Jagger
She hasn’t cried, begged, pleaded or bargained. Most men do. Even the powerful, rich ones have something to say. On occasion, I’ve been offered more incentive from the mark than what was on the original X Member profiles.
The punishment for voiding a contract by taking a bribe from the target is death. On occasion, I’ve toyed with the idea not to assassinate said victim and take the money and other offerings instead.
And I’ve seen it all. Pissing in fear. Shitting their pants. Falling to their knees, begging. Heard it all, too. But Mikayla Bryant takes the honorable way… until I place her on the back of my bike.
I shift between two cars, at the last second, and glide through the line just as it clicks to red. Is she letting go? I grip her hand, pinching it as a reminder to hold tight. I would hate to have her fall at 60 Miles an hour on a busy street. She clutches tighter to my chest. If I was any other man, I’d swear the girl was attempting to crush my ribs, yet the solid muscle overlaying them offers her no slack. Then I hear it. Her friends are in hot pursuit. There are two on my six and nine. They don’t present much more than a minor annoyance, more dead bodies.
My eyes narrow, having adjusted to the dark. There’s a police cruiser ahead. Now that’s a fucking problem. The cops can’t catch me, but if they dispatch a chopper, I will regret the few beers I had this evening. My reaction time is down a tad.
The instant the red and blue lights begin to blare, I’ve kicked a foot down, spin a 360 and stop before the motorcycle gang, which I believe is more of a “let’s learn to jump on the seat while driving 30 miles per hour” than anything. Her fiancé, or whatever the fuck she wants to call him, is headed straight toward me.
You’d like to play chicken? I stay there in the middle of the road.
Let’s do it.
The squad car is half a block out. The emergency lights swirl in my rear view.
“Let me go, asshole!” Mikayla shouts.
I tune her out. She starts to untwine her arms, I give her another pinch.
“Fuck!” She exhales in pain.
“Don’t disobey!” My engine roars. I gun straight for Cree. He might be sporting a Kawasaki, but I truly believe the Boy Scouts would pose more of a threat. These guys in their patches are fit for the Circus. My ride might look non-threatening, but the engine is a Tomahawk. Nothing in this world is going to catch me, as long as Mikayla keeps her damn arms around me and shuts the hell up.
He’s twenty yards out. I aim and target his arm.
Cree’s bike misses me and Mikayla’s left leg by a twig of hair. Even though I did her a solid and didn’t aim for his chest or head, just the force of the bullet sends the bike slamming the asphalt and zipping around.
The sound of the crash is loud, yet above the noise, I hear Mikayla screech. She acts as if I’ve just slid a serrated blade into her heart. Little does she know that I don’t have the heart to kill him. But, it’s his dumbass fault if he doesn’t know how to protect himself against the fall.
The next motorcycle ahead, I aim for the helmet and shoot.
He’s dead, obviously.
Through my left side mirror, I see a squad car jumping over the rider. I cringe. Not only am I selling Mikayla to a royal wolf. I’m also killing her friends.
There are now seven squad cars in my wake. Off in the distance, a bright light beams down. Fuck. Eyes in the sky. Those are a tad harder to shake. The police helicopter is navigating from the direction of the freeway, precisely where I needed to go. At the next intersection, three blocks prior to it, is 12th Street. My mind transforms into a map. I’d only had a day to choose to pick up the mark at Gianni’s.
I have a fifteen-mile radius of the restaurant in my brain. I slow, kick out my leg and turn onto 12th Street, which has a dead end. The helicopter will need time to steer. At the rate I’m going, palm trees blur together. With the cops turning, I target a sidewalk ramp that leads over the brick wall and into a housing tract.
Please hold fucking tight, Mikayla! I scream internally.
My bike lifts from the ramp and over Denarius Avenue. There are a few cars on the street. Most are parallel parked in front of homes. My pace slows. Rap music is blaring and helps mask the sound of Mikayla’s whimpering. I travel toward a row of cars just as I see the helicopter’s lights begin to shine over the street. I park between an Acura and an Impala. After pressing a button, the matte black shade of my bike transforms into a glossy bright green. This color is begging people to stare at me. The best way to go incognito is to show off to your enemy, give them something blatant and they won’t be bothered to take a harder look.
“Make a move and everyone in that helicopter is going down. Got that?”
“What?” She heaves into my back just as we are flooded with lights.
The helicopter continues illuminating down the row, and then into the backyard of where the music comes from.
I slowly begin to ease down the street and merge into traffic. Glancing down at a digitized clock, I have an hour to make it to the checkpoint. Yes!
***
Thirty minutes later, I literally feel her wet tears seeping on to my back. We are at an overnight parcel and trucking company, where a private cargo plane has been chartered to land, without having to deal with airport customs. The lots are empty. When I click off the clutch, and slow to a stop, I roll my shoulders and feel that my back is saturated with her tears.
“You can get off now.” I have to harden myself to her. I can’t deny how gorgeous she is. Her body is warm and innocent against my back. Her creamy brown legs cling to me. It almost hurts feeling as hard as I do for her.
She doesn’t let go.
“Kayla, get off!” I bark.
“You can’t call me Kayla, fucker! You can’t call me shit!” Tiny prickles that I could liken to pain go off against my back. She slaps and slaps. With not an ounce of urgency in my bones, I tug off my helmet. Then I glance at her over my shoulder.
SMACK.
I slowly wipe the blood from my lip.
Alright, I deserved that.
Mikayla jumps from the bike and begins to run. I’m off the bike in a matter of seconds and standing in her wake before she’s made it five feet away.
She kicks out at my jewels. Now that, I block. “You have proven your point, Mikayla.”
“Oh, have I?” She punches out.
I sidestep it. There’s a glint of hatred in those eyes. Damn it! I’ve seen those eyes light up with happiness. I don’t like how uncomfortable this look of hate in her eyes has me feeling. She’s been a candy striper for years; it’s shameful how my cock can’t give a fuck about her anger geared toward me. I’ve seen her in one of those uniforms helping sick people, and I’d like to be one of those people, you know? Sometimes I need stitches. It would be nice to have a beautiful woman with medical expertise help me, instead of clutching whiskey in one hand and stitching with the other.
Now she’s angry because she can’t hurt me. So, I place my arms down at my sides and allow her to act out her emotions. She slaps me again.
“You killed Ronald and Terry and …” she pressed her forearms into me. “You murdered Cree!” The punches are slower now. She presses against me, growls and slaps at me some more, for being unmovable.
And I take it. I cannot do this! I cannot kill women and children. And I certainly cannot babysit them—or abduct them!
CRASH.
My motorcycle slams to the ground. I give Mikayla a deadly glare for knocking the damn thing down. I reach for her to correct her for such a vile move, but the motorcycle zaps and pops. The color changes from bright green to cobalt blue-back to matte black and then a candy paint I’d programmed when that was in style. Shit, when is the last time I’d upgraded this bike? I think absentmindedly.
“Ah!” Mikayla jumps as it continues to change colors, brightening like confused Christmas lights in the night. “What the hell is it doing?”
“Shit, I need to work on the program. That should never happen.” Especially when I’m being chased by cops, I think about adding.
She glares at me in confusion. I consider explaining that if the damn thing malfunctions due to being tossed, it might not withstand a bullet hole.
That’s why I prefer trucks.
“Who are you?” she demands.
“Jagger Johansson.” I hold out a hand.
Her hand grasps at her chest. “Oh, God. You really are going to kill me,” she says, starting to breath unevenly.
“No. Why would I?” Damn, see how socially challenged I am?! Keeping her in fear is the safer bet.
“You … said your name. I know what you look like,” she continues, starting to hyperventilate.
I rub the back of my neck. I hadn’t expected to carry on a conversation with this woman. I glance around. “I’ll kill you if I have to,” I lie. She’s about the safest person in the entire universe with me. My truck is parked at the farthest end of the lot. It has a turbo engine with junkyard finishes. Looks like it might not kick past 50 kilometers per hour, but I’d bet a Ferrari engine that it does.
It doesn’t have a Ferrari engine, though. It’s a beast. It can go faster. And now I need to get this junk piece of a bike onto the back of it. If my truck could change shape, you can bet your ass that I would’ve preferred it for the job instead of the damn thing on the floor now giving out SOS signals.
Ava said to rent a private jet, and get the job done quickly and efficiently. Well, I don’t go anywhere without my truck.
“C’mon,” I grip her arm a little harder than necessary and drag her toward the last big parking space, where I’d left my truck. The parking spaces are all connected to the brick building. It’s about a six-yard dash to my baby.
“Why are we here? Where are we going?” She continues to press back on her heels. One of them snaps. “Jagger, I just asked—”
“Shhh!” I hold out a stiff hand; my ear perks. There’s an open field on the opposite side of the street, outside of the gate. A tiny, circular reflection catches my eyes.
“Why are we–”
PUFF. The brick to the left of my head breaks away from the wall.
Suppressed assault rifle.
“Get down!” My hand slams into her back.
We are sitting ducks!