Losing Control (27 page)

When Rooster nodded, he grabbed her tightly around the arms and pulled her so that his mouth was even with her ear. She fought for just a few seconds before his fingers gripped into the flesh of her biceps. “You think you have this handled, sweetheart? I broke into his house. I saw what he has there. The sick freak has pictures of us fucking in that back room. The one picture he had of you that tore me apart was a picture of your face as you came with my name on your lips. Tell me where he got those pictures, tell me how he got back there and was able to do that. Then tell me he doesn’t have a wide reach. This is dangerous, and I’ll be fucking damned if I let you get hurt because this sicko has a hard-on for you. You understand me?”

The way she swallowed and the wideness of her eyes told him just how much she did understand. “I do,” she whispered, tears pooling in her eyes.

“I don’t want you scared,” he whispered back to her, his hold softening on her. “But if you don’t start taking this seriously, I’m going to scare the fuck out of you. You need to know that your life isn’t something that I’m willing to play around with. You will not be a pawn in whatever game he’s playing. Just believe that I want you and can keep you safe. Stop questioning me and fighting me, damnit. If something happens to you, I won’t be able to live with myself. Let me do what has to be done,” he pleaded with her.

“Okay,” she told him, nodding.

“Okay?”

“Yeah, I get it.” She shivered. “Jagger, does he really have a picture like that?”

“Yeah, he does. That’s why I don’t want you anywhere near this bastard until we can figure out how to bring him down. He’s fascinated with and fixated on you. That’s dangerous, and I don’t want what happened to Meredith to happen to you. Just let me take care of you…can you let me do that?”

Saying yes to him went against everything that she believed, had been taught in her whole life, but this
did
scare her. In her line of work she dealt with mentally unstable people all the time, but it had never hit so close to home. “Yeah, whatever you want me to do.”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out. That’s why we’re all here working on this, baby. It may even be that I need to move in with you, but we won’t know until we see Money Bags response to this show of force that we’ve made for you. We took a risk today, pissing him off, but we have to piss him off to get to the bottom of this,” he explained, moving his hand to her cheek.

She sank into that soft touch, finally letting the anger release from her body. It took everything she had to admit this to him, but she did. “I want you to stay with me. If he has pictures of me like that, I don’t feel safe.”

“Then that’s what will happen. We’ll have Steele hook it up with some security too. He’s not gonna get to you on my watch, I promise you that.”

The group of them still stood out in the parking lot as a white van pulled up and someone they all recognized as Dino got out, striding into the school.

“Well what the fuck do you know?” Rooster breathed as he got in his cruiser and called it in. “Y’all go ahead and get on out of here before my backup arrives. This is bound to get interesting.”

“Where are you two going?” Liam asked Jagger and Bianca.

“Her apartment,” he answered for the two of them. “I’ll follow her over. Have Steele meet us over there.”

“Will do.” Liam stuck his gloves over his hands. “You’ll call me if you’ve got somethin’?” he asked Rooster.

“If I have something I can share, I will.” He turned to look at Bianca. “If at any time you don’t feel right with something, you call one of us.” He handed her his card. “I’ve done this job long enough to know that sometimes you get a live wire, and I think we might have one this time.”

“Thanks,” she told the officer, putting his card in her purse. “I’m sorry I acted like a bitch to everybody.”

“People react differently to feeling threatened,” Rooster smoothed it over. “We’ll make sure everything is taken care of. Now go on.”

Liam roared out of the parking lot while Jagger followed Bianca to her car and waited for her to get in and start it before he followed her on the short ride back to her apartment.

“Wait before you go in,” Jagger warned Bianca as they arrived and walked up the steps to her front door. “Steele’s already been here, and there’s a keypad on that thing. If you get it wrong, it’s gonna alert the club, and there’ll be people responding pretty quickly.”

He took his phone out and put in the code that had been texted to him. “Now that we know it works, I’ll text you the code too.”

She giggled as she saw the code. It was the date of the first time they had gone out to dinner together. “That seems like so long ago, and I still owe you money for my car.”

“I still owe you a dinner,” he reminded her. “I like to think we’ve moved past that now,” he told her as they walked into the apartment.

It felt a little different to her now, to know that it had been wired for her safety.

“You okay?” he asked as he saw her run her hands along her arms.

“Yeah, just a little freaked out that I actually have to have a security system. I’m not one of those people who has ever been worried about my well-being besides if I had enough money to pay the gas bill, ya know?”

He walked over and put his arms around her, holding her tightly against him. “I know. It’s not your fault, and when he’s gone you won’t have to worry about this anymore.”

She moved her hands up to his stubbly cheeks and pushed his face away from her so that she could look into his eyes. “I’m sorry I got so pissed at you earlier. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you in front of the other guys.” And she really was, she realized. Tears pooled in her eyes. She hadn’t meant for it to get so out of hand.

“I’m sorry too. I could have been a little more forthcoming with you before all this happened. But, B, I didn’t want you to know he was there. We had such a good time and it was such a turning point, I don’t want it tarnished. That might be selfish of me, but I’m selfish when it comes to you.”

“I’m selfish when it comes to you too.” She understood exactly why he did it, but it still felt dirty now.

“We’re gonna get through this,” he told her, kissing her softly on the lips.

She knew they would, but she wondered if they would all still be alive when all was said and done. Gripping his cut, she pulled him as close to her as she could get him. A feeling was taking root in her stomach, one that was foreboding and made her want to hold him that much closer to her. No matter what happened, she would never let him go.

Chapter Thirty-Three

B
ianca sat on the couch, her legs in Jagger’s lap. She studied while he flipped through files on an iPad he had pulled out of his bag. She asked quietly what he was doing, but he had only grunted and indicated he was looking for something that tied everything together. She made the decision to just let him come to her when he was ready. As she got a little bit more comfortable, the two of them heard footsteps coming up the stairs outside and a knock at the door.

“You stay here,” Jagger told her as he stood up, pulling a gun from behind his back. He made sure one was in the chamber and walked over to the door, slightly pulling the curtain back.

She stiffened, not sure who was on the other side of that door. It made her nervous not to know just what the fuck was going on. This had never been the life that she lived, but she knew that with Jagger here this would be her life from now on, and she took that for what it was.

“It’s the guys,” he told her, putting the safety back on the gun and opening the door.

“Sorry to just show up,” Meredith apologized as she pushed past Liam and Tyler.

“It’s okay,” Bianca assured her. “What’s going on?”

“C’mon, Mama,” Liam called down the stairs from where he stood then turned back to Bianca. “Denise is with me, she said she’s sick of everyone else getting to know you while she doesn’t. She bitched until I agreed that she could come along,” he explained, holding the door open for the woman in his life.

“Hey.” Bianca waved, a little shy at the fact the president’s lady was in her modest apartment.

“Damn,” she breathed heavily. “Those steps are killer when you’re carrying some extra weight. No wonder you’re so skinny.”

“Anyway,” Tyler cut her off. “We’re actually here for a reason other than to disrupt your night. Meredith got a call from an old contact at the bank.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Jagger asked, confused as to where this was going.

Meredith had a seat on the couch and clasped her hands together. “There was a lot of talking around what’s going on, but I think I understand what my contact was trying to tell me. It involves Raymond Tucker and the Vojnik. I figured you guys would be interested.”

“If I can get this asshole out of my life, I don’t care what we have to do. Tell me,” Bianca told her, running her hand through her hair. She was anxious, hoping that this would be the answer to what needed to be done to rid them of this person who threatened them all.

“Keep in mind,” Meredith cautioned, “I don’t know any of this for sure. This is just me reading between the lines and my contact talking around in circles so that they won’t get in trouble, but it makes sense.”

“Well c’mon,” Jagger encouraged as he had a seat next to Bianca and slung an arm over her shoulder.

“What I think is going on here—and I really need a look at those pictures y’all took at his house—is I think he’s laundering money.”

“For who and how?” Liam asked, his brain not putting together what she was getting at either.

“Have Rooster run some of those serial numbers on the money y’all found. I almost guarantee you that he’ll get a hit from some of the bank robberies that have been going on in the area. I think that Raymond is definitely skimming off the school board, but what he’s doing is replacing clean money with the money from the robberies. Who’s going to look at the school board’s petty cash fund?”

“But wouldn’t that be a lot of money? A petty cash fund would have that?” Jagger questioned.

“I would have to get the financials, but all the banks are hit first thing in the morning. There’s not a lot of money in those tills then. They haven’t received big bills. What they have at that time is smaller bills to make change with. So it’s not completely out of the realm of possibility that they could be using him. He would have access to at least a portion of that cash.”

“That does make sense,” Bianca interjected. “When I go to the bank in the afternoon before work and I deposit my tips, they are always appreciative because they have big bills. People have made their business deposits and bought change for the next few days. First thing in the morning they probably have a lot of smaller bills. Ya know, to break those hundreds or to help make that change. I think Meredith is on to something.”

Denise had sat quietly during all of this. “I know when I worked with Roni they would sometimes send the shift supervisor to get change. That was midafternoon, so I do think they’re right.”

“Okay, so saying he is doing this. What’s he getting out of it?” Tyler asked.

Bianca couldn’t help but look at him, he made her apartment look so small. He made Meredith, who sat next to him, look so small. She really hoped that after all this was over their dreams would come true. She could be excited for them then.