PAYBACK (A Bad Boy Romance) (26 page)

M
y heart thrilled
at the feeling of Jameson’s strong arms closing around me. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t hoped that Jameson would come to me after working at Chester’s.

The entire night I imagined what Jameson would think of me dressed as I was.

It was slutty and sexy when I thought of how Jameson might react.

And I wasn’t disappointed.

His touch was ravenous, as if he couldn’t get enough of me.

I could drown in his touch.

Maybe I was drowning. Maybe all this was a dream.

So much had changed in a short time.

I didn’t seem to know my own mind any longer.

All I thought about was Jameson and how it felt to be in his arms.

The way his touch made me squirm with pleasure.

It was intoxicating and addicting at the same time.

But maybe that was the point I was missing — addictions were bad.

Jameson was going to break my heart at some point. He’d made no promises to me and I’d be stupid to hope for one.

But I couldn’t contain this wild, animalistic attraction I felt for him. I hungered for everything he was willing to give me.

Even if it meant my inevitable destruction.

“What are we doing?” I asked as the sweat dried on our bodies, my head resting on his chest.

His exhale said he didn’t know any more than I did. At least I wasn’t alone.

“What were you and Frankie talking about outside the club?” he asked.

I wasn’t shocked that he’d been watching. In a weird way, I felt safer knowing that Jameson had been close by.

But I didn’t want to share what Frankie had told me. It seemed a betrayal of my brother’s trust.

Frankie had always been there for me and he was trying to protect me as best he could.

Frankie didn’t want me around Jameson. I didn’t blame my brother. On the surface it was easy to draw the line between good and evil with Jameson inching his way toward the evil side.

Maybe
evil
was a strong word. It was hard to reconcile that thought when I was cuddled up to the man, wrapped around him like a spider monkey.

But I wasn’t so naive that I thought Jameson had suddenly changed because of me.

“I can practically hear the gears grinding, baby girl,” he murmured. “What’s going through that head of yours?”

“I’m confused,” I admitted.

“By what?”

“This.”

“Oh.”

I rose up on my elbow to stare down at him. Jameson was, by far, the most handsome man I’d ever seen and that didn’t seem fair. He made me melt with so little effort on his part.

“What happens when this case is over? Are you going to walk away from me and whatever is happening between us like it never existed?”

He sighed. “I thought you were tired.”

“I was.”

But I wasn’t any longer. I needed to know where I stood with him.

Jameson played with a long, curling strand of hair that’d fallen over my bare shoulder but I caught his fingers and squeezed. “Jameson,” I implored. “I need answers.”

Jameson’s expression shuttered and he rolled away from me, reaching down to grab his jeans and jerk them on. “Baby, what do you want me to say?” he said, pushing his hand through his hair. “That I’m falling in love with you and none of this makes sense but I don’t want to quit?”

My heart leaped a beat. Did I want that?

But Jameson wasn’t offering that. “Well, I can’t say that to you. I won’t lie. I don’t want to hurt your feelings — you’re a good kid — but I’m not the guy you want me to be. I don’t do backyard picnics and go to the movies for date-nights.”

“I’m not a kid,” I retorted, wiping at the sudden tears in my eyes. “And if you thought I was a kid, you shouldn’t have down what you did.”

He turned to look at me. “You’re right,” he agreed with a bitter downturn of his lips. “Do you want me to say I fucked up? Yeah, I did. My head wasn’t on straight and I fucked up. Does that make you feel better?”

“No.”

“Then, what do you want from me?” Jameson rose and stalked from the room, leaving me in the dark.

What did I want? That was a valid question. He’d never made me any promises. I never thought I wanted anything from him.

But I was wrong.

I didn’t know when it’d happened but something clicked between us and I wasn’t the only one who was feeling it.

I kicked the blankets free and followed him into the living room.

“You’re a fucking coward, Jameson Reed,” I told him, not letting him escape from what I needed to say. “You feel something for me but you won’t admit it. At least I have the balls to admit that there’s something between us — even if I didn’t want to feel anything for you.”

Jameson’s mouth quirked in a sardonic parody of a smile that cut me to my core. “You want a prize or something? I never asked you to fall for me. Hell, I pretty much figured I’d guaranteed you would hate me. How was I supposed to know that you were going to go and do something stupid like get feelings?”

“Don’t you dare try and make me feel as if I’m the defective one,” I warned, hot tears burning behind my eyes. “You’re doing this in some misguided attempt at pushing me away. I get it, you’re an asshole, you don’t have to put the exclamation point on the statement. But just remember this, Jameson…someday life will be about more than the job, more than just putting away the bad guy, but it’ll be too late. You’ll be an old, bitter piece of shit who can’t stand his own company and you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.”

“Are you finished?”

“Yeah, I’m finished.”
Finished with you, asshole.

“Good.” He grabbed his keys, jacket and was gone.

Damn you, Jameson!

I dropped into the chair and cried my eyes out.

This was my own fault. I had no one to blame but myself.

I should’ve never taken Jameson up on his devil’s bargain.

But then how could I have known that, somehow, someway, that miserable son-of-a-bitch would find his way into my tender heart?

I couldn’t go back to my bed. Not where his scent lingered. Not where the memories still lived and breathed.

Grabbing a throw blanket from the back of the sofa, I curled up and cried myself to sleep.

I
didn’t want
to go home.

I couldn’t stay at Ivy’s.

Everything she’d said had been true.

I was a miserable bastard…a coward.

I did have feelings for Ivy that I couldn’t reconcile.

I didn’t have any business feeling anything for her. She deserved far better than I could give her.

I wasn’t lying when I said she was a good kid, excuse me,
person
. She was the best of people.

Kind, generous, compassionate…all the things I’d long ago forgotten how to feel.

She warned that I was going to end up alone and bitter.

I already had the bitter part down.

The cold place in my chest where my heart should be, ached with something that I couldn’t quite put a name to.

Bits of my childhood crashed into memory, igniting a powerful burn that I couldn’t avoid.

When did I become such an asshole?

I flexed my hand on the steering wheel as a phantom pain erupted in the webbing between my thumb and forefinger where an old circular scar remained.

Thanks, Dad.

Eight years old. Punished with a car lighter for complaining about the cold.

We’d been driving for hours. It was late, probably around one in the morning. My dad had been up for days, now he was hallucinating.

And paranoid.

It was me, my older brother, Jack, and my younger brother Johnny. It was fucking winter and he had the windows down, ranting about how the world was fucked and everyone in it, a liar and thief.

Snow was lightly falling. We were climbing in elevation. All I saw were darkened trees on either side of the road.

Johnny wasn’t shivering anymore.

Somehow he’d fallen asleep against me.

The kid was only three years old. Barely potty-trained.

Dad had jerked us out of bed and thrown us in the car without letting us get dressed first.

Somehow the courts had thought Dad was the better parent. I suppose when you have to pick between two shitastic parents, you pick the lesser of the two evils.

Johnny always slept in a t-shirt and a diaper just in case he had an accident.

We tried to save the unsoiled diapers to use again because my dad wasn’t exactly big on providing for his kids.

And sometimes we had to reuse the diaper because there was nothing else.

This was one of those times.

Johnny wasn’t crying any more either.

“Dad, we’re cold,” I leaned over the front of the bench seat but he responded with more ranting. And then lightening fast, he took the car lighter and slammed it down on my hand with a wild laugh as I shrieked.

“Are you cold now, Jamie?”

Jack pulled me back as I whimpered, holding my injured hand, biting back sobs. We had to ride out whatever Dad was going through.

No one was coming to help us.

No one even knew where we were.

Dad stood on the brakes, fishtailing the old Buick as we chewed up the shoulder.

“Bitches. No good bitches!” Dad roared to the cold silence. “That’s all they are! Everyone wants to fuck me over. Everyone! But I know what they’re doing and I see it! I won’t let them get what they’re after. No way. They’ll have to fucking kill me first.”

He turned to us, his eyes wild and terrifying. “Don’t you fucking move. You wait here, you hear me?”

We jerked scared nods. Satisfied, he jumped from the car and left us behind, his angry voice echoing in the gloom.

The cracked vinyl of the old car seats felt like a slab of ice beneath our bare skin. We huddled together for warmth, our breath clouding in small, desperate plumes.

Every sound echoed. My childhood terrors jumped from every moving shadow as the trees moved to the wind.

Dad never came back.

Tears I hadn’t cried in decades crowded my sinuses and I ground them out.

Shit, why’d I have to remember that?

There was a reason I didn’t think about that night.

A reason I didn’t dwell on the past.

Because no matter what I said or did, nothing would change what’d happened.

Nothing would change that my little brother froze to death that night.

Ahhh, fuck.

I pulled off the road and threw the car in park. Grinding my eyes free of the tears, I hated the helplessness that tightened my chest whenever I thought of that night.

Twenty-seven years was a long time to nurse a wound.

Jack, a year older than me, had turned into a drug addict. I hadn’t seen him in years. I caught wind of his arrests now and then but I’d cut off ties a long time ago. When I didn’t answer his calls, he stopped calling.

I had other siblings, scattered here and there. Dear ol’ dad had seemed on a mission to populate the earth. I didn’t even know half their names.

Except for Katie.

Her mother had been smart, unlike mine.

She’d dropped Dad like a bad habit as soon as he’d knocked her up.

Katie was a good kid.

It was better she had nothing to do with her ratchet half-family anyway.

What kind of man would Johnny have been?

I sniffed back snot, hating that I was sitting here in the dark crying about memories I couldn’t do nothing about.

All because of Ivy.

Ivy awakened feelings in me I’d had on lock-down for so long I didn’t even recognize them any longer.

Memories of my childhood made me feel weak and vulnerable — two feelings I didn’t allow any longer.

This case had me jacked up. I’d spent too long chasing a shadow that always seemed able to disappear around the corner.

The frustration building under my chest bone brought up uncomfortable similarities to what I’d gone through as a kid.

When no one was looking out for you, kids lost hope that things would ever change, leaving nothing but fear, anger and resentment in its wake.

Terano Rodrigo was laughing at me after every failure, every missed opportunity to take him down.

The man thought he was untouchable.

Which meant…someone was protecting him.

Someone who knew what our next move was going to be.

Hank thought I was paranoid for being suspicious of our own. Crooked cops weren’t a new thing. We all played fast and loose with the law sometimes. But if someone was feeding Terano information, it was likely they already knew about Ivy.

If that were true…the possibility of Ivy being in immediate danger sent a cold chill down my spine.

I couldn’t stomach the thought of Ivy getting hurt because of what I’d put in play. I was a fucking bastard for drawing her into my mess. I was no better than Frankie.

Except Frankie actually loved his sister. I guess, in some fucked up logic, Frankie had done his part to keep Ivy away from the life by staying in it.

Frankie was a mess of bad decisions and weak ethics but he’d done one thing right and that was he’d protected Ivy from getting sucked into his black hole of low-life drug dealing.

Hell, if anyone was the bad guy in this situation it was clearly me. In the beginning I hadn’t cared about collateral damage — and that’s all Ivy had been in my mind. But I fucking cared now.

I didn’t know what was happening to me but Ivy had quickly become more than just a tool to use.

I wasn’t going to say I was in love — I wasn’t so naive as to think that I deserved someone like Ivy — but there was something between us that I craved like a body needed oxygen to live.

I was going to pull Ivy from this case. Frankie got himself into his mess, not Ivy. We’d use him as bait instead.

And if Hank had anything to say about it…he could just shut the fuck up.

T
he following morning
I returned to Ivy’s place.

My mind was made up. I was pulling her.

But as I approached her front door, I saw something that immediately had me drawing my gun.

A splintered doorjamb and a clear bootmark marring the door.

Someone had kicked open her front door.

I pushed the door open and walked, calling her name. The silence was deafening.

Signs of a struggle were everywhere.

The coffee table was upended. The nightstand lamp was shattered.

“Shit,” I muttered as true panic began to set in. Someone had taken Ivy.

By force.

I knew in my bones it was Terano Rodrigo.

He was upping the ante and the message was pretty damn clear — 
you fuck with me, I take what’s yours.

I’d fucking tear him limb from limb if a hair on Ivy’s head was damaged.

Sweat beaded my brow. My Ivy was in danger.

Danger I’d put her in.

Fuck!

Now I knew for a fact we had a rat.

No one had Ivy’s address.

She hadn’t filled out an application for Chester’s — the interview had been a one-on-one with the manager only, which had been purposefully planned that way so as to leave out a paper trail.

Which meant that whoever had doled out Ivy’s address had had access to police records.

My immediate suspicion was Hank.

But I rejected it.

Hank had been my partner for two years. He’d saved my ass as many times as I’d saved his.

In all honesty, anyone with access to a department computer could be suspect.

No, narrow it down
, I told myself when I began to panic all over again.

Who had access to the undercover files?

Not as many people.

Hank, myself, the captain, and the sergeant, Erika Juarez. We’d kept the circle tight for a reason.

The captain was close to retirement — there’s no way he was going to risk his pension for a little extra cash. It doesn’t make any sense for the captain to be the rat.
So, scratch him.

Hank was a single guy who made more than enough money to support his lifestyle. I doubted he’d go on the take. Hank hated criminals as much as I did — it was one of the things that bonded us.

Erika Juarez was as no-nonsense as they came. She went by the book, which was why Hank and I edited our reports frequently. If she knew half the shit we did undercover, she’d have IA so far up our asses we’d be spouting penal codes like gibberish.

So that left me with…?

I swore under my breath as I made the call to Hank.

“We got problems,” I said, going straight to the point.

“What's going on?” Hank asked, his voice sleepy. “What time is it? Jesus, Jameson, this better be good.”

“Someone trashed Ivy’s place and took off with her. We definitely have a rat and when I find the fucker, I’m going to make him wish he’d never been born.”

“Calm the fuck down, it’s too early for hysterics,” Hank grumbled. “Maybe she’s just a shitty housekeeper and a slob. She could be at the grocery store or something. You don’t have to jump to the worst conclusion.”

I didn’t have time to dance around the facts. “Hank, cut the shit. Listen to me when I tell you that she’s been abducted. The doorjamb was kicked in and the place is trashed.”

Hank heard in my voice that I wasn’t messing around. “All right, all right, don’t get your panties in a twist. I’ll get dressed and meet you there. What’s the address?”

I gave him the information and clicked off, my mind racing.

Each second that ticked by felt like a knife pressing deeper into my throat.

If anything happened to her…

Don’t go there.

Focus on who fucking did this.

That was the key. Find the mole. Find Ivy.

Whoever had taken Ivy had waited for me to leave. They’d been staking the place out. If I hadn’t left in a huff, they wouldn’t have taken the chance.

But I’d stormed out like a fucking baby because I hadn’t liked what she’d had to say.

Because it’d been all true.

I wasn’t used to people calling me on my own shit.

It was motherfucking humbling.

And I didn’t like it.

But it was long overdue.

The fact was, I’d been running fast and dangerous for too long. I was edging near burn-out.

What life was out there for me? I was a broken fucking crayon that didn’t quite fit right in the box or in the hand.

But a broken crayon can still color.

Ivy’s voice broke into my dark thoughts and I startled, my heart rate jumping. Since when was Ivy’s voice in my head?

But I liked it. Damn, I clung to it. I had to find her.

Hank finally showed up and when he saw the damage he whistled. “Damn, you weren’t lying. This place is trashed.”

“Whoever took her waited for me to leave,” I told him.

Hank gave me a short look. “What do you mean, leave?”

No sense in holding back details now. “I’ve been sleeping with Ivy since the start.”

“You little devil,” Hank said, chuckling as if he were proud of my deviant side. “You are something else.”

I didn’t want his admiration for doing something despicable. “Look, we gotta find her.”

“She got a cell phone?” he asked.

I remembered that Ivy kept her cell phone charged by her bed. I went to the bedroom. My heart sank when I saw it plugged in.

I returned to Hank. “Not with her.”

“I’ll call it in to the Sgt.,” Hank started but I stopped him with a look. Hank was confused. “What?”

“We have a rat. I’m not taking any chances.”

“Jameson, don’t be stupid. We have to follow protocol.”

“Since when?” I challenged. “We never follow the rules, why start now?”

“You might have a point,” he conceded. “All right, I’ll wait until after we talk to Frankie but if we hit a dead-end, we have to call it in.”

What Hank wasn’t saying was that if something happened to Ivy and it was discovered that we sat on critical information, the timeline will indict us for sure. I nodded in agreement. “Let’s see what Frankie has to say.”