Bad Boy Criminal: The Novel Read online

  Ash cocked his head to the side, but he nodded nonetheless. Perhaps the added “You feel me?” tipped him off to the girl I used to be, but I was probably being paranoid. I tried not to let the old Izzy peek out too often. She’d been the one to get me into trouble, and the truth was that troublemakers loved the old me. It seemed we gravitated to each other.

  But that was then. And this was now. And I couldn’t have men who had been shot going into Bill and Hope’s house and introducing themselves. They’d call him an ambulance and see him spirited away, dusting their hands the entire time.

  “I’m not trying anything,” Ash reminded me, extending his arms into the universal gesture of surrender. “You pointed your gun at me, remember? I’m just lost, here. I’m lost, and I’m shot.”

  Still wary, I nodded. He definitely had a point. It was even possible that I was legally obligated to help him, and even if I wasn’t, I would, because—I had a weakness for those in need. I remembered need still, even vividly on certain lonely nights.

  “All right,” I agreed. “Come with me to the rescue shed.”

  Ash’s eyes bulged. “The rescue shed?” he prompted. “That sounds like a half-way house for reformed dogs, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “You’re not too far off base,” I told him. If he wanted to be a chooser, he’d have to stop being a beggar. “Anyway, I’ve got some supplies there that will fix you up as good as any emergency room. At least better than most veterinarians, in my humble opinion.”

  “Oh, very humble,” Ash replied.

  I shot him a look, but he followed as obediently as any animal in need of help. Dire circumstances tend to straighten out even the worst of us.

  It wasn’t much of a walk back to the main house of Turner Dairyfarm, not that we went so far. About an acre away from the main house was the rescue shed, where I kept my other strays. It was in desperate need of repairs to one side—which leaned kind of funny and had a few gaps in the woodwork—and a paint job—as its red was now practically beige, and in many places, gone altogether. But none of that was my business; this place belonged to Bill and Hope, in the end, and I was just a lucky tag-along.

  My truck, narrow and brown, was parked alongside the rescue shed, and not far from that rested my forgotten backpack and the blue jay cage, alongside the boulder I had been straddling when those bushes had rustled with Ash’s weight. As we passed it, I scooped up the cage and the pack, which wasn’t home to only a First Aid kit.

  There were needles and thread in there, too.

  “Come on inside,” I commanded, shoving open the shed door and holding it to the side for his shambling entrance. As much as he could crack wise and pretend to be casual, he was clearly in pain.

  “Please, please, tell me you’ve got something hard in here,” he sighed, collapsing without invitation onto a stool alongside my workbench. “Something like Jim Beam.”

  I smiled ruefully and shook my head at him as I rested the wound blue jay cage in front of him on the workbench. “You’re looking at doxycycline only. It’s not for pain, it’s just an antibiotic, but it will help prevent infection, which would be very painful if we don’t stop it,” I informed him, leaning toward a shallow shelf built into the wall behind me, where several small bottles were lined up in a row. When I turned back to Ash, I caught his eyes traveling the curve of my buttocks and up over the mountains and valleys of the torso. His eyes found mine again, suddenly, and I cocked my head to the side and squinted at him slightly, with a knowing yet bemused smile.

  I gave the small bottles I’d collected from my shelf a little shake and sat it in front of him.

  “How heavy are those?” he asked hopefully. These questions may have caused a real doctor to pause and reevaluate the psychology of the victim, but I didn’t bother with it. Judgment had never been my strong suit…not after everything I’d been through.

  “It’s actually for birds,” I replied shortly, offering him a small smile of commiseration. “You can buy it on Amazon.” I fished a lighter from my backpack and ignited it, then paused, the needle I had taken from my little sewing kit hovering near the flame. I looked at him over the flickering light and said, “Now, I can call you an ambulance if you want. Do you want me to call you an ambulance, or stitch you up myself, with a sewing needle sterilized by a Bic lighter, and some yellow darning thread?”

  Ash chuckled. “Honestly, I would really rather not go to the hospital,” he said. “Just get tangled up in all the red tape.”

  Hmm. If you’d been shot by an illegal hunter, wouldn’t you want to—

  “No insurance,” he went on.

  That made sense. Except, you’d think he’d still want to call the—

  Ash pulled the white t-shirt up over his head, and all thought fluttered from my mind, disbanding like dandelion seeds in the September breeze. His abdomen was trim and muscled, tenderly worked by the sun to a smoldering light caramel shade. Colorful murals sprawled over his Adonis physique. Skulls…flames…roses…snakes…all tangled around him in hot, vibrant hues.

  His eyes caught mine, and I averted my gaze. Pursing my lips and nodding, cheeks probably fuming, I dipped the needle through the finger of flame still burning in my hand. Next, I slid a spool of yellow-colored thread from the front pocket of my backpack and unraveled a length to spear the eye of the needle.

  “Wish I had something a little darker,” I told him, pulling my own stool closer to his.

  He was busy unscrewing the doxycycline and dumping it into his mouth like Nerds.

  I winced. “You should’ve taken two,” I told him. “I crush and divide those pills for the birds. It’s still—real medicine.”

  “I think it’ll be all right. You got anything to drink with this?”

  I dug a bottle of water from my backpack and he killed the last of it. I settled across from him…

  …and found that my thigh would brush against his every time I leaned forward, but there was nothing I could do about it in retrospect. Nothing that wouldn’t make me look like some kind of high school girl; who cared if our knees bumped? Or if, whenever I had to lean forward, the interior of one of my thighs would graze the interior of one of his?

  I cleared my throat. Focus. And leaned over his kind of perfect body. “This is a very clean wound for a hunting rifle,” I informed him. “Honestly…” You should be a lot more messed up. But then again, who was I kidding? Did I really believe that this guy, hesitant to involve any “red tape,” with a through-and-through shoulder cap, no scatter, was actually shot by the errant bullet of a hunting rifle? “Honestly, you’re very lucky,” I finished, trying to dismiss the matter in my own mind. “This is going to sting.”

  Leaning forward, I concentrated instead on sliding the needle through his skin. I winced as I did it; I’d never stitched up a human before. To his credit, Ash didn’t shift one inch, nor did he grumble unpleasantly at the sensation.

  I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stop myself from asking the question.

  “Do you think we should call the police?” I broached. “Let them know what happened? I mean…somebody shot you.”

  Ash didn’t respond for several seconds, and I didn’t dare look away from my work to gauge his reaction. Part of me, subconsciously, might have also been unwilling to gauge his reaction. Deep down, I still knew that nothing was as it seemed, especially in the case of beautiful devils. I had actually finished the first stitch, and was breaking and knotting its tip, when Ash finally replied: “I’d really rather not, Izz.”

  I felt my heart rate kick up a notch. Most people nowadays called me Isabelle. Izz wasn’t a name I’d heard used casually in a long time. “I could talk to them for you—” I offered, finishing my knot.

  “Please.” Ash grabbed one of my hands with his own, and my eyes flashed up to meet his.

  They were so beautiful, and what I saw in their depths was impossible to communicate with nature similes or metaphors about drowning. I saw him. I saw him flashing back at me—him in
despair.

  “Okay,” I said, my chest constricted, my breath short. “Sure.”

  At this, Ash’s serious expression cracked into a smile, and a veil seemed to pass over those liquid green eyes, transforming them. They were still gorgeous, but no longer penetrable. I wasn’t quite sure who I was seeing anymore, but it wasn’t down into any core.

  “So, doc,” he said, shooting me a lopsided and rakish grin, “Am I dyin’?”

  “Not unless you give me a reason to shoot you again,” I replied, sharing in his play-act that everything was okay. I didn’t like too much confrontation and confession myself, anyway. It was easier to leave all that behind. Instead, I scooted my stool around to his backside and straddled it again, fixated now on the exit wound. It was small, but then, I’d already assessed that this was no typical “hunting” wound, hadn’t I? The smaller wound being on his back meant that he’d been shot in the back. Shot fleeing.

  Clearing my throat again, I warned him of the coming sting, and, as the needle and thread slid in and out of his skin, I said to him, “You can stay in the rescue shed tonight…if you want. But you can’t come in the main house up there. Okay? And I’ll come back and give you some leftovers from dinner later. I should go help Hope prep, for now, and—we can see how you’re feeling in the morning. Maybe I can give you a ride into town. How’s that?” This stitch was done faster than the first, and I was able to break and knot the thread quickly without his deltoid muscles gleaming softly up at me.

  “That sounds great, Isabelle,” Ash said.

  I applied some ointment to the wounds and sealed them with gauze bandaging, then stood and moved toward the door of the rescue shed; I could see that a hot, dark pink had replaced the soft orange of sunset, becoming the livid outro of deep dusk in the window. I opened the shed and saw that the sky above us directly had darkened to a gentle but rich blue. The main house was alight, and dinner would certainly be soon. I was probably too late to help with anything. I’d lost track of the time.

  When I turned to smile over my shoulder at Ash, I found that his eyes were already on me—and they had changed again. They’d softened and broken open, like a suit of armor with many cracks. “Thank you, Izzy,” he said to me.

  For a moment, I was caught there, in the embrace of his gaze, and forgot myself. Then I remembered: right, right! He had said something to me! He had thanked me!

  So I threw a quick, disconnected smile onto my face and murmured that he was welcome as I turned and hurried out the door.

  Chapter Four

  Ashton

  I couldn’t decide if I was relieved or disappointed to see her go.

  On the one hand, she herself functioned like a painkiller. Those thoughtful hazel eyes; the way her cheek naturally curved upward, as if smiling was just part of her genetic makeup; the way she had helped me when she didn’t need to—when I could feel her hesitancy to trust me. And Christ, she was right. I wouldn’t trust me, either. If I’d been anyone else, I could have seriously hurt her, or her family.

  On the other hand, the past twenty-four hours had been a whirlwind, and I was grateful for the room to breathe again.

  It had only been that morning that I’d been in a standard issue jumper, neon orange, shackled up in the back of a bus, on transfer to another penitentiary; this one would have security equipped to deal with scum like me, or so I’d been informed by the previous warden.

  Then, an accident on the road. The prison transfer bus I was in, losing control and spinning into a ditch. My MC brothers surrounding it on their Harleys, with Dom, my real brother, front an center in a beaten down truck.

  “We need Ash Carter, send him out,” my buddy Hawk bellowed.

  Then a prospect climbed into the bus, a young kid I didn’t recognized. Pointing his gun at the guards, he pushed them out.

  “Ash, get out of there,” Dom yelled.

  Slowly, I rose, realizing what was happening, grinning from ear to ear like a birthday kid who’d just been presented with his favorite toy. My MC was breaking me out. My older brother was breaking me out. I knew he’d come through, but still… This was all a little overwhelming, yet there was not time to get all sentimental.

  “Shit, bro,” I managed in a choked voice, extending my shackled hands in front of me. It’d been too long since my hands had been unbound in a field not surrounded by barbed wire fencing. “I’d hug you, but you know…” I trailed off.

  I caught a sudden motion out of the corner of my eye and heard a scream—I could’ve sworn it was a woman—

  “Dom, watch out!”

  We dropped to the ground, and I saw Hawk slamming the butt of his handgun into the back of the shooting guard’s heads, knocking him to the ground.

  I didn’t feel a thing. Just a warmth, an uncomfortable warmth, like a bee’s sting, and numbness, but that was all.

  It was only when I tried to get up that I even realized I’d been actually shot. But it was okay, I kept telling myself. It was all going to be okay. It was a hell of a lot better than being in transit to a maximum security prison for something I didn’t fucking do, wasn’t it?

  “Good news, I got the keys,” Big Red, one of my MC brothers, pronounced, throwing the keyring to us.

  Dom unshackled me and looked at my wound, muttering “Shit!” under his breath.

  “I’m a nursing student, let me help.”

  There was a woman there. A cute one too. What the hell was she doing with my MC brothers? I was about to ask this, when the pain tore through me again and I almost barfed.

  The girl gave Dom one of those looks, letting me know that she was head over heels into my brother, and I had to smile. Still, why did he bring a broad to a prison break gig?

  She inspected my wound carefully and pronounced it a “simple flesh wound,” promising me and my brother that I’d survive.

  Dom visibly relaxed at the news. “Let’s get him to the truck. Hand in there, little bro, I’ve got you,” he mumbled, helping me up into the cab.

  Then we fled the scene, heading to Dom’s warehouse. There wasn’t much time. I was hardly any safer outside of that truck than in it, and I hated to think about where they would send me if I was caught again. More maximum than maximum? That would have to be ADX Florence, home to some of the most unsavory motherfuckers you’ve ever seen.

  But the first step was just to get out of the orange jumper.

  What time had that been, then? I wondered, staring out of the rescue shed window; it was dark outside now. Isabelle must have been gone for the past hour, at least. I wondered what she was having for dinner, and if she’d really bring me some tonight. I thought of it melting in her mouth...

  As soon as we were in the warehouse, I wanted to talk to Xander, my other brother and Dom’s twin.

  Dom grudgingly handed me his cell. “He’s gonna meet up with us at the warehouse. He’s bringing some money for you, just to tide you over till we find a better hiding place.

  I pushed Xander’s name on the display.

  “Hey, big bro.” I smiled into the phone.

  “Ash? Shit, Dom did break you out, huh? I thought he was half kidding when he told me of the plan.”

  “Yeah. We’ll tell you all about it. Hey, he said you’d bring me some cash so I can disappear. I was just wondering when you were coming because I don’t feel like staying in the same place for long.”

  That much was still true. It would probably be true for the rest of my life, wouldn’t it? Would I ever be able to settle down somewhere like Turner Dairyfarm? A real home, for the real family I might have someday? Would I ever be able to spend a sunset relaxing, instead of glancing out windows, into rear view mirrors?

  Or was that all as much of a fantasy as a science fiction novel now?..

  “Cops are going to be everywhere soon…and I need to get the fuck out of here,” I’d told Xander.

  “Where are you?”

  “Dom’s warehouse…the one used by the club.”

  “Don’t you think the co
ps will look there?”

  “That’s why we need you to hurry the fuck up.”

  Xander wasn’t the kind of guy I would normally tell to “hurry the fuck up,” but he found the movement of the police motivation enough, and he arrived with a change of clothes for me and five hundred dollars in cash.

  Only a few minutes later, Jade had called. What time had that been? I wondered at the moon. Could it have really been only, what, one o’clock? Two? The moon and I both knew the truth; it only takes one breath for the trajectory of your entire life to change. From jailbird to fugitive… It wasn’t a huge step up, but I’d take it.

  Jade said she’d made good on her promise to dig deep and had discovered proof of my innocence. Her spider-like fingers, always blurring gracefully over some or other cryptic keyboard, were rat-tat-tatting in the background as we spoke. “It’s like the tattoo says: ‘These chains are strong, but so am I,’” she’d boasted. “But you’ve gotta come to me, man. You know that. I can’t travel, not with all those warrants after my ass.”

  And that meant one thing and one thing only: road trip.

  Road trip over the border. Juarez…Mexico, where Jade was currently in hiding. Ten hours, if we made good time.

  In what car? With whose money? And which fucking identification?

  I’d figure it out, I told my brothers. I’d already gotten them both with aiding and abetting—not that I had asked anyone to do that. I wasn’t looking to see them arrested with me. I would go alone. I would go alone, and I would figure it all out.

  “You’ll need more money,” they’d said. “We’ll be back in a few hours.”

  But I left on foot, with nothing but a bullet hole in my shoulder, a blade in my boot, and five hundred dollars, cash, in one pocket. I was probably still in shock at the time.

  Chapter Five