Chapter 2
Ronnie stood in the convenience store parking lot and stared at the man she'd mistaken for her skip.
Damn, he was fine. And he reminded her of the actor who played her fictional man crush.
He didn’t look just like him, but there was enough there to make the connection, at least in her mind.
Where else mattered anyway? She wished for a moment that she hadn’t met him on the job.
There was no way he’d agree to go out with her after she accused him of skipping out on a bail that wasn’t even his.
She'd been doing this for a few years now and never, not once, had someone who actually knew her skip offered to help her find them.
She understood it. Most of them had the mindset that they weren’t going to be the rat. They didn’t see it from the perspective of protecting society at large, only that they couldn’t betray the person they knew, even if they knew that person was guilty.
Before getting into this job, she thought that the people with the most to lose, the parents or spouses who had put the house up to guarantee that their loved one would show up for court, would be more helpful. After all, they had the most to lose if they didn’t show up for court.
Then again, until today, she hadn't been given someone with a name quite so close as the man in front of her and her skip. They even looked alike.
“You said you’re related to this guy and you’re still willing to help me?
" She looked back up at him and noted how he resembled the photo she'd been given, but now that she looked more closely, she saw more differences than similarities. Their eyes were both blue, but the picture in her file showed cloudy, pale blue eyes while the ones staring back at her were bright. Bluer than the sky behind him. Something in her wanted to find a name for the color. Even as she thought it, she knew it was stupid. Most likely he was trying to find out where she was looking for this Jim Bob, then he’d let her skip know so he wouldn’t be wherever she was looking.
He nodded. “Yeah, I’ll help.” The man in front of her shook his head. “I don’t know what Jim Bob has gotten into, but it’s not good. I’d hate for his stupidity to get someone killed, or at least someone other than him.”
Ronnie frowned. That was a little callous, but she didn’t know what had happened between the two of them to make this James to feel that way. This James? How awkward was that?
“If he goes by Jim Robert, what do you go by? Are you James? Jimmy?”
One corner of his mouth quirked upwards in a wry half-smile. “James was my grandfather, and Jimmy is my uncle. I go by Demon.”
Ronnie’s eyes went wide, and she gave him a slow blink as she tried to decide if he was serious or trying to pull something over on her. Who in their right mind would go by the name Demon?
“Yo, Demon. You good? What you think we should do with this guy?” A voice she didn’t recognize came from near the back of Demon’s truck.
She assumed whoever was speaking was a friend of the man in front of her and since they’d called him Demon, she believed that’s what he went by.
She turned to see who it was, noticing that Demon turned at the same time.
“I don’t know him,” Demon said before turning to her. “He with you?”
Ronnie resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
Two men she didn’t know, but they wore leather vests very similar to the one Demon wore, stood behind the truck.
What did they call those on Sons of Anarchy?
A cut wasn’t it? Were they all part of the same club?
She glanced over at Demon and couldn’t help but notice how much his beard resembled the one of her favorite character from the show.
Opie. She wondered how much of the rest of him would remind her of Opie.
A sound drew her attention back to the rear of Demon’s truck.
Though she couldn’t see exactly what was going on, from the looks of it, the one standing directly behind Jack had his arm twisted behind him and was pressing it upward to keep Jack from going anywhere or fighting them too hard.
She’d told him to stay in the truck, or at least out of sight while she tried to handle this the easy way first.
Jack had taken one look at Demon and determined that there was no way they’d take him easily.
She wanted to try and see if he would just come with them when she explained.
Now she was glad she hadn’t listened to Jack and tried a snatch and grab.
Now, he glared at Demon as he struggled against the man standing behind him.
She took a deep breath and let it out in a rush.
Why did Dad insist that Jack go with her on every retrieval?
“He with you?” Demon asked again. Obviously, she’d taken too long to suit him.
She glanced at Demon and found him watching her, an amused glint in his eye. She wondered briefly what they would do to Jack if she said no.
“Yeah. Unfortunately,” she muttered. “I told you to stay in the truck and I would handle this.”
“You needed my help. He could have hurt you.”
She rolled her eyes again.
“Could have yes. But I wasn’t going to trap him, I was just going to try to talk to him. Which I did. Successfully I might add, at least until you decided to take an overdose of testosterone and act like an idiot.”
“You can let him go,” Demon said. “They’re looking for my fuck up cousin, not me.
” He turned back to face her. “I’ll see if I can find out where he is, but no guarantees.
That part of my family doesn’t talk to me much.
” He stared at her a moment and she wondered what was going through his head.
After a moment he shook his head. “Give me a call in a couple days if you haven’t found him yet. I’ll let you know what I’ve found out.”
“I’ll do that,” she said.
Demon opened the truck door, she stepped back so he could get in without smacking her with the door, but she stood and watched as his friends walked away, then he started the truck and left.
“What was all that? You sure he’s not really the guy we’re after? He looked an awful lot like the picture, and he even admitted his name was James.” Jack stepped onto the walkway in front of the store and watched three motorcycles pull out onto the road behind the pickup Demon drove.
“If it is him, he’s gone to a lot of effort to fake his identity.
And if he were going to have a fake name, why would it be so close to the other, with a date of birth only a few weeks earlier?
I mean I could see having one when you’re a teenager trying to get alcohol, but then you’d be a few years older, not one month. ”
He tilted his head to one side in a gesture she’d learned meant that she had a point, but he would never say so.
She could live with that, she knew she was right.
Still, it was a delay she didn’t need, not right now.
She’d hoped this would be the James she was looking for.
She needed that money to make rent next week.