THREE YEARS LATER

“What do you mean, I’m already married?”

Jax leaned back in his chair and angrily swiped at his forehead with the back of his hand.

“A . . . Pastor Clark . . . filed a marriage certificate on June 21, 2015 with your name on it. Are you saying this is incorrect?” a bored voice asked.

Fingernails clicking on a keyboard carried through the phone, and the tap tap tap grated on Jax’s already frayed nerves.

“Yes, it’s incorrect!” Jax said through clenched teeth. He had to be polite to this woman or she would hang up on him, and then when he called back, he would have to wait on hold for another half an hour. “No, it’s not incorrect. There was a wedding, but . . .” His words faded as the implication finally sank in. “Who was the bride?” he whispered.

Tap tap tap.

“It says here her name is Raven Grey. I have to admit, sir, it isn’t often we have a groom who does not know to whom he married.”

“It was a mistake.”

Jax closed his eyes. He hadn’t thought about the homeless waif since he’d shoved her from his limo in a cloud of cash and expletives. He’d been so appalled and ashamed he’d touched her in the church that all he could think about on the ride to that rundown plaza was getting rid of her just as quickly as he could.

He hadn’t let the tears that gathered in her eyes, or the way she’d demeaned herself, crawling after the bills like a little beggar girl as they blew along the cracked sidewalk, affect him.

There were reasons people called him heartless.

“Be that as it may, Mr. Brooks, a Raven Grey signed a marriage certificate that was filed by a Pastor Clark of Our Lord and Savior Baptist Church. Perhaps, since you didn’t know you were married,” Jax caught a hint of sarcasm in the woman’s voice, “you could file for an annulment. In most cases, annulments are more easily granted, providing your situation qualifies.”

Jax leaned forward. An annulment sounded faster.

Lucia would not be pleased with this recent turn of events, and he suppressed a sigh at the thought of the tantrum this information would cause.

An annulment would wipe out the entire marriage. As if it never existed.

“What are the circumstances for an annulment?” Jax asked, catching the eye of his brother, Erik, who lounged on Jax’s black leather couch with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, and one dark blond eyebrow raised in question.

“One moment please,” the woman said, tapping on the keyboard. “If either party married under duress . . .”

Jax had been under duress, but he didn’t think that was the kind she was referring to.

“. . . if either party was mentally unable to consent to marriage, if either party was coerced by force, if either party was underaged, if either party lacked the physical capability to consummate the marriage . . .”

Jax sighed. If he wouldn’t have put his hands on her, that would have been his ticket out of this mess.

“But, unfortunately, Mr. Brooks, the time limit has expired on an annulment. I am sorry to say that an annulment can only take place up to one year after the marriage, and three years have gone by. I apologize for thinking it was an option for you. I misspoke.”

Of course she would get his hopes up, only to have his best option taken away.

A divorce could get messy, but he assumed Raven wouldn’t know what her entitlements were, and she would just sign on the dotted line as easily as she had the first time around.

Raven.

A peculiar name for a woman.

“Mr. Brooks? Are you still there?”

Jax jerked at the woman’s voice. Now that the courthouse clerk was of no use to him, he’d forgotten about her. “Thank you for your time,” he mumbled, and clicked off his phone, dropping it onto his desk like it’d turned into a fireball.

“What was that all about?” Erik asked, resting one ankle on his knee and nestling into the couch.

Jax wished he could be more like his brother. Erik had such an easy-going way about him, and women flocked to him. Even Raven had seen what a sincere and true person Erik was, and the scared little mouse had actually appeared at ease in his presence.

So unlike when she was with Jax.

But most women treated Jax such as that—even Lucia remained wary, like prey being stalked by a cat, sometimes lashing out in fear and anger, and that was after being in a relationship with him for two years.

“It appears Raven has signed her real name to our marriage certificate, even though I distinctly remember telling her not to.”

She had known it was all a sham. What in devil’s hell made her sign her real name?

Erik clucked. “It was all such a whirlwind for her, to be sure. How did you expect her to do anything but? You put her on the spot that way, and then, if I recall, Mother came barging in for a look at the bride. You’re lucky the girl had any wits about her at all, and that she didn’t collapse in a glob of jelly on her way up the aisle.”

Jax pinned his brother with a frosty stare. “Is that why you walked with her?”

Erik barely smiled; he was used to his brother’s barbs.

“I hardly think you can look at me that way. In fact, you should thank me. For all you know, I was the only thing that made her stay.”

Not the way she chased after that money.

Jax pushed away from his desk in disgust and poured himself a drink. He rather liked having the small bar in his office—it was a throwback to the old days where drinking had been a natural part of the work day. In his world, it still was.

“I had that part of it covered.”

“Oh, yes,” Erik said drolly, also standing, slipping his cigarette behind an ear, and tugging the hem of his suit jacket down, smoothing the lapels. “She told me you were bribing and blackmailing her. Desperate times and desperate measures, and all, I’m sure.”

Jax handed him a low ball of scotch. “Why don’t you just say what you want to say and get it over with. You’ve never been so pussy-footed before.”

Erik took a sip of the scotch and regarded Jax over the rim of the crystal. After pausing for a lot longer than Jax would have given anyone else, Erik said, “I just think you could have given her a little more courtesy, is all. You saw her. It was evident the kid was down on her luck. But did you cut her a break? No. You blackmailed her into helping you.”

“It worked, didn’t it? No one was the wiser.”

It had worked, too. Jax had gone to the reception full of apologies. Gwen had fallen ill, but everyone was welcome to stay for the catered dinner and for the monstrous chocolate ganache cake Gwen had ordered. But as a loving husband, he would stay by his wife’s side in case she needed anything.

What he’d actually done was go to the honeymoon suite and drink away his disappointment. He’d really given in to the hope Gwen was different.

But she hadn’t been. No woman in her right mind would marry a man with a heart of ice.

“You’re missing the point.” Erik set his glass on the bar, and again, dangled his unlit cigarette from his lips.

“The point is, I got what I wanted.”

“Jax, the accident was years ago.”

Jax pursed his lips. “How many times have I told you, don’t talk about that.”

“I think you need to start. Your life would be different if you could forgive yourself.”

“I’m not having this conversation with you,” Jax rasped.

Erik heaved a sigh. “What is your next step, then? You can’t apply for a marriage license to marry Lucia if you’re married to Raven.”

Jax bit back a retort. Rarely did he like the obvious pointed out to him. “Find her. Get her signature. She can sign her name easily enough.”

“You could treat her like a person, Jax,” Erik said, turning toward the door.

“So could you,” Jax bit out, though the thought of Erik and Raven together made him grit his teeth.

With his hand on the doorknob, Erik said, “Maybe I will. Maybe I will.”

Finding Raven was easier said than done, and Jax pounded his fists on his desk in frustration. A girl named Raven Grey attended a Timber Creek High School, and the grainy yearbook photo looked similar to the woman he’d unintentionally married, but there were no dates of graduation. She dropped off the school’s website her junior year, when she would have been seventeen, and no hits on her using various search engines after that time.

The timeframe made bile rise in his throat, and Jax swallowed it back.

Three years after the accident.

To complicate matters further, Grey was a common last name, and the white pages online filled several computer screens full of possible matches that could be Raven’s family.

He thought briefly of tracking down her social security number, but even if he had it, what good would it do? If the woman didn’t have a credit card, or a bank account, if she didn’t drive and didn’t have a driver’s license, having her number wouldn’t help.

She didn’t pay bills.

A search for a cell phone number hadn’t popped.

No record of work.

Nothing.

Frowning, he searched the obituaries.

But nothing for her obituary surfaced, either, and Jax sat back in his seat, stymied.

He’d married a ghost.

Only, she wasn’t.

She was alive. He was married to her.

He needed a divorce.

There was only one thing he could do.

He dialed the first number at the top of the white pages.

Jax rang the bell of a ranch style house in one of the older neighborhoods.

After making several calls over the course of several days, he struck gold with a Rozlyn and Philip Grey. He’d almost given up too, being they were near the end of the alphabet, but giving up wasn’t Jax’s style, and he’d pushed forward, finally rewarded for his tenacity.

The woman hadn’t admitted she knew Raven, but the hesitancy in Rozlyn’s voice was enough for Jax to know he’d finally found Raven’s parents.

At least, he assumed they were her parents, though they very easily could have been her aunt and uncle.

I’ll find out, whether they want me to or not.

A white curtain in the huge picture window twitched, and Jax wondered what the person thought of him standing there on the weather-worn porch. He couldn’t look more out of place if he tried. He’d dressed in his usual three piece suit and slung on his long cashmere overcoat to ward off the chill.

Winter had settled in to the point it was unpleasant to be outside.

Jax blew out a breath in irritation, and it turned white in the chill.

As he waited while the person decided whether or not to answer the door, Jax looked around. The residence was kept neat, the walks shoveled. The house appeared to have brand new siding on the outside, and the roof looked new as well. Whoever lived in this house took pride in its appearance, and it made Jax curious that Raven would have family who lived like this while she . . . floundered.

She could have gotten back on her feet between the ceremony and now, though Jax thought it unlikely or more information about her would have surfaced during his search.

Finally, the front door cracked open, and a bottle-blonde woman with brown eyes peered at him through the screen door she did not bother to open. “Can I help you?”

The woman’s eyes reminded him of Raven’s, and he crowed to himself in victory. It didn’t matter if this woman was Raven’s mother, at least he had found some part of her family.

“I’m looking for Raven Grey,” Jax said, hoping his firmness wouldn’t earn him a door slammed in his face. But he knew of no other way to ask. His approach to all things was to be straightforward. His lack of kid gloves had gotten him into trouble multiple times, such as marrying Raven in the first place, but it was his way.

“We don’t know of anyone by that name,” the woman said, her eyes downcast in sadness, already shutting the door.

Jax could read misery. He knew it all too well.

He had to stop her from shutting him out.

“I’m looking for her because I’m her husband.”

Jax stood in a living room devoid of any human touch. The room was neat and tidy just like the outside, but it wasn’t what he would have expected from an older couple. Pictures on the mantle. Photos hanging on the walls. Books. Newspapers. Clutter.

But there was nothing.

It made Jax uneasy because the empty feeling of their house echoed the feeling of his own.

“Do you take cream or sugar?” the woman asked, bringing a wooden tray laden with coffee and small cookies into the living room.

“Black is fine,” Jax said, turning from the window that overlooked a yard filled with snow.

The couple who sat on the couch were just as devoid of any humanness as the house itself. The only apparent indication they still had any spirit left was that the woman dyed her hair. She, at least, still cared about a little something, even if that something was a reluctance to go completely gray like her husband.

The man who sat on the sofa along with his wife looked just as gray as his last name implied, lifeless, without even a hint of spark in his eyes. His hair was the color of steel wool, and Jax guessed it must have been black at some point. He wore a gray cardigan with a dark gray pair of Docker slacks.

“I don’t know what makes you think we know Raven,” the man said gruffly, handling a thick ceramic mug of coffee. “And if you’re truly married to her, you should know better than we do where she is.”

“It was your wife’s hesitation when I said Raven’s name that brought me here,” Jax said, sitting on the edge of a chair, his hands cradling the mug Rozlyn gave him. He hadn’t thought he’d been invited in for any significant amount of time, and he kept his overcoat on.

Now sweat was starting to run down his back, but he didn’t want to seem like this visit would take longer than necessary.

Get in, get the information, and get out.

“As for being married to her . . .” Jax swallowed. He was going to have to admit he’d been a prick. It wasn’t something he was good at, and showing his true colors might do more harm than good. But it was a chance he was going to have to take.

“She was cleaning the church where I was to be married, and I have to be honest, my fiancée backed out on me. Raven looked like she needed money, and I . . . hired her . . . to be my fiancée’s stand-in so I wouldn’t lose face in front of my friends and family.”

There was no need to go into the reasons why Gwen abandoned him. If he spoke with Philip or Rozlyn again, or if they got to know him in any capacity, they would find out soon enough.

Philip snorted. “It sounds like one of those soaps you like to watch, Roz,” he said, a frown pulling down his mouth. “Then why are you looking for her?”

“Because she signed her real name on the marriage certificate. I’m about to . . . marry . . . and when I applied for our license, I was informed the marriage to Raven had been real after all. I need her to sign divorce papers.”

This time it was Rozlyn who snorted. “You rich people, thinking you can do whatever you want. We haven’t spoken with Raven since she was seventeen. That’s almost thirteen years, if you don’t know her real age,” the woman sniped.

Apparently, he’d said the wrong thing after all, and Rozlyn’s pointed glare told him visiting time was over.

Jax took the hint and stood, placing his mug on the tray, his coffee untouched.

“Then you have no idea where she is? I searched for her online and nothing popped.”

“All I can tell you Mr. Brooks, is to remember how she looked. What did that tell you?” Philip Grey led Jax to the door and opened it wide in invitation to leave.

On the way to his car, his dress shoes crunching over the frozen snow, Jax thought about Raven’s father’s last words.

How had Raven looked?

Erik had seen it. Down on her luck.

Jax had simply thought her a druggie, an alcoholic who would spend his money on drugs and booze. What if she was more than that? Instead of living in a rundown apartment in a poor section of town, maybe she didn’t even have that.

Maybe she was . . . homeless.

“How are you going to go about that?”

Jax snarled. It wasn’t like he hadn’t thought about anything else since he left the Grey’s residence. He glowered at his brother. “How would you?”

The evening after meeting Raven’s parents—and Jax still assumed they were her parents, though neither had actually confirmed it—he’d been seething about that very thing in his study. A fire burned in the fireplace, and his housekeeper had put a roast in the slow cooker that morning, the spicy scent of beef permeating the house. If he hadn’t been so sick with the idea of telling Lucia they couldn’t marry until he found his current “wife,” the aroma would have made him go crazy with hunger.

It made for a cozy scene, all he needed was a dog sleeping at his feet.

But inside, Jax felt anything but cozy.

“This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve done your dirty work for you.”

“Why are you here, again?” Jax asked, balling his hand into a fist on his thigh under his desk. He loved his brother, he really did. Without Erik, Jax would never have come out the other side of the accident in one piece. Some would argue he hadn’t, but without his brother, Jax would have been dead.

There wasn’t any way to pretty up that truth.

Not that Jax didn’t deserve everything that would have come to him.

“Checking up on you—”

Jax growled.

“At Mom’s request. She’s at the same benefit as Lucia, remember? She knew you were home alone tonight.”

“I can be alone. I’m not five.”

“Ah, but you still play with matches.” Erik grinned, enjoying the verbal sparring match.

“I’m not playing,” Jax corrected, shutting his laptop. “I’m thinking of ways to track down Raven, if she really is homeless.”

“That seems easy enough to me,” Erik said, crossing his legs. He was dressed in an evening suit; a sign he would be leaving soon. A Friday night when Erik didn’t have plans was almost unheard of, and it smoothed out Jax’s temper.

He stretched. He’d been enjoying the peace and quiet of an empty house. It was his lucky evening the benefit tonight was a dinner and silent auction for a local domestic abuse crisis center.

Women only. Men were not welcome there.

“Do tell.”

“It’s fucking colder than hell out there, Jax. Where do you think she’s going to go? It’s not like she can find a bench in a park or lay out a newspaper under a bridge. Admittedly, summertime would be different, and you probably would have a harder time, but use your fucking brain. We’re in the middle of a Minnesota winter.”

Pouring a scotch from the bar in the back of the room, heat burned Jax’s neck.

Checking the homeless shelters should have been number one on his task list, and he should be thanking his lucky stars the average overnight temperature for February was fifteen to twenty below Fahrenheit. No one could be out in that kind of weather for any amount of time without the risk of dying from hypothermia.

“Hey, it’s not like I haven’t done anything. I found her parents. I’ve just had a lot on my mind, lately.” Jax winced.

“Like the fact looking for Raven is a godsend because marrying Lucia is the last thing you need right now?”

That surprised him, and Jax met Erik’s eyes over the rim of his glass. “Where did that come from?”

Erik rubbed his face, making a lock of dark blond hair flop over his forehead. “You go after the same kind of woman. Lucia is Gwen all over again.”

“That’s not true. Gwen spent as little time with me as possible; she never fought with me like Lucia does.” He hated arguing with his fiancée, and he always gave in just to make it stop. It was like fighting with a wolverine. Whoever tried came out bloody and mangled, and it was all for nothing. Jax never won.

“See? It is true. She’s frightened of you, just like Gwen was.”

“Obviously, you’ve never been around when Lucia’s thrown things at me, whenever I say or do something she disagrees with. That’s not fear.” Jax had been livid when she’d destroyed an antique Chinese cloisonné vase worth over five thousand dollars. Cheap, in comparison to some, but it had still pissed him off. Her childish temper tantrum had been a waste of money. And all because he worked late. He hadn’t known she’d made dinner plans for them.

“If you fought back just once—”

“I wouldn’t. And Lucia knows I’ll let her get away with anything,” Jax said.

He’d never raise his hand to a woman. He’d never raise his voice. He’d never show any emotion at all. Calm. Cool. Collected.

Ice.

Except for one afternoon in a church when he couldn’t keep his hands off a homeless stray.

Which brought him back to the conversation at hand.

Erik shifted in his seat. “All I’m saying is I see Lucia leaving you just as Gwen did. Your relationships are not based on love.”

“And all I’m saying is that I’m not going to let looking for Raven delay me from marrying Lucia. Me loving her, or her loving me, is beside the point. Lucia’s willing, and I’m ready. If I can’t find Raven, then I’ll see about getting a divorce in absentia. There has to be laws in place for spouses who go missing.”

“Have it your way, little brother,” Erik said, walking to the door of Jax’s library. “But mark my words, women want love, not credit cards. Lucia will turn into another Gwen. She’ll realize the prestige and money that comes with marrying you won’t be enough.”

“Gwen had her own money; she didn’t need me.”

Erik cocked his head, one foot in the hallway. “Is that why you chose Lucia, then? Because you think she won’t take off like Gwen? Didn’t get enough bribery when you dealt with Raven, huh?”

Jax was pouring another drink when Erik shut the door softly behind him.

If that’s what had ended up happening, him bribing Lucia to marry him, it hadn’t been his intention.

They’d met at a benefit his mother had dragged him to because his father couldn’t go. Lucia had been the only woman with guts to approach him and begin a conversation. It hadn’t been quite a year since Gwen had abandoned him at the altar, but by then Jax had spun the whole ordeal into a sad story of neglect and desertion.

Lucia had wanted to comfort him, and by the end of the night, Jax asked her to marry him.

She said yes.

They’d had a two year engagement because his mother insisted on it, saying he wasn’t over what Gwen had done to him.

Which may or may not have been true. He’d buried his emotions so deep, even if Gwen had hurt him, he wouldn’t have felt a thing.

Jax sat behind his desk and opened his laptop.

Lucia wouldn’t be home until the early morning hours, more than likely going clubbing with her friends after the benefit or sneaking off to another man’s bed.

He had time to research how many homeless shelters were in the city.

Then he would do what he needed to do.

Find Raven Grey.

It was like looking for a needle in a pile of needles. The homeless shelters were the way to go. Erik had been right. She had to escape the cold.

But after visiting all the homeless shelters in the huge city, Jax still hadn’t found her.

Apparently, there were still places Raven could hide.

“Maybe she made a friend, and she’s bunking on a couch.”

Across a rusted metal desk, Jax stared at the director of Heavenly Hands, the last homeless shelter he tried because it was so far along the outskirts of the city. Anyone who needed the shelter’s services would have to scrape up change for the bus. At some point, Raven had been able to do so; the director had known Raven from the scant description Jax had been able to give her.

His presence hadn’t been welcome at most shelters in the city. Some were used as a refuge for domestic violence victims, and more than one director said they wouldn’t give him information even if they had any. The look of dislike in their eyes spoke volumes—explicitly, they distrusted and hated men—and in a move of solidary toward a woman they may not even have met, the female directors he’d spoken with kicked him out.

Another director at a different shelter had taken in his driver and Mercedes through the dirty windows of the crumbling and rundown building and asked if this was some kind of Pretty Woman joke.

It did seem odd a man dressed in a suit and his cashmere overcoat would be looking for a homeless woman, probably a junkie and alcoholic besides. But until the director’s comment, he hadn’t thought of Raven as a whore, and with a twist of his lips, thought that he should have.

It could be why he was having a hard time finding her. She might be sleeping in a whorehouse or living in one of the trashy downtown pay-by-the-month apartment buildings that had slowly started popping up when the new mayor had been elected last year. Word was he looked the other way because it happened to be his favorite side activity.

That didn’t have anything to do with Jax, he wouldn’t judge another man’s . . . hobby, except for the fact now he had a million other places to look.

Jax sighed.

He hadn’t given Raven a thought after he’d kicked her out of the limo. Hadn’t given one fuck if she would be okay or not.

He couldn’t say he did now, either, except if she was safe and sleeping somewhere that wasn’t a shelter, finding her had just become a whole lot harder for him.

Son of a bitch.

Why yes, he had been called that on occasion.

He pulled a business card from his breast pocket. He hadn’t brought more than the usual supply, and this was his last one. If every director he’d talked to had taken one, he would have run out a long time ago.

“Can you at least call me if you see her?” he asked, knowing the answer.

The slim black woman wearing jeans and a black shirt with the Heavenly Hands logo above her heart frowned. “I’m sorry, but if she shows up here, I wouldn’t be able to say. We have strict confidentiality rules. Some of these women are running from abusive husbands and boyfriends, and if we give out information all willy-nilly, we could be endangering all the women who stay here. All I can tell you is that I have seen her recently, and she was okay. As okay as a woman without a home can be.”

She leaned back in her chair and narrowed her eyes.

Jax knew an accusing glare when one was aimed at him, and he took it as his cue to leave.

“Thanks, I appreciate it.”

His words fell on deaf ears. The director was already picking up the phone and punching in numbers, dismissing Jax.

He shrugged into his coat in the dim and dingy hallway, the lightbulb close to burning out. The women who stayed there tried to make it homey, but the peeling wallpaper and the smell of hotdogs negated anything pleasant the women had tried to do. Every space was used, and it made the shelter look cramped and cluttered.

He walked past a living area where a couple of women were watching TV, eyeing him warily as he strode by. Jax offered them a smile that wasn’t accepted.

Jax bristled.

What they saw on the outside was a man of privilege, looking for a woman he possibly used as a punching bag.

Not all men were assholes.

That he was wasn’t anyone’s business.

“Yo, mister.”

Jax paused with his hand on the handle of the door leading outside.

A young black boy wore black sweats and a stained NBA t-shirt two sizes too big. His wide brown eyes flashed with amusement, and his grin revealed white, even teeth. It didn’t seem to bother him in the least he was spending the night in a homeless shelter.

“What’s up?”

“I heard you talking to Miss Hayley. You want to find Raven.”

Jax hunkered to his haunches. “Yeah, I do.”

The boy’s eyes grew concerned. “Are you gonna hurt her when you find her? One time she came here, and she didn’t look so good. Sometimes she plays checkers with me, but Mama wouldn’t let me see her. She cried a lot. Mama said a mean man hurt her, and for me not to grow up like that.”

Hurting Raven hadn’t been on his radar, and with all his might, he tamped down the dread knowing someone had. Jax shook his head, honesty ringing in his voice. “No. I just need her to sign something for me. That’s all. And your mama’s right. It takes more courage to be nice than to be mean.”

The kid bobbed his head. “I believe you. I know where she crashes sometimes, but you have to promise you won’t tell. You got any cash?”

Jax was used to being asked for money. That’s just the way it was when you were rich. But this kid asking made him chuckle instead of growl. Who could resist a kid looking out for himself?

“How much you looking for?” Jax asked, pulling his wallet out of his pocket.

The boy tilted his head, considering.

Jax knew the look. The kid wanted to get as much as he could but didn’t want to ask for so much he came away with nothing. He was willing to pay for something useful, and he pulled out a hundred dollar bill.

“How about this?” he asked.

The boy’s eyes almost bugged out of his head. He reached out his hand.

“No can do,” Jax said, pulling the bill away. “Info first.”

“Raven stays at her friend Elle’s sometimes. I heard her talking to Mama about it. Elle has a hair shop on Z Avenue.” His face fell. “I don’t know how to get there, though.”

“Lucky for you, I do,” Jax murmured.

The boy held out his hand again and dropped it when Jax put the bill between his teeth and reached for his wallet.

“You change your mind, mister?” the kid asked, scuffing his toe on the faded linoleum.

Jax pulled out another hundred dollar bill. “No.” He held up the two bills in each hand. “One for you, and one for your mama, okay?”

The boy grinned in excitement.

“Promise.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die! Thanks, mister! Remember, don’t tell on me!”

The boy ran away, the bills clutched in his fists.

Jax chuckled, but the fact he had probably just given that kid more money than he or his mama had seen in a long time made his smile fade.

As he turned to the door, a donation box bolted to the wall, secured with a large deadbolt lock caught his eye.

Before he left the building, Jax shoved a check written out for fifty thousand dollars into the slot.

He thought nothing of it; he’d claim it as a charity donation on his taxes.

Z Avenue wasn’t for the faint of heart.

Drug deals took place in plain sight. Hookers claimed corners and were a permanent fixture in that part of town. Stolen electronics were sold out of plain white vans and the trunks of beat up cars. Gas station attendants were protected by bulletproof glass boxes. Bar fights were a regular occurrence because the bartenders couldn’t be interrupted stealing from the registers.

Nobody dared venture into that part of town unless they belonged.

Jax, dressed in his suit and overcoat, being driven by a chauffeur in a spotless black Mercedes, didn’t.

He could just imagine how the street would look in the summer at this time of evening. But now it was February, and the sun took what little warmth it had brought to the day while it sank below the hazy chilled horizon. Not a soul lingered on the frozen sidewalk.

“Don’t stay here,” Jax told his driver before opening the car’s door. “Give me twenty minutes, and then come back. It won’t take me longer than that to know if I’ll find what I need.”

“Yes, Mr. Brooks,” the driver said, meeting Jax’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

Jax gritted his teeth against the cold air as he opened the door.

He wouldn’t have bothered if there hadn’t been any lights on in the grimy, rundown salon, but there was one light cutting through the darkness of the shop. He bowed his head against the frigid air trying to find a way into his jacket and pulled open the heavy glass door decorated with a pair of scissors and the words Jagged Edge. The letters were peeling from the glass, the residue of the sticky backs outlining the missing letters.

A woman swept hair off the dirty linoleum floor, and she glared at him. “We’re closed.”

Her platinum blonde hair was shaved on one side of her head, the other side hung past her ear, her bangs hiding her face.

Earrings ran up and down her exposed ear, and where the earrings stopped, a tattoo began, snaking down her neck from behind her ear, disappearing into a shabby tank top she wore under a stained white apron.

“Are you the owner?” Jax asked, not letting the pinch of her mouth, or the anger in her eyes, deter him from finding out what he needed to know.

“Who wants to know? You a cop?”

Jax stepped deeper into the salon. The woman ran a real business . . . or tried to. The smell of chemicals floated through the air; she’d recently given someone a permanent. And the fact that she was sweeping up hair indicated she’d had a customer or two not that long ago.

He had to give credit where credit was due. It would be next to impossible to try to run any kind of business on Z Avenue. How many times did she get robbed? By the look of her, she had a gun close by, and knew how to use it.

“No, I’m not a cop. I’m looking for someone.”

“Don’t know, don’t care,” the woman clipped, bending to sweep the hair into a dustpan.

“I’m looking for a Raven Grey,” he said, and zeroed in on her expression.

The woman pursed her lips and blinked at the floor. “Don’t know her.”

Yes, you do.

Jax waited her out.

She emptied the dustpan and secured it to the broom’s handle. After storing it in a closet in the back of the room, she met his eyes. “What do ya want her for? A quick fuck? You slummin’?”

Jax hated thinking about Raven that way. He’d been tempted, and he’d given in. Raven in a wedding dress had made him feel things he hadn’t felt before, and he’d succumbed to those desires before he could tell himself no.

But it hadn’t been because he’d wanted to see what slumming was like. It had been the look in her eyes after downing the contents of his flask. It had been the way she’d looked in all the satin and lace. It had been because he knew he could, and that little amount of power over her had made him harder than he’d ever been in his life.

“I don’t need to slum.”

“Then I don’t know what you’d need her for. If I knew her,” she tacked on, realizing her mistake.

Jax leaned against a small desk the woman used to check in customers. He hadn’t wandered too far into the little shop; he didn’t want to spook her. Cops couldn’t be bothered to come out this way, especially in the cold, but he didn’t want to take the chance she would push a panic button. Maybe it wouldn’t call the cops. Maybe she had a huge hulk of a husband upstairs above the salon pounding back beer and gobbling pizza who wouldn’t give a shit about beating the fuck out of him.

“If you’re her friend, perhaps she told you about something that happened about three years ago. Standing in for a bride?”

Anyone else would have missed it, but Jax caught the imperceptible widening of her eyes.

Raven had spilled her guts.

The kid deserved another hundred.

Jax wasn’t sure he would have made it this far without the tip.

The woman took a pack of smokes from the pocket of her apron and lit one up. She stared at him while she took a long drag. After she blew out a lungful of bluish-white smoke, she crossed her arms over her non-existent breasts. Tilting her chin, she said, “Maybe. What of it?”

“She signed the certificate with her real name. We’ve been married on paper for the last three years. I’m engaged and need to apply for another marriage license. I need to find Raven to divorce her.”

The woman laughed, the sound coming out dry and hoarse like the smoker she was.

Jax cleared his throat, suddenly wishing for a glass of water. Or three fingers of good scotch.

“Look at you. Your jacket cost more than what I make in a year.”

Jax shoved his hands into the pockets of said jacket. A jacket he would need to send to the dry cleaners after standing in this woman’s smoke.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“She’s not brave enough to take you for everything you’ve got. And even if she was, she’d never be able to afford a lawyer that could take on yours.”

Jax had hoped he’d get out of this situation pain free. But that wasn’t to be the case. Now he’d have to decide how much a divorce from Raven was worth to him.

He thought of the fury on Lucia’s face if he told her he couldn’t marry her on the date they’d decided. A divorce from Raven was worth a lot. More than he’d ever admit to this woman.

“Will you tell me where she is if I promise to take care of her?”

“Like you did last time?” she asked, then took another draw of her cigarette. “The two thousand you gave her is pocket change to a guy like you. And she didn’t get a chance to use it, either.” White smoke puffed out of her mouth.

“What do you mean, she didn’t use it? What happened?”

“She’s too trusting. She got ripped off one night at a shelter. They took every penny. It almost broke her. I never saw her so devastated. She had big plans for that cash.”

Jax gritted his teeth. Raven getting beat up. Raven losing the money he’d given her. Jax fought against the feeling of responsibility that wiggled in the back of his heart. “You have my word that I’ll look out for her. Better than last time.”

A full ashtray sat on the corner of the desk, doubling as a paperweight, and, snorting, she snuffed out her cigarette.

She was close enough now Jax caught a whiff of a cheap perfume under the layers of cigarette smoke.

Rubbing her face, she met his eyes.

Jax was taken aback by the fatigue, despair, and loneliness that filled her eyes.

“I don’t believe you, but the fact is, I’m worried about her, and right now, you’re the only one who can do anything about it. She hasn’t stopped by in a while, and in the cold, that’s not like her.” She jerked her head toward the back of the salon. “Sometimes she sleeps in my storage room.”

“She spent a night at Heavenly Hands a week ago,” Jax offered. “It’s how I found you. I paid off a little kid to tell me how to find you.”

Her mouth tightened. “Well, that was a week ago. If you were searching the homeless shelters, where else has she been?”

Jax stared at the floor. “I don’t know. She could have been at any of them. No one would tell me anything.”

“Then they haven’t seen her. Little kids aren’t the only ones who will take money in exchange for information, no matter how uppity and indignant those bitches pretend to be. Loyalty to Raven or their other clients don’t shut them up. They just didn’t have anything to tell you. I’ve had to stay in one or two, and they’re all scum suckers.”

Jax rolled his shoulders. Her tone implied she lumped him in with the “scum suckers.”

“Do you know where else she could go?”

The woman sank wearily into the chair that sat behind the desk and rested her head in her hands. “There’re a bunch of abandoned apartment buildings along Pike. They were zoned for demolition a long time ago, but one of the buildings still has electricity and the temperature inside stays above freezing in the winter.” She looked at him, her upper lip curling. “Raven tries not to stay there—it’s dangerous for a woman to be alone in that building, and she knows she’s welcome here. God only knows what kind of situation she’s in right now.”

“She’s your friend.”

The woman stood, her hands on her hips. “What do you know about friends?”

“I know enough you care. Do you want to come with me?” Jax asked, unnerved by her display of emotion. No one felt like that about him—not outside his family. He tried to remember a time when he had felt like that toward another person. Love. Care. Concern.

Not since before the accident.

“I can’t. I need to keep an eye on this place twenty-four/seven, or assholes will vandalize my shop quicker than shit.”

Jax cocked his head. “If I give you money for helping me, you could relocate.”

“Not everyone cares about money, Mr. Bigshot.”

“That hasn’t been my experience,” Jax said smoothly, pulling out his checkbook. “Cash it, or not.” He ripped the check out of the book and handed it to her.

Without taking her eyes from his, she tore it in two. “I don’t need your money. I’m here because I want to be. Just let me know, somehow, if you find her. I want to know if she’s okay.”

A small pit at the bottom of his stomach began to grow.

“Because you don’t think she is?”

“Because after everything you told me, I know she’s not.”