Hard Charger: Jake & Sophia: A Hot Contemporary Romance (9 page)

“My mom would never do that.  I wouldn’t let her.”  He felt shocked over how much she seemed to know about ‘the organization’ and its workings.  Suddenly he recalled how she’d been a junkie once, hooked on drugs; and a new, terrible thought occurred to him.  Had she somehow gotten herself mixed up with the organization?  Was she still hooked, and dealing for them now, too?  A hollow feeling began to grow deep inside him, and along with a deep-seated fear for her.  “You know a lot about this, Sophia.  More than a waitress ought to know, in my opinion.”

She tensed, and looked out the window.  “I would rather not know, honestly.”

“You want to talk about anything?” he asked, as he pulled up the driveway to his home.

“There’s nothing to tell.”

He parked the car, took the keys out of the ignition and handed them to her. Something inside was urging him to put his arms around her and hold her close, but he fought the impulse off.  She didn’t want him that way anymore—she’d made that clear. “You sure?”

“I am.”  She took the keys and looked at him with those deep green eyes of hers, eyes that he’d seen smolder with desire, and blaze with anger.  At the moment, they were dark and shrouded with secrets.  “Just don’t go to the cops.  Promise me you won’t.”

“I’m not promising anything,” he replied, and stepped out of the car.

She slid over to the driver’s seat, started the car, and gave him one last pleading look as she put it in reverse and backed out of the driveway.  He watched her go, his heart pounding in his chest.

Chapter Nine

In just a few
hours after Sophia had dropped him off, the new day had dawned gray and cold, reminding Jake that winter was only a few months away.  He didn’t mind the winter, usually; he enjoyed several different snow sports and was looking forward to seeing snow again, having spent most of the last ten years in the desert or in various army bases that fell south of the Mason-Dixon line.  At the moment, though, he felt cold inside, chilled to the bone, and he would have appreciated some summer heat to warm him up.

His mom owed money to the mob.

And Sophia, the woman who refused to leave his dreams, seemed to be involved with organized crime in a way that couldn’t be good for her health.

He was up and waiting for Laurie when she came down in her bathrobe to make coffee.  He let her pour herself a cup, drink a few sips and remark on how he looked like he hadn’t slept in days, and then told her about Ray Morris.

“Oh my God,” she breathed, once he’d finished.  “What am I going to do?”

“What are
we
going to do,” he corrected her.

She gave him a grateful look.  “Jake, it’s my problem—”

“It’s
our
problem.  And we’re going to pay them back.”

“Pay them back? How?”

“I’ll find the money, somehow,” he vowed.  He already had a few ideas as to where he could go to ask for a temporary loan. “I want you to consider leaving town for a while.  Go up north and live with Uncle Joe.”

Laurie shook her head
no
.  “I can’t leave Beach Waves.”

“Screw the salon,” he said.  “Your life is more important.”

She stuck her chin out.  “I won’t let them ruin my life.”

“Goddamnit, mom—”

“No!”  She stood up so quickly that her coffee sloshed all over her bathrobe.  “I’m not leaving, and that’s that.  I won’t let them bully me and destroy everything I’ve worked so hard to build.”

“But—”

“That’s the end of it,” she barked, leaving Jake no choice but to glare at her.

“So what are you going to do?” he barked.  “Stay here and wait for them to come back and bash your skull in, too?”

“Martin’s moving in tomorrow,” she told him.

“Uncle Martin can’t watch out for you twenty-four hours a day.”

“He’s got the Guardians behind him.”

He snorted with disgust.  “All right, mom, you go see Uncle Martin and the Guardians.  And while you’re wasting your time with
that
, I’ll go down to the police station and file a report.”  He nodded once, firmly, and headed toward the back door.

“No police, Jake,” she insisted loudly.

He paid her no attention.  Rather, he pushed his way out of the house and strode over to his bike. 

When he reached the
Rockport Grove Police Station, the captain in charge listened to Jake’s brief recital of the events leading up to his mother’s black eye, took some basic information, and then directed him into a waiting room.  He cooled his heels a good two hours in the waiting room before a junior officer brought him before a computer workstation, to take his statement.

“Explain to me what your complaint is,” the officer said, his fingers poised over the workstation’s keyboard.  He looked extremely young, with a smattering of acne across his cheeks and peach fuzz on his chin that didn’t appear to need shaving yet.  “Missing person, harassment, you witnessed a crime, what?”

“Harassment,” he supplied.  “I explained the complaint to the captain in charge when I came in.”

“The captain doesn’t take complaints,” Junior said.

“Fine.  I’m here to report harassment.”

“What kind of harassment?”

Jake went on to explain how his mother had borrowed money from Will Hansen, and that Hansen had sent two goons to rough her up when she didn’t pay on time.  As he told the story, Junior’s eyebrows crept upward, and his typing slowed.  Junior’s eyes suddenly narrowed as Jake related his theory that perhaps certain criminal elements had decided to make Rockport Grove their hunting ground, and he stopped typing altogether.

“Were you present when this event occurred?” the officer asked.

“No, I wasn’t.  I was over at Rowdy Ray’s Roadhouse,” he admitted.

“So you didn’t witness this attack at all.”

“No.”

“Mr. Gallent, you’re wasting my time.  We’re going to need your mother to file this report, not you,” the officer said in bored tones, as he methodically began to click keys on the keyboard again.  “As you weren’t present, anything that you report is hearsay.  We can’t do anything with that.”

“You don’t even want to know what happened?”  Jake couldn’t believe the officer was dismissing him so abruptly.

Junior hesitated.  “Did your mother go to the hospital?”

“No,” Jake conceded.  “She didn’t think her black eye was bad enough to for her to sit in the emergency room for hours.”

“Did she visit a doctor?”

“No.”

“Did you take pictures of her injuries?”

“No.”  Jake slouched a little further into his seat. 

“So you have no evidence of your mother’s injuries.”

“No, damnit, I don’t.”

The officer lifted an eyebrow.  “Why do you think Will Hansen is behind the attack on your mother?”

“Because she owes Hansen money,” he answered.

“And how do you know that the men who ‘roughed her up’ represented Hansen?”

“They demanded that she pay up or become a front for some kind of criminal operation,” he replied, striving for patience.  “Since Hansen is the only one she owes money to, who else could it be?”

“Did the two men mention Hansen’s name directly?

“I don’t remember.”

The officer shrugged.  “As I said, you’re wasting my time.”

Jake leaned forward in his seat, until he was looking Junior straight in the eyes.  “I need you to take me seriously.  To look into it.  To start with Will Hansen.  I don’t want these goons to bash my mother over the head like Ray Morris, because she couldn’t pay up, and you refused to investigate.”

“Sir, have you been drinking?” Junior asked suddenly, cutting his gaze from the computer screen in front of him to Jake for a moment.

“No!” Jake replied immediately.

“I smell alcohol.”

“You’re mistaken.”

“I’d like you to take a breathalyzer test.”

Outraged, Jake stood up.  “Look, I’m a captain in the U.S. Army.  I just returned home from my third tour in Afghanistan.  I’m not a drunk and I’m not a liar.  There’s something going on and my mother’s in danger.

“We
know
who you are,” the officer replied, his gaze on the screen in front of him.  “I have your file open in front of me.  Ten, twelve years ago, you were a frequent visitor to the police station.”

“Oh, this is bullshit,” Jake growled.

“Sir, I’m going to ask you to leave now,” Junior warned him.  “If you stay, I’ll have to call the captain over.”

“So you’re not going to take my report.”

“Have your mother come down to the station.”

“Great.  Thanks.”  He stood up so suddenly that the chair he’d been sitting on made a loud scraping noise.  He knew his mother wouldn’t bother.  She clearly felt too intimidated.

The officer shrugged.  “I’m just following the rules.”

Jake left the police
station feeling somewhere between disgusted with police bureaucracy and scared for the two women he cared most about.  He headed over to the construction site at Holy Trinity, where his boss and the rest of the crew had already been on-site for hours.  He’d left a message earlier, saying he’d be in late, and now he walked through the site to the trailer Tom used, with hopes to get a few words in with him.  Tom was the only guy he knew with any money at all, and being a decent man at that, Jake felt pretty sure Tom would lend him the cash he needed.

As luck would have it, his boss was in the trailer, alone, sitting behind his desk and going over some blueprints.  Dressed in Carhartts as usual, with his red hair neatly combed, Tom fixed him with a friendly blue-eyed gaze.  “Glad you made it in.  Everything okay?”

He swallowed.  “Did you hear what happened last night?”

“No.”  Tom put his pen down.  “What happened?”

“It’s about Ray Morris, the guy who owns Rowdy Ray’s Roadhouse,” Jake replied.  “I’ve been friends with the Morris’s for years—Ray’s son Luke and I went to school together.  And last night...  Last night, Ray was killed.”

Tom sat up straighter in his chair.  “Oh, my God.  I’m so sorry.”  He pointed to a chair opposite his desk.  “Sit down, please.”

Frowning deeply, Jake sat.

  Tom shook his head, as if the world disgusted him.  “How did it happen?”

Jake gave a terse explanation of how Ray had been found, and how his son Luke had revealed that Ray had gone bankrupt.  Pausing to acknowledge Tom’s shocked exclamations, he went on to describe his suspicion that organized crime had gained a foothold in Rockport Grove.  He brought up Will Hansen and explained Hansen’s possible ties to organized crime, and told him how Hansen’s ‘representatives’ were pressuring his mom to pay off her loan.

“That’s not good,” Tom observed, once Jake had finished his tale.  “Did you go to the police?”

“They weren’t interested.”

“Why not?”

“I wasn’t present when the goons visited my mom, so my ‘testimony’ is just hearsay.  And my mom won’t go down to the station herself—she’s too intimidated.”

Tom abruptly stood up and walked to the window, where he looked out at the construction site.  “It’s hard for me to believe Hansen’s dirty.  I work with him all the time.  He’s never once suggested anything even slightly criminal to me.”

“I’m telling you, Tom, he’s as dirty as sheets in a whorehouse.  That’s why I’m here, in your office.”  Jake took in a deep breath.  “I need a favor.”

“Of course!  What is it?”  Tom turned away from the window toward Jake, his face tight with concern.

He took a deep breath.  “I need to borrow money from you.”

Tom frowned, but in a considering rather than negative way.  “How much?”

“Fifty thousand, to cover my mom’s loan and interest,” he said quickly, and then flinched backward slightly.  “I know it’s a lot of money.”

Tom dropped heavily into his desk chair.  He picked up his pen and toyed with it.  “When do you need this by?”

“As soon as possible, I’m afraid,” Jake replied.  “I’m going to work with my mom to get a second mortgage on her salon, but Hansen’s men aren’t prepared to wait for us to do that.”

“Goddamn.”  Tom shook his head again.  “You’re between a rock and a hard place.”

“The whole damned town is between a rock and a hard place,” Jake observed.

“So, you want me to loan you the money, and you’ll pay me back as soon as you get that second mortgage?”

Jake nodded.

His boss thought it over a little while longer, and then fixed Jake with a direct stare.  “I didn’t grow up here, but I kinda think of this town as my home now, since I’ve worked on most of the houses damaged by Sandy, in one way or another.  It sickens me to hear about organized crime taking over a town which I’ve been working so hard to restore.  You’re a trustworthy guy, Jake, so I’ll lend you that money.  I can’t go any higher that fifty thousand, though.  It’s going to be difficult to find even that much so quickly.”

“I understand.”  Jake felt his throat tightening with gratitude.  “We only need fifty.”

“I
will
ask that you pay me back as soon as you can,” Tom added.

“Of course.  I’ll make it a priority,” Jake promised.  “Thank you.”

“Come back to my office tomorrow, and we’ll work out the details.”  Tom held out his hand, Jake shook it, and the deal was done. 

They chatted a little while longer, and then Jake left the office with a feeling of hope inside, one that lifted his mood as well as his shoulders.  He headed over to Holy Trinity, where a day’s worth of work on restoring the rectory’s foundations awaited him, and began measuring lumber with an entirely new appreciation for both Tom and the graciousness of spirit he’d displayed.

Jake arrived home that
night from work feeling half-dead from exhaustion.  It had been a rough couple of days for him, and even worse, of course, for Luke, who no longer had his father around.  At least Jake had something positive to report: he would be able to pay his mother’s loan and keep Will Hansen’s goons off her back until he managed to help her get a second mortgage.  Feeling a little better, he staggered to his bed and woke up the following morning to dark, gray skies and a drizzle of rain.  That nor’easter his boss had mentioned was finally moving in.

After slamming his hand on the alarm clock button to shut it up, he went downstairs.  His mom was already up with a cup of coffee in hand and the newspaper spread out in front of her.