10. Jax
10
JAX
“ D on’t worry, Anna. You’re going to see your mom real soon,” I whisper while rubbing small soothing circles across her back. “Mark and I will drive you to the hospital.”
It’s a fucking terrible idea.
Not because I don’t want her to see her mom. No, Anna was right to call Mark and me out on that bullshit. Her mom’s sick, worsening by the day from the sounds of it. If someone tried to stand in the way of me or Mark spending time with Penny, we would have gone ballistic. Somewhere along the way of planning and implementing our revenge against Patrick, we lost sight of why we wanted to get back at him in the first place.
We did the research. We knew Barbara had cancer when we decided to kidnap her daughter. She was supposed to be in remission. At least, that’s what the medical records said when we hacked into her oncologist’s server and went through Barbara’s file. It looks like his staff was behind on updating office notes in the patient records. I wish I could blame the incompetent employees for the situation that we’re in, but I can’t. Mark and I should have kept digging.
Hell, we never should have taken Anna in the first place.
But then, she wouldn’t be ours. Maybe that’s for the best. We can still cut her loose, cut our losses, and run. It’s not too late. Who am I kidding? Of course, it is. Now that we have her, had a taste of her, there’s no way we’ll be able to let her go.
Which brings me full circle. Right back to why taking Anna to the hospital is a horrible idea. We can’t protect her. Not from that piece of shit, Patrick Calhoun, her father, or herself. Especially herself. Anna was ready to go back and marry Patrick before we called her mom. She was supposed to talk to Barbara, let her know she wasn’t hurt, and that despite being kidnapped from her wedding, she wasn’t in any danger. She is safe.
That plan went to shit too.
As it turns out, Mark and I aren’t the strategists we thought we were. We’re clueless, bumbling in the fucking dark and making a huge mess of Anna’s life. And yet, I’m having difficulty regretting anything we’ve done. Well, except for the pain and suffering we’re causing Barbara. We never would have let that happen to Penny. Anna’s mom is innocent, just like Penny. She didn’t do anything to deserve this.
We fucked up. And now we have to fix it.
“Anna.” Her face is buried in my neck, and her tears are soaking through my shirt. Her entire body is trembling. I hate seeing her like this, knowing we had a hand in it. “Hey, come on, baby. Your mom’s a fighter, right? You had to get it from somewhere. I’m guessing it wasn’t your dad.”
She laughs. It’s a soft, halfhearted chuckle and a little snotty, but it’s the most beautiful sound to my ears right now because if Anna can find even the smallest spark of humor, she’ll be okay.
It’s either laugh or cry, boys, and I’m not one to waste time on tears. That’s what Penny used to say. Her sense of humor was a little dark, a little jaded, and a hell of a lot sarcastic. I guess it had to be working in a factory and raising two boys with a knack for getting in trouble. But Penny always found a way to crack a joke no matter how hard or bad things were.
If Anna can laugh, even a little bit, she’ll be okay. She’ll get through this.
“Come on, baby. Grab your things. Mark and I will get you to the hospital.” With my hands on her hips, I ease her off my lap and steady her as she gets to her feet. Mark takes her hand, adding support from above.
“There’s nothing to grab. I don’t have anything here.”
Anna doesn’t catch my wince or the pained expression I see in Mark’s eyes at her choice of words. I’m not sure she means it the way it came out, but damn, to hear her say that cuts fucking deep. You have us. I want to tell her but now isn’t the time. We need to get her to the hospital.
“Do you want us to swing by your place on the way? Is there anything you want or need to take with you?” Mark’s voice is a little rough. It’s obvious he’s struggling with the same memories, the same guilt that I am.
“No, the only thing I need right now is my mom. Besides, everything I own is at the landfill. After Patrick surveyed my clothes and accessories, he said there wasn’t anything in my closet or dresser drawers good enough for the wife of a Calhoun. I need to look and act the part. He even took my ID and said there wasn’t any point hanging on to it when I have to get a new one anyway.”
Not good enough my ass. He wants her under his fucking thumb, dependent on him for everything. He wants to make her weak, to break her. Over my dead body. I glance at Mark, and we share a brief, knowing look. His clenched fists and jaw say it all. He feels the same way I do.
Anna is not marrying Patrick Calhoun.
We have more than enough money to cover Barbara’s medical bills and any treatments she might need in the future. Cyber security pays well, and Mark and I are good at our jobs. We would have cleared the debts already if we knew she was sick again.
“All right then, let’s get you to your mom.” Mark laces his fingers through hers. She grips his arm with her other hand, clinging to him like he’s the only thing keeping her upright.
I follow Mark and Anna out of the house to the van, open the driver’s door, and flip down the visor, catching the keys that fall free. Her eyes widen, and she shakes her head as if in disbelief that her means of escape would have been that easy. Of course, it wouldn’t have been. Mark and I may have lost sight of our goals and made some pretty big mistakes with this whole revenge thing, but we’re not complete fucking idiots. I reach under the dash and pull the lever to pop the hood.
“The battery’s disconnected,” I inform her before walking around to the front of the van to reconnect the wires.
The old six-cylinder revs to life, and I put every bit of the big block’s horsepower to use, punching the gas and peeling out of the gravel driveway. The rubber hits the road with a screech of the tires, and I’m racing through the back roads to get our girl to the hospital so she can see her mom.
“Hey babe,” Mark breaks the intense silence. He shifts in his seat and turns to look at Anna, sitting in the middle of the rear passenger sixty-forty split bench. “We need to go over a few things before we get to the hospital, okay? People are going to ask questions. We need to come up with a story.”
Shit. Fuck. Shit. He’s right. The longer we let our game of revenge go on, the more complicated and out-of-control things get. We should have just taken Patrick out of the equation altogether. Killing him would have been easier. Anna’s supposed to be a captive, held for ransom. She can’t just waltz in the hospital like she was on vacation or something. People are going to want to know how she escaped.
“We kept you locked in a room in the basement. There was a small pet door we used to pass you food and water and one window. A small one in a window well? Do you know what I mean? The little details are going to be important. We want details, but nothing too elaborate. That’s what’s going to sell it, okay?”
“Yeah, okay,” Anna replies with a nod. She’s listening, but it’s obvious her mind is on her mom. I’m not sure how much of Mark’s cover story she’s taking in.
The one thing working in our favor is that men like Patrick Calhoun don’t go to the police. They take care of business themselves. And I doubt her dad is going to care too much about how she escaped her kidnappers. Not after he sold her to a fucking kingpin to cover his ass. Okay, that was a little harsh. He wasn’t doing it for himself, not really. He was trying to save his wife, but he’s still a piece of shit for using his daughter to do it.
Mark and Anna are still running through her cover story as I pull into a public lot across the street from the hospital.
“We’ll be right here waiting for you, okay?” I turn the key, killing the engine.
Anna nods, wipes fresh tears from her cheeks, and presses her mouth to mine. Her lips are soft, sweet and so is the kiss. I can still feel the press of those full pouty lips against mine when she pulls back.
It feels an awful lot like goodbye.
With a sad smile, she turns and kisses Mark the same way, sweet and tender. From the look on his face, I know he feels the same way I do, that Anna thinks this is the last time she’ll see us.
Yeah, fuck that. Not happening.
She’ll have to come out of that hospital eventually, and we’ll be waiting for her when she does. We took her once, and we can do it again.
“She’s going to run.” Mark stares out the windshield, watching Anna disappear through the automatic glass doors. When she’s out of our line of sight, he turns to me. “She’s going to marry Patrick. Or try to anyway. We’re going to have to kidnap her again.”
He says it like it’s a given, like he doesn’t even have to ask whether or not I would be on board with stealing Anna again—because he doesn’t. She’s not marrying Patrick Calhoun. If anyone puts a ring on her finger, it’ll be me and Mark.
“I think a small part of her is counting on it, bro. It’s not like she loves Patrick. She can’t stand the bastard. The only reason she’s going through with this is because of her mom. A problem we can solve with one phone call to the billing department.” I jerk my head toward the hospital. “We don’t even need to make a phone call. We could walk in there right now and end this whole thing.”
We hash out a few plans on how we can keep Anna and take care of Patrick. The money looks like our best bet, but if it was that easy, we would have hacked his accounts and drained him dry with donations to our favorite charities like the Susan G. Komen Foundation, Alex’s Lemonade, and St. Jude’s, in the first place.
No, Patrick Calhoun’s not only washed his money, he’s stashed it too. What he has on paper is nothing compared to what we suspect he has off the books.
“That only solves part of the problem. Patrick may not love Anna, but he wants her. He wouldn’t be paying hundreds and thousands of dollars for her if he didn’t want her. Clearing the debt won’t stop him from coming after her.”
As if saying his name conjured the devil himself, Patrick Calhoun cuts into traffic, jaywalking across the street like he owns the fucking world. Horns blast. Asshole probably thinks it’s trumpets blaring to welcome the king. He gives one driver laying hard on their horn the finger and strolls into the hospital.
Fuck.