Ransom (Dead Man's Ink Series Book 3) (15 page)

“
Fuck. You. Denise
.” With that he turns around and walks away from her, heading in the direction of the workshop and barn. Lowell watches him go, eyes slightly narrowed, thumbs still tucked into her waistband. She only turns away when Jamie’s disappeared into the building beyond and she can’t drill holes into the back of his head anymore.
 

“We’ll be back,” she says lightly; I’m assuming she’s talking to me, but who the fuck knows? Who the fuck
cares
? She can come back here as many times as she likes. She’ll never find guns here. She’ll never find drugs. It would take her twenty years to get inside Jamie’s office, and even when she did, she’d only find a few burnt out servers and three destroyed hard drives.
 

There’s only one thing Agent Denise Lowell might come across that could cause us problems, and that’s Sophia. Hopefully, that will never come to fruition. Hopefully Lowell never lays eyes on the girl again, otherwise our shit will seriously be fucked up, and my best friend will likely be arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment.
 

Better hope and pray it doesn’t come to that. “You should get a pet, y’know,” I tell Lowell. “It’d be calming. Give you a reason to actually go home at night.”

She angles her head, glaring at me. “Thanks for the concern, Preston, but I have enough on my hands as it is. I don’t need a dog under foot, pissing and shitting all over the place when I have
you
.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

SOPHIA

“Pack a bag.”

I nearly jump out of my skin when I hear Jamie’s voice behind me. I didn’t notice him entering the clubhouse. Ever since Carnie burst into the cabin and told us about our DEA guests, I’ve been holding my breath, worrying about what’s going to happen if Lowell decides she wants to come on in and make trouble. A part of me has been ready to duck out of the back exit and jump on my bike, burn off down the dirt road that leads back toward civilization, head away from the compound and from my friends here simply so that my presence doesn’t cause issues. Carnie told me to
‘stay the fuck here’
though, and despite how badly I wanted to run, I managed to do as I was told, keeping out of sight until the DEA cars sped off down the long dirt track back in the direction of town. Now, down in the compound, Jamie looks like he’s about to go on a killing spree. My stomach is doing backflips as he storms across the clubhouse toward me. “What?”

“Pack a bag. We need to get out of here.”

I can’t be hearing him right. Surely he can’t actually be suggesting we leave Freemantle? “I can’t go anywhere, Jamie. I’m not leaving my dad here.”

He makes a frustrated growling sound; when he reaches me he takes hold of me by the wrist, pulling me toward the exit. “We have six days, sugar. Six days before anything bad happens to your father. That gives us six days to go figure this shit and get our asses back here.”

“You’re trusting Ramirez to stick to his word? Are you
mad
?” He has to be if he’s being even remotely serious right now.
 

Steel and ice flashes in his eyes. The cold blue of his irises seems even colder as he sighs, guiding me outside. “Sophia. I don’t trust him, no, but he’s not going to do anything, believe me. He wants to be holding the pliers when it comes down to it, and he wants an audience. Ramirez loves to fuck with people. He’s not going to break the rules to his own game. Not when it’s so much more satisfying to have us scrambling, trying to figure this out.”

A sinking feeling low in my gut tells me this logic is madness. I want to yank my arm free and confront him in the middle of the court yard, ask him if he’s really being this naïve, but Shay and Keeler are standing in front of the workshop, watching us, and the last thing I want or need is Shay cat calling at us as we fight in front of them. I’m liable to try and claw her eyeballs out of her head.
 

“Where the hell do you think we’re going to go?” I hiss. “You told me when we first met that Maria Rosa’s the only person crazy enough to go up against Hector, and in case you haven’t noticed we’ve had her locked in a fucking basement for the past six months.”

In the distance, plumes of orange dust rise up from the horizon—Lowell and her DEA friends still high tailing it back to their base. Jamie heads in the direction of the cabin, anger pouring off of him in palpable waves. “She was our best bet, sure. She wasn’t our
only
bet, though. There’s someone else.”

I don’t like the sound of this someone else. Anyone powerful enough to take on the Los Oscuros cartel has to be seriously dangerous themselves, and undoubtedly into some really fucked up, illegal activity. “Who, Jamie? Who the hell are you talking about? And why am I really worried right now?”

He slows, his urgency abating ever so slightly. Letting go of my arm, he scrubs his hands over his face, groaning. “Perez,” he says. “Julio Perez.”

My head starts spinning in the most disconcerting way. “
Julio Perez
? The man you had collect me from Ramirez? The man who sells women? The man you despise?” I can’t comprehend what’s going on in Jamie’s head right now. He has to be desperate to even consider this move. He hasn’t told me much about the tense nature of the relationship he shares with Perez, but I do know he has something on him. Something bad. Information on one of those hard drives that could put Perez away for a really long time. The last time they met, when Jamie came and took me from him in the middle of the night, Julio swore he was going to find a way to free himself from Jamie, and at the time I got the distinct impression shooting him in the back of the head wasn’t something Perez had ruled out.

“He’s not likely to be too happy about doing me a favor,” Jamie says through gritted teeth. “He hates me, but he hates Hector more. Los Oscuros poses direct competition to both his skin trade and his drug trafficking. If he can get Ramirez out of the picture, his income goes through the roof, especially since he has connections in Mexico.”

“But he’s not going to do anything that gives you more leverage over him. That’s just madness, Jamie. He’s gonna tell you to go fuck yourself.”

“We have a twelve hour ride ahead of us. I’ll have figured out that part by the time we get there.”

“Oh god.” This whole thing sounds like a horrible idea.
 

“Don’t freak out. It’s going to be fine,” Jamie says. But I can tell from the tightness in his voice that he’s not a hundred percent sure it will be.

******

Twelve hours is a seriously long time to sit on a motorcycle. It’s better now that I’m actually riding my own bike and I’m not perched on the back of Jamie’s, but still. Sore shoulders. Sore back. Sore hips. Sore ass. Every part of my body is humming with pain. We stop to stretch our legs and get gas, but it’s not enough; the dull ache returns within ten minutes of being back on my Ducati, and all I can think about is blasting my skin with a hot shower and falling asleep in a soft bed.
 

The only thing that keeps me from complaining is the thought of Dad, asleep on a cold, damp floor, no hot showers or soft beds for him. He’s probably wondering what the hell happened to land him in this predicament. Has Ramirez spilled the beans about me? Has he told my father I’m shacked up with an outlaw, the leader of a motorcycle club that has one boot firmly planted in highly illegal activities, the other shoved up the Los Oscuros cartel’s ass?

I really fucking hope not—no matter how much I’ve let my family down, I don’t want them thinking badly of me, ironic though that may be. It seems as though Hector delights in causing hurt wherever he goes, though. He’s probably taken great pleasure in showing my dad what a miscreant his daughter has become.
 

It’s dark when we cross the border into California. There are no streetlights or cars on the roads. The sky overhead is cloudless and vast, a myriad of stars bowed from horizon to horizon, clustered so thick and shining so bright that it takes my breath away as I follow the constant red glow of Jamie’s tail light up ahead. We ride for another hour through the night before he pulls off the highway at a dingy looking motel and parks up out front. I pull in beside him, killing the engine on the Ducati, trying not to groan as I sit up straight, stretching out my back.
 

“Are we stopping here?” I ask.
 

Jamie nods. “We’ll head on over to Julio’s place first thing. If we come charging out of the desert at this time of night, his men will shoot us on the spot. Better they can’t use the dark as an excuse for any accidents they might try to instigate.”

Fucking perfect. So there’s a chance we might end up dead. I guess I knew that when we set off. Julio’s a piece of shit, and from the high fences and the razor wire I saw circling his home when I was there last, it’s pretty clear he doesn’t take too kindly to uninvited guests. Jamie climbs off his bike and heads into the motel; the building itself has been painted a rather gaudy color of pink, and there appears to be a Star of David painted above each and every single one of the entrances to the rooms. A flickering sign above the reception reads:
Queen Of Hearts Motel
, though it seems that half of the letters only work half of the time.
 

Jamie’s gone for five minutes. When he returns, he has a key in his hand and a sour look on his face.

“That was like pulling teeth,” he says. “The old guy in there is ancient. He had a fucking sawn off shot gun leaning against the wall behind his desk.”
 

I try and figure out if this makes me feel safer or even more concerned for our wellbeing, but I can’t decide. We both take our small backpacks up to the room on the second floor the ancient guy allocated us, which overlooks a drained swimming pool full of trash and rotting leaves, and Jamie pretends not to notice the craters in the building’s plasterwork that can only have been created by gunshots. Shotgun blasts by the looks of things. I know he sees them, though.
 

Inside our room, Jamie tosses his bag down on one of the beds and starts typing something into his phone. After a second he frowns, then holds his cell up for me to see the screen

‘Three teenagers attacked in rural Queen Of Hearts Motel. Girl’s mother shot dead in pool by elderly desk clerk.’
There’s a black and white picture of a pool underneath the tagline, the same pool that sits in the yard outside our room, except in the photograph it’s full of water, and there’s a woman floating face down in the middle of it. The article shows a date two years ago.
 

“Seems we can’t escape trouble.” Jamie lets out a deep breath. He takes me in his arms and immediately works his way underneath the light jacket and the t-shirt I wore to ride in. “I need to ask you something,” he says. “And this is the worst fucking time for me to ask this, but I’m sick and tired of waiting.”

I angle my head, tilting it to one side, narrowing my eyes at him, trying to figure out what he’s talking about. “Waiting for what?”

“For this.” Jamie reaches into the back pocket of his jeans and takes out something small and round and shiny. I don’t give myself time to look at it properly. I’m instantly panicked. Terrified. I screw my eyes shut, trying to back away from him.
 

“Oh, no, you fucking don’t.” He winds an arm around my waist, holding onto me tight, stopping me in my tracks. “What the hell d’you think you’re doing, missy?”

“God, Jamie. Not now. I don’t—I can’t even—” I can’t even
think
straight right now, but Jamie won’t let me finish my sentence. He places a finger over my lips, cutting me off.
 

“Open your eyes, silly girl.”

“I don’t want to.” I’ve just ridden a motorcycle across three states. My whole life is in turmoil, upside down and inside out, and I feel like I’m about to really lose it. I can’t open my eyes. If I do, I’ll see what he’s holding in his hand, and I won’t be able to take it. It’ll be too much, too overwhelming, too scary, and I’ll end up doing something stupid.

Jamie presses his lips against my forehead, his mouth hot and pliable as he kisses me gently. “Yes, you can. You’ve done much harder things. You survived being kidnapped. You made it through three days at my father’s house. You’ve lived with a biker gang for the past six months. You defended yourself against a man who wanted to do you harm, and you helped me bury him. All of those things were harder than this.”

I shake my head, still trying to wriggle free of his grasp. “Jamie, this—I can’t do this now. It’s not the right time.”

“That’s my point. There won’t
ever
be a good time.” He sighs heavily. His grip loosens, releasing me ever so slightly, but I can tell he doesn’t want to. “Please, Soph. Don’t run away from this. You can see what I have in my hand and you can listen to what I have to say, and you can shoot me down if you like. Or you can do the opposite. But don’t just fucking run away from it. I know you better than that. You’re going to feel shitty if you don’t deal with this.”

He’s right. I will feel shitty, I know I will, but that doesn’t stop my heart from pounding away like a jackhammer inside my chest. My head feels like it’s too full, so much pressure building inside it, and I don’t know what to do. It’s as though it could explode at any moment. Slowly, cautiously, I open my eyes. I make sure to look up at him—that feels safe enough, though it really isn’t. When I see him and the open, hopeful look on his face, I know I won’t be able to escape this.
 

“I’m not going to get down on one knee, sugar, and I was born in Louisiana. I was taught there was a proper way to do this kind of thing, so you should know how much it pains me to shirk tradition. But I know it’s not what you want.
 

“So this is just me telling you that I want you to be my wife. Asking you if you would do me the greatest of honors. I want to be your husband. I’ve never wanted anything so much in my life.” He blows out a deep breath, both his eyebrows rising up his forehead. “You know, I thought when I got out of the army, the hell I’d been living through was over. Shitty thing was, it had only just begun. The moment Laura went missing, everything got so fucked up. I never for a second thought something like this would happen.”