Bad Boy Criminal: The Novel (7 page)

W
e were almost
two hours outside of Boulder—though still in Colorado—when we got the alert that the Turners had reported their truck to be missing. So they had found that damn letter Izzy insisted on leaving . . . and we wouldn’t have much time. I had to admit, she was a sharp little pistol; the police immediately issued her presence as a hostage situation. How charming. Very cute.

On the entrance ramp to 71, a dark green sedan was abandoned with a white t-shirt tucked into the passenger side window, the national symbol for a vehicle which will no longer run.

If I’d have my phone, or my car, or my CDs, we could’ve been listening to Mozart…or, God, Schubert. But we were trapped listening to the musical stylings of The Eagles, and Chicago, and the like. Blugh.

Maybe that sedan would have some classical in it. I whipped the wheel to the side and pumped the brakes. “Whoa!” Izz cried, turning to flash me wild hazel eyes. Did she think we were going to make it all the way to Juarez in her old man’s truck? Not anymore… Not after they’d called in and reported it missing. Not just it, but her, too, dammit.

Ignoring her confusion and alarm, I reversed until we were angled parallel to the broken-down vehicle.

“What are we doing?” she demanded.

“Don’t worry about it,” I replied. In truth, although I appreciated her gesture, and it was cool of her to want to come, to help out, and to let me take her old man’s truck… Something about this didn’t sit right with me. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it—though I prayed I could put my finger on the reason I did want her here, God willing. Sex aside, her presence made me uncomfortable. As I glanced over at her, I shifted once, thoughtful as to this development, and ducked out of the truck. “We’re gonna have to leave this one for the cops to grab,” I warned her through the open window. “Can’t keep driving it now that it’s been reported.”

The saving grace of this particular truck was that the truck bed was packed to the gills with useful equipment, including cruddy tubing and a spool of some thin copper wire. It was everything we’d needed to hot-wire this sedan, if I could get it moving. Slapping my palms together, I ducked out of the window and went to inspect our new find. My new find.

The first step would be hot-wiring the car. Driver’s side unlocked, I slid beneath the steering column and popped its cover off easily. A tangle of wire guts came spilling out, and I used the owner’s manual in the glove compartment—naturally—to differentiate between the red and yellow and green and blue wires. It was a simple matter of splicing a few cords together…

But, even after successfully hot-wiring the engine, the little bitch was still being ornery.

Inspecting the gauges, I found the gas needle unwilling to budge.

Hilarious. They’d just finished passing the last exit. I could only pray the gauge was broken; it was the only excuse I could possibly make for the sheer idiocy involved therein. But it also meant that the owners were very close to a variety of gas stations; I couldn’t imagine one being further than half a mile off the exit, a twenty or thirty minute walk for someone who didn’t really care about speed. But who didn’t really care about speed? It was only going to be a matter of minutes. Shit.

Foraging in the back of Bill’s truck, I extracted a length of narrow tubing, sawed it off with the switchblade from my boot, and ignored the sound of Isabelle calling to me, wondering what was going on. I couldn’t get in the state of mind where she was the Bonnie to my Clyde. I just couldn’t. That would be stupid—stupid, and deadly, for both of us.

Siphoning the gas from Bill’s truck to this unknown sedan, I sparked the wires again, and this time the engine roared to life. The gas needle still didn’t fluctuate; gauge must’ve been busted, hence their ability to completely ignore the red line until it was too late. At least Izzy and I were already going to drive it until the wheels rolled off. Where we were going, we didn’t need gauges to tell us anything.

I dug the burner phone from my pocket next, and punched in one of the three numbers I had memorized in my life: Jade Rodriguez.

Even though it was bound to be near midnight, she picked up on the third ring. That was my girl.

“
Que pasa?
” her familiar, mousy voice piped over the line.

“It’s me,” I answered grimly.

“
HOLY SHIT!
” Jade cried. I heard a crash in the background. “Damnit…oh well,” she muttered. “I’ve got an entire box of keyboards anyway. So, HOLY SHIT, MAN! What the hell! The last thing I heard, you were being transmitted to max security, bro! Now you’re calling me from a cell phone?”

“A burner phone,” I corrected her. “There’s a mild difference.”

“STILL!”

Over my shoulder, Isabelle called, “Who are you talking to over there?”

“Who’s that?” Jade asked merrily.

“Nobody,” I answered, defensive.

“Well, nobody sounds cute.” I could hear the smirk in Jade’s voice.

Over my shoulder, I hissed to Izzy, “Get in the car.”

She didn’t resist. She climbed out of the truck and into the sedan, readily diving into the passenger seat for me.

Damn. If I was looking for a Bonnie…she’d make a straight one.

“Look, Jade, truth be told, I don’t have a lot of time,” I confessed, continually glancing over my shoulder for the approaching silhouettes of the car owners. “I need a hot favor, and then I’ve got to get back on the road.” Even as I said this to her, I collapsed into the driver’s seat of the sedan, pumped the gas, bringing the engine to a roar, and jerked onto the interstate. We’d have to get off at the next exit, in two or three exits at the most, and find our way to the next town via backroads. Now that the state police would be alert to the string of auto thefts, there’d be a blue boy idling at every speed trap, waiting for us. No. Waiting for me.

“Sure, boo, anything,” Jade said. “Like I said,
que pasa?
”

“First, I’m gonna need you to prep some new identities for me and my friend, Isabelle, here.”

I saw Isabelle’s hair flip as she twisted to stare at me hard.

“Oh, let me hook you up with Arlo, down in Albuquerque,” Jade answered, unaware of the hard stare I was receiving at the moment. I pretended like I was, too. “I’ll do the dirty work, and he can get you set up with the stuff when you get to New Mexico. Can you be there by this time tomorrow?”

God, I hate all the driving being a criminal entails.

“Yes,” I groaned.

“Great,” Jade chirped, completely unaware of my tone. “What’s Isabelle’s full name?”

“Hey, Izz, what’s your last name?” I whispered to my side.

“Turner,” she answered, following a brief hesitation. So, she really had been a bad girl in life. I knew that hesitation.

“You don’t have to be afraid to tell me,” I chastised her lightly. Of all the people to judge whatever she may have done, I’d be the last, and I was still somehow certain it’d probably been an accident…or a mistake, just like this was.

“What?” Jade said on the line.

“Shit, sorry,” I answered, glaring back at the highway. I needed to get Isabelle Turner off my damn mind. “Isabelle Turner,” I said. “Why?”

“Just gonna snatch up a nice Facebook picture for her license,” Jade informed me.

“You’re the most efficient nerd I know,” I told her.

“High praise,” she replied.

“Could you do one more thing for me, babe?” I wondered.

“What?” Isabelle asked off to my right.

“What?” Jade asked on the phone.

“Let Dom and Xander know I’m all right. I’ll let you know where I’m headed when I know more.”

Jade groaned. “Okay,” she finally agreed.

I knew exactly what she meant.

I
t seemed
as if we’d been driving for an awful long time, for someone who was just trying to get to the border. I mean, what time had we left? Nine? Ten? And we’d taken the new car, the green sedan outside of Otero County, shortly before midnight. But what time was it now? I hadn’t brought my cell phone. That would’ve gotten me kicked out of this car.

“What time is it?” I asked Ashton. I felt like we hadn’t been talking nearly enough for a criminal duo. I had to wonder at what he was thinking while he glared down the barrel of these winding, tree-clotted backroads. We’d gotten off the interstate around midnight, too. I wasn’t sure what time it was anymore, but a trip from Boulder to the border was nine or ten hours.

“Almost four,” Ashton replied, seeming casual as he kept his eyes on the road.

Yet here it was, almost four in the morning now, and I hadn’t even seen a single sign for New Mexico.

“Shouldn’t we be…
somewhere
by now?” I wondered aloud.

“We are somewhere,” Ashton assured me. “We’re at the tip of Utah.”

“Utah?”
I spluttered.

“You know how it is,” he grumbled. “We’ve got to skirt around the interstates…about to head on into Arizona for a…” The sedan sputtered and lurched beneath us. “…bit,” Ashton finished, his face screwed into a scowl. “Shit.”

“What shit?” I asked, unable to hide my alarm.

“The gas gauge on this bitch has been broken the entire time, giving a false read on the E,” he informed me. “And now it is legitimately empty. God damn.”

I sighed deeply and racked my brain for reasonable thoughts. It was my only purpose on this ill-advised road trip, apparently. Meanwhile, the dark green sedan lurched onto the side of the road, coughed, expelled one long, wistful sigh, and died.

“Well,” I allowed, being the first to fill the silence, “how far are we from town?”

Ashton grimaced. “Not very.” He pushed his door open, and I followed suit. We both grabbed our respective packs. I slung mine over my shoulder and joined him on the side of the dark and narrow road, somewhere in Utah, Ashton alleged.

“I saw a sign about a mile back, pointing us toward a town called Bluff,” he informed me, his tone oddly light. “We could give it two miles of walking distance, find a motel in about an hour.” Just the kind of thing a tired farm girl who’s been trapped in the car for the past seven hours wants to hear. Walking. Great. “And the cops won’t be able to track where we are, because it’ll probably be a day or two before anyone finds this piece of crap this deep in the woods.”

He sounded so cheerful about all of this. And, I supposed, no matter how exhausted I was, no matter how doubtful of the logic, it was still a hell of a lot more interesting than sleeping until sunrise, then dragging myself out of bed just to go collect eggs from the henhouse.

But, as we walked in silence along this dark ribbon of country road, I had to wonder what, exactly, my purpose
was
. Although I had thought that I could bring him shelter and safety, as well as a piece of reasonable advice from time to time, he didn’t seem to really need or appreciate my input. So, why was I
here
at all, anyway?

When we’d been back on Turner Dairyfarm, he’d been almost clingy. But now that we had left behind my world, and plunged into his, he was quiet, solemn, and stood at a distance from me. I couldn’t figure out what I’d done wrong. Just be here? Just want to get to know him?

My eyes panned up to the dark sky and I sighed. At this time of year, four AM was still deep night, and the stars were all twinkling as if it was only midnight yet.

“We’re right under Leo,” I noted breathlessly, gesturing to the cluster of stars shaped like a shepherd’s crook. Just beneath that constellation was another, which looked to the uneducated astronomer like a mere thick spatter of bright, twinkling stars. I immediately became excited that she was so vibrant tonight, but it was obvious that Ashton didn’t catch the significance of the cluster.

“Mmph,” he said, hardly glancing upward.

“And that’s Berenice’s Hair,” I informed him, stopping and pointing. It was my absolute favorite location on the star map, and I wasn’t going to let him just “mmph” it away.

When he noticed that I was no longer walking, he indulged me and grudgingly returned.

I knew he was on a tight schedule. That was clear. But, dammit, if we weren’t going to have a little fun out here, what was the point of
not
being in prison after all?

“Okay,” he said, smirking lightly down at me. For just a split second, I saw the Ash for whom I had begun to fall shimmer back at me, as if he’d been allowed to peer from the window of the otherwise shuttered fortress Ash had become. “You’re going to tell me, so go ahead and tell me.”

“Berenice was an Egyptian queen,” I went on wonderingly, no longer looking at him but up at the amazing sheath of starlight she produced. “And she gave her long, shining hair away to the gods in exchange for the safety of her lover in battle.” I smiled up at the sky, even if it couldn’t smile back at me. “They found it to be so beautiful and bright, they laid out her hair among the stars themselves.”

I was startled back down to Earth when Ashton reached out and lightly touched the patch of singed hair follicles near my temple, which did, at first glance, appear to be a lock of shorn hair. “Maybe you can relate,” he murmured. God, those eyes.

Smiling up at him, suddenly demure, it was I who broke the eye contact and continued forging down the road ahead. Ashton loped after me, but he did not speak.

We walked in silence for almost a minute before he went on, “Who was Berenice’s lover? The one she’d protect in battle with her hair?”

“Her husband,” I answered, suddenly meek. “A pharaoh. One of those Ptolemies. I can’t remember which one—he had a ton of brothers.”

“Ha,” Ash barked, startling me. When I glanced at him, he was grinning, his eyes sparkling, and I again caught a glimpse of the real Ash. Or, the man I hoped was the real Ash. He was the man I had
wanted
to go to Mexico with. “Maybe I can relate too,” he divulged.

T
he Sandy Castle
was a motel so far off the beaten path, we hadn’t even reached the main strip of Bluff when we found it. It didn’t even look like it housed guests, and at first, we thought it was just an abandoned duplex or something. However, there was a Vacancy sign in the front lot; only the last four letters were alight.

We took our room—#3, which the mildly drunken manager informed us had always been “lucky” for couples—and tried not to look too hard at the crumbling plaster, or the stains on the thin carpeting.

“Oh, my god, a shower,” Ash groaned as soon as we entered the room. He fumbled over a lamp and illuminated the area with a dim puddle of yellow light. Green carpet. Miniature television mounted on top of a VCR. And one queen-sized bed.

“But ladies first, right?” I half-joked, half-pleaded.

Ashton replied with a warm smile. I couldn’t figure out why the sudden thaw—or if he was just bound to refreeze any minute. “Of course,” he acquiesced. “After you, my lady.”

But the bathroom wasn’t any dreamy vacation, either. Don’t get me confused with a princess, now. I had no trouble stripping off my pants and tank top and clambering on into that narrow stall, wrenching the faucet, and damn near moaning with pleasure at the steam which buffeted almost instantly up to my face.

Scanning the small shelf located on the right wall, I found a bar of hotel soap, still wrapped in its plastic, and two tiny bottles of shampoo and conditioner. My feet throbbed with gratitude as the hot water rinsed over them, and my joints joined in the chorus of their song. Ripping the plastic from the bar of soap—mm, vanilla and sandalwood—I worked up a thick lather between my hands and glided it over my breasts, down my stomach, and into my arm pits. Oh, god, it was fantastic.

Shifting to and fro to rinse the suds from my shoulders, my mind trailed as if by design to contemplation of the man undoubtedly now stretched out on that hotel bed. Ashton.

With that sculpted, golden torso, etched in vibrant dragons and suns and roses and guns. His shaggy hair as dark as oil, and almost as reflective. And the eyes…like gemstones ringed by raven feathers…

I thought back to our last kiss, with my back pressed against the rescue shed and his fingers slick beneath syrupy Vaseline from milking Rosie. The way he’d seemed to have known my body innately, his thumbs rolling roughly across my nipples, already so taut and electric with arousal. Argh, and then, Hope had hollered out the window, and we’d sprung apart like a couple of teenagers…

But what if Hope had decided to run to the grocery store for fresh parsley? Then what might we have done?

As I contemplated this, my fingers trailed down my breasts and pinched my nipples again, reminding them of Ashton’s touch. And then, what if he had turned me roughly toward the wooden wall of the rescue shed, pressing my torso there…and I would have pushed back, I would have resisted, desiring to be against his body at all costs. In my mind’s eye, my ass ground into his rigid member, and while one of Ashton’s greasy hands had continued to paw and massage one of my breasts, damn near milking it, too, the other had frantically unfastened the button on my blue jeans, shoving the denim flaps to either side, manic fingers slithering between my labia with a mind—no, an appetite—of their own…

I bit my lip and trembled as my own fingers captured my clit, pretending to be Ashton’s. My middle and pointer finger worked together over the engorged nub of my womanhood, eliciting further trembles, causing my knees to lock into a position from which I would not accidentally go sprawling. While one hand worked a nipple, and the other brought me to the threshold of orgasm, nestled between my responsive labia, I was hundreds of miles away, back on Turner Dairyfarm, with Ash again… He was pulling my pants down, so savage, so desperate to be inside me… The clatter of his belt coming undone… His thick, turgid cock sprang up between my legs and pressed hungrily at the very entrance—

An authoritative knock brought me screaming from the fantasy, and my hands—one had come down to work with the other—both flew away from my now totally soaked pussy.

“Uh,” I called out to him, almost as disoriented as someone waking from deep sleep, “yeah?”

“Nothing,” he yelled through the door. “It’s just been, like, almost half an hour… I was just checking—”

“Oh!” Blush sprang to my cheeks. “Right! I’m sorry! I’m just so—dirty—” Thank God he couldn’t see how red my face was just then. “I totally lost track of time, I’m getting out.”

Disappointed, I bade farewell to my fizzling fantasy and wrenched the faucet in the other direction, bringing the steaming shower to an immediate halt. Seemingly frigid air rushed to greet me as I swept the plastic curtain to the side, and wrapped myself in a towel. As much as I wanted to fantasize about what might have been, who really knew? Things seemed to have changed for Ashton, hadn’t they? And I wasn’t the type of girl to pour myself into a man’s lap for nothing at all.

It was probably just an accident. When he was at the dairy, he was swept up, it was sudden, no strings attached, strangers, practically… But now, here I am, following him on the road, pretending to be his prisoner, and it’s probably getting a little bit too real, and he’s just not really that—

As I opened the bathroom door and stepped out, I almost walked directly into his chest.
Speak of the devil…

“Oh!” I exclaimed. I’d never been so consciously nude in my entire life. Around us, the hot fog from the bathroom drifted by. “Sorry, I—I—There’s still hot water.”
IDIOT,
I cursed myself.

It couldn’t have possibly been my imagination that Ashton’s eyes were so intently trained on me. “You smell like peonies,” he murmured, taking me in as if I was a drink at his lips. “And—I smell like dog shit,” he added, smiling sheepishly.

He didn’t smell like dog shit, per se. He just smelled like…rust, and gasoline, and sweat, and he needed to keep his wound clean…

I bit my lower lip and peered up at him. “There’s still hot water,” I reiterated.
IDIOT!

But Ashton only grinned and tipped an invisible hat at me. “Be right out,” he promised, sidling past me and into the tiny, steamy bathroom.