Chapter 14 Jasmine
JASMINE
Everything moved in snippets. There was cold air that rushed over my body before something pricked my upper arm. I tried to whip my head up and figure out what in the hell happened. Did I need to fight again? Did I need to run?
I felt groggy.
Exhausted.
Bone-dead tired.
I was out like a light within seconds.
I wasn’t sure how long I was out, but when my eyes fluttered open, I felt groggy and disoriented.
It was still dark, though, so I couldn’t have been out for long.
Unless a light was off. For a moment, for just a split second before everything came rushing back, things were okay.
Life was grand, my plans were in motion, and it was time for me to get to work.
“Welcome back to the land of the living.”
I flinched as Ghost’s voice destroyed that reality, however. I gasped as I sat up, my head on a swivel before the world tilted around me.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Easy there, Jaz,” Ghost said as I felt pressure on my shoulders, leaning me back down toward the bed. “Your head is still sensitive. You’ve got some stitches. You need to rest.”
“Huh?” I groaned out.
I felt a blanket settling over me before there was pressure at my sides.
Like I was being tucked in.
“Doc got you all cleaned up,” Ghost said before I heard something sliding across a surface.
There were so many sounds that I didn’t recognize.
I hated it. “The bottoms of your feet will take a few days before you can walk right. You’ve got seven stitches in your forehead.
No concussion, but your hip was partially dislocated.
Doc got it popped back in. Said it’ll be sore for a few days, but you’ll be fine. ”
It was so much information, and not nearly the information I wanted. My voice was heavy with sleep. “Do you always sneak up on people?”
“Yes.”
I scoffed and shook my head, but even that movement ached.
“Seriously, just rest. Doc says you need very little movement for the next couple of days,” he said.
“Who’s Doc?” I rasped out.
“Our doctor.”
“Who’s ‘our’?”
“The crew.”
Crew.
What crew?
What the hell was this man talking about?
The confusion must have been written all over my face, because I felt his hand take mine, all leather gloves and tips of his fingers, before he spoke again.
“I’m part of a club here in Redd Valley.
The Iron Battalion MC. We sort of watch over our town.
Make it our mission to make sure everyone is all right. ”
“Like Sons of Anarchy?” I croaked out.
“Not at all like that, but the basic jist is the same.”
“So you’re in a gang,” I said, my voice slowly growing stronger.
“No,” he said almost immediately. “We aren’t a gang. We don’t run drugs. We don’t harm others. We have our businesses. We protect what’s ours. We look out for our community.”
I furrowed my brow softly. “You have a business?”
“I run the local bar in town.”
“Oh.”
Slowly, I managed to peel my eyes open. The world tilted a bit, but the deeper I breathed, the better that got. I felt his finger slowly sliding against the skin on the top of my hand. I squeezed his hand for a moment, and he squeezed back.
“Are you hungry?” Ghost asked. “Doc says you should be good to eat.”
My eyes flitted around, trying to get my bearings.
My eyes passed by a window, but even with the curtains drawn, I saw it was still dark.
Okay, same night. Unless I’d been out for twenty-four hours.
I tried searching for a clock on the wall or something.
Anything to tell me what time it was. But when I turned my head a bit, I found a desk perched in the corner with a bunch of televisions mounted to the wall.
“Why do you need so many TVs?” I asked.
He didn’t even look over his shoulder. He simply answered. “They’re not TVs.”
“What are they, then?”
“Don’t ask questions you’re not ready for, Jaz.”
That was the second time he called me that. Jaz. No one called me that. Why did he call me that? I didn’t like the sound of that at all. Not the ‘Jaz’ thing. That was fine. I didn’t mind that, I don’t think. It was the televisions.
Why was that his reaction to the televisions?
I stared at him for a while. He stared right back. I hoped he’d just… volunteer the information. I didn’t have the energy to go back and forth with someone. But when he didn’t respond, like every other time in my life, I accepted defeat.
Eventually I found my voice again. “Why are you following me?”
He didn’t hesitate. “You have information on the company that we believe is helping to supply this trafficking ring in some way.”
I blinked. “What?”
He scooted what I realized was a chair he was sitting in a bit closer to the bed, but he didn’t release my hand. “The law firm you work for is working with this sex trafficking ring.”
I scoffed. “That’s insane, you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I just work for—”
“Jasmine, listen to me. My crew and I have circumstantial proof that the law office you work for may be in cahoots with the ring pushing into our town. To what end, we aren’t sure, but we know the two are connected. We could prove to you right now.”
I furrowed my brow. “Cahoots? What are we in, some kind of murder mystery from the seventies?”
His chuckle ignited his eyes, and I hated how warm the sound was. I hated how it shivered down my spine and slithered through my veins like morphine.
His next set of words, however, were a cold dash of water on that warmth. “My crew tasked me with getting close to someone in your place of work to see if we could find any sort of physical proof of the connection between the women that we know are being taken and your law office.”
I just stared at him. The first rule of law was that if someone could say something over and over again, phrasing it differently but never changing their story, it was worth listening to.
My brain kept screaming at me that this wasn’t happening.
That this was all a dream. That I was still on my couch, fielding text messages from my boss about…
“The meeting,” I whispered softly. Ghost didn’t say anything as my eyes focused back on him, and my voice grew in strength. “I was supposed to be heading to a meeting at the firm when I was taken.”
He just slowly nodded his head.
I searched his intensive green eyes. “You don’t seem shocked.”
He just shook his head.
I quirked an eyebrow. All right, I’d bite. “What kind of circumstantial proof do you have?”
He scooted to the edge of his chair before taking both of his hands and holding just my one.
Like he was scared I’d take flight, and he’d never see me again.
“Do you know why your law firm would buy up small businesses here in Redd Valley?”
I furrowed my brow deeply. “What?”
“We have financial records that state that they’re using a shell company that traces right back to them. They’re buying up businesses around ours in Redd Valley.”
I blinked. “What does that have to do with what’s happening now?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” he said as he finally moved from the chair and perched on the edge of the bed I was lying in. “We also have a video of a vehicle that chased a woman to our doorstep, screaming and begging for her life.”
My eyes widened. “You what?”
Ghost just nodded. “When she was chased onto our doorstep a few days ago, I took off after the vehicle. And even on my bike, which is modded out, I couldn’t catch up to that vehicle.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it was apparently important. “Okay…?”
He read me like a book. “My bike isn’t street legal. I can push it to close to a buck-ninety, if I need to. And I couldn’t catch up.”
My eyes widened.
Ah.
All right, very important.
“So, I took out my phone and took some video. Gave it to our tech specialist, Ranger. And guess what we found?”
I swallowed hard. “What?”
“Your firm’s logo is on that vehicle.”
I felt my face blanche.
“Your firm’s logo was also on the side of the vehicle that I found to be stalking you.”
The world around me muffled. Even my own voice sounded muffled as I spoke. “You’re lying.”
“I can show you.”
I spoke before my rational mind had time to think. “Let me see.”
“Ranger!” he bellowed. “Get in here with your laptop! She wants to see!”
I flinched at the way he yelled, but I jolted when his door whipped open.
There stood a man with long hair, a beard, and a bright smile, balancing a laptop in his grizzled hands.
His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows.
His forearms were so hairy. I mean, Bigfoot hairy, you know what I mean?
Like, ‘he’s probably got hair on his back’ kind of hairy.
I watched as the man walked over and settled a laptop onto my lap. “Just press the space bar when you’re ready.”
My trembling fingers hovered over it for a while before I finally had the courage to tap it.
And what I saw made my stomach drop into my throbbing toes.
“Oh my God,” I said breathlessly.
The logo. It was on the side of that vehicle.
I knew who that car belonged to.
When the video was over, Ghost reached out and closed the laptop. “Have you ever seen those vehicles before?”
I scoffed as I looked over at the masked man. “That particular car belongs to one of our biggest clients. I see those cars all the time.”
Ranger, the man with the laptop, spoke. “How do you know it belongs to your client?”
I looked over at the bearded man with long hair.
“Inside of some contracts for some of our bigger clients, my firm makes them put the logo on specific parts of the car. Sort of an, ‘I scratch your back, you scratch mine’ sort of deal. It’s one of their advertisement clauses, but most clients just choose to purchase a new vehicle instead of using one of the ones they already own.
Wherever the logo is, that designates how high on the list the client is. ”
“You mean, how much money they spend with the firm,” Ghost said.