Dark Curves (Dangerous Curves Book 6)
Read Dark Curves (Dangerous Curves Book 6) Online
Authors: Marysol James
Tags: #romance, #Contemporary, #suspense, #Fiction, #Women's Fiction, #Romantic Suspense
Dark Curves
(Dangerous Curves #6)
By Marysol James
© 2015 by Marysol James.
All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, including information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written permission from the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover design:
www.doc2mobi.com
Cover photo: © Photographee.eu/Fotolia
Dedication
For D.
Because you found love on the run.
Contents
Jackson Taylor was just climbing in to bed when his cell phone went off. Not his personal phone, though, and not his phone for King’s Men. No, it was his
third
phone, the one that Jack used for the specific purpose of contacting Ace Cuddy. Right away, Jack’s whole body went in to high-alert mode. Code Red, man, and no lie.
He grabbed the phone, stared at the number for a second. Yeah, it was Ace – which was good, Jack supposed – but everything else about this call was potentially bad.
The arrangement was that Jack called Ace,
never
the other way around. Ace stuck to texts, and they never said more than ‘OK’ as Ace agreed to a meeting time and place that Jack proposed.
Also? How did Jack know for sure that it was Ace at the other end of the line? Maybe his cover had been blown, his phone taken… and the voice that would come out in to Jack’s ear would belong to one of Ace’s Fallen Angels MC brothers, looking to see who the hell their President had been talking to secretly.
If that was the case, then Ace was a dead man. And as much as Jack hated the nasty little dickhead, he didn’t want him dead because he’d been blackmailed by Matt ‘King’ Kingston to be an informant for King’s Men.
Jack’s conscience was crystal clear about using Ace to get information that King’s Men then used to break up drug, kidnapping, and sex trafficking rings run by Kirk Jensen, scumbag
extraordinaire
… but he wasn’t sure how good he’d feel about being directly responsible for Ace having his head blown off over a phone that Jack had personally given him.
Muttering a curse that doubled as an oath, Jack swiped ‘accept’.
“Yeah?” he said.
“Jack?”
Jack relaxed a tiny bit at Ace’s voice, pitched all low and careful, but definitely not in any pain. OK, so this part was good… though now Jack was all tense about why the hell Ace felt the need to whisper down a phone at him at one a.m. on a Wednesday.
“What the fuck, man?” Jack said.
“I know, and I’m sorry. But shit’s going down, and you needed to know right away.”
“Go.”
“Shay Alcott.”
Jack paused, already mentally packed and in the SUV, heading north. “Damn. Really?”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“It’s already done.”
That
startled Jack, and he wasn’t the type to startle all that easy.
“What – you’re in Montana?” Jack said, pissed that Ace was only telling him this now. “You were supposed to tell me what was happening
before
you went up there to grab the woman.”
“No,” Ace said. “I’m still in Denver. Some
other
guys were sent to get her and bring her back here. Some boys out of Vegas that Kirk outsources on occasion. I just found out two minutes ago that they’ve already got her, and they’re heading here as we speak. They should be in Denver in about seven hours.”
Jack found that he was taken aback for the second time in less than a minute.
“I thought it was supposed to be you to handle this?” he said. “You and the Fallen Angels?”
“Yeah, I thought so, too. But Kirk had second thoughts about us doing the job.”
“How come?”
“Seems that Shay teaches in a damn small town up in Montana, and it occurred to Kirk that having a bunch of one-percenter MC members stroll on up Main Street in a town of less than twenty-thousand might be a bit eye-catching and memorable. In all the wrong ways.”
Jack paused again. Well, yeah, actually. If Ace Cuddy, and Joker Kane, and their asshole MC brothers showed up Smalltown,
Anywhere
, they’d attract attention. Hell, those boys might as well stomp around carrying signs saying, ‘You
know
we’re here to cause shit’.
And if Shay Alcott’s disappearance was noticed so soon after a real, live version of ‘The Sons of Anarchy’ had mysteriously blown in to town and back out again? Any cop worth his or her salt would make the connection. No way Kirk Jensen would risk
that
kind of exposure.
“Right.” Jack sighed. “I guess the guys that Jensen sent were able to blend in better than your boys would.”
“I guess so.”
“Right,” Jack repeated, running his hand through his dark hair. “And is she OK?”
“I dunno. I haven’t heard otherwise.”
“Well, that’s a relief.” Jack stared at the clock on his bedside table for a second. “So, eight a.m.?”
“More or less.”
“She’s coming to your clubhouse?”
“Yeah. Then we’re taking control of the situation, and we’re moving her. Where, I don’t know yet. We have a few safe houses scattered around, so maybe one of them.”
“Is anybody going to miss her?” Jack asked. “It
is
Christmas break at the school, right? Is she supposed to be somewhere?”
“Nope. She has no boyfriend, no interest in her brother, no parents. As far as Kirk’s people were able to figure, she was spending the break all alone.”
Privately, Jack thought that was pretty sad. But then again, it’s not like
he’d
spent Christmas trimming the tree and opening presents with a smiling wife and a few overexcited kids. Maybe he needed to dial down the judgment just a bit.
“The second you can, you call me,” Jack said now. “Tell me what the hell.”
“I will.”
“And as soon as you move her, you leave Warren with her as guard, yeah? Alone, if you can. Just like we discussed.”
“Yeah. Just like we discussed.”
Without another word, Jack disconnected the call, as far from sleep now as it was possible to be. The thought that an innocent woman had gotten caught up in all this shit made his stomach clench up, hard.
Shay was taking the fall for something that she’d had nothing to do with: she’d been taken because Ace had been passing intel on to Jack, who’d in turn passed it on to King. From there, King had mobilized his team of ex-special-ops types, known collectively as King’s Men. With the local cops and the feds, they’d busted several of Kirk Jensen’s businesses wide open, burned others to the ground, and killed anyone who’d opened fire on them.
It had been a bloody, brutal, and violent few months, and Jensen had just recently shut down and dug in. Started to look at his lieutenants, and associates, and contacts; he’d started to look damn hard. He was utterly
convinced
that the reason for so many successful police busts was because of a rat… and of course, he was right.
The problem was that Kirk was sure the big-mouth was Crusher Alcott, the President of the Highway Hellions MC over in Utah. According to Ace, Crusher was the middle man in one of Kirk’s most profitable drug corridors, the one running from Colorado to Nevada. Ace and his MC got the drugs as far as Utah, where Crusher and his boys picked things up and made all the final drop-offs, as instructed.
It was a good arrangement, but the word on the street was that Crusher was fed up with being Jensen’s delivery boy. He had aspirations and ambitions of his own, apparently, and he wanted to start up his own drugs operation, with his MC pocketing all the profits. No way to do that with Jensen in the picture, though, so the tension and mistrust between the two men was off-the-charts.
Jensen’s thinking was logical and clear: he’d come to believe that Crusher was setting him up to fail. Kirk thought that Crusher was looking to shake and shatter Jensen’s infrastructure, and damage his credibility with suppliers and customers alike. Once Jensen had lost his supreme position, maybe even gone to jail at long last, then Crusher could just sweep on in and take over.
Taking Shay Alcott was a typical Jensen move – using family and other loved ones to get people to do what he wanted. It wasn’t a shock that he’d gone this way… but the issue was that Crusher Alcott wasn’t the one who was helping to destroy Kirk’s empire from the inside.
No, that was Ace, all the way. Ace and King’s Men. And now this young woman was collateral damage, and Jack was having a hard time getting square with that.
He sighed, picked up his work cell, punched in King’s number.
“Taylor?” King’s guttural rasp was in his ear. “What?”
“Shay Alcott. She’s on her way here now.”
“But not with Ace,” King said. The man hadn’t missed a beat, and he wasn’t asking a question.
“No. Some Vegas outfit that does outsourcing work.”
“Damn. When does she arrive?”
“In less than seven hours.”
“Ace will take control of her?”
“Yeah. She’ll be brought to the clubhouse, then moved and kept under Fallen Angels supervision. He says that Warren gets the babysitting job.”
“Good.” King thought for a few seconds, and Jack waited. “Is she alright?”
“Ace said he thought so. But, I mean, she has to be terrified, King.”
“No, I know. Hopefully, Warren will be a friendly face until all this mess gets sorted.”
“You think it
will
get sorted?” Jack asked, all healthy scepticism. “Jensen’s going to accuse Crusher of working against him, Crusher’s going to deny it, and then – what? Jensen’s going to say, ‘Oh, my bad. Here’s your sister back?’”
“Not a chance.”
“So?”
“I have a plan, man. Don’t worry.”
Right away, Jack felt much,
much
better. Yeah, of
course
King had a plan; the man
always
had a plan. And a Plan ‘B’, as well as Plans ‘C’ through ‘R’. No way he was leaving an innocent woman in the hands of a bunch of MC assholes. Not while he was drawing breath.
“You gonna share?” Jack said, already knowing the answer.
“Nope.”
Jack laughed. “I figured.”
“So why’d you ask?”
“Because I live in the hope that some day, you’ll actually voluntarily
offer
information long before it’s necessary to relinquish your death-grip on it.”
“Yeah?” King said, his voice a ferocious growl. “Dream on, Taylor.”
“Yeah.” Jack shook his head, his worry for Shay settling in to his chest now. It’d stay there, he knew, until whatever King had in mind had unfolded and then wrapped up. Hopefully without complications. “I’ll do that, man. I’ll just keep dreaming.”
“Speaking of which… goodnight.”
“Goodnight. I’ll call you as soon as I hear from Ace.”
“Uh-huh.” Now it was King who sighed, and Jack knew that the other man’s chest was also full of hope, worry, and care for Shay Alcott. “You do that.”
Warren ‘Derby’ Kane stared at the woman in front of him, his face carefully arranged in a cold, hard expression. Over the past eight months, he’d practiced the look in front of a mirror for hours on end, and now he could just slip it on at will.
She tossed her blonde hair over her slim shoulder, hitched her barely-there skirt high enough to flash her bare pussy, gave Warren a smoldering, sexy little glance. One that clearly said, ‘Come fuck me.’ One that should have had him hard enough to pound nails. One that was every teenaged boy
and
grown man’s wet dream.
He couldn’t have been less interested.
All he wanted was to get the hell out of there. Away from the blonde missing her panties, away from this biker bar, away from his fellow MC members. Away from his whole damn life.
Eight months ago, Warren had taken a wrong turn. He’d set foot on a road without really understanding what he was doing, and that had led him to some horrible, horrifying places.
He’d beaten people up, he’d burned down businesses, he’d held rival MC club members hostage. He’d been in two shoot-outs, and committed two burglaries, and kicked ass in seven serious bar fights, and he’d helped bury the bodies the morning after.
He’d taken two lives. The men hadn’t been upstanding citizens, to be sure; they hadn’t even been nice men. To be totally honest, they’d been child abusers and rapists, and God knows the world was better off without them. But they’d been souls, and Warren had snuffed them out.
Every step that he’d taken for the past eight months had led him farther down that twisted, dark road. Every step had led him
here
, to
this
chair, in
this
bar, staring at
this
woman. Eight months ago, Warren had fucked up his life beyond all belief and recognition, and – he had now come to fear – beyond any hope of
ever
getting off this road. It was a one-way street, and it led nowhere good.
Dead end, man.
Just over eight months ago, he’d left Kentucky to prospect for the Fallen Angels MC, at the invitation of his cousin. Joker was a fiercely loyal member, and no wonder, seeing as he’d been born in to the club – and quite literally.
His father, Sandy ‘Sands’ Kane, had knocked up some hellion, and had done just about the only semi-decent thing that he’d ever done in the whole of his life, and stuck by her. He’d never married her, never even made her his old lady… but he’d warned every other man off. That was about as good as it got with him, and she’d accepted it. She’d even had another child with Sands, Warren’s other cousin, Miranda, who everyone called Mirrie.
Two days after Joker had extended the invitation, Warren had gotten on a bus with a suitcase containing his whole life. He’d been so stupidly excited about joining the MC, excited about earning his own money, and having people who’d be loyal to him and watch his back.
He’d been so damn
stupid
.
This wasn’t
him
, this life.
None
of this was him, not really. Not the half-naked blonde, not the steady flow of alcohol, not the roar of music. Certainly not his MC brothers fucking their women-of-the-night right here next to him;
most
certainly not the savage undercurrent of violence that just never stopped bubbling away under the surface of his life. His whole life just bristled with tension and danger, and he hated it. He hated all of it.
But he was stuck. He was a fully patched-in member and he was in for life. To leave meant death.
Some days that sounded like the better option.
The blonde was losing patience with him now, he was relieved to see. She made one last-ditch effort, though, and he hardened his face even more as she shimmied on up to him, climbed on to his lap.
“Hey, Derby,” she purred.
“Hey, Lisa,” he responded, keeping his hands on the table.
She gyrated on him now, so slow and sexy, but his cock didn’t so much as twitch. Yeah, he liked blondes, but he didn’t like one-night-stands. The one small victory that he’d managed to claim and hold on to in these nightmare eight months was that he hadn’t had sex with any of the women who got passed around the club like goddamn bottles of ketchup.
Not that they were bad people, some of them. A few of them were actually incredibly sweet girls, and Warren didn’t know why they’d hang around the Fallen Angels, sucking and fucking the men on demand. On the pool tables, under the bar, in the back rooms – if a guy asked, some woman would happily deliver.
Warren had never asked, never would ask. But that didn’t mean that he didn’t
get
asked, and he’d perfected the cold, hard, angry stare to back up his refusals.
“So,” Lisa said, all sultry and low. “Is tonight the night?”
“Nope.”
She pouted, in a way that Warren assumed that she thought was cute.
It was not.
“C’mon, baby,” Lisa said, her hands running over his broad chest. “Let’s go to one of the back rooms, huh? I’ll even do all the work.”
“Sorry.” He didn’t make any effort whatsoever to look sorry, not even one tiny, little bit. “I’m out of here.”
“Then I’ll just suck you off, yeah?” she said. “I can do it right here.”
She slid to the floor in front of him, and Warren forced himself to not leap to his feet with a yell. As if he’d
ever
enjoy having his dick sucked in front of a bunch of other men.
Jesus
, his life.
He got to his feet, stared down at Lisa there on her knees. She stared right back at him, totally confused.
None
of the guys had ever turned down a blow job… like never,
ever
. Derby was a mystery to her, and to all the other hellions, too. He was like the club’s great, white whale… and there were some pretty heated bets on who was going to land him.
Lisa took one look at his face, guessed that it wasn’t going to be her. And definitely not tonight.
“I said I’m out of here,” he said, his voice so cold, she almost shivered. “So get up.”
“Aw, now,” said Nails. The club Vice-President was lolling in the chair next to Warren’s, already unzipping his jeans. “As long as you’re down there, darlin’, crawl on over here. Seems a shame to waste what’s being offered.”
Right away, Lisa gave him a huge smile. “Sure thing, baby.”
Warren turned away from the deeply disturbing sight of Nails’ dick bobbing around, made eye contact with Ace and Joker. Ace waved at him and with an internal sigh, Warren walked over.
“Hey, Prez,” he said, paying the man the proper respect. “It’s OK that I’m heading out?”
“Yeah, of course,” Ace told him. “I just wanted to let you know that I need you at the clubhouse at eight o’clock.”
Warren glanced at the clock on his cell. Just over five hours from now. He sighed internally again. He hadn’t slept a solid eight hours in eight months, and he ached for a blissful, uninterrupted, untroubled rest. But Ace’s word was law, and no discussion.
“Sure thing,” Warren said.
“Good.”
Warren nodded at his cousin, wished him dead for about the thousandth time, headed out the door of the bar.
It was freezing outside, but he had to ride his motorcycle home in the sub-zero January night, since everything was about appearances. He had to wear the cut, ride the bike, plaster on the scowl, play the part of the big, bad, one-percenter biker asshole. All day, every day. Forever. Until the day he died.
And when he considered the way that his life was headed, that day might not be so far off.
Yeah. Dead end, that’s for goddamn sure.
**
Four hours later, Warren slammed the button on his alarm clock, rolled over with a groan.
Jesus God
, he was tired. He’d slept badly, far worse than usual, and his sheets were a tangled mess all around him.
He forced his ass up, forced his ass in to the bathroom. He stared at himself in the mirror, took in his eyes all bloodshot from lack of sleep, his tousled dark-blond hair, his muscular chest covered in tattoos. He ran his hand over his beard, briefly considered giving it a trim, decided against it.
Of all the the ways that he’d changed over the past eight months, there were only two that he actually liked. The first was the tattoos, though he hated that the large one on his upper back was the Fallen Angels tat, since it made him feel marked and dirty. At least it was behind him, so he didn’t have to look at it. The second was his beard.
Warren was almost twenty-six years old, but he’d always looked way younger. He knew now that it had partly been a naturally youthful appearance, but it had also been a certain innocence that he’d had. He’d never been stupid – though he’d never been very book-smart – but he’d
definitely
been naïve.
Once upon a time, that naïvety had been written bright and large all over his face, and had made every person around him call him annoying things like ‘kid’ and ‘sport’. The beard had been a stab at looking older, and it had worked… though Warren now wondered how much of his suddenly-much-older appearance was the beard, and how much was the world-weary, hardened look in his blue eyes.
Sighing, he stripped off his boxers, stepped in to the shower. He turned it on as hot as it would go, then just stood under its relentless spray, his hands against the tile, his head hanging low, his eyes closed. Wishing hard for things that were too late to wish for; wishing away things that had strolled on in to his life and taken up permanent residence.
Feeling the minutes ticking away, he pulled himself together. He shampooed and soaped and rinsed, then with nothing but regret, he stepped out in to the world again. He toweled off roughly, then stalked back in to the bedroom to get dressed.
As usual, he put off donning the final article of clothing for as long as possible. As always, he shrugged it on in the end, since he had zero choice in the matter.
He regarded his cut in the mirror with nothing but distaste. It was stunning, he supposed, with its expensive leather and red, white and blue background, and the red and black ‘1%’ patch on the shoulders. Even the club insignia – a skeleton with angel’s wings, stretched across its entire upper back, mirroring the tattoo it now hid – was arresting, eye-catching, breathtaking. Put all those elements together and you had a piece of art, and as much as he hated having the thing on his body, Warren could see the staggering beauty of the cut.
He also knew what it represented to people who saw it coming at them. For most people, it was a clear sign to get the hell out of the way. Since he’d put it on, Warren had noticed people crossing streets to avoid him, leaving shops to get away from him, ushering their children far away from him, as fast as they could manage it. It made him a leper in many ways.
It had gotten him faster service in bars, though, and had attracted some admiring looks from women keen to fuck a bad boy. Guys liked it as well, and that more than anything told him just how many people aspired to life in an MC, how many people wanted
his
life.
And he’d let them have it, in a heartbeat.
He threw back a cup of coffee – with milk and plenty of sugar, to hell with drinking it black when he was alone – and then headed out to the garage. He got on his motorcycle, already dreading the freezing air, the biting wind. He covered his ears more snugly with his knit hat, flexed his fingers in his thick gloves. Kicked his bike to start it up, and headed out to the clubhouse.
That was the first moment when he allowed himself to wonder just what the hell Ace had waiting for him. Whatever it was, he hoped that it was easy, quick, and clean.
He had
no idea
then that what was coming in to his life was going to be difficult, drawn-out, and fucking messy.
He
also
had no idea that it was going to be the one – the
only
– thing that he’d be willing to live and die for. That it was going to be his sole reason for getting up in the morning and breathing; it was going to be the thing that gave him hope and bring light in to the dark, dismal hole that had become his entire existence on earth.
It was the thing that was going to change everything. Forever.