a feeling that she wasn’t talking about Trick’s open gash.

  • • •

  An hour later I was walking/limping even more than usual down the street when I heard my name called.

  I was unsurprised to find Trick sitting on his front steps.

  “Thought they said to take it easy?” Trick asked.

  I shrugged. “I am.”

  “Come over here,” he ordered.

  I would’ve, but I was kind of scared to hear what he had to say.

  “I think I’m all right,” I lied.

  Then I went into my loft and didn’t look back.

  And it was definitely not because I cared what he had to say. Or that I was scared to hear it.

  CHAPTER 12

  Dreamed I was a muffler last night. Woke up exhausted.

  -Swayze to Trick

  TRICK

  “There’s a woman helping them,” Hunt said as he leaned back in his chair and stared at the room around him. The table was crowded with men. Well, there were two women there as well, but they were so busy talking to each other and cooing over Trouper’s baby that neither one was counted.

  “What makes you say that?” Laric asked, petting the kitten in his lap.

  The kitten didn’t actually belong to Laric, per se. It belonged to his dog, or his current dog anyway. The dog, Kookie, used to be a military working dog—or MWD for short. Apparently, the dog had bonded with the kitten, and since the dog needed any help he could get since he was traumatized by a multitude of things, Laric had decided to allow the kitten to stay. We liked to call it an emotional support kitten.

  “Because nobody but a woman could get another woman into a car so easily,” Beckham piped in. “There’s no way in hell that I would’ve gotten into a car with a man if I was broken down outside of town. I would’ve kept walking.”

  “Agreed,” Six supplied.

  “I was going to say that the surveillance videos that I’ve been able to pull from the stores that they pass show a woman with long brown hair,” Hunt said. “But yes, I agree. Women in trouble hesitate to get into a man’s car.”

  When I’d first come into this group of misfits, it was because I’d promised to help any way that I could with the human trafficking threat that hung like a pall over our area.

  I guess when I’d said yes, I had no clue just how bad it was. And not just in deep East Texas, but everywhere.

  For instance, we’d had seven teenage girls go missing over the last month, and all of them had last been seen on a highway as their cars had ‘broken down’ in the middle of nowhere.

  “Where’d the last one disappear?” I asked. “You said the first couple were near our area. But not the last couple.”

  “In a town called Bear Bottom. It’s about an hour…”

  “That’s where the prison was, dumbass,” Sin interjected. “We know where Bear Bottom is.”

  Hunt smacked his head. “Oh, yeah.”

  He looked sheepish, so I knew that he hadn’t intentionally forgotten.

  Still.

  “We’ve had three from the Souls Chapel area, two from Bear Bottom, two from Uncertain, and there’s one more from a place deeper south than here, it’s called Whispering Pines,” Beckham, our information gatherer via person—Hunt was the information gatherer via web—said.

  “Thank you.” Lynn tipped his head up so that his gaze was on the ceiling. “Any luck pulling their cell phone records?”

  “Phones dumped at a rest stop not far from a central location between all four locations,” Hunt muttered. “All were coming home from a party. Each had an invite via text from that same number I was telling you about earlier.”

  The ‘same number’ was actually a weird thing. The phone number in question belonged to an elderly man in hospice care. What it looked like was whoever was making the calls and texts were ghosting the old man’s number. On the man’s phone information, there was no record of him ever making the call.

  Plus, the phone had been in a lockbox in the middle of a hospice home health center for over a month, and no one had used it in so long that there was dust collecting on the screen.

  I’d found that out myself when I’d sweet talked a nurse into letting me have my ‘dad’s’ phone.

  “So pretty much we have fuckin’ nothing?” Bruno guessed.

  “Right,” Zach grumbled. “This is a fuckin’ nightmare. How the hell do they do all this so secretively?”

  “Because they have people helping them,” Sin said. “The sheer amount of crooked people in this world, I’m finding, is fucking terrifying. Cops. Lawyers. People high up in the government. Medical personnel. You name it, people are disgusting.”

  He had that right.

  I had no idea what an intricate underground system that human trafficking had in place until Lynn had opened my eyes to it. And Sin was right. There were people helping this ‘cause’ that never, not ever, should’ve been helping them.

  These were people that you were supposed to be able to trust.

  Before I’d come on the scene, Lynn had put his own father-in-law-to-be into the ground because of his involvement. He’d been the mayor of fuckin’ Dallas for Christ’s sake.

  Then there was Trouper’s entire reason for going to jail. Trouper had volunteered to help because there’d been a few women in the Air Force at his base that had disappeared. Come to find out, one of his very own friends had gotten himself involved. Then, when his wife had been traded into it, Trouper had lost his damn mind. Then he’d lost the court case.

  “I think that’s all that we can do for today,” Lynn said, sounding annoyed. “Until we have something more solid to go on, we’ll keep our ears to the ground.”

  I sighed and stood up, my arms stretching high above my head from being in a chair for the last two hours as we listened and brainstormed.

  “Oh, before y’all leave,” Lynn said as he rolled his sleeves back down his arms. “I now have a lawyer on retainer. Her name is Swayze…”

  “Swayze Marrin. Long, curly blonde hair. Walks with a limp. Has sexy blue-green eyes that make you want to fall into her soul and is all alone in this cruel world,” Sin said. “We know her.”

  “How do you know her already?” Six asked curiously.

  “Trick here is in love with her,” Zach said as he bumped me with his shoulder.

  I punched him in the arm, a denial on my lips.

  Only, that denial never came because he was right.

  I definitely had feelings for her.

  Twelve years in prison—all of it her fault—didn’t dim the feelings either.

  “And this is a small town,” I grumbled. “I live across the street from her.”

  “What are the odds that you know her that well in such a short time of being there, though? Man, you boys move fast,” Six drawled.

  “Not much of a coincidence that I know her when she’s the one that got me sent to prison,” I said. “I think it’s more of a coincidence that she’s here right now in the city that I landed in.”

  Lynn was quiet, his head tilted slightly, and his eyes were sparkling.

  I narrowed my eyes at him.

  “Is it a coincidence?” I asked.

  Lynn didn’t answer. Instead, he walked out and didn’t look back.

  “It totally wasn’t a coincide
nce,” Six drawled. “That man has things up his sleeve that even I wouldn’t expect.”

  With that, she walked out, too, following her man.

  That left the rest of us staring at each other.

  “He’s like a meddling mother hen,” Beckham said as she too stood. She reached for her son, Hiro, and patted me on the shoulder as she walked past. “Good luck to you, good man. I want to meet her soon.”

  Trouper’s amused face followed his wife out.

  “I think you should just go for it,” Sin suggested. “Get rid of whatever that chip on your shoulder is saying and make her want you.”

  “She already wants him,” Bruno muttered. “When I took her home the other night, she kept looking longingly at his bar, as if she wanted to see him walk out of it even though we’d left him at the restaurant with crazy pants.”

  “Crazy pants?” Zach asked, confused.

  “There is one fucking woman in this town that would literally be the death of him, and he managed to find her,” Bruno explained.

  “Why didn’t you warn me?” I asked. “She came up to me while I was at the same bar that you were drinking at.”

  “I’m not your mother,” Bruno said as he walked out.

  I sighed and followed him out, making my way outside and then to the parking lot.

  Bruno was right, though.

  Ignacia was a ‘crazy pants.’

  I’d met her initially when she greeted my move to this town. Then, I had a run in with her at the grocery store. I never expected her to come into my own bar. I should’ve realized that she wasn’t going to be what I wanted her to be, but the problem was when Ignacia had asked me out, Swayze had been rolling her trash can to the curb, and I’d said yes.

  But it hadn’t been intentional or anything. I’d just been answering what I thought was a simple question. Not a ‘will you go out with me.’ But then Swayze had seen me standing with a woman, and her eyes had narrowed and a pissed off look had settled on her face.

  Which led me to continuing to agree with it because I’d liked the look on her face.

  That, and it might help if I had something to curb the turbulence inside of me when it came to Swayze Marrin.

  God, I wanted to fuck her.

  I wanted to brand her.

  I wanted to make her mine in every single way possible.

  Then I wanted to hurt her like she’d hurt me.

  Logically, I knew that it wasn’t her fault. I knew that she hadn’t asked to have the shit beat out of her by her own father. I knew that it was a more of a right place, right time kind of thing. I knew that I hadn’t needed to intervene the way I had.

  And, honestly, maybe I should apologize to her for killing her dad.

  But…

  I stepped down off of the sidewalk and cut across the parking lot just in time for a Ford truck to come hauling ass my way. I had barely enough time to dive into the bushes before the truck barreled past me.

  “What the fuck?” I growled, getting up onto my knees as I peered around the bush.

  “You alive?”

  Zach.

  “Yeah,” I hollered back. “Peachy.”

  Just as I said that, they were there, all of the ‘MC’ coming to a halt in front of and beside me.

  “Called it in, but the truck’s long gone,” Sin said as he hunkered down beside me.

  “Plates are stolen,” Hunt said as he looked down at his phone. “Reported missing two hours ago from a gas station north of town.”

  It was scary how fast Hunt could come up with information.

  I looked at my arm and grimaced when I saw that I popped two stitches open.

  “I think you gotta go back and take care of that,” Sin said with a grim tone. “We’ll go looking for the Ford.”

  I sighed.

  Normally I would leave it, but the doctor had said last night that I needed to be careful with these stitches because they were close to a nerve. And if I experienced any problems to seek medical attention swiftly.

  Leaving me with no choice but to go.

  I didn’t want to lose feeling in my fuckin’ hand.

  Goddamn Ignacia.

  “Gonna go look at the cameras,” Zach said, disappearing back into the restaurant.

  I grumbled and moved to my bike. “Thanks, y’all.”

  Then I drove myself back to the doctor.

  CHAPTER 13

  Rocky Mountain oysters. The original sac lunch.

  -Coffee Cup

  SWAYZE

  “Ignacia strikes again,” Jayco said as he walked into my office.

  “What?” I asked, coming alert at the mention of her name.

  He showed me his phone, but the words were too small—who read with their font on the smallest setting?—and I didn’t have my glasses on because I’d broken them only an hour before.

  “I can’t read that,” I grumbled. “My glasses broke.”

  He moved closer and showed me his phone.

  I blinked when I saw the video he was watching.

  Then I was up and out of my chair.

  “What the fuck?” I cried. “She’s not usually at that level yet!”

  Okay, so when I said that Ignacia was ‘bad’ I really meant it.

  In the other two cases, it was ‘thought’ that Ignacia had tried to run them down. In one instance, Ignacia had made contact with the man and broke his leg.

  Only, it usually happened after they’d gone out on five or six dates.

  When the man actually realized just how freakin’ crazy she was and tried to break things off, she struck.

  The problem was, nobody could prove that it was her doing it. It was only suspected because Ignacia had threatened the other two men with it in the past.

  “Yep,” Jayco said. “I canceled all of your appointments for the rest of the day. Rescheduled them for tomorrow.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “How did you know I would care?”

  Jayco rolled his eyes. “Because you have a picture of his mugshot on your computer as a ‘reminder’ to, my guess, never forget him. Even though I doubt that you’d ever forget him even if you didn’t have that photo there. Plus, the way you stare out at the bar all day through your office door that you never used to leave open before is a dead giveaway.”

  He was right.

  I didn’t usually have this amount of distraction.

  I usually kept my office door closed. Worked on what I needed to work on. Got my shit done. Went home.

  Now it was taking me two and three times as long to get through stuff that used to take me only a couple of hours.

  Whatever. None of that mattered right then.

  Grabbing my phone and keys, I looked at Jayco. “Can you get the place shut down?”

  His eyebrows went up to his hairline. “You’re going to trust me with your baby?”

  I rolled my eyes. “It’s about time that I do that, yes? You’ve been lecturing me for months that I needed to learn to delegate. Well, I’m delegating.”

  “I don’t have a key,” he said, sounding surprised.

  I handed him my key ring. “Make a copy and make sure you’re here by eight in the morning.”

  “What about your house key? You need to be able to get into your place,” he said.

  “I have an extra key hidden,” I said. “Thanks, Jayco.”

  I moved across the street to the bar, as fast as my walking boot would take me.

  When I yanked open the door, I was unsurprised to find a few usuals in their spots.

  I knew that he was there.

  I also knew that I was likely making a mistake.

  But I just needed to see him.

  I needed to know that he was okay.

  My eyes scanned the area, and I was just about to walk farther inside when he came out of the back.

  He was talking to the other bartender while he had a keg in his hands and he was hefting it high as if it didn’t weigh a hundred pounds easy.

  I must’ve made some sort of noise
—one of relief at seeing him okay—because he looked over at me standing in the bar door letting all his air conditioning out.

  He wasn’t clean shaven. He had a five o’clock shadow that was gorgeous as hell, but still let me see his square jaw as much as I wanted.

  His square jaw that clenched when he saw me walk inside.

  He gestured toward the bar, the seat farthest in the corner, and I took that to mean that I was allowed to enter, as well as sit down.

  Nice.

  Maybe he’d hold off on hating me long enough for me to assure myself that he was okay.

  Then I could go back to work.

  Hopefully.

  Taking the seat he’d indicated, I pulled off my blazer and tossed it onto the seat beside me out of habit. If I did that, then people wouldn’t sit next to me. Not unless the bar was packed, and at that point I usually left because me and crowds didn’t do so well.

  Ever since the trial, when everyone had been watching my every move, I’d had a hard time being in places that I knew people were solely focused on me.

  To combat that, I’d forced myself to try to be more outgoing. But it was still tough to do court cases to this day.

  When I got home, I usually needed a couple of beers and some headache meds. But I got through it.

  “What can I get you?”

  I swallowed hard, looking at the man and studying his body to make sure that he wasn’t any worse for the wear.

  “Dark beer. Whatever you have on tap,” I said. “Are you okay?”

  He walked away and got me a mug of beer, and it was then that I saw his back side was covered in dirt.

  “You’re dirty,” I said as he came back.

  “To answer your question, I’m fine. Had to have the stitches redone, though.” He showed me his arm, and I winced.

  “It was Ignacia.”

  His brows rose. “How do you know?”

  “This is her MO,” I explained. “Though, this is usually sixth-date level shit. Something she doesn’t hit until she’s well and truly ‘hooked.’ Or she thinks they are. I don’t know. But she doesn’t usually get like this after only one date.”