Bad Boy Criminal: The Novel Read online

  “Jade’s number?” Now I was a little doubtful.

  “And Dom’s number. And Xander’s number.”

  “How many numbers do you think my brain can hold?” I half-joked.

  “If you could just practice with me…for a few minutes… It would put my mind at ease,” he said.

  I cocked my head and frowned at him. “Why?” I had to ask.

  Ash frowned. “In case anything happens to you,” he said. “I want you to be able to contact one of us for help.”

  The comment immediately brought more questions to the surface. Did he think that something was going to happen to me? With the exception of our run-in with the Valiant over in Moab, the road trip had almost been uneventful; well, and that little road block set up on the interstate at the Utah border, but Ash had let them get a big tip by using his ATM card in Bluff. We hadn’t seen any sign of them, or the Valiant, since.

  Another question his request brought to the surface was this: He cared? He cared enough about a roadside companion that he would actually let her know the intimate details from his friends and family—their phone numbers? Memorized?

  “Fine,” I said, not wanting to press him on the matter and embarrass myself by forcing him to confess to me that it was a liability issue. If anything happened to me, after all…he would be in more danger with the feds.

  We straddled his bike across from one another for twenty minutes, reciting numbers I just couldn’t get right.

  “I’ll have to sleep on it,” I said. “I need time to be able to remember. You can’t memorize anything in just a few minutes. Anyway—shouldn’t you be in a hurry, Ash? We’re only an hour and a half from Juarez. And then, you wanna stop just a few minutes from border patrol, and…go to a shooting range? And work on my memory skills? This close to being over, and you want—”

  Ash grimaced. “Maybe I wanted to just spend some more time,” he grumbled, his eyes averted from mine. “But I guess you’re right. Might as well get it over with.” He took a deep breath and turned from me, straddling the seat in the right way.

  I joined him, feeling suddenly cold, as if I’d said the wrong thing and I knew it. Had I actually…hurt him?

  And here I had been, thinking that he couldn’t be hurt.

  Chapter Thirty

  Ashton

  As we powered through downtown Las Cruces, back toward the long stretch of highway which would lead us through border patrol, I felt the sudden, intense desire to stop the motorcycle. To just stop.

  We needed gas, anyway.

  That was as good an excuse as any.

  I pulled up to a gas pump and pulled off my helmet, shaking out my hair, made darker with sweat in the dry heat. I exhaled heavily and looked down at Isabelle. She was pulling her helmet off too, and just like me, she shook out her thick chestnut hair, made thicker and wilder in the heat. God, it’d been a long time since I’d met a woman like her, if ever…and it’d be a long time again once we parted ways.

  I jammed the gasoline pump into the tank. “Damn,” I muttered. “Have to piss.”

  Izzy smirked at me and unstraddled the leather seat on the motorcycle. “I can pump,” she assured me, and I was reminded of the type of woman I’d always been looking for: the kind of woman who will take over pumping the gas into your hog while you run inside for more smokes. Damn, Izzy.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  As she took the pump from my hand and inserted it into the tank for me, I dipped down and kissed her, once, quickly, on the cheek. She blushed and fluttered her eyelashes up at me as if chagrined. “What was that for?” she wondered.

  “Just…for being you,” I said, slinging my hand down to pinch her buttock affectionately. “I’ll be right back, babe.”

  As I loped across the parking lot and into the restroom, straddling a urinal and releasing my bladder gratefully, I simultaneously leaned my head back, closed my eyes, and frowned deeply. I cursed myself for the familiarity we had allowed to develop between us.

  No, for the familiarity I had allowed to develop between us.

  Finishing with a shake and a zip, I washed my hands quickly and then…just…stared, still dripping from my fingertips, into the mirror, fogged with age and damage. I ran my fingers over my lightly sweating face, groaning aloud, and when my eyes opened again, I scrutinized the man staring back at me so thoughtfully.

  The entire purpose of this venture together had seemed so clear to me at first. Protection. Companionship. Sex. Simple. Convenient. She had the keys to the old man’s truck. She had a face that wasn’t all over the news—though that probably wasn’t so true anymore.

  But now…what had it become?

  I thought not only to the surge of panic and horror in my chest at Alex Cantrell’s gun trained on Isabelle, but also to her flowery scent and her child-like hazel eyes; the tightness and wetness of her sex didn’t even occur to me. The way we had wildly and freely twisted around the trunk of a tree in a national park for our first time didn’t occur to me.

  Instead, I thought of the jealousy percolating in my heart when that bartender at Tiny’s had dared to look upon her. I thought of how right it felt to cup her against my chest at that firing range—even if it had only seemed like I had been helping her to fire a new gun. But deep down, I knew…

  Shit.

  Had I…? Was I…?

  What was I doing?

  We would have to talk.

  I shook my head at myself as if vaguely disgusted—how could this kind of thing just sneak up on a man, especially a man so heavily guarded to its assault?—and I was still staring down at my own two feet as I pushed through the restroom door.

  Agent Harrison loomed on my right. He’d been waiting for me. His gun was trained directly onto my heart.

  Another memory of Isabelle—tenderly referring to her as crack shot—flooded up from my subconscious, and I raised my hands into the air. The sign of surrender.

  “Ashton Carter,” Agent Harrison rapped, his hands never leaving the butt of his gun. Heavy sweat trekked down his face, and his eyes were glazed with a kind of delirium.

  He and I had interfaced on more than one occasion, and he’d always stricken me as cold, dispassionate, and a bit of an asshole: the typical federal agent type. But not anymore. Now, his eyes were manic…possessed with a feverish kind of glee.

  “Don’t you fucking move.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Ashton

  The past few days had been a whirlwind for me: escaping the transit van toward maximum security hell, getting shot in the shoulder by a warden, fleeing into the vast Colorado woods, and then...finding myself at the business end of a Winchester hunting rifle held by a shapely brunette, body burnished in the summer sun, oval sweep of her cheek hidden beneath a thick curtain of unruly chestnut hair. Then the whirlwind had intensified with heavy rains and lightning, which started fires.

  The attraction between us was instant, inexplicable, and ill-advised. She was the adopted daughter of two kindly, but stern, dairy farmers. She was wholesome, doting, and took to me with sympathies I didn’t deserve. When she caught me in the act of running—after her dad bribed me to leave sooner rather than later—she offered to come along. After all, it wasn’t her face flashing on the news. It wasn’t her description on the radio. She snagged the keys to her dad’s truck and we took off down the interstate, headed to Juarez, Mexico, where I had a friend who swore she could clear my name.

  We were still in Colorado when Isabelle Turner became an accomplice to grand theft auto for the first time.

  We were in Bluff, Utah when the piece of shit broke down, and we had to walk to The Sandy Castle, a run-down inn not even found on the main street. By then, my fingertips were burning to touch her, and I knew she wanted it too—but she was asleep when I got out of the shower. We were still in Bluff when I made the awesome decision to purchase a new bike and a gun—with cash withdrawn from my bank account that morning.

  We were in Moab when we hit the road block at th
e state line into New Mexico. We were still in Moab when Alex Cantrell, a member of Valiant, the MC that was the nemesis to my own club, pointed his gun at Izzy and demanded I give myself up to Agent Harrison. That was when my brothers, members of the Hell’s Ransom, came roaring up behind us. Jade over in Juarez had put in a call to the boys—but it also made me wonder how The Valiant crew had known where we were to put us into trouble in the first place. No one knew where we were…except Jade. Was she connected to some kind of mole?

  The Valiant backed off rather than engage in a mid-town massacre, and since then, Dom and Xander, my brothers by blood, insisted that I lay low while they sniffed out the leak in our business; I obeyed (somewhat). Izzy and I traveled on back roads and bought everything in cash.

  It was in Albuquerque that we met with a surly member of Hell’s Ransom named Arlo in a shady bar called Three Tequila Floor, and he suited us up with several hundred in cash, as well as fake identification for the border. We got out of there fast. It seemed like the kind of place, even to me, that Izzy might get drugged and abducted if we lingered too long.

  We slept under the stars at Rio Grande Nature Center that night—where we finally made savage, animalistic love…three times…against a tree. In all truth, I was beginning to catch feelings, and had to pull myself a step back and keep remembering that our relationship was only as good as this last tank of gas.

  Once we crossed into Juarez, I would have to let her go. She was a good girl; I couldn’t drag her through what was to come. Even with evidence to acquit me, I would have to be taken back into custody, and I didn’t want Izzy trapped on the other side of a pane of glass, forced to only touch me by touching herself and imagining. That was no life for a woman like Isabelle Turner—and I wasn’t looking for no woman, anyway.

  We were in Las Cruces when we pulled over to pump some lead into silhouettes on posters at La Casa de Pistolas; I wanted her to get a feel for my gun—I don’t know why. It wasn’t like it mattered. A kind of morose mood hung over both of us. We knew it would be over soon. I was trying to stall; we’d be reaching the border in less than an hour.

  I pulled over to get some gas and take a leak. Izzy stayed at the pump, and I was just coming out of the men’s room when a monotonous, all-too-familiar voice commanded me to freeze. I glanced to my side, and there he was: Agent fucking Harrison of the FBI. Ruddy, uneven complexion. Pale and scraggly curls cropped close to his head. Sweat stains on an otherwise expensive suit. And a handgun pointed directly at me.

  I’d been interrogated by Agent Harrison on multiple occasions, and he’d been the one assigned to my case when I’d fled Boulder. He’d always conducted himself with a cold and detached air, like many other government officials in his line of work. But now—now that I was at the tip of his gun—his bright blue eyes shone with a maniacal victory. Sweat shimmered inconspicuously on his forehead—was it just the summer heat, or was he nervous?—and no one approached our freeze frame. No one.

  He was supposed to have a partner, a woman by the name of Carson. Where was she? Was she here? Had she already captured Isabelle?

  I gulped, remembering Izzy. She’d always said that, if anyone caught her, she would claim that I had kidnapped her, but it’d been said in a light tone, as if it was half-joke, half-dream, and nothing to really consider. After all, if she accused me of abduction, that would add a minimum of two years to my sentencing.

  Would she really say it? I doubted it. The sweet, terrible girl would end up in jail, too, for aiding and abetting a felon, accomplice on two counts of grand theft auto, conspiracy, fraud, all of it. Even if Jade was right, and I could be cleared on the murder charge of Jared Wayne, I’d have a whole new set of charges, and the state wouldn’t care that I’d only committed them to correct their erroneous judgment…would they?

  “Look—Harrison—you don’t want to do this,” I said, my hands raised in the air in the position of surrender. I knew I didn’t have my new gun holstered; I’d last given it to Isabelle to practice at the range. All I had was my stupid switchblade, and that was in my boot. Damn idiot…I winced as I glanced down at my ineffectual shoe.

  “Oh, I assure you,” Harrison rasped, licking his lips, “I do want to do this. Very, very much.”

  “But really, really don’t,” a warm female voice warned him from behind.

  My chest flooded open with relief.

  I’d know that voice anywhere anymore. As intimate as silk, but stronger than concrete.

  Isabelle Turner.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Isabelle

  I thought that boy had been taking an awfully long piss at that point, and hung up the gas hose, sauntering to the other side of the station, where I’d seen Ash disappear to use the facilities.

  Turning the corner, I’d realized two things. First of all, I recognized the man who had his back to me, shoulders pulled tight as he aimed his gun with stiff, unsteady arms. Even from behind, I recognized the terrible hair, the unfortunate, splotchy complexion, and the dully sophisticated garb: Agent Harrison, who had visited my door a few days ago with a picture of Ash, and his brothers. He had asked me then if I’d seen Ash, and I’d lied. I’d laid my neck on the block then to protect the misunderstood convict with sooty lashes and full sleeve tattoos, and I’d do it again.

  The second thing I realized was that the standard-issue black sedan parked in this parallel lot didn’t appear to have anyone inside, meaning that his partner, Agent Carson, had been abandoned somewhere. Tsk, tsk, Agent Harrison. There are reasons that you’re always supposed to follow protocol, you know.

  I slid my hand up my shirt and extracted the handgun Ash had given to me at La Casa de Pistolas, which he had not remembered to take back, and I’d forgotten to return. I didn’t hesitate; coming to Ash’s defense was as second nature to me as it would have been for a wife. I aimed the gun at Harrison’s head and advanced just in time to hear their tense exchange: Ash’s plea, and Harrison’s creepily concentrated denial.

  “Oh, I assure you, I do want to do this,” he hissed. “Very, very much.”

  “But really, really don’t,” I interjected firmly.

  Harrison whirled, and that moment—that failure of judgment on his part—was all Ash needed to come back into the game. He swung an arm down over Harrison’s still-stiff, still-unsteady grip, swinging the line of fire away from me and down onto the fine grit of this Las Cruces gas station. He didn’t even have a chance to fire it once before Ash brought up a knee into Harrison’s elbow, shocking the man into opening his fingers and allowing the gun to fall to the ground. We were lucky it did not discharge, and I descended, scooping it up, again by second nature.

  Ash, significantly more muscular than Agent Harrison, looped his arm around Harrison’s scrawny neck, forcing his windpipe to close in the crook of Ash’s elbow. The man turned bright pink, then deep red, then purple, and then, he slumped bonelessly in Ash’s arms…all without making a sound.

  I realized, as the endorphins swelled and then flowed through me, that my heart was hammering out of control. That moment—everything had been moving in slow motion, and everything had seemed so natural, so animal and fluid…but now that I had just two seconds worth of distance from it, I felt human again. Fumbling. Uncertain. Terrified.

  “What do we do?” I half-shrilled, half-demanded. I’d never disarmed a federal agent before! Oh, god, I was going to go to jail with Ash. I’d never even pointed a gun at another person before! I had been shot, but that’d been an accident, and it’d only been in the leg, and I’d been drunk at the time, so it hadn’t even really affected me mentally…

  “Do you have any rope?” Ash asked. By comparison, his tone was steely and determined, as if he had done this before.

  “Yeah, Ash, I always carry rope in my backpack!” I howled sarcastically. “It’s so light and convenient for abductions!”

  Ash shot arrows at me with his eyes. “You’re not helping, Izz. What do you have in your backpack?” he hissed.


  I racked my brain. “Uh, uh,” I murmured, eyes scanning the ground as if it had the answer splayed there in the dirt. “Batteries…a flashlight…water bottle…that emergency—” My eyes flew wide as I stumbled across the perfect resource: the emergency blanket. It was plush, but also flimsy, and easily torn or cut. And what was a blanket, really, but one long sheath of rope, all knitted together, right? “That emergency blanket! We slept on it at the nature center!”

  “Go get it and bring it into the men’s room,” Ash instructed, pulling the unconscious Harrison backward through the swinging door. I caught a flash of grimy tile and urinal before the door clapped shut behind them, and I whirled, rushing back to the bike for my bag. As I passed the glass storefront on the other side of the building, I glanced inside and saw a disinterested teenager leafing through a celebrity magazine at the counter.

  I galloped to the bike, extracted my bag from where it dangled by handlebars, and rooted inside for the blanket. Unraveling the tight bundle of dark red imitation feather down and microfiber, I bolted back to the men’s room. This time, I didn’t bother to glance into the gas station. I knew no one was looking.

  I pushed open the men’s room door and immediately recoiled at the odor of piss within. “Argh!” I cried, holding the blanket up to my face. “How can you stand to be on this floor?”

  Ash cradled the unconscious Harrison with surprising gentleness. The boy really was unpredictable, and not just in the bad ways.

  “Stretch out that blanket, or I’ll lick this floor right now,” Ash commanded, opening one arm to stick his hand down into his boot. A moment later, as I held the fabric taut for him, he produced and opened a switchblade, running it along the seam and tearing the blanket into several long strips. “Perfect,” he breathed. “Now tie the ankles—tight—and I’ll get the wrists behind his back.”