Chapter Fourteen
Juniper
We returned to the Kiss of Death compound not long after I’d decided I was going to kill Brett.
I’d like to say it was a figure of speech, but I knew in my heart there was something wrong with the man.
While I firmly believed everyone deserved a good defense, I also believed some people needed to die.
I don’t know what had broken inside his head, but Brett was not all right.
And I didn’t want him to fixate on someone else.
Like that poor woman with him on my birthday at Throttle.
Now, I clutched the recipe box to my chest like it was the last life raft on a sinking ship. Brett had, indeed, put a tracking device inside my grandmother’s recipe box. It felt like he’d defiled her memory or something. The thought made my skin crawl.
Once they knew where to look, Hannah and Knight had located the tracker and removed it carefully from where Brett had glued the damned thing to the bottom of the tin.
“It’s still active,” Knight said. He pointed to a tiny blue light blinking on the edge of the disc. “Cheap, off-the-shelf hardware. Not hard to jailbreak.”
Inferno stood beside me, one hand on my lower back. His fingers were warm through my shirt. “So he was close,” he said. “When he got the photo.”
“Had to be.” Knight swiveled his chair, elbows on his knees. “This is good news, actually.”
I barked out a laugh that sounded raw. “How the fuck is this good news?”
“Because now we own the narrative,” Knight answered. “He thinks he’s tracking you. We can feed him whatever story we want him to see. At least, from the point of this tracker. If we can get him to follow where we lead him, we can take him someplace we can deal with him on the down low.”
They talked for a while longer, but I didn’t participate much. I was mentally exhausted and battered. I listened to every word. Nodded where I was supposed to nod.
Knight had been careful with my grandmother’s recipes, and I was more grateful to him than I could say.
Inferno had gone with me back to our room after the meeting to let me put it in our kitchen.
As I stowed it in the cabinet next to the stove, I had to smile.
I wanted to be with Inferno and I knew he needed to be here.
Truth was, I liked the compound and the people in it.
We ate dinner in the common room because Knuckles declared the compound on lockdown, which apparently meant nobody left and nobody came in without his say-so.
The common room was warm and loud; the long table covered with pizza boxes and beer bottles.
I kind of expected the place to be chaotic and loud, but most everyone was quiet and focused on the problem at hand.
Which, apparently, was the threat to me and how best to deal with Brett.
Darby sat across the narrow table from me.
Several of the other old ladies were also close.
Right now, she’d propped her boots on an empty chair, a slice of pizza in one hand.
“So here’s what I’m thinking,” she announced to me, and anyone else who wanted to listen.
“We lure him to an open house. He loves open houses, right? We stage one. Empty house, fake sign, the whole nine yards. He walks in, we lock the doors, and then…” She mimed slitting her throat. “Kobayashi Maru.”
“Subtle,” Sully said from beside her. He smirked at his woman, shaking his head. “He’ll never see that coming.”
“Subtle is for people who aren’t having fun.” Darby took a bite of her pizza. “Next idea. We get him to agree to meet Juniper for coffee in a public place. He shows up and there’s me instead, with a taser and a very creative vocabulary.”
Hannah reached across the table and stole a pepperoni off Darby’s slice as she laughed. “Or,” she said, “we let Knight do his thing.”
“Why do you have to go being all logical and shit, Hannah?”
The other woman just smiled. “It’s a gift.”
I sat between Inferno and Hannah, picking at a slice of pizza I had no appetite for.
My hands were free of bandages, but my palms still ached.
If it weren’t for the psycho who refused to leave my life, I could easily say I was more content than I’d ever been in my life.
These people had folded me into their lives like I’d always been here. Like I belonged.
Later that night, I stood at the window in Inferno’s apartment and watched the compound yard below. I knew Knight intended to have Brett chase the tracker to different places until he was comfortable following it out of the city again. Then they’d take him.
The truck we’d used earlier rolled through the gate. My guess was, they’d started laying the groundwork for their trap tonight. The guard on the gate raised a hand. The taillights faded into the darkness beyond the compound, carrying that Goddamned tracker into the night.
Then the waiting began.
The ghost route the guys ran with the tracker went to all the places Brett expected to see me. It took nearly a week before he finally swallowed the bait. We knew we had him on the hook when the texts began.
The first couple of days, there was only one or two, then they came in clusters. By the end of the week, they were coming morning and evening, sometimes midday if he felt particularly smug. At least, that’s how the texts sounded in my head when I read them.
Saw you at Perk Place this morning. That’s my coffee shop, Junie. You used to wait for me there.
I’d been in Inferno’s bed when that one arrived, his arm heavy across my waist, both of us half-asleep in the gray pre-dawn. The bakery had been closed for a week and I hadn’t been within a mile of Perk Place.
Supply run today? Why are you running low on flour when you’ve been closed? Something wrong with the building? I’d hate to see you lose it, Junie.
Each text used that stupid nickname he’d given me. Each text carried smug certainty, like he believed his own fiction. I also knew there was no way he’d ever back down, so trying to clue him in to the reality I would never take him back would be difficult.
By the end of the second week, I had seventeen texts from the bastard.
Seventeen reminders that somewhere in this city, a man believed he watched me and knew everything I did.
I sat on the edge of Inferno’s bed with the phone in my hand, the screen illuminated by the last text of the evening.
Not only that, but if I didn’t get everything straightened out and the bakery reopened soon, I was in real danger of losing everything I was fighting for.
I’ll dream of you tonight, Junie. Just like I always do.
The room was dark except for the light from the screen. Inferno was downstairs with Knuckles, going over whatever Knight had received from Inferno’s friend, Frank Danner, about the storage fire.
I should have deleted the texts or blocked the number.
Or better yet, given my stupid phone to Inferno, so Knight could do Knight shit with it.
Which, he was likely to turn it off since he’d cloned my phone and got every text I did.
Instead, I went downstairs with the phone in my hand.
I was done pretending I was strong enough to lift this one by myself.
I found Inferno in the common room with Knuckles and Hawk, the three of them bent over a map spread across the pool table, red markers circling locations I didn’t recognize. They looked up when I came in.
I didn’t say anything. Just held out the phone, screen up, Brett’s last text glowing like something toxic. Inferno took it and read it. His jaw worked once, hard, the muscle jumping under the stubble. Then he scrolled. Read another. Another.
“He thinks he’s winning,” I said. My voice sounded steadier than I felt. “How much longer does this have to go on?”
“Not much longer, honey,” Inferno said. “Knight didn’t tell me he’d been harassing you.” He leveled a look on me. “Neither did you.”
“Yeah, well, I knew I was safe and thought I could handle it. But the bastard is just so fucking smug!”
“We’re closing in on him, Juniper,” Knuckles said as reassuringly as he could. “When we catch him, we don’t want blowback.”
“If he wasn’t being such a little coward, we’d have him already,” Inferno muttered.
“Yeah. He won’t come out of hiding.” Knuckles scrubbed a hand over his face. “Knight thinks he’s following the tracker with an app on his phone, so he’s working from that angle. It won’t take him long to track Brett down.”
“We just want to keep you safe, Juniper.” Inferno moved to me, reaching out to take my hand in his. “This won’t be forever.”
“I know, but all this is starting to get to me. He’s the one who left me!”
“He’s a narcissistic asshole.” Hawk crossed his arms over his chest. “He’ll fuck up. It’s only a matter of time.”
“If we pull the tracker, he knows we’re onto him,” Knuckles said, but I could tell he was tired of the game too. “He goes to ground. We lose any chance of catching him with evidence.”
“Then we find another way.” I held his gaze. “Because I am not spending another day letting that man believe he has any claim on me. Not even in his imagination.”
The silence that followed was thick enough to touch. Inferno looked at me, really studied me, and I watched him weigh what he thought was best with what I wanted. The cost of what I was asking against the cost of denying me.
Knuckles cleared his throat. “She’s right.”
We both turned. Knuckles stood with his arms crossed, his massive frame blocking the light from the overhead fixture. “I’m tired of this shit, too. Time to try something else.”
“Something else,” Hawk echoed. He was already reaching for his phone. “I’ll get Knight. And Zero.”
It took an hour. Zero rolled through the gate just after nine on yet another run to one of my usual places, trying to get Brett to lower his guard and start sending pictures again, letting us know he was actually nearby and following the tracker again.
Knight retrieved the tracker from Zero, carrying it to me in the Ziploc bag they’d put it in.
“Your call,” Knight said, and tossed the bag to me.
The compound yard was empty except for the five of us. The security lights threw our shadows long across the gravel. I set the bag on the ground and pulled my phone from my pocket.
“Inferno,” I said. “I need a hammer.”
He didn’t ask why. Just turned and walked to the guard shed beside the gate and came back with a claw hammer, the handle worn smooth from use.
I positioned the phone on an upturned bucket, camera aimed at the bag, then brought up the camera app and switched it to video.
The little red light started blinking when I hit start.
Then I picked up the hammer. With a big, bright smile, I hit the fucking disc inside the bag with the hammer several times, shattering the little tracker with violent glee. Then I picked up the phone and turned it around so I could speak to him. “Go fuck yourself, dickwad.”
I stopped the recording and opened my messenger app. I tapped in his number, attached the video, then sent it to him. Tossing my phone to Knight, I turned and left.
Inferno followed me as I stormed back through the warehouse and up to our apartment. His hand found the small of my back as we climbed the stairs, and I trembled beneath his touch. I was scared and angry, and I needed to lose myself in him. Just for a little while.
Once we got inside the apartment, the door hadn’t closed behind us before I had my hands in his hair, pulling him down to my mouth.
I kissed him hard and claiming and entirely on my terms. His surprise didn’t last long before he caught up.
He found my waist and lifted me against the wall beside the door.
I automatically wrapped my legs around his waist.
“Juniper.” My name in his mouth was half warning, half prayer.
“I need you.” I bit his lower lip, not gently. “Need you so much!”
I tugged his shirt up his chest. He lifted his arms so I could pull the material over his head before tossing it away.
I found his neck with my mouth and sucked.
He grunted, already hard against my stomach.
His cock strained against his jeans, and the sound he made when I palmed him through the denim was animalistic.
I got his belt open. Got his jeans down his hips. His cock sprang free, thick and hot in my hand, and I stroked him once, twice, watching his face go tight with the effort of holding back.
“Bed,” I said. Not asking.
He carried me through the apartment to the bed.
Then he dropped me onto the mattress before following me down.
He snagged the waist of my jeans as I unfastened them, then yanked them and my panties off my hips.
Both garments slid easily from my legs for him to toss to the floor.
When he settled on top of me, his weight felt so right, even as he braced on his forearms. His kiss was hungry yet soft and passionate.
I reached between us to find his cock and guided him to my entrance.
“Fuck me, Jonah. The way I need to be fucked. Right now.”
He pushed inside in one long, burning stroke, and I arched beneath him, digging my nails into his shoulders, a scream tearing from my throat as he filled my pussy so perfectly. He stretched me, owning me in every way that mattered.
He didn’t hold back, each thrust driving the ghost of Brett Calloway out my mind. I wrapped my legs around Inferno’s hips and took his cock, demanding more as I dug my heels into the small of his back, pulling him deeper.
“Harder,” I gasped. “God, harder, Jonah --”
He growled my name against my throat and obeyed.
The headboard hit the wall. The mattress springs sang.
I came with his cock buried to the hilt and his teeth on my shoulder, my pussy clenching around his dick in waves that didn’t seem to end, and he followed me over, spilling his cum inside me with a groan that I felt through my whole body.
We lay tangled afterward, sweat-damp and breathing hard, his weight a warm anchor across my chest. His face was buried in my neck, his breath hot against my pulse. I tunneled my fingers through his hair, feeling the silky texture slide through my grasp.
The room was dark except for the strip of light under the blinds, painting a gold line across the floor. I didn’t know what came next. Didn’t need to. Whatever move Brett made now, he would make it knowing which side I’d chosen and the ground beneath his feet had shifted.
Inferno’s arm tightened around my waist. His lips brushed my temple, once, soft. “We’ll figure it out,” he murmured against my skin. “Everything will be OK, Juniper. I won’t let it be anything else.”
I believed him. With all my heart, I believed in Jonah “Inferno” Sherman.