Take Me Down (Riggs Brothers #2)

by Julie Kriss

  Instead, I let myself into my lonely little apartment, changed into casual jeans, a T-shirt, a sweater, and flip-flops, washed my face, brushed out my hair, and walked back out again. I got back in my car and drove across Westlake, across the train tracks that bisected the town, and I headed for Welmer Road. The big, ramshackle house where the Riggs family lived.

  I wasn’t Jace Riggs’ counselor anymore.

  Maybe now, we could finally have a conversation.

  Eight

  Tara

  The house was in bad shape, but I could see that someone was at least trying to improve it. The grass was mowed, and a large section had been pulled out and replanted with grass seed in an effort to kill all the weeds. There were a few new paving stones in the front walk and a stack of tools sat on the sagging front porch, like someone was planning to do work with them as soon as he was free.

  I circled around the house to the back. Jace had said he lived in the guest house on the family property, and sure enough, behind the main house was a smaller building, big enough for just a few rooms. The day was receding into dusk, and the air smelled sweet. A few yards over, a dog barked. A quiet day in the neighborhood on the wrong side of the tracks.

  I could see no light on in the guest house, no car parked in the cleared gravel space at the side of the house. I knocked on the door anyway and waited patiently. Funny that the idea of digging into Jace’s file and finding his phone number felt like a breach of privacy to me—which was why I hadn’t done it—yet this didn’t. I was probably crazy and he would kick me off the property. I should probably go home.

  Especially since, as it seemed, he wasn’t even home. I left the guest house and walked back around the house, but instead of heading back to my car I mounted the steps to the sagging front porch and rang the bell for the main house.

  Because apparently, when it came to Jace Riggs, I had no idea where to draw the line.

  There were footsteps behind the door, and it was opened by a wildly good-looking man wearing a white tee and a low-slung pair of jeans. He had dark hair and high cheekbones and a bad-boy curl to his lip that probably slayed women for miles. I knew instantly that he was Jace’s brother Luke, who Jace had said lived in the main house with his girlfriend. The two men didn’t look exactly the same—Luke had a casual, lazy air, where Jace was all coiled-up tension—but the Riggs genes were there: size, muscles, smoldering good looks. The Riggs parents might be useless, if not abusive, but they produced downright gorgeous sons.

  “Yeah?” Luke Riggs said, looking me up and down, in a way that was curious rather than sexual.

  “Hi,” I said, trying to sound like a halfway normal person. “I’m looking for Jace Riggs. Is he here?”

  Luke blinked, and his curious gaze intensified. “You’re looking for Jace?”

  “I am,” I said. “You’re Luke, right?”

  Now he was very curious, though he masked it with his lazy drawl. “You know who I am,” he said slowly, “but I don’t know who you are.”

  “Tara Montgomery,” I said. I thought about sticking out my hand, then decided it would look too dorky with a guy this cool. “I’m, um, an acquaintance of Jace’s. I really need to talk to him. Is he here?”

  Luke just stood there looking at me for a moment. I couldn’t quite read his expression. “He’s not here,” he said finally. “He went out.”

  I blew out a breath. Damn it. “Where do you think I could find him?”

  “No offense,” Luke said, “but I don’t know you, so I don’t think I’m going to say.”

  It was then I realized what his expression was: distrust. “I’m not going to hurt him,” I said. “I just want to talk.”

  Luke leaned a shoulder on the doorframe, still looking at me with that dark, distrustful gaze that had an edge of hostility to it. “I’m trying to figure out who you are,” he said. “You’re definitely someone official, because Jace doesn’t have a girlfriend and women don’t come around looking for him. You’re not his PO. I’m tossed up between a cop or a social worker, and Jace doesn’t need to talk to either one.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, I had no idea what, but a voice called from behind Luke’s shoulder. “Luke? Who is it?”

  A woman appeared in the doorway. She was blonde and gorgeous, even wearing yoga pants and an oversized T-shirt. She stepped next to Luke and looked at me curiously.

  “A woman,” Luke said, “looking for Jace.”

  The blonde’s eyes went wide.

  “She says her name is Tara Montgomery,” Luke said. “You know a Tara Montgomery, Emily?”

  The woman—Emily—looked thoughtful. “Doesn’t ring a bell,” she said to Luke. She turned to me. “Did you go to Westlake High?”

  “Um, no,” I said. “I went to private school.”

  Emily’s eyes went wide again, and Luke elbowed her gently. “Cop or social worker,” he said to her. “That’s my guess.”

  “Look,” I said, feeling my chances slipping away, “can you tell me where Jace is? I’m not a cop or a social worker. I really need to speak with him.”

  Emily glanced at Luke, took in the set of his jaw, then looked back at me. “Honey,” she said, “come clean.”

  What was the deal with these two? “I’m his friend,” I said.

  “Jace doesn’t have friends,” Emily said bluntly. “He especially doesn’t have good-looking, private school, female friends. So just say what you want, or Luke will send you on your way, and I don’t blame him. Jace has already been to hell and back, and he doesn’t need any more trouble.”

  So that was it. I saw it now: they were protective. Jace thought no one in his family gave a shit about him, but apparently someone did. I took a breath and rolled the dice. “Here’s the deal,” I said. “I was assigned by the court as his counselor, but when he came to see me I fucked it up. I really did. And I submitted my report and said nice things and I’m not his counselor anymore, but that isn’t enough. I want to make it right. I need to apologize to him. That’s all—just apologize.” I looked back and forth between them. “Please.”

  The corner of Emily’s pretty mouth twitched. She leaned against Luke, curling one arm casually over his shoulder, her hip against his. “I vote you tell her,” she said to him.

  I tried not to stare at the easy way she touched him, the way her body fit against his, the way he looked so relaxed with her leaning on him like that, like she was meant to be there. These two weren’t just dating—they were in love.

  And they were having sex, a lot of it. It was pretty much there for anyone to see. It made my throat close because even when I was engaged, I’d never had a relationship like that. I’d never leaned on Kyle without thinking the way Emily was leaning on Luke right now. I’d never felt so physically close to a man—even a man I was sleeping with—that I’d notched my hip against his. Like we just totally belonged to each other. What must that feel like?

  Emily obviously won Luke over by touching him—something I gathered wasn’t new—because Luke said, “Okay, fine. He went to play pool at the Guardhouse. Left about two hours ago.”

  I knew the Guardhouse, a pool hall on the downtown Westlake strip. “Thank you,” I said, turning to leave.

  “Apologize,” Luke said, and though his voice was even, I knew he meant it. “If you fucked up, tell him you’re sorry. Emily is right. Jace is the last person who needs anyone’s shit.”

  I nodded and turned away, heading for my car. I felt like I’d been put to the test, but I couldn’t feel bad about it. In fact, it made me almost feel hopeful. Because someone really did care about Jace.

  If only he could be made to believe it.

  Nine

  Jace

  You’d think the Riggs men would be big drinkers, considering our upbringing. Our mothers bailed early—Ryan had a different mother than Dex, Luke, and me—and left us alone to grow up however we could. Predictably, we ran wild. We didn’t follow very many rules growing up, but we ended up with surprisingl
y few vices. Sure, Dex knew a weed dealer on every block and had the alcohol tolerance of a solid slab of iron—he could do shots one by one until his eyes got a little unfocused, and then he’d fall into a peaceful sleep. But Ryan was an athlete, and now he was raising a seven-year-old son, so he didn’t drink, and Luke only had the occasional beer.

  As for me, my endlessly ticking brain never let me get truly fucked up. Why are you doing this? Is this the right thing? Is it making you happy? By the time I’d talked myself into getting hammered, I’d usually exhausted myself.

  Tonight, I wanted to get wrecked.

  Sitting and staring at nothing on a barstool sounded boring, so I took my beer to the pool room in the back of the Guardhouse and challenged all comers. I learned pool at thirteen, and I was fucking good at it. The lines and angles all made sense in my head. A pool shark once told me that to be good at pool was the sign of a wasted youth, and he was right. I’d gone to school, and I found it easy, but teachers hated me. After the fourth or fifth time a teacher assumed I was cheating when I got good marks, I gave up trying. I went to school occasionally, and the rest of the time I read books or played pool.

  I am trying to figure out why a man who is intelligent and sensitive and kind would steal cars and fuck up his life.

  A guy I vaguely recognized from high school challenged me with thirty bucks on the line; I beat him easily. Then I beat him two out of three. Next up was John Bowmer, well-known Westlake dart champion and barfly. At thirty, John’s teeth were cigarette yellow and he’d had at least one divorce. His pool skills were not equal to his dart skills, so I beat him for twenty bucks and sent him back to the bar.

  I was now eighty bucks richer and on my third beer. I was prickly and pissed off after that session with Tara Montgomery. I was mad at myself and at her, but mostly at me. Her words hovered in my brain, cutting like razor blades. I am trying to figure out why a man who is intelligent and sensitive and kind would steal cars and fuck up his life. I feel sorry for whoever gets you next. I took another deep swallow of beer.

  The Guardhouse was popular, and it was busy, so I got more contestants. There were even women here, a few of them eyeing me. Fuck. Twenty months in jail. If I could get out of my own head long enough, maybe it was time.

  I feel sorry for whoever gets you next.

  “Riggs.” I knew that voice. I turned to see Derek Payton, who had been in the same grade as me in high school. We Riggs boys were from the wrong side of the tracks in Westlake—literally, Westlake had railroad tracks with a wrong side and a right side—so we were out of place at Westlake High. Derek had looked down his nose at me, just like everyone else. What made it extra annoying was that I happened to know Derek had a side business selling meth, so he wasn’t really any better than me. I knew too many people’s dirty secrets in this fucking town.

  Still, it would be satisfying to beat Derek, so I said, “Derek. You up for a challenge?”

  Derek’s gaze flicked down to my cue, then back up. “Shooting pool, huh? I see you’ve been real productive since you got out. Sounds like something your brother Dex would do.”

  “Dex sucks at pool.” Dex was good, actually, but I was better.

  Derek gave me a smile that had no humor in it, and I remembered the time we’d gotten into a fistfight in tenth grade. I won. Maybe he hadn’t gotten over it. “You’re the brother that ended up in jail,” he said. “Funny.”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “Lots of time to read your weird-ass books in there, I guess,” Derek said. “Just don’t bend over to get the soap, right?”

  Anger flared up my throat, and I wanted to break my pool cue over his head. Not because anything had happened to me in prison—it hadn’t—but because he was so fucking smug. The thing about hitting rock bottom, I’d learned, is that it can happen to anyone. Fucking anyone. It didn’t matter who you were, or how good you were, or what side of the tracks you came from, or how superior you were. Anyone could end up where I was right now.

  Then again, I’d made some choices, hadn’t I?

  I opened my mouth, probably to say something stupid, and then I stopped. Because behind Derek’s shoulder, the door to the bar opened and Tara Montgomery walked in.

  She had changed out of her work clothes. She wore jeans on her slim legs and a white T-shirt under a light summer cardigan of navy blue. Her long brown hair was down, soft over her shoulders and down her back. Flip-flops were on her feet, and I could see her bare toes beneath the hem of her jeans. Her toenails were painted dark purple.

  Every guy in the bar noticed her one by one as she spotted me and crossed the room. I couldn’t do anything but stare—I was too shocked at the sight of her. Why was she here? At the Guardhouse? Looking for me?

  Derek noticed her at the last minute. He turned around and his eyebrows went up. Tara barely spared him a glance.

  “Jace,” she said to me in her blunt way, “can we talk?”

  She didn’t even have makeup on, and she was fucking beautiful. Derek noticed. “Hi there,” he said, butting in. “You Jace’s girlfriend? You don’t seem like his type.”

  Tara turned to him, unimpressed. “What type is that?” She shook her head. “You know what? Don’t answer.” She turned back to me. “Well?”

  I felt myself smiling. She’d actually come looking for me; she must have. Even if she’d come to chew me out, I was still happy to see her. “You want to play pool?” I asked her.

  She looked me up and down—all the way up and down, and I realized we weren’t in session anymore. “No,” she said. “I want to get out of here. Is your tab paid up?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  She took the pool cue from my hand and put it back on the rack. “Honey, let’s go.”

  What the hell could I do? I was three beers in, and she had those jeans on, and she’d said Honey, let’s go. I followed her through the bar and out the door.

  “Impressive,” I said to her when we got outside and stood on the street, “but you shouldn’t go into places like that. All of those guys were staring at you.”

  “Maybe I like pool,” Tara said.

  I slid my hands into my back pockets and looked at her. “You hate pool,” I said, taking a guess.

  Her lips pressed into a line, and I knew I was right. I smiled again, and she looked at me closely. “Are you drunk?” she asked.

  “Three beers,” I confessed. “I feel pretty good, and I won a hundred and twenty bucks. Are you going to tell my PO?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not your counselor anymore, Jace.”

  “What does that mean? I thought I was going to have to go to sessions until I’m ninety.”

  “Yeah, that.” She bit her lip. “I feel bad about that. Where can we talk?”

  My place was out of the question, and so was hers, wherever it was. We were too combustible right now; the air practically smelled like sulfur. “Let’s take a walk,” I said.

  We walked down the sidewalk toward the park. It was dark out, getting late, the air warm as a breath, the wind hushing in the trees. The peak heat of summer was gone, and now we had the sweet-smelling bittersweet feel of September coming. In my bedroom, in the guest house, I kept my windows open every night because part of me couldn’t stand being parted from the fresh air.

  The park was dark and quiet, private. We took the main path toward the center, and then Tara dropped onto a park bench. I sat beside her, sprawling my legs out, and waited for her to say what she had come to say.

  “Okay.” She squared her shoulders. “First, I wrote the report on you and sent it to the judge. I gave you a clean bill of mental health. I told him you are adjusting just fine.”

  I tilted my head and looked at her. “What? Why did you do that?”

  She didn’t look at me; she looked straight ahead, so I was free to stare at her perfect profile in the dim light. “Well, you are in good mental health,” she said logically. “Also, I was a jerk in session and I owed you that.”

  �
�No,” I said. “You were a jerk because I was a jerk first. I call dibs.”

  “Jace,” she said. She sighed, shook her head, and glanced at me. “You deserved better.”

  That was when I figured it out. Why she’d sought me out, why she’d come to the Guardhouse, why we were sitting in the park right now. Why she was saying sorry. It wasn’t because of me. It never had been.

  “Shit,” I said to her. “They told you.”

  Ten

  Tara

  He sounded surprised and annoyed, and there was something else in the undertone of his voice. I thought maybe it was hurt, but it was so fleeting and hard to read that I couldn’t be sure.

  I looked into his eyes. I’d been avoiding them, because it was always Jace’s eyes that stripped me of my defenses. But I held his gaze and said, “They told me. They should have told me before our first session. It would have been different if they had. I would have—”

  “Stop.” His voice was flat. “They aren’t supposed to tell you. That’s what the word confidential means in confidential informant. The more people who know, the more chances I have to get killed for it.”

  “Your file is confidential,” I said. “Believe me.”

  Jace looked at me coolly and steadily. The happy, unfocused, slightly drunk look was gone; he was dead sober now. “I wondered why I got put in the counseling program,” he said. “It wasn’t supposed to happen. They keep us out because the fewer people who know who we are, the better. I thought I was a special case.” A swift shot of pain crossed his eyes, then was gone again. “How did you track me down, by the way? It must have been Luke.”

  “It was,” I said. “I told him I wanted to find you. To apologize.”

  He seemed to calculate something. “Luke doesn’t know,” he said. “None of my brothers do.”