Fierce Defender: Book 2, Hard to Handle trilogy (13 page)

Dani wished now that she’d had a crystal ball. She would have never left him, and he would have never fallen in with the people that he had. But she hadn’t been able to see the future, so she told him, “I’ll come back often. I promise. And you can come visit me too.” She had really meant it then, but life had a knack for getting in the way of good intentions.

Danielle flipped the scrapbook forward to a picture of Justin when he was about thirteen. The bright smile from his earlier pictures had faded to one that was forced for the school photographer. She should have noticed it then. She thought now, as she had a thousand times before,
If I had been there… If I had been paying more attention…
But she hadn’t been, and when she came home for Christmas that year, she could already see the changes taking place.

Justin was sulky and quiet, even around the family. He seemed almost disinterested in her, although she knew now that it had been his way of punishing her for leaving. She asked her mother about his moods. That was when her mother had told her that Justin was being bullied at school. He had come home a few weeks earlier with a black eye and busted lip. Her mother and father had called the school about it, but Justin refused to give them the names of the boys who had attacked him.

Dani had gotten an internship in Boston over the summer the following year, so she didn’t go home. She kept in touch with her mother, and Justin when he cared to return her calls. He had told her he was doing fine, but her mother sounded anxious every time she called. She never gave Dani any details; she just said she was worried about Justin.

Her father had taken on a business partner, who her mother also said “worried her.” She never told Dani why, other than to say the man “attracted the wrong kind of customers.” Her father, on the other hand, didn’t care what kind of customers they were, as long as they were, in fact, customers. He told Dani that his motorcycle shop was more profitable than ever. He had hired ten new employees, and they were doing so many repairs and restorations, they actually had to turn people away for lack of time. Dani’s mother was a worrier; she had always been. Dani wrote it off to that, and moved on.

The following winter, Dani’s mother died. She had a heart attack at the age of fifty-four. Dani came home for the funeral. Justin was angry. Dani thought it was a normal part of grieving for a then almost fourteen-year-old boy who had lost his mother. She asked her dad to call her if Justin needed her, and she would come home right away, and then she went back to Boston.

Her dad didn’t call. He had thrown himself into work to assuage his own grief, unfortunately leaving Justin to deal with his on his own. That spring, when Dani came home over break, Justin barely came out of his room. When he did, his dull emptiness scared her. She thought that he almost seemed suicidal. He still wouldn’t talk to her about how he was feeling, so Dani did something that seemed like such a good idea at the time. She told her dad they were losing Justin. She told him he needed to snap out of his own grief and take care of his son.

It made her feel bad to talk to her father that way, but he had wallowed in his own grief for too long, as far as she was concerned. There was a point when a father had to kick himself in the ass and move on. She’d told him that he needed to spend more time with his son—quality time. At the very least, he should be taking Justin to the shop with him, teaching him to work on and restore the bikes. It would give the boy an outlet for his grief and anger. Her father took her words to heart and gave Justin a job at the shop.

Justin seemed to blossom after that… for a while. When Dani talked to him on the phone, he was happy and would talk to her for hours about the bikes he was working on, or send her pictures of the ones he had helped their dad restore. He was making friends too. He told Dani the guys at the shop, Dad’s partner’s friends, were “really cool.” She was happy for him, and happy that her dad had taken her advice.

She stayed loosely in touch with her father and brother over the next two years. She had gotten a job in Boston working with the campaign manager of a congressman who had White House aspirations. At the same time, she was working on her master’s degree. She had been so caught up in her own life that when she’d call and Justin told her he was doing well and that Dad’s partner, Christopher, was “teaching him so much,” she hadn’t asked enough questions.

She didn’t go home again until her dad died. Justin was seventeen and Dani twenty-three. He was too young to be alone, and she too young and naïve to understand that an offer she’d thought was heaven sent would turn out to be akin to a deal with the devil.

A knock on Danielle’s front door pulled her up out of her memories. She was happy for the distraction. She put down her wine and the scrapbook and went over to the door. Without asking who it was, she pulled it open and, seeing who stood there, exclaimed, “Oh my God! What do you want?”

“I just need five more minutes… please.”

It was Grayson Alexander. The man was beginning to feel like a stalker.

******

Stockdale, Texas

Tuesday Morning

Hank woke up, sore and disoriented. It was still dark, and he couldn’t remember where he was at first. He started to sit up, and that was when he realized he couldn’t move. He was tied to a bed. Reality was like a slap in the face when he suddenly recalled where he was. He was in a small hotel room, probably six miles from where his sister worked and maybe twelve miles from where she lived. She would never know that, however. Last night, after Vincent told Hank that he was going to make Eva his “queen,” he had his goon Armando hold a gun to Hank’s head while he wrote her a letter.

Vincent told him what to write, and as Hank penned it, he had hopes that it would be what Zack and Evie needed to put them back on high alert. The day he had left their house and got on that bus to Chicago, no one knew where he was going. However, Vincent didn’t know that. When he asked Hank if his sister knew he had left town, and where he was headed, he had told him, “Yes.” He told him that Evie had helped him make the arrangements for the bus and the motel he’d been headed to. As he wrote the letter, exactly as Vincent told him to, he said a silent prayer that the words would sound an alert in Evie and Zack’s minds. The letter said:

Evie,

I got off the bus in Chicago. I was headed to the motel that you and I had talked about, but I think someone was following me. I took a cab all over town, trying to lose them. I finally got back out at the bus station and realized that two of the men who had been looking for me were there. I got back on the first bus I came to. It took me back to Texas—Brownsville, to be exact. That was when I had an idea. Who would look for this white boy in Mexico? I don’t want to walk around looking over my shoulder all the time. I crossed the border into Matamoros, and I plan to make my new life here. I hope you understand.

I love you, Evie.

Hank

Vincent read it, and then as if talking about an animal, he handed the letter to Armando and said, “Feed and water him, and tie him up next door. Then mail this from Matamoros.”

Armando had given Hank a bottle of water and bought him a Happy Meal, which barely scratched the surface of his hunger. Then he had told him to pee because it would be a while before he came back. Hank lay there now, his body a mixture of pain and numbness, and he wondered how long it would take them to find his body if he died here.

***

Vincent made a phone call to Marcella, who he had sent home for a few days to visit her mother. “Tell your mother I’ll be sending another her way in a day or two,” he said.

“Is it another woman?” Marcella asked.

“No, this one’s a man,” he told her.

“Should mother put him to work as well?” She sounded relieved.

“Yes, my mother’s lawn needs to be taken care of, doesn’t it? Tell your mother to fire the lawn boy; this one will do it for free… for now, anyways. Make sure the same security measures are followed.”

“
Si, Señor Heston
,” Marcella said. “Do I get to come back to you soon?”

“Not yet. When I get settled into a place of my own, I’ll send for you.”

“
Si, Señor
.” She was clearly disappointed. Vincent had noticed how tense she became every time she saw him look at the redhead at the bakery. She probably thought he was fucking her right now. But Marcella wouldn’t pout. He had trained her well. And he knew that it wasn’t that she minded him fucking other women; it was that she liked to be there with him while he did.

******

San Antonio, Texas

Tuesday Afternoon

Gray put on his jeans and boots and leather gear. As he waited for his coffee to brew, he thought about his visit to Danielle the night before. As usual, she hadn’t been happy to see him. He didn’t understand it. He was such a nice guy.

Reluctantly, she had let him in the house and said, “I got you out on bail today, wasn’t that enough?”

“No,” he said. “I still need to know what your connection is to Ayden Styles.”

He had seen her eyes flick towards a book on her coffee table and land there for a few moments before she answered him. It just looked like an old scrapbook, but it was the eye motion that convinced him she was lying.

“I told you. He’s a client. Any further discussion would be in violation of his attorney-client privileges.”

“I think it’s more than that. You know these guys that you’re defending are bad dudes, right?”

“Everyone deserves a defense. I’m doing my job, and you have no right to tell me how I should do it. If I weren’t defending these guys, the next person in line in the courtroom would be.” As usual, she looked vexed. Why did she always look that way when he was around? “Besides, just because bad ass agents such as yourself arrest them, that doesn’t mean they’re automatically guilty. This is America, you know.”

Gray sighed as he poured his cup of coffee. It had been exasperating trying to talk to her. He found himself wishing that she was at least ugly. It was hard sometimes to look at someone so attractive and keep the heat in his argument. But she was right; he had no right to tell her how to do her job. He had never tried to do it with any other attorney. He didn’t know why she was different. He didn’t even like her, looks aside.

That said, he knew he was right about the gut feeling he had about her connection to these guys. But for now, he needed to shake it off and get back to work.

Stella awaited him. He was taking his Harley on a long ride today, and he was sure she was going to love it. He walked out into the garage and flipped on the light switch. She gleamed under the fluorescent lights, and he could swear she looked happy to see him. He pulled on his black leather gloves and put on his helmet. Her headlight seemed to be watching him as he walked over towards her and slid onto the smooth leather of her seat. He felt that thrill that he always got when Stella was between his legs, and as he fired her up and listened to her purr, he told himself that his last girlfriend had been wrong. There was nothing abnormal about his relationship with his bike.

Accused

San Antonio, Texas

Courthouse

Tuesday Morning

Danielle felt sick to her stomach as she sat in the courtroom today. She wished it was the venti caramel latte with the extra shot she’d had this morning that had done it. She knew though that it was a combination of two other things. The first one was seeing Grayson at her door last night. The man was incorrigible! Who did he think he was coming to her home? He acted almost as entitled as her next problem.
Well, maybe not that bad
, she thought as she watched the other “problem” being led into the room by the correctional officers.

Most definitely not that bad
, she reassessed. At least Grayson was one of the good guys, for the most part, and nice to look at. Ayden was neither. She had been “assigned” to him when he’d been brought in by the DEA on drug trafficking charges, but she knew he had requested her. He always did. The DA had strenuously argued against bail being set, due to his history of violence and the known fact that he was a general in the Aryan Brotherhood. Danielle had really done her best to argue for the bail, although she didn’t want him set free any more than anyone else did. He wasn’t too pissed at her when they lost. He could control his empire from inside just as well as he could outside.

His trial was supposed to begin yesterday, but the DA had requested a one day postponement, which was granted. She was prepared to begin the trial today, but then she received a phone call this morning that changed everything. That’s when her stomach began to turn.

Last night, she had held out hopes that no matter how well she presented his case, they would lose, and he would go to prison. But after receiving that phone call, she was instead presenting a motion to the judge to have the charges against him dropped completely.

A large amount of cocaine that had been held in evidence was now missing, and so was a very important witness in the case. Danielle was going to argue that, without the evidence or the witness, they had no case. The part about it that made her so sick was that she was sure Ayden’s crew had a hand in both.

He sat down next to her at the defense table in the courtroom and smiled. “How’s things, Dani?” he said casually, like they were old friends.

“Well, thank you,” she answered. She pretended to be engrossed in the file in front of her, hoping that he wouldn’t continue to make conversation. It was to no avail.

His next words were what kept her doing this.

“I haven’t seen the boy in a while. How’s he doing?”

Danielle looked at the minimal excuse for a man sitting next to her and wanted to punch him in the face. He probably knew better than she did how Justin was doing, since her brother was serving a sentence in Dominguez right now that Ayden should be serving himself. The only thing that kept her sane with Justin behind bars was knowing that Ayden paid those animals he controlled in there to watch out for him—as long as she kept doing what she did. It made her sick to be in any kind of cahoots with this man. She had sold him her half of the business her father left her, and she prayed every day that once Justin was home safe, she could cut all ties. He was on the last nine months of his sentence. Almost there…