“And how do you propose we do that?”
“I’m gonna go talk to the guys we ditched.”
Her brows knitted together as she waited for him to finish. When he didn’t… “I’m sorry, I don’t get it. What’s the punch line?”
“No punch line.”
“Irish, after what we pulled last night, you’ll be as good as dead. Besides, how would you even get to them? We have no idea where they are.”
“Don’t have to. I’ll go to your apartment. They’ll come to me.”
“And then what? Ask them to pretty please tell their boss not to come after me anymore?”
“You don’t think it’ll work?”
Kat’s eyes bugged out of her head. Was he effing seri—
A slow grin lifted one side of his mouth as he continued to work on his bike. He was teasing her again. Despite the fact that the subject matter was nothing to joke about, a small dose of giddy spread through her.
“Jerk,” she said as she punched him in the arm. Or what appeared to be an arm but actually felt like a two-by-four. He hadn’t even tightened up in defense, he was that solid. She’d never seen him have to throw punches at the bar like Xander sometimes did, but she couldn’t imagine taking a hit from him. He might not be Incredible Hulk bulky, but the guy was all defined muscle and controlled power.
“Sorry.” He gave her a smirk. “The look on your face was totally worth it, though.”
“Glad I could oblige,” she said wryly. “Seriously, Irish. What’s the plan?”
“Not much of a planner. Guess I’ll see what comes to me when I get there.”
“When we get there. I’m not letting you go there alone. They’re here because of me.”
“Exactly. Which is why you’re gonna stay here. There anything I should know before I meet these goons?”
“Like what?”
“Like anything you may have left out of the story? If I’m gonna be on a level playing field with them, I can’t have any surprises, Kat.”
She shook her head. “It’s just like I said. Lenny gambled Sicoli’s money away and now he wants it back.”
“Okay, then,” he said, grabbing a not-so-clean rag to wipe the grease from his hands. “By the end of the night, we should know where we stand.”
Kat swallowed hard and took a deep breath to try and settle her nerves. At the end of the night, if Irish was still standing at all, she’d consider it a success.
If he wasn’t, it would be her fault and she’d never forgive herself for endangering the only man to have ever shown her any compassion.
“Irish…” Her throat constricted, and the words wouldn’t come.
“Hey,” he said softly, leaning forward with his elbows braced on his knees. “Everything’s gonna be fine. Don’t go worrying about me, okay? I got this.”
She nodded and prayed to God he was right.
Chapter Seven
Aiden rolled up in front of the tattoo shop below Kat’s apartment and killed the engine on the GSXR. He glanced around for signs of the guys who’d been tailing her the night before, but he didn’t find any.
He’d give it a few minutes and see if they wanted to approach him on the street. It’d be better for him if they did. It was only eleven, so the tattoo joint was still open for business, and with those gigantic windows and the street lamp directly above him, it’d be hard for anyone to miss a guy getting beat with bats.
Setting the kickstand, he got off the bike and wished like hell he wasn’t wearing his snug leather riding jacket and gloves. They were suffocating him in this weather, but if these guys were from the East Coast and knew anything about the fighting world, they could recognize his tattoos and make him.
The last thing he needed was his past colliding with Kat’s present. At least he didn’t need the jacket zipped, since his shirt covered up everything on his chest.
He pulled off his helmet and hung it on the throttle handle, then took out a cigarette from the half-crushed pack in his jacket pocket. Lighting his smoke, Aiden leaned back on the bike, ankles and arms crossed, looking for all the world like he wasn’t about to step into the lion’s den with steaks tied around his neck.
Kat had done her best to tag along, but there was no way in hell he’d hand her over on a silver platter to these assholes. As long as she was somewhere they couldn’t find her until he could figure a way out of this mess, she’d be safe. She’d taken consolation in telling him where she kept her gun and making him promise to use it for protection.
Aiden took a deep drag on the cigarette and searched the surrounding area again as he thought about that afternoon. Keeping his distance from Kat was proving damn near impossible. In the beginning, he at least had the boyfriend standing between them and that almost hadn’t stopped him from kissing her in the kitchen. But then she’d told him she had no attachments, and it took everything he had not to pick her up and haul her off to his room. He’d fantasized about her for weeks, so the news of her single status had flipped his moral traffic light from red to green in an instant.
He shook his head as he dropped his smoke to the ground and crushed it under his heel. The best thing for both of them would be to get these goons off her back and get her to her sister so that he and she could part ways. Then she’d be safe from sharks like Sicoli, not to mention riptides like him who would suck her under the surface faster than she could swim to shore.
“Sooner I deal with these assholes, the better,” he muttered to himself as he pushed off his bike. Taking one last look around and seeing nothing out of the ordinary, Aiden headed into the alley between the tattoo joint and voodoo jewelry shop to the door that led up to Kat’s apartment.
He had no plan other than to see how serious these guys were. He needed to know how much they wanted and the latest they’d take it. If he could put them off for at least another week, then Jax could wire the money.
Using Kat’s key, he opened the alley door and walked up the dimly lit stairwell. At the top were two apartments. Kat’s on the left and another on the right, which sat over a shoe repair store.
In other words, nothing like a rowdy bar that would disguise any noise coming from across the hall. For small town cops, answering a call for “gunshots fired” would make them cream their department-issued polyester pants. They’d have the cops crawling up their asses so fast they’d have friction burns.
Aiden took a deep breath, cracked his neck, then his knuckles, and let himself into Kat’s apartment. She’d given him the layout so he had a basic idea of where things were in case he needed to know in a lights-out brawl kind of situation, but when he closed the door behind him and flipped the switch, the lights came on without a problem.
The problem was the two men standing in the center of the room holding guns with suppressors. Damn.
“Oh, good, you’re already here,” Aiden shot off. “I was worried I’d have to send smoke signals or something. By the way, how’s the Caddy? Sounded like you maybe scratched the paint.”
The goons glanced at each other, communicating in some sort of telepathic mob language, then turned their attention back on him. Goon One narrowed his eyes, giving him a strong resemblance to Christopher Walken. “Let’s get down to business, shall we?”
Whoa. The guy even sounded like Walken. Aiden half expected the guy to demand “more cowbell.” Aaaaand now he had to use every ounce of control he possessed not to laugh out loud.
“My name is Sully and my associate here is Vinnie. And you are?”
Aiden arched a brow. “None of your fucking business.”
“I disagree if you’re here on the girl’s behalf. However”—Sully gestured with a roll of his hands, the barrel of the gun drawing small circles in the air—“if you’re not, then you’re absolutely right; who you are doesn’t matter.”
The one called Vinnie pulled back on the slide of his gun, chambering a round, and aimed it between Aiden’s eyes.
“Smith. John Smith.”
Sully offered a smil
e a cat would flash to a caged canary. “Mr. Smith, as you may or may not already know, we’ve been hired by Mr. Sicoli to collect a debt owed to him.”
“Hired? You don’t work for him?” If not, their loyalty was more likely to themselves than to Sicoli. Aiden had a chunk of winnings still in a savings account back home. Maybe he could pay them to forget about Kat and tell Sicoli they’d killed her.
Sully spoke with a tinge of annoyance. “I know what you’re thinking, Mr. Smith, and the answer is no. We might only be contracted to go after runners, but Mr. Sicoli pays us handsomely for our loyalty. Plus, we get half of whatever money we collect on top of our regular fees, which is why we’re more patient than your average collectors.”
Fuck. There went that plan. At least he’d had the presence of mind to instruct Xan to get Kat out of town until Xander could reach Jax if Aiden didn’t make it out of this meeting. From the look of things, he’d give himself a fifty-fifty chance at this point. Not great odds.
Aiden planted his feet shoulder-width apart and kept his arms loose by his sides. Without the aid of Kat’s gun, the only thing he had going for him was his fighting skills. “What happens if you can’t collect?”
A sadistic glint lit up Vinnie’s eyes. The kind that said, I’ve tortured living things since kindergarten and never lost an ounce of sleep. “Why don’t you ask Lenny Marx? Oh wait, you can’t.”
Sully elaborated. “Our orders are to come back with either the money or proof of death. After meeting with Mr. Marx in prison, we determined he had no means of getting us the money. Soon after, he met with an unfortunate accident.”
If that wasn’t a bluff, then these guys were the real deal, and any hopes he’d carried for bargaining his way out were a waste of energy. Though he hadn’t wished death on the guy, he couldn’t deny a small part of him was glad Kat’s ex wouldn’t be coming after her in the future.
That is, if he could ensure she even had a future.
“So then it should be over. The girl doesn’t have anything to do with it. Marx was the one who borrowed the money from Sicoli, not her.”
Vinnie barked out a laugh. “Is that what she told you?”
“Marx didn’t borrow money,” Sully added. Unbuttoning his suit coat, he sat on Kat’s futon and rested his gun arm on the back of the couch. “He was contracted as a distributor for the crystal meth division of the syndicate. He moved the product but never brought in the earnings. Then he and the girl skipped town.”
“Which signed his death warrant,” Vinnie piped in with a wry grin. “Sicoli uses contracts. No matter what you sign on for, you owe him one of two things: completion of your job or your life. Marx knew the score.”
“So now you two either do your job or he has you killed, too, is that right?”
Sully shrugged a shoulder. “It’s how he operates with everyone. We don’t take it personally.”
“Good for you,” Aiden drawled. “I still don’t see what the hell any of that has to do with the girl.”
“Considering her name is on the contract, it has everything to do with her.”
Aiden’s blood ran cold. “I don’t believe you.”
“Not that we owe you proof,” Sully said as he motioned to his partner, “but see for yourself.” Vinnie pulled a folded piece of paper from his back pocket and handed it to Aiden.
Unlike most contracts that had multiple pages of language you couldn’t understand without an attorney dumbing it down for you, this was a single page of pretty cut-and-dry terms. And at the bottom, right under Lenny’s, was Kat’s signature.
Aiden felt the cold fingers of betrayal close around his neck like a noose choking the air from his lungs. The seemingly innocent woman he’d been protecting all this time was no better than a common drug dealer. Like Lenny. Like Janey’s scumbag boyfriend. Someone who pushed narcotics on kids desperate to fit in or who want to rebel, who then end up dragged into the sordid life of a never-ending addiction with little hope of escape.
Goddamn it!
Aiden took a cleansing breath and screwed his fucking head on straight. What Kat was or wasn’t had no bearing on his role in this mess. He promised Jax he’d keep her safe, and he aimed to keep that promise.
Besides, no matter what she’d done in the past, she didn’t deserve to die. And he couldn’t live with the blood of another girl’s death on his hands.
“Don’t look so shocked, pal,” Vinnie snickered. “Just because a bitch is prettier than the other whores on the corner don’t mean she don’t spread her legs just the same.” Laughing, he turned his head to share in the moment with the only other man in the room who might find him funny.
Aiden’s eyes narrowed on the bastard. Inattention, even a split second, was a point of weakness, and it was all the opening he needed.
Rage and betrayal flooded his vision and melted the chains on the part of him he’d kept leashed for the last five years: his darker half. Aiden went for a flying arm bar. He jumped into the air, wrapping his legs around Vinnie’s outstretched arm and dragged him to the ground. The gun went off, but the shot went wild from being yanked around. Then, with the thug’s arm held tightly between Aiden’s thighs, Aiden pulled down on the limb until just before the breaking point. Vinnie howled and released the weapon, and a second later Aiden had it pressed against Vinnie’s temple.
“I’d stop there if I were you, Mr. Smith.”
Aiden froze and bit back a curse. He’d let his anger do his thinking and acted without looking at the bigger picture, which was that Vinnie wasn’t the only guy in the room with a fucking gun.
Realizing they once again had control, Vinnie took back his gun, stood up, and pistol-whipped Aiden across the face. His head snapped to the side and pain lanced from his mouth that bore a hole straight to his brain. Aiden tested the severity of his split lower lip with his tongue.
Tasting the coppery tang of his own blood only fed the animal inside him more, but as he got to his feet, he tamped down the ferocious instinct to do anything other than stand and wait.
Sully tsked his disappointment like he would to a naughty toddler. “Didn’t think that one through, did you, Mr. Smith? I should also warn you that if we can’t collect the debt in full, we have special orders to bring the girl back to Mr. Sicoli.”
A barely contained fury rolled through Aiden’s muscles. “What the hell does he want with her?”
“Well, even though most of his business deals in the pharmaceutical side of things—”
Aiden scoffed in disgust. That was one way of saying the man made money from killing people with drugs.
“—he occasionally dabbles in the skin trade, and clients who come from places where a redhead’s coloring is considered rare and exotic are willing to pay at least double the normal price. Unfortunately, we don’t get a percentage of that cut, so we’d prefer to bring in the money.”
Oh, Jesus Christ… The man wanted her for sex trafficking. She’d be sold to the highest bidder for whatever the depraved mind wanted. She’d be kept drugged and dependent on her owner, and her body would be used in the worst ways.
Aiden suddenly felt violently ill. He clutched his stomach as it rolled, and he stepped back a few steps until he could lean against the kitchen counter. Images of Kat naked and beaten and high out of her mind as some guy raped her churned the bile in his gut. He wanted to throw up, but he refused to give them the satisfaction.
Sully checked the flashy gold watch on his wrist then leveled him with a glare. “I’m usually a very patient man, but I’m growing tired of this shithole town. So tell me, Mr. Smith, does she have the money or do we reunite her with her former employer?”
He had to come up with a solution and fast. Too bad he wasn’t still fighting. He’d have easily gotten her the money she needed with one event.
Holy shit, that’s it. A plan started to formulate. “What if I can get you the money?”
Sully raised an eyebrow. “Can you?”
“It’ll take me a few weeks to get
it, but yeah, I can.”
Vinnie’s lip curled up in a canine-like snarl. “Yeah, right. Where’ve we heard that before? No dice, asshole.”
“You said yourself you’d rather have the money, right? If you give me a few weeks, I can get you double what she owes.”
“You can get us forty grand?” Sully asked suspiciously.
Aiden nodded. “Forty. But I have a condition I want met.”
A chuckle from the leader. “You’re not exactly in the position to make demands.”
“You’re right about that, but you’re not on a deadline. And if you give Sicoli the twenty Gs, he’ll give you half of that, plus you’ll have the other twenty I’m giving you. So you each walk away with fifteen grand plus whatever you normally get paid. I’d say that’s not a bad deal for sitting around on your asses and waiting for it.”
Vinnie looked confused from all the numbers being thrown around, but Sully was quiet and contemplative. Aiden stood his ground and never broke eye contact. He refused to let them see him sweat. They were like rabid dogs. Smelling fear would cause them to attack.
“Let’s hear these conditions of yours and then I’ll decide if this is worth my time,” Sully said, crossing an ankle over the opposite knee.
“I want you to let her think I’ve convinced you to wait on Lenny getting out of jail. That means stop tailing her and let her come back to her apartment.”
“Sure, no problem,” Vinnie jeered. “How ’bout we book her a nice day at the spa, too, while we’re at it?”
Just as Aiden was about to shoot off at the mouth, Sully beat him to it. “Shut the fuck up, Vinnie. Is that all, Mr. Smith? You want her to think she’s no longer in danger?”
“That’s it. I don’t want her to see you, smell you, or know you exist.”