Enemy Lover (22 page)

Jax watched in fascinated horror as Cross continued forward. He’d been hit at least six times!

“Cassidy? What’s going on?” Shane screamed in her ear.

“You wouldn’t believe it,” she said and watched Cross systematically reduce the gang from six to none.

He’d felt her fear, her distress. He’d heard the rampant beat of her heart as she’d run through the dark city streets. He’d watched her fight her way out of one group of gangsters even as she’d seen the other approaching. They’d carried guns. He’d known they would kill her. And for some reason, even though he’d known he’d probably end up having to kill her himself, Marcus hadn’t been willing to let that happen.

He wasn’t done with Jax Cassidy. He didn’t like the
name. It was too abrupt, and it didn’t do her justice. She was a complex melding of all things female and kick-ass bitch. So much more than three letters.

Despite the dozen bullets that hit him, many in his vital organs, Marcus felt only marginal pain. He grabbed the closest gangster. With the other hand, he yanked out the six-inch blade the prick had just stuck into his liver.

He stared down the last two standing. Marcus grabbed one by the throat and yanked so hard that his neck snapped. He dropped the corpse to the ground, then turned and heaved himself into the night air after the last one, who had taken off. He didn’t get far.

Marcus landed effortlessly five steps in front of him. He grabbed the kicking, screaming
norteno
by the scruff of the neck and tossed him to the ground. He grabbed him up and tossed him to the ground again.

“Madre de Dios!”
his victim screamed.

Marcus laughed. “Not even that great lady can save your sorry ass,
mijo.
”

“I got drugs, man, anything you want, I got it.”

“Drugs kill,” Marcus quipped.

“I got kids! My mother, she’s dying, man.
Por favor!
”

With his forearm, Marcus pushed the unfortunate up against the wall of the building they stood next to.

“I might let you live.”

“I’ ll do anything.
Anything.
”

“Who sent you?”

The man stilled. “Nobody, man, we were out looking for some action.”

Marcus growled and dug his elbow into the man’s throat. A fit of coughs wracked the guy. As he caught his breath, Marcus pressed into him again.

“Who sent you and why?”

“I—I didn’t ask his name—” Marcus cursed and pressed harder. The guy squirmed.

“What did he want?”

“He said to watch the second-floor window at the Veterans Building for a man in black, but to follow the person who came after him. He didn’t say it was gonna be a chick!”

“What were you supposed to do with this person once you followed them?”

“Rough them up some. Tell ’ em to back off.”

The distant wail of sirens infused the still night air. Marcus decided to save the taxpayers some serious cash and also give the overworked cops in San Francisco a little breather.

In one hard jab, he crushed the gangster’s windpipe with his elbow. Marcus dropped the body he’d just broken in half and immediately turned his thoughts to Jax. Was she hurt? Had she been hit? His long stride picked up. His mind ran rampant with thoughts. He jumped into the night to find her.

As he flew down the alley, he slowed his frantic pace as he saw her running toward him. He dropped to the ground in front of her and slightly to the right.

“Jesus! Cross!” she screamed at him, then punched him in the chest.

“Are you hurt?” He resisted reaching out, touching every part of her to make sure for himself she was unharmed. She would kick his ass.

“No, damn it. What the hell was all of that?”

The distant wail of sirens infiltrated the tension
between them. “You’d better get out of here or you’ re going to have a lot of explaining to do to SFPD,” he said.

Jax looked over her shoulder to the carnage behind her. “That’s all your fault, Cross. Hell if I’m going to pay for it.” She moved past him.

“You owe me,” he called to her retreating back.

He laughed aloud when she flipped him off.

He stood and watched her until she had completely disappeared, then took off in the opposite direction. As he made his way across town, he wondered who Jax really worked for and who would want to put the brakes on Rowland’s people.

The obvious answer was the man running a heated campaign against the senator. Mayor Mercer.

But why? And what was the point of chasing down Jax? There was only one way to find out. The next time Mercer tangled with Jax Cassidy she was going to give him straight answers.

Jax nearly collided at the end of the long alley with a frantic Shane. “Damn it, Cassidy!” he bellowed, grabbing her by the arms and practically shaking her. “I was worried sick. Why didn’t you call out your location? And what the hell was Cross doing there?”

Jax shook her head and grabbed his arms. “Dante, do you copy?” she asked.

“I copy,” he said. “What the hell happened?”

“Boys, you are not going to believe this,” she said, shaking her head. Hell, if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes she wouldn’t believe it either!

When she was done replaying the entire episode, they didn’t believe her.

“A vampire?” Dante asked incredulously.

“He took how many rounds?” Shane demanded.

Jax shook her head. “I know, it sounds like a bad episode of
The Twilight Zone,
but I’m telling you, this guy is for real. If he hadn’t arrived on-scene when he did, I’d hate to think of what would have happened to me. I owe the guy, and that really pisses me off.”

“Godfather is never going to buy this,” Shane said, shaking his head. They were almost back to the Vet Building.

“I’ ll talk to him,” Jax said, wondering how the hell she
was going to convince Godfather when despite what she had witnessed tonight, she was still in denial.

“We’ ll discuss Cross later. Dante, what’s going on, on your end?”

“I took immediate possession of the envelope and instructed the senator and his staffers to mingle and act as if all was well. But as the evening began to wind down, the senator began to wind up. Prepare yourself, Cassidy. He’s pissed, scared and demanding answers.”

She could handle Rowland.

As they came upon the Vet Building, Jax grabbed her pumps from the courtyard and slipped them on before they hurried to the anteroom. Half a dozen heads shot up, including the senator’s. He looked as if he had seen a ghost.

“Sir,” Jax said as she approached. “If you would excuse everyone but my team from the room, perhaps we can make some sense of what’s going on.”

He stood, his hands fisted, his lips drawn thin. “I trust every person in this room.”

Jax smiled wanly. “I don’ t. Please, do as I asked. I can’t help you if you refuse to follow my orders.”

“Now look here!” he spouted, taking a step toward her.

Jax tossed her head back and stepped into the senator’s space. “With all due respect, sir,” she calmly began, “I just spent the last hour fighting for my life against the thugs who left you that lovely calling card. Please, empty the room now.”

Anger and fear wreaked havoc with the senator’s handsome features. Reluctantly, Rowland curtly nodded to his staffers as well as his security detail.

Where was Sophia Rowland? Jax wondered. Were there trust issues between the senator and his scheming other half?

Jax drew in a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “Dante, the envelope.”

He pulled a plastic bag with the envelope in it from the back of his jacket. Carefully he handed it to her. Gingerly, Jax extracted the single photo from it. She cringed for the second time. Rowland made a sound reminiscent of an animal in pain.

The photo was of Grace Rowland, naked and snorting cocaine with a naked man three times her age.

“I’m sorry,” Jax said softly.

Rowland’s head snapped around and his eyes narrowed. “It’s Photoshopped!” Rowland defended as he stood up and began to pace the room. “Gracie would never do drugs! Or have sex with a married man! She wouldn’t do that to me!”

Jax understood his pain. Trust. Such an elusive animal.

“You said he’s married. So you know the man?”

Rowland swiped his hand across his face and closed his eyes for several long minutes. “Alan LeVech, my daughter’s high school counselor.”

Jax nodded. Shane and Dante stood quietly by; when she looked at them, they evaded her gaze, almost making her smile. Apparently, this touchy-feely stuff was outside their scope of skills. Not that it was her forte, exactly, but they were happy to have her do the hard work.

“Either LeVech is in on this or—” Jax looked closer at the photo but could discern nothing in the background but a rumpled bed. “Do you recognize the setting?”

Rowland dragged his eyes from the floor to the photo. He swallowed hard and shook his head.

“Okay, so unless you want to confirm the authenticity of this picture with your daughter, Senator, I’m going to go on the assumption that someone, most likely Mercer or someone who really wants him to win the election, took this picture. It’s obvious what they intend to do.”

Rowland put a hand to his temple and shook his head. “Mercer is a smarmy piece of shit, but he’s not this stupid. He knows that by circulating a picture of a minor this way, I could have the feds up his ass on a child porn charge so fast he wouldn’t know which side was right or left.”

Shane coughed. “Sir, hardly a child.”

Rowland speared Shane with a daggered glare. “She just turned eighteen. Do you have children?”

“No, sir!” Shane vehemently denied.

“Then you don’t understand a parent’s desire to protect their child from every bad in the world.”

Rowland turned dismissively away and looked at Jax. “Regardless of who is behind this, I don’t believe this is authentic. I want my daughter brought in here to look at it. When she denies it, I’ m—”

“Senator, I’m sorry to interrupt, but whether it’s real or not isn’t our primary concern right now.”

Rowland’s face turned red. “What could be more of a concern than—”

“You seem to be forgetting that there’s someone else who might have delivered this photo.”

“Who else?” Rowland asked. “Who else would want to drag my name through the mud and use my daughter to do it?”

“The same man who threatened to kill her,” Jax offered.

Roland sat down and dropped his head in his hands. He moaned and rubbed his eyes, then looked up to the three of them. “This is something Lazarus is more than capable of, but I’m no use to him if I no longer hold my Senate seat. He would not jeopardize it at this stage. He knows there is no way I can recover from something like this if it goes public. Lazarus is a lot of things, but impatient is not one of them.”

“He’s up against a wall at the moment. He needs funds, funds that only you can provide. He’s showing his entire hand, and if you still resist? If he can’t have you, no one will,” Jax said.

Rowland ran his fingers through his thinning blonde hair and stood. He looked as if he’d aged twenty years in the space of an hour. “Bring my daughter to me, but keep my wife out of this. This would kill her regardless of its authenticity.”

It took some wrangling to get her away from the clutches of overzealous supporters, but after twenty minutes, Grace Rowland was finally brought into the anteroom. She knew immediately something was wrong. Her blue eyes darted from her father to Jax, then back to her father. “Daddy? What’s wrong?” She flew into his outstretched arms. A hard lump formed in Jax’s gut as she stepped toward the table with the plastic-enclosed envelope.

“Grace,” Jax slowly began, “I’m going to show you something. But before I do, I need for you to understand the importance of your complete honesty with me.”

“Oh, kaaay,” Grace carefully said, looking to her father for support. He nodded imperceptibly. Shane and Dante had the forethought and common courtesy to move across the room so as not to look at the photo again. The senator looked away.

Jax slid the photo out of the envelope. Grace gasped. Rowland groaned and turned farther away from his daughter and the incriminating photo. “Is it legit?” Jax softly asked.

Grace’s cheeks flared red, her head dropped and her blonde hair hung down, covering her face. Slowly she nodded.

“Damn it, Grace! Do you have any idea what you’ ve done?” Rowland roared.

Silent tears stained her cheeks. Jax slid the photo back into the envelope. Rowland strode to the window.

“I love him!” Grace shouted at her father’s back.

Jax groaned and rolled her eyes. Shane and Dante stood, stoic, on the other side of the room, but she read the same can-this-get-any-worse? look on their faces.

Rowland turned, barely containing his fury. As a father, he was outraged. As a U.S. senator, he saw his entire life’s work slipping away because his teenage daughter had an infatuation with an older man.

“How long has this been going on?”

Grace stood straight as a sudden infusion of indignation filled her. “Long enough for us to make plans. He’s leaving his wife.”

“The hell he is! His ass is going to jail! Not only for sex with a minor but for the cocaine!”