Chapter Twenty-Four
Jack looked positively ridiculous with his fake beard, but Ava had to admit it was doing something for her. Probably, if he went down on her with that scratchy beard, it would be—
“Ava.” Jack was saying her name as if she hadn’t been listening.
Which she hadn’t.
They may be fucked, they may be running for their lives and freedom, but Ava was on a boat, in spring, with a very hot man she had been having mind-blowingly good sex with. So she was going to lie under the little canopy and watch the trees go by and enjoy at least that, thank you very much.
“Was I ignoring you again?” Ava asked. “You were probably using your ‘Rules’ voice again. That one is really easy to tune out.”
“You’re a brat, Boss,” he said. “I’m going to dock the boat before we reach town, and I’m going to take out the drain plug so it sinks slowly, hopefully before anybody notices it.”
Ava winced. “Hope the owner’s got good insurance,” she said, and then her face clouded. “Are you sure we have to sink it?”
“It would be safest,” Jack said, but she could see that he was hesitating.
Staying alive in his profession must mean doing a lot of unsavory things and being pretty ruthless about taking a resource or leaving a resource—a car, a boat, a motel room, the clothes you’d woken up in, the sandwich you’d been planning to eat—at a moment’s notice.
He hadn’t mentioned the rental car she’d ruined, or the motorcycle they’d abandoned, or the SUV they’d burned in the woods. Or the van they’d blown up.
“We don’t want the cops to be able to retrace our footsteps any more than they already will,” Jack told her.
“With this much pressure on them to find you—to find us, now—they’ll be using every resource they have.
Every camera, whether or not they legally are allowed.
And I want to slow them down as much as we can. ”
“But somebody’s going to be really fucking sad when you sink their boat.
” Ava and Ari hadn’t had the money for a boat, but Ari had grown up on the water in coastal North Carolina and had been driving her family’s little fishing boat long before she’d learned to drive a car.
And this little boat reminded Ava too much of that one, the boat Ari loved like it was an old friend.
“Let’s just wipe down anything we touched and leave it somewhere it’ll be found eventually.
They won’t even know it’s us, not necessarily. ”
“You didn’t have the same feelings about any of the vehicles you or I have ruined so far,” Jack said as he steered the boat toward a flat patch of land along the river.
“Rental cars are just rental cars.” Ava waved her hands. “And insurance for corporations always takes care of them. Insurance for people is just there to fuck you over.”
“Are you ever going to tell me more than that?” Jack asked. “About why insurance, and why Cale?”
Ava stiffened, the sun beating down suddenly feeling oppressively hot. “I haven’t demanded that you tell me more about Jay,” she said. “You don’t ask me for a why. Deal?”
He was quiet, controlled, even in sleep. But he always said the same name:
Jay.
Jay, please, said in a whisper.
Jay, come back. Measured and steady but so desperate.
Jay, Jay, Jay.
Ava shivered. You probably didn’t get to a career as a hot hit man without going through something along the way. “Is this like a John Wick situation?” she asked, turning on a smile despite the way the mention of Ari, of the reason, fucked her up. “Or is that insensitive to ask?”
Jack grunted in response, not even stooping to respond. When they neared land, he jumped out, taking the rope with him, and towed the boat onto shore, where he tied it to a tree. “I still think we should sink it,” he said. “But you’re the boss.”
Ava snorted. “Damn right I am,” she said. “I’m going to remind you of that next time we fuck.”
“Oh, did you want to top?” Jack called her bluff with such merciless precision, a glint in his eyes, that Ava had to take a step back.
“Why, are you going to bottom for me?”
“Tell me what you want to do,” Jack said, his mouth twisting into a roguish little smile. “And we’ll do it. If you’re going to top me, Ava, I’ll get you a cock myself.”
Ava squirmed. He should be more of a gentleman and stop calling her bluff. “Maybe I will,” she said. “Maybe I’ll say Jack, I want to bend you over and—”
Jack’s mouth was on hers, hard and bruising, a kiss that deepened. When he stepped back, he was still grinning. “If you say it, say it like you mean it, Boss.”
Ava blushed from the base of her neck to the top of her forehead, which was an unfair genetic trait she would like to formally complain to her ancestors about.
“Fuck you,” she whispered, and kissed him again, moaning when his hand cupped the back of her neck and then slid up, tangling in her thick curls.
“Kissing you with this dumbass beard is something, though,” she added when he pulled away again.
“It’s staying on,” Jack said. “I wish I had a wig. I had a really good one once, with a man bun, and I had a very realistic tattoo, and all the descriptions centered on the man bun and tattoo, and I walked right by some police who were looking at the sketch they’d done of me, and they didn’t even look my way. ”
“That sounds like risky behavior,” Ava nagged him as he set off into the patch of trees. “Weren’t you lecturing me about risky behavior and keeping a low profile? For, like, a hundred days in a row?”
Jack reached back and took her hand, his closing over hers with such firmness that she found herself blushing again. “And I’ll lecture you about it for the next one hundred days,” Jack said.
The words left Ava feeling unexpectedly warm. There was no after this hit, but when Jack talked about the future, in that tone, Ava could almost pretend there would be. “Well,” she said. “Don’t be stupid.”
He just mmm’d at her in response.
Silence fell as they skirted farther up the shoreline, Jack shrugging his bag on like a backpack. “Do I look like a hiker who has wandered back into town?”
“No,” Ava told him. “You look like a dangerous man who is very good at fucking. Who is currently wearing a goofy-ass fake beard.”
“No respect.” Jack shook his head, but he was looking at her playfully.
“All right, we’re only a few miles from Cale’s property line—about thirty from the mansion, though, because his property is really fucking big.
And I found us a hostel just at the edge of town.
It’s cheap, and they’ll take cash. We should both keep masking up—I have extras in my bag—and you should wear a hoodie. ”
“It’s hot as balls,” Ava said, aghast.
“I imagine prison isn’t comfortable, either,” Jack said. “And I’d rather not go. Would you?”
“And you call me sassy,” Ava shot back, but when Jack stopped to retrieve hoodies and masks for both of them, she put the hoodie on.
It smelled like Jack. Pine and gunpowder and a musk that was just uniquely him.
Her heart rate slowed for the first time since she’d been blissfully hazy postorgasm earlier that day.
Damn, how fast that had been snatched from her.
“The police really picked the worst moment to interrupt us,” Ava complained as she trailed behind Jack. “I mean, who starts a car chase with postcoital—”
“You did not just use the word postcoital to talk about this,” Jack said, shaking his head. “You’re the most irreverent person I’ve ever met.”
They had reached the main road—a county road with wide sidewalks and little tree cover, a few businesses lining the street.
It felt strange to be back in civilization, this town—she didn’t know its name—even smaller than Gable, the town they’d left behind.
It felt the same, though: busy and dangerous and waiting.
Jack squeezed her hand, pulling Ava back to the present as a few cars rolled by.
“We’re not that far from where we blew up the van,” Ava murmured. “You don’t think they’re looking here?”
She hadn’t seen helicopters for miles, the search probably still centered on the patch of woods they’d first fled into.
Maybe they had time, but Ava had felt secure in that feeling before.
In fact, she’d felt pretty damn secure up until the moment Jack had snarled at her to duck down to the floor of the minivan.
“They will be,” Jack said. “Always assume that. Assume that wherever you are, there are eyes and ears, and that every action has a consequence, and everything you say to anyone can be remembered. Every interaction can be a way you are recognized, found, and caught.”
Ava threaded her fingers through his as they walked up to a small two-story white building set back from the street, two fir trees bracketing the sidewalk leading up to the door. “I know you always say that. But that sounds lonely,” she said softly.
Jack looked down at her, surprise on his face as he adjusted his mask. He pulled the door open after Ava adjusted hers, too. “I was lonely,” he said. “Though I’m not sure I knew it.”
Was.
He was lonely.
Did that mean he wasn’t anymore? Did that mean—
Ava’s chest squeezed as she walked inside. The air-conditioning was blasting, a welcome relief from outdoors, drying the sweat so quickly Ava shivered.
The person at the front desk, an androgynous person with pale skin and messy, short dark hair, did not look up from their phone. “Checking in?”
“Yep,” Jack said. “Booked earlier today. We’ll be paying in cash.”
They held out their hand for the cash, then scribbled something on a list. “Name?”
“Gilbert,” Jack said.
It took every ounce of control Ava possessed not to whip around and stare at him.
“And my wife, Amy.”
“I only need one name,” the desk attendant said, their tone bored. They scribbled Gibbert on the paper in messy handwriting, and then sat idly, chipping blue nail polish off their thumb. “Anything else?”
“Are there towels in the room?” Ava asked.
The desk attendant grunted, returning to their phone. “No amenities,” they said. “This is a hostel, bucko.”