Chapter 22 – Ava Jade #2
I already knew enough about him to have dismissed him as any sort of threat, but judging by the drawing, the ratty old booster in the backseat, and the wedding band on his ring finger, I doubly knew he wasn’t going to fuck around.
Not if he was a good husband. Not if he was a good father.
Not if he wanted to go home to his family.
“Just keep driving,” I replied, the leather glove on my left hand creaking as I gripped the blade tighter. How I’d missed them. They were faded black, well worn, and fitted to every curve and knuckle of my hands like a second skin. “We’re almost there.”
Mr. Hughes began to shake as we passed the dead-end sign and kept on going.
“Please,” he said, the word a breathy plea. “I have a family. You...you don’t have to do this.”
I rolled my eyes. Fucking yawn.
“Park.”
He did.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I told him, slipping the faded gray bag onto my lap. “I’m going to take this, and you are going to forget that you saw me. You’re going to say it was stolen out of your car. I’m sure your insurance will cover it.”
He swallowed again, eyes shifting to the gray bag on my lap like he might make a play for it.
Try it, fucker.
Mr. Hughes didn’t answer me, a knot forming between his brows.
“I’d hate for anything to happen to Bethany.”
His head snapped up and a fire lit in his eyes. I’d struck a nerve. Good.
“I know where you work, Jordan Hughes. I know where you live. I know where you like to park and jerk off to amateur porn before going home to your wife. I know where darling Bethany goes to school.”
His lips parted, a raw form of terror taking over his features. My thighs clenched, and I ground my teeth, a rush of power pulsing through my veins.
“Do we understand each other?” I asked after a second.
Hughes nodded and I flipped my blade away from his ribcage and lifted myself in the seat, using my full body weight to drive his face into the steering wheel.
His sharp intake of breath was the only sound before a sharp blare of the horn.
Then he was out. His body sagging against the wheel, arms hanging down.
The engine revved as his foot hammered down on the accelerator and I quickly shut off the engine and nudged his leg off the gas.
I slipped my blade away and unzipped the cash bag, flipping through the stacks of cash. They were nearly organized in bundles of fives, tens, twenties, fifties, and hundreds.
The smaller bills would be coming back to Briar Hall with me. The larger ones would be my bet.
I judged the sizes of the stacks, quickly tumbling through the bills for a rough count. About seven grand in larger bills.
I fucking hoped that would be enough.
“Thanks.”
I gave Mr. Hughes a gentle pat on his arm and slid the money into the inside pockets of my oversized jacket.
It cost me thirty bucks at the small Thorn Valley thrift shop, but it held all the cash easily.
I’d find a place to stuff it and two of my three blades once I got closer to Sanctum.
They’d undoubtedly be doing pat downs before entry, and I didn’t want to be caught with big ass wads of small bills and knives.
I opened the door and stepped out into comparably chilly air, breathing it in to erase the lingering tang of his fear and stress-sweat clogging my nostrils.
“Here,” I offered, digging a few tens out of the stack and tossing them onto the booster in the backseat. “Buy your kid a better booster seat, asshole.”
Sanctum.
Not exactly a covert name for a pub owned by the Saints of Thorn Valley. But then again, I didn’t think they really needed the anonymity. Hell, it seemed they strived for the opposite.
I was sure it helped officer Vick’s pals know exactly who not to mess with. Where not to step foot.
It didn’t look like all that much on the outside. A heritage building at the edge of the strip, taking up the full corner lot. Three levels. Well, if you knew about the basement, anyway.
On the top floor, cherry red curtains hung in the windows, backlit with diffused light.
I’d heard talk that there was a brothel of sorts up there, but hadn’t confirmed it just yet.
Couldn’t go asking too many questions of the locals, especially when they were so clearly as enamored with their Saintly St. Crow and his merry band of misfits as they were with themselves.
I bypassed the burgundy painted front entry of the pub and went around the side of the building to the nondescript black service door near the parking lot behind the bar.
I felt naked in the skin-tight black dress I wore after getting rid of my larger jacket and the rest of the cash. But the long sleeve little number was easy to move in, made the girls look killer, and hopefully, would help me blend in. I knocked. Waited.
The door opened three seconds later and the burly bouncer gave me a once over.
It was five to eleven now. I knew I wasn’t too late, but by the look on his face, he was going to turn me away.
“I think you’re in the wrong place, sweetheart.”
He began to close the door.
I tugged the cash from my thrifted designer purse and thrust out a palm to stop him.
He eyed the cash. “Don’t call me sweetheart,” I deadpanned. “You want my money or not?”
“Fighter?” he asked, his shoulders tensing as he frowned at me.
“Rook,” I replied. I didn’t even have to know a goddamned thing about his opponent to know where my money would be safest. If I could double it. The More the better.
But it still physically wounded me as Mr. Bouncer ushered me into the narrow space at the top of a set of stairs going down and took the wad of cash from my hands to feed it into a counter.
When it was done eating my spoils, he stuffed it into an envelope and wrote the amount on the front. “Name,” he barked gruffly.
“AJ,” I replied on a whim, kicking myself when it was too late to take it back.
I had a cycle of names I usually used. All variations of Evangeline.
That name had so many short form variations.
Eve, Eva, Evie, Vanna, Angie, Lina, Gilly, the list went on and on.
Made it easier to remember and if I forgot I could just say Evangeline and they would connect the dots themselves. Voila.
But AJ? Fucking, really?
I groaned inwardly, telling myself that AJ could stand for any number of things while mentally kicking myself.
He added the name beneath the amount and sealed the envelope before prying open a metal drop shoot in the wall and chucking it in.
The shhhhh of the paper sliding down the metal shaft made a weight settle in my belly.
Bye-bye, my sweets, I’ll be seeing you and your cousins very soon, I promised each bill.
The bouncer looked me up and down, judging my ability to hide a weapon somehow beneath the skin-tight dress I was wearing. The heels, the ones Becca lent me the night at the docks, were strappy and wouldn’t conceal anything, either.
“Spread,” the bouncer decided, and I heard a few cheers erupt from deep below. I could hear the faint thud of music, too, but it was all so muffled up here, they must have invested a small fortune in soundproofing.
I lifted my arms and spread my legs as the guy completed a very thorough search.
Above his head, I noted the blinking red light of a surveillance camera set into a nook on the ceiling.
I wondered if they already knew I was here.
I held no illusions that this disguise would fool the Crows, but if I managed to stay in the choked crowds of people I assumed would be surrounding the ring, I may skate by unnoticed.
“About finished?” I asked the burly fucker as his fingers trailed up my left thigh, hedging below the hem of my skirt. Another inch and he’d know exactly what I was hiding down there.
He frowned, but released me, snatching my small purse to look inside that, too. He grunted as he stepped out of my way and thrust the bag back at me.
I had a fake ID prepared, but it seemed my money was good enough to neglect the need for one even though I could smell the strong tang of mixed spirits and beer below.
“Good luck,” he barked as I took the first step down into the bowels of Sanctum. I heard the deadbolt slide shut behind me and my heart skipped a beat, mouth going dry.
This was going to be one interesting night.