Wicked Ambition (46 page)

Jax was chatting up a pretty girl who couldn’t have been more than eighteen. Hanging as she was on to his every word, he would have no problem reeling her in…

Just as he had reeled in the lover no one could know about.

Danny Fu. Turquoise wondered if he still thought about that night, the things he had done with the quiet, mild-mannered Chinese gymnast when he was riding high on victory.

She turned and slammed straight into someone on his way out, a broad chest that smelled musky and delicious. She looked up and found herself face to face with Leon Sway.

Wow. This guy was stunning.

‘Leon, right?’ She held out her hand. Normally she didn’t feel at all flushed talking to hot men—she encountered enough of them—but Leon was something else. He possessed all the power and heat of Jax but combined with a grace that propelled his physicality to a totally different level. She couldn’t stop staring at him.

‘Hi,’ said Leon. His dimples were cute, appearing only briefly as the serious line of his brow set once more, under which eyes dark as forests glittered.

‘You’re leaving already?’

‘Not my scene.’

Turquoise read between the lines. The athletes’ rivalry was no secret.

‘Hey,’ she said, ‘good luck at the Championships.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You can win it.’

His gaze flickered. ‘You think?’

‘Sure.’

‘Jax wouldn’t like you saying that.’

‘Jax wouldn’t like me saying a lot of things.’

Leon smiled properly this time. ‘Yeah?’

A tinny shriek cut through the space. Cindy was up on a podium, testing the microphone and sending metallic squeals of feedback into the crowd.

‘Greetings, everyone,’ she began, tapping it and dispatching a series of loud booms. A groan rose from the assembly and someone shouted, ‘Get off!’

Jax stormed towards the stage. Clocking his approach and the expression on her boss’s face, Cindy began babbling into the microphone. ‘And now I give you the man of the moment, he’s everybody’s hero, he’ll be taking the charts by storm, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the one and only hip-hop icon Mr Jax Jackson—’

Jax pulled the mic away and the clanging ring reverberated around the walls. He winced at the sound. Cindy crept off-stage, attempting to incite a round of applause, which was met with a wilted smattering of claps. Nobody seemed to know what was going on.

Clearing his throat, Jax surveyed the minions before him. He breathed in deeply, channelling his inner centre podium, how it felt to receive the hundred-metre gold. It was a calming technique, helped get things in perspective.

‘I wanna thank y’all for comin’,’ he commenced, his gaze sliding across the guests. ‘When my track gets dropped next week you can bet your asses it’s gonna make history.’

‘Hell, yeah!’ shouted Jermaine, his training partner.

Jax gritted his teeth at the disruption. The guy needed to put a sock in it.

‘It’s time,’ he commanded, holding his arms out. Shit, with all these massive posts and grapes around, he felt like fucking Caesar or something. ‘You think you’ve seen the best of Jax Jackson? You ain’t seen nothing yet.’

Jax swallowed his distaste when he saw Turquoise waiting at their pickup point, leaning against the canary Lamborghini, her arms folded and her dark hair swirling around her face. Jeez, why’d she have to look so fine? The fire raging in his head moved down to his chest, his stomach and his groin, settling eventually in his pants. Man, this was exhausting.

To hell with Kristin for giving out his information—he should never have allowed the bitch through his doors. As soon as Turquoise had turned up at Pacific Heights he’d known she had come bearing an ultimatum. The sooner this was done with, the better.

He recalled their conversation, the grit in her eyes and her refusal to back down.

‘This is my turf, lady,’
he’d growled,
‘and you’re on it. I ain’t doin’ nothin’ for you.’

‘Oh yes you are. You know why.’

He’d gulped.

‘Do I need to say his name? I can remind you if you need a little help…’

Jax had thought for a millisecond about denying it, claiming
temporary amnesia or total ignorance, but one dip into her icy glare told him not to bother.

‘After this, it’s over,’
he’d sworn.
‘You got that?
Over.’

Turquoise had explained. What did the broad want with a ride out to the desert?

‘You don’t need to know. That’s not your business. All you have to be certain of is that breathing one word of this trip to anybody will result in total exposure. Am I clear?’

Now, approaching the vehicle, Jax opened his mouth to speak, not knowing what he was going to say but knowing he had to have the first word, whatever that was.

She beat him to it, pulling open the door the instant the lock was released.

‘Let’s ride.’

61

S
he hadn’t taken this route since the fateful trip with Cosmo all those years before. Jax drove fast and no words passed between them. As the city rushed past, thinning out to sporadic clusters of houses and churches, the warm wind in her hair, Turquoise remembered.

Bruce Springsteen playing on the airwaves, ‘Born to Run’. The freezing cold night and the fist that wrapped around her heart each time they rounded a corner and she felt the girl’s body slide across the trunk of the car. The glare of the headlights as Cosmo had dug the grave; the stars above gazing down as grim, accusing spectators to their crime. The thump of the corpse as she was tossed carelessly in, skin already turning grey, hair matted, her face the face of a baby. How she had pleaded with Cosmo and he had hit her, and hit her again.

It began to get dark. The Lamborghini blazed a trail across the badlands, carving through fists of dry shrubs and arid planes forked with dirt roads. The sky opened, a
vast sweep of deepening blue across which gauzy cirrus clouds sailed on the thermals. On and on they went, further from civilisation as the light bled out of the day, wilderness stretching as far as the eye could see and mountains looming. Dark forests appeared like ink blots on a distant horizon, rocks tough as knuckles punching through the cracked earth.

They came to a crossroads.

‘Keep driving.’

Though it had been dark, and Turquoise had been delirious, the place was etched in her memory. She would never forget the sickening roll of Cosmo’s car as he steered them towards that end point, a spill of moonlight illuminating their path.

The track gave way to rugged banks of volcanic rock, red and black, the Lamborghini’s tyres spraying up dust fine as powder. Vegetation dwindled to a sparse, patchy shroud, irregular clumps like balding hair, from behind which animal eyes that glowed in the night returned the vehicle’s light. On they drove.

‘You wanna get back on this tank,’ commented Jax, ‘we’d best be gettin’ close.’

‘We are. Not far now.’

Emaline had raised her to be honest, to be true, and never to fear the pursuit of her dreams. It might have taken a while for her to get here, but the old adage was right: it was better late than never. She was trying her best to make amends and in doing so her past would release her. The girl could never be brought back, but that didn’t mean she had to be left.

‘Here.’

‘This is it?’

‘This is it.’

They reached the edge of a ravine, plunging into nothingness. It was cold. Turquoise wrapped her arms around herself as the car pulled to a stop in a crunch of tyres.

They sat in silence.

‘Now what?’ Jax asked eventually, pissed off it had taken so long.

‘Kill the lights.’

‘Sheesh, lady—’

‘Do it.’

With the snuffing of the bulbs they were left in swollen dusk. A fingernail moon slung loose in the indigo, so fine she could have reached up and peeled it straight it from the sky.

Turquoise released the door. ‘Stay here.’

Jax exhaled impatiently and muttered something about where else was he going to go.

The ground prickled beneath her footsteps as she made her way to the spot. She didn’t know what she had expected—an open grave, perhaps; proof that the girl was still living and had leapt from her interment. Or else she had been saved, or the body discovered, and all that would be left was a gaping cavity, grinning at the latecomer to the party. Perhaps the cops might have been waiting, a helicopter soaring up from some hidden approach. Cosmo would be with them, pointing his finger and shaking his head.

The reality was ordinary. The ground was indifferent. Turquoise crouched and ran her fingers across the dusty earth, stiff folds of fossilised soil coarse under her touch. In this open wasteland no one would suspect it. The gamble
had paid off. The girl was still here. Turquoise could feel her calling, the silent wail that had gone unanswered.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered to the wind. ‘Please forgive me. I’m sorry.’

Back then she’d wished it had been her. So many times she had wished that.

‘If I could change things, I would,’ she promised. Tears spilled from her eyes, the release of coming here again, arriving full circle at the scene of her life’s pivot. Cosmo had only been one of her tormentors; the other had been herself.

She closed her eyes.
I’m saying goodbye. I’m letting you go
.

Behind her, the Lamborghini’s engine purred to life. Her secret would be safe with Jax—today would be forgotten, gone on the wind, a never-happened dream.

For once, a coil in her past had helped straighten her present.

Turquoise withdrew her cell. She located what she needed before rising to her feet, taking in the scene one more time and returning to the car. She pulled open the door.

‘What was that about?’ Jax reversed fiercely, discharging a shower of grit.

‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘Let’s go home.’

Back in LA, she supplied the anonymous information: the co-ordinates of where the girl was buried, the year she’d died, but not her name. Turquoise hadn’t known her name.

62

L
eon wished he had never gone to Jax’s party. When he arrived back at the apartment, finally clear of the press, his bones were weary and his head fit to explode. He’d hated every minute, hadn’t wanted to go in the first place and only had to placate Teddy and the rest of the team.

In the midst of Jax’s faux grandeur it had felt like the world was closing in.

He wanted to see Robin. He wanted to talk to her about what he’d found, had to know if that was what she’d been trying to tell him when they’d fought in New York. She was the only person who could help him make sense of it.

She was the only person who made any sense.

Thinking of his brother’s murderer left Leon with a cold, hard sensation deep inside, like holding a smooth pebble in a tight fist.

He was close enough to touch—and if his suspicions were right, he could not be held accountable for his actions.

Marlon had been killed in cold blood and had perished in Leon’s arms.

When Leon took a life for a life, his arms would be empty.

He would walk away and leave this man to die, just as his brother had been left.

No mercy.

63

Compton, LA, 2000

G
ordon Rimeaux turned eighteen a month before Marlon Sway was killed. His birthday wasn’t celebrated; like all the birthdays that had gone before it passed unremarked by his father and brothers, and yet this carried no disappointment: to be disappointed you first had to have expectation, and Gordon had none. He had grown up with nothing, his future held less, he lived for the day and he didn’t much care if he woke to face another.

His was a tough neighbourhood. You had to fight your ground. At sixteen Gordon had been initiated no problem: his brother was already in with Slink and his crew. That didn’t earn him respect, especially from Slink’s white-trash right-hand man Principal, who figured they’d all had to make sacrifices to be accepted and blood privileges didn’t cut it.

Slink was five years older than him. He mixed records
and was set on getting a deal some day. Everyone decided he was the business.

Over the next couple of years Gordon moved up the ranks. His brother quit LA and it made sense he would assume his place. It was good to belong to something, to have people at your back. Slink’s crew was more of a family than any he’d had.

One night, Principal showed up covered in blood. He had started a war.

Already Slink was up against a rival gang and this latest altercation raised the stakes. Gordon had seen them; they were notorious. Most of the crew had been locked up for assault or theft; one guy from his neighbourhood was bad to the core, a livid scar like a rash down one side of his face. Intimidation fired their swagger; the way they watched you, taking you in and sizing you up, their eyes staring white from the shadows of their faces.

‘You put us on the spot, brother,’ Slink had warned darkly. ‘Now it’s payback time.’

His words had sealed the fateful night that had changed all their lives irreversibly.

It was Saturday when Slink’s truck pulled up in the lot. Dusk had fallen across the city and the twinkling lights of Hollywood shot an amber thread through the black.

Gordon didn’t want to be there. The sun had slipped away and a chill bit his arms, chasing goosepimples across his skin. A storm was coming. He could sense it.

They were made to wait, before at last the still was shaken by the loud growl of an engine. A mean car swung into the space opposite, a lick of flames blazing in furious red across the hood. The windows were blacked out and the machine
sat low to the ground, crouching as if trying not to be seen. It purred thickly, black body slick and gleaming as liquid, and Gordon squinted into the fading light, waiting to see what would happen.

Both engines died within seconds. A bad feeling took root in his chest and started to spread. The air smelled funny, like metal. It had started to rain, a steady patter. In a slam of doors, three guys emerged from the car. They looked bad: jumpy, hollow-eyed, the skin on their faces dimly lit like a dying flame through wax.