Wicked Ride (25 page)

“What’s it to you?”
he challenges with a quick glance over his shoulder at me, and then
he continues on his path without falter.

“Cut the shit,” I
growl as I turn to catch up to him. “You clearly know where she
is. Magnus may have bought that crock you just handed him, but I
don’t.”

Bridger doesn’t
even look at me but walks right out of The Silo, with me following
behind him. When the door closes behind us both, he says, “I
repeat. What’s it to you? Auralie said you left her last
night—that things were over between you two.”

“They are,” I mutter
defensively, and fuck… why does that make me physically sick
to my stomach to even say that? “But don’t begrudge my
worry about her.”

Bridger opens the back door to
the Wicked Horse and steps through as he says in a bland voice. “I
don’t begrudge you anything, but why you waste effort on this
woman is beyond me. She’s a scammer. A con artist. Apparently a
great fuck, but still… plenty of those around here.”

Rage strikes me in a hot,
blistering wave and I lunge at Bridger from behind, both my hands
slamming into his shoulder blades and knocking him forward. He’s
not expecting the attack, and he goes flying forward several feet
before he catches himself.

He spins on me, bracing for
another attack, and I don’t
hesitate, snagging fistfuls of his t-shirt and spinning him toward
the wall before slamming him back into it. His hands come up to grip
onto my wrists, but he makes no effort to fight back at me or push me
away.

“You fucking asshole,”
I snarl as I put my face right into his. “You don’t know
shit about Auralie or the reasons she had to do what she had to do.”

“Then why don’t you
enlighten me?” Bridger taunts with a quirk of his lips, and I
can tell my shoving him around amuses rather than intimidates.
“Because I truly don’t understand why it matters to you.
You left her last night. Left her to fend for herself now that you
ruined her game. So why the fuck does it even matter to you?”

“Fuck you,” I yell as
I release him to turn away, my frustration boiling over because I
don’t know why it matters to me. I let her go last night.

Or rather, I refused to stay and
give her something she wanted.

Was probably entitled to,
actually.

I look down the hallway toward
the interior of The Wicked Horse just beyond. It’s
not overly packed, but then again, it’s a Wednesday night. An
ordinary night where I might be in there myself, drinking a beer and
perusing potential fuckmates. Most likely, I wouldn’t indulge
because most women in there required work. Conversation, flirting,
etc. If it wasn’t an easy lay, I wasn’t interested. So
I’d usually head over to The Silo.

That would be my ordinary
Wednesday night in my ordinary life here in Wyoming. I was satisfied
with that.

Until a raven-haired beauty with
innocent eyes but a fun and kinky side won me over, and I have no
clue how it happened.

Why we connected.

Why I felt something with her I
never felt for another woman.

Fuck that…
for another human being, except for…

Nope. Not going to think about
that.

Except, fuck if I can
stop thinking about Auralie and the way she’s made me feel
since I locked eyes on her. And I’m not talking about the way
she makes my cock feel. I’m talking about the way we connect.
The way we can speak silently but still deeply with each other. The
natural feeling of ease in her presence. As if I don’t have to
prove myself, but she accepts me for who I am. Or the way she laughs,
whether it’s because she finds me funny or she’s being
mischievous. Or the way she lays in my arms. Or shrieks in excitement
when she catches a fish. Or sucks my dick on a riverbank. Or just
about fucking anything she does turns me on physically, mentally,
spiritually, emotionally…

Christ, I’m
fucked in the head.

Mostly though…
I can’t stop thinking about what a survivor she is. To be
raised the way she was, and, yet, she found her own moral compass to
break away from that life. Granted, she was in the middle of a con
when I met her, but she wasn’t doing it for herself and she
wasn’t doing it for the almighty sin of greed. She was doing it
to protect someone she loved, which made me respect her even more.

Auralie’s
a woman who has given me every reason to hope for something better in
this life. Yet, I’m still too afraid to reach out and grasp
onto that with ambitious determination. I’m still hiding from
the world because it’s become easy for me to do so.

But still…
I have to make sure she’s okay.

I spin around to ask Bridger
again where Auralie is because no matter the bullshit he just tried
to hand me about having disdain for her, I could tell that was
nothing more than him baiting me. Bridger works with ulterior motive
most of the time, and I get what he’s
trying to do. He’s telling me to shit or get off the pot.

Not really ready to do either,
but I need to know Auralie’s
safe.

Except when I turn around,
Bridger’s gone, but
his office door is standing wide open. I take this as a clear
indication I’m invited in to continue this “discussion”.

I walk in, shutting the door
behind me to close out the country music blaring in the club.
Bridger’s sitting at
his desk, flipping through something on his iPhone. He doesn’t
even look up at me when I take a seat opposite him, but merely says,
“She flew out around mid-morning to New York. Met with my buddy
Cal and the federal prosecutor, woman named Dee Switzer, late this
afternoon—east coast time, of course. Don’t know anything
more than that.”

My stomach clenches to know she’s
not here in Wyoming because I think I was hoping, deep down, that
maybe there was a chance I’d get to see her again. Maybe to
fight again—maybe to fuck. Maybe even to find a way to give her
what she wanted without destroying myself in the process.

It also clenches because now
she’s made her break
from Magnus. The thing that’s been bothering me the most about
what I did is that I put the wheels in motion to force her to do
something dangerous. To turn her and her father against a man who had
the clear means to make people go
poof
.
And I know one thing I would never survive is if I caused someone to
be hurt or worse yet…
killed.

I cannot survive that again.

There’s
no way.

“How do you know this?”
I ask neutrally, trying to act not all that interested, but I’m
not fooling Bridger.

I know I’m
not fooling him because he cocks an eyebrow at me as he smirks, but
then enlightens me without making me feel like too much of an idiot.
“Because she came to me last night after you left her. She told
me everything. All about her life as a grifter with her dad. How she
wanted to break away and almost did, and how she was working this one
last con to protect her dad.”

“She had no choice,”
I say in defense of her actions.

Bridger raises his hand to wave
me off. “I get it.
Not mad at what she was trying to accomplish. I’d do the same
thing if I were in her shoes. Which is why I pushed hard at her to
take the offer by Cal to go to the authorities on this and put Magnus
in prison. It’s her best option.”

“Her only option after I
ratted her out,” I mutter, wondering why I feel such guilt over
betraying her that way. I honestly was hoping to help, but I realize…
I should have talked to her about it. For all my prattling on to her
about wanting to help her out of her situation, after finally forcing
her to let me in on her secret, I should have given her the respect
of mutual discussion on how to best attack the problem. I acted like
a fucking caveman, brought Bridger into this when really…
maybe I should have let her finish the scam so she could be free.

But it’s
too late to cry over that now. It’s done.

“Will the federal
prosecutor help her? Protect her and her dad?” I ask
hesitantly.

“No clue,” he says
with a shrug. “Not my problem either. I helped her out best I
could. I’m also going to do one more solid to her by putting
Magnus off her trail a bit.”

“You had her leave all her
possessions behind,” I surmise. “So Magnus wouldn’t
know she ran.”

“It will hold him off maybe
a day,” Bridger says with a casual shrug. “But I’m
guessing he’s going to go after her come tomorrow.”

“What the fuck?” I
snarl as I shoot up out of my chair. “You say that as if you
don’t give a fuck she could be in real danger.”

“I don’t,” he
says, pinning me with a hard look. I feel my blood pressure
skyrocketing at his further bait tactics. “She’s not my
problem.”

She’s
not mine either.

Except…
goddamn it all to hell. She is my problem.

But not really a problem.

More of a miracle actually.

And one I didn’t
anticipate I’d ever be worthy of, but the thought of that being
snuffed out and taken away from me forever spurs me into action, even
if I’m not quite accepting of the fact I deserve this.

“You’re an asshole,
Bridger,” I mutter as I turn away from the desk. I hear him
snort behind me before he gives a bark of a laugh. I refuse to smile,
but I grudgingly say, “Thanks for helping her out,” as I
walk out of his office.

“Have a nice flight,”
he says, again taunting me, but I deserve it.

I deserve every bit of shit he
might choose to give me for my pigheadedness. I know I’ve
had my head stuck up my ass, and I have to do something to remove it.
But that’s a secondary worry.

For now, I have
to get to New York and make sure Auralie is safe because I’m
sure Magnus won’t be far behind.

Auralie

“Did we do the right
thing?” my father asks as he sits back in his recliner and sips
on a beer.

“No crawling out of the
rabbit hole now,” I murmur as I sit in the window seat, looking
down at my Vinegar Hill neighborhood below. And I use the term window
seat loosely. It’s really just a window with a sill that’s
larger than average, about a foot wide, and I’m barely able to
sit my ass on the splintered wood that’s about fifteen years
overdue for a re-paint.

But the sun is shining and warm
upon me as I rest my chin on my knees and try to shake myself out of
my doldrums.

“Magnus will be gunning for
us hard,” he says pensively, and my stomach knots up. That is
an absolute fucking understatement.

“We had no choice,” I
tell him, trying to sound confident, but I’m far from it. I
have no clue if we’re doing the right thing, but as I just
said.

No choice.

Logan saw to that.

And yet, I can’t
find it in myself to be really mad at him. When it boils down to its
simplest form, there were actually three choices we had available to
us when my father landed himself in hot water with Magnus.

First, and not ideal at all, we
could have run. Dad and I could have packed up and moved somewhere
across the country. Hoped Magnus wouldn’t
want to waste his precious resources trying to find us. It wouldn’t
have been hard to set up elsewhere. We could have had a meager but
decent life back on the grift.

Second, we’ve
always had the option of flipping on Magnus. Can’t say as I
ever really gave it much serious thought, but as I watched Magnus
pull my father deeper and deeper into his web, not going to say it
didn’t cross my mind on occasion to rat him out. Of course, I
never considered having my father do this as I knew the risk of
pissing someone like Magnus off, but still… it was an option.

Third, and the option I chose,
was to assist Magnus in one last con to get my dad back in his good
graces. It was the easiest choice, and I was deluded enough to allow
myself to think Magnus would accept this as my final payment to him
and that he’d
release me forever. Deep down, I probably knew it wasn’t ever
going to turn out like I’d imagined it, because people like
Magnus never let go of what they considered their rightful property.
And no doubt… he felt he owned my dad and me.

Ironically, pursuing choice
number three ended up ultimately leading us to use choice number two
to get out of this pickle, and in hindsight, it’s
easy to wish we’d just done that to begin with.

But had we gone to the police
from the start, then I would have never gone to Wyoming and met
Logan. I would have never known a man existed who was probably my
soulmate. And while it ultimately didn’t
work out between us—a thought that still has me on the verge of
tears when I think about how stubborn he is in his refusal to let me
all the way in—I can’t regret the time I spent with him
and the hard way in which I fell for him.

“Where do you think Magnus
is right now?” my dad muses, but not in a lighthearted way. I
can hear the fear coating his voice, and I know he’s not
fearful for himself. He’s fearful for me since I’m the
one who royally fucked Magnus over this time. I didn’t tell my
dad all the details, because he has no idea what the real con was,
but I told him enough to make it clear the police was our only
option.

I pick up my phone, flip through
my text messages, and see the one Bridger sent me just a few hours
ago.

Magnus flew out at noon. He’ll
be back in NYC this evening.

Bridger has kept in contact with
me since I left Wyoming yesterday morning. He’d
been instrumental in giving me guidance the night I went to see him
after Logan left me. He got me on a plane the next morning, had Cal
Carson pick me up at the airport, who in turn swung by my dad’s
apartment and picked him up, and then stayed with us all afternoon as
we answered Dee Switzer’s questions about all of Magnus’
illegal operations.

Cal is great. It turns out, he
and his wife, Macy, know Bridger well, but I’m
not sure how. Dee is also great; a tough old broad who smokes like a
fiend inside her “non-smoking” government-issue office
and doesn’t give a shit who it offends. She’s tough on
criminals, but she wasn’t judgmental about me and my dad’s
involvement in said crime. She’s more interested in pulling a
big fish out of the sea of crime in her city, and once my dad told
her about the mini-Ponzi scheme Magnus started nine months ago, her
eyes glittered like a child on Christmas morning.