Bad Boy Criminal: The Novel (18 page)

N
o paperwork
. Didn’t follow protocol. Didn’t let Carson make the proper calls. I bit down on my lower lip and stared out the window at the Las Cruces skyline. We had entered the phase of night when the cars on the road have thinned, and almost solely comprised of drunk people, party girls, and cops. No one knew where I was…and I didn’t even know if it had been in vain, because Harrison had intentionally made this arrest covert. If it wasn’t on the news, would Alex really have the balls to kill Izzy?

I thought of her…her doe-like hazel eyes, her tenacious inner-spirit…and I hoped that an uncharacteristic streak of humanity would work its way through Alex on her behalf. Though I kind of doubted it. He wasn’t the type of man who saw people as people. People were just obstacles and stepping stones and extensions to him. Just parts of himself he could manipulate at will, with no personal history, no complicated feelings, no rights. God dammit. He would’ve done it. He would’ve gotten impatient, felt as if I was challenging him, pressuring him (because he wasn’t just a narcissistic sociopath, from what I’d seen—he also had some pretty severe insecurities, and a desperation to disprove them to himself). He would’ve done it. He would’ve killed her.

I winced.

And Harrison was going to kill me, now.

Why else apprehend me without informing your superiors? Why else drug your partner’s drink, and leave her on the floor of a restroom where you know, from personal experience, that she’ll remain for hours? Hours… Just long enough to torture a man for a while, and then, end his misery.

I guessed that the lone silver streak in this dark cloud was that Isabelle and I would be together on the other side.

But who was I kidding?

The other side would just be an exaggerated rendition of real life.

She’d be in heaven, of course. And I’d be in hell. And that’s one state line you can’t just sneak across. There’s no fake id good enough to trick Saint Peter.

I was surprised when the sedan drifted off the road and into the abandoned lot—no cars, loose gravel—of an imposing metallic building, rusted and lopsided. It looked to have fallen into severe disrepair, and to have been that way for a long time. It also looked like it wasn’t any building where men, women, or children were meant to ever dwell.

It kind of looked like a goddamn torture chamber.

Harrison climbed out of the driver’s seat and strode to my door. The son of a bitch was more relaxed than I’d ever seen him. Like a new man. The freak.

He unlocked the handle and wrenched open the door, swiftly gripping my arm and pulling me to my feet.

“No little damsel to turn heroine on your ass tonight, is there?” Harrison breathed into my ear, forcing me forward.

“You might be surprised.” If there was anything I could do, and would do, at any given opportunity—it was provide hubris for the situation. I had absolutely no hope, but Harrison didn’t need to know that. A little confidence on my end might throw him off his game.

“Come on, slimebag,” he snarled, shoving me closer to the intimidating complex. It stunk. It reeked of sickness and decay.

Harrison kicked in a door which had previously been chained, but the chains were severed by bolt-cutters, it looked like. Someone had been here recently…and I had a feeling that it was fucking Connor Harrison. His hands never left me as we were both propelled forward, up an eerie, creaking ramp, and into a wide space, dark and dank, shuttered off into various aisles with cheap steel. The smell of blood and other bodily waste was overwhelming now, and I gagged.

“Knew you were soft on the inside,” Harrison informed me as we shuffled forward. A chair had been set out, and I had a sinking feeling that the chair—a metal folding chair—had been set out for me. He came here. He planned this. “Knew it was all an act.”

I began to catalogue my options. Exits? Weapons? There had to be something here…something for me to use.

Harrison shoved me down into the seat, and I felt a hot, uncomfortable pinch on my arm. When I looked down, there was nothing there.

“Something to relax you,” Harrison explained blithely.

As the room blurred and became dim, the last things my cataloguing forebrain took into account were the rusted, bloody hooks dangling from the ceiling.

O
n the motorcycle ride
, my arms secured around Juan’s waist, I felt safe and insulated in the spare helmet strapped over my head. Safe and insulated in a way, anyway. I felt safe to think, and I was insulated from any critical gazes being directed my way. When you’re traveling with a crew of Hell’s Ransom brothers, you don’t want to appear weak and vulnerable. But, behind the tinted glass of Juan’s visor, I stared across the cityscape of Las Cruces, New Mexico in shock. I was definitely in shock.

The Hell’s Ransom members had just extracted me from the home of an elderly couple who had taken me in after I’d escaped from the warehouse where Valiant psychopath, Alex Cantrell, tried for the second time this week to kill me…and force a false confession out of my boyfriend, Ash. Er, my traveling companion, Ash. My mind-blowing sex partner, Ash. I didn’t know exactly what his title was, but the important part was that Alex Cantrell had delivered this ultimatum via phone, and since then, no one had heard from him. Not even Jade Rodriguez, his official sounding board and most trusted confidante.

Not that I knew of, anyway.

We pulled up to a small ranch on the outskirts of the city, twinkling lights sprawled below us like a separate universe. Drake, a Las Cruces Hell's Ransom president, allowed us in.

I could see why Ash felt comfortable in a motorcycle club. Even though Drake hardly knew me, he’d been willing to drive out with some of the Utah chapter and pick me up from a complete stranger’s house…all because I was affiliated with a troubled Hell's Ransom member, the younger brother of another club president. He was willing to let us come into his home just so we could regroup on a plot of which he wasn’t even a part.

“You wanna beer?” he asked me, receding to the kitchen to grab drinks for the guys. In total, there were six of us in the living room, an area some would call “cozy” and others would call “shabby,” depending on what they wanted out of life.

“God, yes, I want a beer,” I moaned. While Alex had me duct taped to a rigid, metallic cot in the basement of some factory, all I’d been able to do was panic and sprout gray hairs and fantasize about my inevitable murder. He’d stripped me of my gun, Beyonce, who I had finally reclaimed, and he’d idly threatened me now with both a switchblade and a handgun. My stress levels were through the roof. The vague self-righteousness which accompanies sobriety just wasn’t worth it anymore.

“All right, pussycat, I think you’re the one of all of us who knows Ash best, that right?” Juan wondered.

…Alex’s gleaming eyes surveyed my body greedily.

“You know,” he leered, “it was sheer luck that I happened to find you when I did, pussycat…”

“Yo? Uh, damn, what’s your name again?” Juan asked, leaning into my face. I snapped back to reality just in time to accept the frosty beer Drake was extending toward me.

“Oh…thanks,” I murmured, cracking it gratefully and raising the brew to my lips. I drank long and deep before departing from the effervescent amber, and belched before answering, “Izzy. You can call me Izzy.”

The five bikers surrounding me grinned—except for Juan. Juan’s eyes were warm and dark with concern.

“You don’t look too good, but it’s going to be okay,” he assured me. “You’ll get past it. Doing how we do, you know…shit gets crazy from time to time. But your stamina increases. You get over it because you have to. The mind is an incredible thing,
mamacita.
You’ll be okay.”

I looked at him in vague surprise that he could speak so kindly and honestly with me. I never really got that kind of treatment…from anyone. “Thanks,” I said.

“No problem.” His voice became flippant as he forged on, my distant gaze remedied. “Now, if anyone would know where Ash was, who would it be?”

“Me,” I answered softly, my eyes drifting to the ground. I nibbled at my lower lip and then adjusted my answer to something a little more realistic. “But—if not me—then maybe his brothers. He was always slipping off to call them. And Jade. He let Jade know every step he made, and he talked to her as if…she was some kind of oracle who could get him any information he needed.”

At this, Drake grinned. “I know Jade,” he explained, “and that’s a pretty accurate title for her.”

“All right, well, shit,” Juan said, “let’s give her a call and see what she can tell us herself.”

I reached for my burner phone and then winced, remembering that the last person to have it was Alex fucking Cantrell, and God only knew where he was now. Oh well. So much for that. Not having a phone is a lot like not having a gun or not having a car or not having a wallet, but there were bigger problems on my mind, anyway. The only problem that was ever really on my mind anymore: Ash.

But Drake had her number in his own phone, and put her on speaker. It was in the third ring when the device was snatched up and Jade’s voice, which I had never heard before, came sparkling over the line: “Drake? What’s up, bro? Is everything going to hell in a hand basket up there or what?”

As viciously and blindly jealous as I had been of her only hours ago, I now liked her just as viciously and blindly. It was hard to explain how, but her light, thoughtful tone put me at ease.

“Hey, babe. Yes and no,” Drake answered.

“Next question. Am I on speaker phone?”

“Er, yes,” Drake said. “I’m with four other Hell's Ransom brothers, and Ash’s little lady, at
mi casa.
We haven’t heard anything from Ash. A little worried, considering all the shit that’s been going down.”

“Right, right. Give me one sec.”

The sound of a keyboard chittering in the background came over the phone line, and Drake cracked an appreciative smile. After thirty seconds, there was a scuffle and Jade’s voice returned. “No new reports filed on Ashton Carter,” she announced. “Whatever is happening to him is under the table.”

“What do you mean, whatever is happening to him?” I demanded, voice pitchy with distress.

“Oh, hell, is that his girlfriend I hear?” she wondered brightly. “Izzy, right? Isabelle Turner? Dang, girl, how the hell are you. You know, when you guys get to Juarez, we’re gonna have to go out for some drinks and talk about Ash. I can’t tell if loving you is making him an idiot or a genius anymore. But I’m leaning toward genius, because fuck, he’s almost here. Then again, I’m leaning toward idiot, because—right! Shit! Speaking of the dumb shit he’s doing because he’s in love with your ass…” she muttered, and there was another drumming of fingers on keys.

“Does this have anything to do with ‘whatever is happening to him’?” I asked, feeling bedraggled.

“Yeah, it does,” Jade replied. “He never said he was specifically going to turn himself in, but he did call me up to get the private lines for the two agents who have been on his case since I can’t fucking remember how far back ago…but there’s no reports…that’s why I’m saying, you know, there’d need to be phone calls, transport, clearance, yadda, and yadda, yadda, and there’s none of that—but he was gonna call. I’m pretty sure he was gonna call Harrison to turn himself in…but no report got filed on Harrison’s end. It doesn’t make any fucking sense.” Incessant tapping. “Hold on a minute.” Another few seconds of tense silence. “Tracing their lines,” she informed us as we waited. “I’m seeing one of the phones is idle at a rest stop. El Toro Rojo. That’s cute. And…huh. That’s interesting.”

El Toro Rojo.
Unless there was more than one, that was the same gas station where Ash and I had choked Harrison out and left him tied up on the men’s room floor.

“What’s interesting?” I demanded, not thinking about how bitchy I must’ve been coming across. I was just completely panicked.

“When I first traced these numbers, for Ash,” Jade clarified, “one of them was at the exact same address…64 Toro Drive. It’s on the same road as El Toro Rojo. I might be able to get a screenshot—”

“I think Harrison might be at El Toro Rojo,” I exclaimed, cutting Jade off. “Or maybe it’s just his phone. We kind of—choked him out and left him there earlier.”

Juan couldn’t contain his laughter, in spite of the solemnity of our search. “Come on, then,” he said, slinging his empty beer bottle into the trash and his spare helmet into my hands. “Let’s get over to Toro Drive and have a look-see.”

Drake took Jade off of speaker phone, but I could still hear her high-pitched, manic voice as she continued to speak, even as we barreled out the door. It wasn’t until I’d secured Juan’s helmet over my head that I no longer heard Jade, and was in too much of a hurry to wonder what she might be saying.

I
didn’t expect
to ever see Isabelle Turner again.

Not the way that Harrison was talking.

“It won’t leave any marks,” he informed me, manic with excitement. He had a rusted barrel filled to the brim with water which he had dragged across the floor of the old, abandoned slaughterhouse, toward me. I stared at the dank, murky water with a kink in my nose. One could only imagine what variety of bacteria thrived therein. It had probably once been full of pig’s blood or something… “It’s going to look like an accident,” Harrison went on proudly. “Just like my father, right, Ash?”

The question threw me. Was Harrison really crazy enough to think that I knew anything about his father? The guy was clearly about ten years older than I was, and I had no idea who or where his
father
was, of all people.

“What?” I snapped.

I mean, if you’re going to kill me, you psychopath, then kill me. But let’s not bring completely extraneous elements into this. You might as well be blaming me for global warming or your credit card being hacked—although, considering Jade, it was possible that I might have been remotely linked to something like that and not known it.

“My father, Carter,” Harrison snarled. “Jeff Harrison. He was a cop in Colorado…back in the 90’s.”

I frowned up at Harrison and relented in the urge to bite his head off. The way he spoke of his father, sentimental and halting, told me more than enough.

“No,” I answered, softening. “I never knew your father.”

“No, I guess you wouldn’t have,” he replied. “How old are you again, Carter? Twenty-something?”

“Aren’t you the federal agent assigned to my case?” I replied. I couldn’t help myself. Illogical questions were a tic of mine. “And you’re not sure how old I am?” I grinned, like an idiot.

But Harrison’s fist was quick to remedy my hubris. It shot out and clutched a handful of the hair at the nape of my neck, plunging my head into the rank water in the rusted old bucket. I thrashed and gurgled and tried not to breathe it in…but failed. After shouting in protest at the assault, my lungs were depressed of oxygen, and I automatically attempted to pull some in. It was my mistake, and I reflexively sucked the water in and coughed, instigating a vicious cycle of failed attempts to inhale air and expel water.

When my sodden head emerged from the water, dripping, I was actually grateful to Harrison, in a sick kind of way.

“You never would have met my father,” he explained to me, acidic and loathing, “because he died at the hands of you Hell's Ransom filth. I was seven.”

Damn.
All at once, it made sense to me. The utter loathing in his eyes when he would behold me at the prison, even as he spoked in a high-gloss, professional tone. His preoccupation with my motorcycle club; his certainty that I was guilty, even though “no alibi” and “in possession of the right weapon” certainly wasn’t “beyond a reasonable doubt,” in my opinion. And then…his push to apprehend me solo. How he came to El Toro Rojo without Carson. How he failed to submit any tracking information to his superiors before coming for me. He wanted to see me writhe…and he wanted to see me die, even if it would mean losing his badge. He’d already lost it, hadn’t he? He’d lost it the moment he took Carson over to El Toro Rojo and left her on that same men’s room floor.

“Look, man,” I called out to him, my voice ragged but soft. I didn’t know what I’d do if some rival club took Dom from me; didn’t even want to think about it too closely. Yeah, that kind of thing could change a man forever. It could make him a worse human being, and it was hard to control, hard to stop. Maybe no one had ever reached out to him. Maybe they’d let him build a wall, and he’d driven himself insane behind it. I really couldn’t judge him. Hell, I could relate to him. We were fucked up individuals, and I’d hit people before, too. I’d tied people to chairs before. I’d dunked heads in water before. I was no better than Agent Harrison in this moment. “I’m sorry about your dad. Think about this, though. When you were seven…I wasn’t even born yet. When your dad died, I was still just a thought in my mama’s head. I know about anger, all right? I know about revenge. But this isn’t the way. This is…random, and cruel, and your dad, he wouldn’t have wanted that for you—”

I found myself submerged, burbling and screaming, before I could finish my sentence. When he jerked me back up by the hair at the nape of my neck, he howled into my face, “Don’t even talk about my dad, you Hell's Ransom fuck! You don’t know anything! Don’t you talk to me like some kind of fucking therapist, you—you
loser!
You
murderer!
‘Cause you can wax philosophical all you want, but we both know this is not exactly random, is it? It’s not exactly cruel, is it? You killed Jared Wayne, and—”

“I did not—”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Harrison yodeled into my face like a teenage girl throwing a royal tantrum. His complexion was as bright and waxy as the skin on a tomato.

“But—”

Back into the bucket I went.

This time, he kept me under the water. It wasn’t some show of his dominance. I shook and bucked and shuddered, and then, at last, I breathed. I breathed the acrid water, the pressure in my lungs clenching like a vice, and the dark, earth-green water churned with shimmers of light and black spots.

He dragged me into the air and I vomited water reflexively onto the floor. The world around me swung and swooped, pivoting and whirling like a whimsical carnival ride. I was going to pass out, if I didn’t die first.

“Harrison,” I croaked. I had to try one more time. “Connor. I—am not—a murderer. You…are not…a murderer.”

“Hmm.” Harrison’s fist held my head up by its dripping hair. I didn’t have the strength to support my own weight anymore. Part of me fluttered and whimpered and suggested that giving up might be the gentler escape from this predicament. “You’re right about one thing.” Harrison dropped my head, and it hung over my lap uselessly. Black static encroached in my peripheral vision. “I’m not a murderer. I’m an executioner.”