chapter 44
Jaxon
SHOULD I PRETEND I’M selling something?” Demon suggests, looking down at his biker attire and smirking.
“Like what? Drugs?” I ask, staring up at the house. “Because that’s the only thing you look like you’d be selling. Fuck it; let’s just go in. Worst case, they call the cops. We’ll be out of there before then,” I say, approaching the door.
“Worse case they have dogs and we die,” he says, but follows me anyway. True friendship right there.
“If there’s a chance Scarlett is in there, I’m going in. I don’t care if they have fucking hellhounds,” I tell him.
I try to open the door but it’s locked, so we move around to the back. Also locked. I’m about to kick the fucking door down when Demon pulls some sneaky lockpick out of his pocket and proceeds to break into the house.
“Is this what they teach you at cop school?” I whisper, entering in front of him. If anyone is getting hurt in any way, it’s going to be me, not him. Scarlett is my woman, and I’m going to do anything to save her. Fuck, if it is Sharon, then this whole thing is my fault. I’m going to be the one to put her behind bars myself. The house is empty, and there’s no sign of anyone in there.
No Scarlett. No Sharon, no anyone.
Demon’s phone rings.
“Yeah? What kind of issue?” he waits for them to reply, then looks me in the eye and mutters, “Fuck.”
“What is it?” I ask, hoping to God that she’s okay. Let her be okay, please.
“Okay, I’ll be there soon,” he tells them, and hangs up. “Let’s go. Arrow found her.”
“Where?” I ask, leaving the house and running to the car. “Is she okay?”
He gets in the driver’s seat of my car and turns to me. “She’s in Sharon’s other property. He hasn’t actually seen her, but the men heard Sharon and a man talking about it. They tapped their line.”
“Fuck, they work fast,” I say again, so fucking thankful that Scarlett brought these men into my life. “So why hasn’t he gone in and gotten her?”
Demon cringes, and sighs. “The man Sharon was talking to is a cop. It’s become a little trickier now. But she’s alive.”
“A cop?” I grit out between clenched teeth. “One of Darren’s buddies? Or is it something else?”
“We don’t know yet. Arrow is staked out. We’ll know if they try to move her. We just need to figure out what to do with the dirty cop. If we kill him, there’s going to be a lot of backlash and the other cops won’t give up until someone does time for the crime,” Demon explains to me.
“Maybe we don’t have to kill him,” I say, formulating a plan. “Maybe we use a distraction of some kind?”
“What are you thinking?” he asks me, sounding intrigued.
“What if I rang Sharon and asked her something, I don’t know. I’ll make something up. She’ll make any excuse to come see me, and then she’s out of the house. Now we just need to get rid of the cop. Can’t you just maim him but not kill him?”
“I can.” He nods, seemingly liking this idea. “But I feel like he’ll come back to bite us in the ass; it won’t end here.”
“Should we worry about that when it happens?” I ask, brow furrowing. “Or is that just asking for future disaster? I mean if we can’t kill him, I don’t know what other options there are, really. We just need to move soon. I don’t want her there longer than she has to be, who knows what Sharon is fucking doing to her. She must be so scared.”
“She’ll be fine,” Demon promises me. “Concentrate on saving her, not what she’s doing right now. She’s strong. She’ll be okay, we just need to be able to get her out of there, and you’re right, it needs to be now. There’s no time to waste.”
“Okay,” I say more to myself than him.
Okay.
We can do this.
I can do this.
I will have her back in my arms before tonight is over.
WE MEET UP WITH Arrow and my plan backfires because Sharon doesn’t pick up her phone. “Too busy kidnapping my woman and being a psychotic, jealous bitch.”
“Do we have a plan B?” I ask Demon and Arrow as we sit in a car out front of the place where Scarlett is. “Please tell me we have a plan B.”
Demon flashes me a look, and I have a feeling he has a plan B, he’s just not telling me what it is. That worries me a little because of the place he’s in right now. He’s a cop. But he can’t be one right now, so it must be hard for him.
“Someone give me a gun, I’ll just storm in there and grab her,” I say, holding my hand out.
Arrow looks unamused. “If anyone’s storming in there, we all are. They can’t take us all down.”
“That’s the plan? Just raid the place? Force and weapon tactics?” Demon asks, sounding like he thinks we should be coming up with something better.
“Anyone have a better idea?” Arrow asks us.
No one says anything.
“Load the guns,” he says, then turns to me. “We’ll storm in and hold everyone hostage, you get your woman.”
I nod. “Thank you, Arrow.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” he murmurs, then gets out of the car with Demon, and opens the trunk to take out the weapons.
“Do you even know how to use a gun?” Arrow asks me as he slides back in and hands me one.
“Just because I’m a lawyer doesn’t mean I don’t know how to use a weapon,” I tell him, shaking my head. “I’m more than just a man who knows how to look good in a suit.”
“Just checking,” he says, smirking. “You never know with you business types.”
“I’ve got this, don’t worry. I’m not going to let anything happen to my woman.”
I’ll take down all of them if I have to, but she’s coming home with me.
WE BUST INTO THE house, me in the middle, and Demon and Arrow on each side. They actually have a formation for situations like this, I don’t want to know how many times it’s been necessary to break into an establishment guns blazing, but I’m thankful they know what they’re doing.
I suddenly know why the biker men do what they do, I so easily called them criminals, but now I’d do the same as them in a heartbeat, anything to have Scarlett safe and by my side once more. I will never judge them for their methods again. When you take someone’s woman—that means war. If you don’t like it, then you shouldn’t have touched what wasn’t yours in the first place.
Sharon puts her hands up when she sees us and starts screaming. She drops her gun on the floor and yells for a man named Brendan
“Where is she?” Arrow demands, looking every inch of a scary-ass biker president.
She doesn’t reply, so I move to check the rooms on this floor. Finding each one empty, I shake my head at Arrow, who grabs Sharon, her back against his chest, and puts the gun to her temple.
“Tell us where she is, or I will blow your fucking brains out, lady,” he growls, and Sharon starts to cry. When she points upstairs, I’m about to run up there, but Demon stops me. “We don’t know who else is up there.”
He leads the way, and I follow behind, facing the other way with my gun, our backs together so no one can get at us from any angle. Maybe in another life I would have made a good cop, or a good biker.
“Put your hands up!” Demon yells at the man standing there in front of a door. He’s in uniform, the bastard. His name tag has Gilmore on it. I don’t know who this guy thinks he is, but I will kill him if he doesn’t let Scarlett go. If she’s been hurt, I’ll kill him anyway.
“You’ll all go to prison for this,” he says in a calm tone, reaching for his gun.
Demon takes one shot, hitting him in the leg. He collapses to the ground, crying out in pain.
“Slide your gun to me, or I’ll take out your other leg,” I tell him, pointing my gun to his other knee. He slides his weapon over, and Demon grabs it. I move to the door, unlocking it and opening it. What I see has my heart galloping in my fucking chest. Scarlett is lying on the bed, knocked out. I rush over and feel her pulse. She’s alive, but when I shake her she doesn’t wake up.
“I think they’ve drugged her,” I call out to Demon, picking her up in my arms and carrying out. “She’s alive but she won’t wake up.”
“Take her downstairs,” Demon tells me. “I’ll handle this . . . cop.”
“Okay,” I say, but linger for a moment. What is he going to do? If anyone needs to be committing a crime, it should be me, not him. I don’t want Demon getting into any trouble.
Demon growls at me. “I’ve got this. Go, brother.”
I don’t miss the slip of him calling me by that name, but I ignore it and head down the stairs, where Arrow still has a gun to Sharon’s head.
“What did you give her?” I ask the bitch. “She’s out cold.”
“It’s just a sedative, she’ll be fine. It wasn’t my idea, Jaxon; it was Brendan’s. He wanted her dead, I don’t know why, please don’t let him kill me,” she pleads. “He’s a cop, of course I just did what he asked me to. He said he knew Darren; he said that Darren had his money and that now she owed him! That’s all I know. I don’t even know who Darren is!”
And there we have it.
This Gilmore guy is a friend of Darren’s. It always comes back to money, doesn’t it? If Sharon is telling the truth and this wasn’t her plan—that must be it. Sharon is just a pawn, probably because she was sleeping with Gilmore. There’s no other reason for anyone hating Scarlett. Darren is fucking things up from the grave, that stupid bastard. I ought to move Scarlett away so she never has to deal with one of his crooked cop friends again.
I hold her tight against me, and thank my lucky stars she’s back where she belongs.