Chapter Thirteen #2
When they reached the warehouse district, Jack slowed the SUV. There was no sign of conflict as they approached—no cars, not even a trace of broken glass or blood. Like most things when it came to the ultrarich, they could afford to wipe the slate completely clean.
Jack breathed out.
Jacobson’s men would have ensured that there were no cameras recording when they brought Ava here a few hours ago. But the cameras would be recording now, and it was imperative that whoever replaced Devin did not see Jack side by side with Ava.
Jack pulled his ball cap from his pocket and jammed it on his head and then pulled on his mask.
“Are you worried I’m contagious?” Ava asked him. “I mean, no shade if you’re COVID cautious. I’ve just noticed you wearing that a lot, but not in the house.”
He didn’t grace her question with a response, just got out of the car and came around to her side, offering her a hand.
She took it, eyes sweeping up and down as if she was taking in new details, seeing something she hadn’t before. “Are all hit men such gentlemen?”
“We prefer the term contract killers,” Jack reminded her dryly. “It’s more gender inclusive.”
Her hand was warm in his. It was the first thing that made him realize his hand ached, the knuckles scraped and raw from hitting the guards he’d knocked out.
How long had it been since he just made a fist and punched somebody?
His MO was usually more removed, distant, weeks of planning followed by a single bullet.
“Let’s be quick,” he said, even though he had been the one lingering.
They found the motorcycle where he had left it, parked in a narrow gap between two long, low warehouse buildings.
By now the sun was well and truly starting to rise, and their window to leave the city was rapidly closing.
“I’ll drive the motorcycle,” Jack said. “I’ll be right behind you, and you’ll take the SUV. That way if we get—”
“Do you know how many stop signs I run?” Ava asked. “Give me the motorcycle key. I’ll draw way more attention by driving the SUV over every curb in the Pacific Northwest. Also, I’m not driving the body. It’s gonna start to stink.”
“That’s why you don’t want to drive the body?” Jack shook his head. “No, Flight Risk, I’m not handing you the key to the motorcycle so you can take off and try to fight Cale Jacobson in broad daylight again.”
“I could do that either way,” Ava said, practically pouting as he walked back to the SUV with her.
“You can’t,” Jack said. “Because I’m taking the SUV key with me. If you behave, I’ll even disable the alert so it’s not beeping at you the entire time. And then I’ll drive close enough to you to make sure it stays running.”
Ava groaned. “I hate push-to-start,” she complained. “They’re way harder to steal.”
This woman. This fucking woman.
“Stop stealing cars,” Jack told her sternly. “Now we need to go. The SUV has enough gas to make it outside the city. I’ll follow you, and you’ll stay close. Is that clear?”
“And if I decide to eliminate the competition?” Ava asked as he helped her into the driver’s seat. She groaned, pressing a hand to her ribs.
“And by competition, do you mean the person who saved your life?” Jack reached out impulsively, his hand closing over her wrist. “Drive safe, Ava. And don’t pull anything wild.”
“Okay,” she said. Too easily, which meant she was planning something, but this would have to do. “I got Ms. Rae’s phone, by the way.”
Jack shook his head. “Who aren’t you stealing from? And it seemed like Ms. Rae knew you pretty well—you’ve been going to see her there for a while now?”
“Well, she’s been my domme for . . . a while, I guess? As long as I’ve been in Portland,” Ava told him, as easily as breathing.
Most people, in Jack’s experience, were a lot more hesitant to talk about kink and the role it played in their lives, however large that role may be. But Ava shrugged her shoulders to shame as much as she dismissed fear, and Jack couldn’t tell if he respected it or feared what could happen to her.
Maybe a little bit of both.
“I think she tried to warn me,” Ava continued.
“Or threaten me? I couldn’t really tell.
But because it was one of those undercurrents—the messages under the things people say, the ones you’re just supposed to automatically know or guess—I didn’t get it, and then she left and those men came and put the cloth on my face .
. . and oh that means they did drug me! And then they dragged me to the truck, and I think I bit one of them? ”
Well, her face was going to be all over the news for yesterday’s incident, so her DNA being on one of Jacobson’s people was hardly making anything worse. But still. Biting?
“The phone could be useful,” Jack curtailed the Ava ramble. Having the assistant’s phone was going to be even more useful than having the copy of Cale Jacobson’s calendar, but they needed to go, not stand around talking about it.
And Ava needed to sleep, but that wasn’t an option now.
“Is your rental car a bust, then?” Ava asked. “What about the rental house?”
“Rule number two,” Jack said. “Always leave the house knowing you might never come back, and pack accordingly.”
“Well, I left with one Dove chocolate, some gum wrappers, and your gun,” Ava called after him. “I don’t even have a pair of underwear. Like, at all. You can’t wear underwear in this dress.”
“Just drive, Ava,” Jack called without turning back. “We have places to be.”
He had checked and double-checked and triple-checked that he still had the key to the SUV as he was walking away. Still, when he got back to the motorcycle, relief washed over him when he found he still had it.
He let her lead as they left town, but he drove slowly, cautiously, stopping fully at each stop sign so that Ava would be forced to do the same. Once they were on the highway, he drove beside her, scanning for threats as they went and ignoring her attempts to talk to him through her open window.
They stopped for gas cans and a few gallons of water once they were well outside the city, and when they finally pulled off the main highway, down a long, winding road that led deeper into the forest outside the city, Jack felt like he could finally breathe—as long as he avoided looking at the bright-eyed, red-haired mess in the driver’s seat of the SUV.
The second they stopped, Ava had lots to say. About the location, about having to pee, about his chosen career field.
And Jack’s phone had a single text from his client:
There’s been a wrinkle. We’ve encountered a second problem we need you to solve for us.
Jack was grateful for their ability to veil what they actually meant.
There was nothing quite as stupid (or as likely to make him walk away from a job) as a client who wrote, in detail, what they wanted done.
Anyone who said “I want to hire you to kill someone” over text was either a dumbass or a cop, and Jack wanted nothing to do with either.
He replied as Ava fussed at him about finding a place with a bathroom.
Our agreement was clear. Limited in its scope.
Their response was immediate, too.
We’ll triple your original payment plan. We’re in a tight spot with this wrinkle.
Jack’s finger hesitated over his phone. He needed the money. He always did. And this job had paid so well he thought it would be smooth. Simple, even.
But he’d lost the rental car, the rental property, all of it in one fell swoop, and that had been an important investment of his cash to begin with.
And this job reeked of complications, but to blow it—especially with a job as big as this one, with a price tag as high and a hit as high profile as Cale Jacobson—might mean that Jack’s reputation would be so damaged he’d never work again.
He texted back:
Tell me more about the wrinkle.
He breathed out.
“Jack!” Ava was saying his name insistently. “Don’t look at me. I’m going to go pee in the bushes.”
Considering he’d seen her naked more than once, seeing her pee seemed like an unimportant matter at this point, but Jack left that argument for a different day and turned away politely.
His phone buzzed again.
A picture this time.
Staring back at him from his phone was a woman in a red dress, her fist raised above Cale Jacobson outside that café.
The mild morning felt suddenly stifling, the air in the forest dead and still. Jack’s pulse was a drumbeat as he stared down at his phone.
His clients wanted him to kill Ava Cavalcante.