24. Jaime
Chapter 24
Jaime
I ’ve just gotten back with Maeve when Cal comes into the kitchen. “You were gone hella long,” he says, tilting Maeve’s chin up so he can kiss her.
I look away before I do something stupid and remind myself of what I just told Maeve. She’s just playing a part. We both are.
“I needed corn husks and all this other stuff. We had to go to a couple places.” She grabs the vape pen from his hand and hits it a couple times before giving it back. “Is that … blueberry? Yuck. I hate that fake stuff.”
Hiding a smile at her little act, I set the case of beer on the counter. “All right. Let me know if you guys need anything else.”
“Jaime, just a sec.” Cal hits the vape, motioning for me to come.
Leaving Maeve to her tamales, I follow him into his office.
“You know anything about Maeve’s phone?” he asks, shutting the door.
I give him a puzzled look. “What do you mean?”
He pulls out his own phone, frowning as he taps the screen. “I haven’t been able to get a read on her location lately. Thought it would clear up after a couple days, but it hasn’t.” He thrusts the phone at me, showing me the app he uses to track her .
“Huh.” I squint at the screen, then shrug. “Could be buggy. Try uninstalling, then reinstalling the app.”
“On my phone?”
I nod.
“Okay, but it’s possible she turned it off, right?” he says. “On her phone?”
“I guess, if she knew you were tracking her,” I say neutrally. “Does she know?”
Cal’s eyes narrow. “What the fuck do you think, Jaime? No, she doesn’t know.”
I hold my hands up. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Well, I need you to figure it out because I don’t like not knowing where she is.” His eyes flicker to mine. “It’s bad enough she’s out there every day with everything that’s been going on.”
“Anything I should know about?” I ask.
“A deal fell through, and my uncle’s pissed. I’ll work it out, though.”
I consider this, wondering which deal, and with who. “Do you need Maeve to go someplace else for a couple days? For safety?”
“Nah.” He shakes his head firmly, glancing down at his phone. “She’s good here. Just don’t let her out of your sight. Mac might be sticking around more to make sure you have backup if necessary.”
“Sounds good.” But it doesn’t, not at all. I’m definitely missing something here. I make a mental note to use the Stingray later so I can scan for any burner phones that Cal’s recently acquired. There could be whole conversations I haven’t been privy to lately. “And I can take a look at her phone, see if that’s where the issue is. Could be a software glitch, or maybe the firmware.”
“Yeah, that’s good. I can give it to you when she’s in the shower later,” he offers.
Nodding, I turn for the door.
“Has she said anything?” he asks suddenly. He used to always ask me stuff like this, but I guess time has made him complacent. Either that, he’s been too busy to care.
“About what? You?”
He lifts his chin.
My heart skips a beat. “No. We don’t talk all that much.”
“See, I don’t believe that,” he says with a small, sardonic smile. “I know Maeve, and she’s chatty. I can’t see her spending all that time with you in silence.”
I’ve wondered when this idiot would finally start to worry. Who the fuck lets their woman spend hours and hours with another guy and never worries once? It wouldn’t be me, that’s for fucking sure. “I’m her driver, not her therapist, Cal,” I say evenly, looking him right in his paranoid, bloodshot eyes. “When we do talk, it’s about sports, or the weather, or what she needs from the store, not her relationship with you.”
Cal studies me for a moment, maybe searching for deception. I meet his gaze, letting him look all he likes. He thinks he wants to know the truth, but he doesn’t. It would destroy him.
The tension stretches between us until I blink. “That’s why you hired me, right?”
After a moment he grunts and looks away, the lines on his forehead deepening. “I’ll get the phone to you later,” he mutters.
Ignoring Maeve’s curious look from the kitchen, I exit through the French doors and make my way to the guest house. I scan it like I always do, making sure no one’s been here besides me, no cameras here but mine, and settle on the couch. Seems like Cal’s choices might be catching up to him. Dario wasn’t too happy with him after the latest meeting, and now there’s another messed up deal?
And then there’s Maeve. He knows she could be used to get at him, so I get why he’s worried. But he also knows that he fucked up when he hit her, that if there was ever a time she might leave, it’s now. The cocaine is probably heightening his paranoia, but that doesn’t make it any less real. This is what happens when you spin a web as tangled as his. You can’t really trust anybody.
I would know.
I check my phone’s calendar even though I know exactly what day it is. Lewis and the guys on the team are taking too long, crossing their T’s and dotting their I’s before making their move, but I’m running out of time. I know it’s fucked up, and I could go to prison if they thought I was undermining the investigation by providing sensitive info to Cedro and Leo, but I don’t care anymore. The Feds have plenty of evidence on both the Oliveras and De Leon families thanks to me. They’ll get their arrests .
But they don’t care about Maeve, not the way I do. At this point, they’ve likely figured out that we have a sexual relationship. They see it all the time in these situations. To them she’s a potential witness at best and collateral damage at worst. Getting her out of this situation isn’t their primary concern.
So it’s up to me to see this through. If everything goes as planned, Leo’s crew will be here two nights from tonight. They’ll do what they need to do, and I’ll use the chaos to get Maeve out of the house.
In the morning, I tell Cal that I can’t fix whatever’s wrong with Maeve’s phone.
Distracted, he clicks a key on his laptop. “Then keep her home until I get her a new one.”
“I can try, but she doesn’t like missing dance class?—”
“She has a studio here,” he mumbles, squinting at the screen. “That she barely uses.”
“And she said something about going to the DMV for a new license.” Bullshit, obviously. I just like the cornered look he gets when he realizes he did something stupid. “I guess she lost the old one.”
“Whatever. I don’t have time for this,” he snaps, waving me off. What a dick. “I have to be in SF by eleven.”
“I can check in with you,” I offer, hand on the door. “Let you know where we’re at.”
“Yeah, do that,” he says, already onto the next task as he snatches up his phone.
I let myself out of his office and return to the guest house. What’s happening in the city, a meeting? If so, I doubt it’s with Dario—they usually meet at the club in Oakland or in Marin. Feretti, maybe? San Francisco is their turf, so it fits. I wasn’t able to find evidence of a new burner, so I’m still in the dark about that. I send Lewis a heads-up, informing him that there might be a meeting between Cal and Feretti today in San Francisco, but I can’t go to confirm.
Maeve rolls her eyes when I mention my conversation with Cal. “Keep me home? After I made him tamales?” she says. “I can’t wait to get out of here. ”
“Soon.”
She nods, her eyes softening as she looks away.
“What’s up?” I eat a grape, the last of the fruit salad she made us for breakfast.
“I’ll miss you when I’m gone.” She sighs, wrinkling her nose. “That’s weird, isn’t it. I’m being creepy.”
“It’s not creepy.” Laughing softly, I take my bowl to the sink. We’re in the guest house, the only place on the property where I feel one hundred percent secure hanging out with Maeve. “I’ll miss you, too.”
“Let’s skip dance, then,” she says, putting our dirty cafecito cups beside the bowl. “Let’s just hang out.”
“I’m down. What d’you want to do?” I ask, my gaze traveling over the oversized sweatshirt she’s wearing over her leotard and tights.
“Can we go back to Wolf’s house?” she asks, the blush that stains her cheeks betraying her casual tone.
The semi I’ve been sporting for days perks up like it’s been waiting for this moment. It’s been like this since we hooked up at Wolf’s, and Maeve asking for a repeat definitely doesn’t help. Unable to hold back, I pull her closer by the hip. “Analisse works from home.”
“Oh, right.” Leaning into me, she rests her forehead on my chest.
Stroking her hair, I pick up my phone and recheck everyone’s locations. Cal, Griff and Mac are all in San Francisco, close to the North Beach area. They’ve gotta be meeting Feretti . It’s so, so tempting to just take Maeve right here, bend her over the couch and fuck her until she forgets everybody but me, but I can’t. It doesn’t matter that I sweep the property incessantly for bugs and cams, that I track Cal, that I have outside intel letting me know what other leads in the investigation have uncovered. It’s too risky.
Maeve is so close to getting away from here, and so am I. I’m an adult. I can control myself, even if my dick is trying its best to poke a hole through my joggers.
“Is there something you’ve wanted to do around here that you haven’t been able to?” I ask. “Now’s the time to do it.”
Her arms wrap tighter as she presses her body against mine. She can probably feel my racing heart, among other things.
“Maeve,” I warn, closing my eyes as her hair tickles my chin.
“I just want to be with you. ”
Fuck. Why does she have to be like this? She has no idea how hard it is to not completely cave to her.
She rises to her toes, kissing my jaw, and I can feel her siren’s call threatening to pull me under. Gripping her arms, I gently push her back. “Let’s go for a drive. Get tacos or something.”
“Tacos work,” she says, tossing her hair back. Suddenly her mask is back in place, the one she used to wear when I first began driving for her. It’s unsettling how easily she can slide it on. “I’ll go change.”
“You guys have been together a long time, huh?” I ask as we coast down the hill. “Am I the only other guy you’ve been with besides Cal?”
“Yeah. I went out with other people sometimes when we took breaks,” she replies. “But I didn’t sleep with them.”
I nod, adjusting the heat because it’s cold today.
“I don’t know why. I know he’s been with other women,” she goes on. “I guess I wasn’t ready for things to end until now.”
“Understandable.”
“For a long time I wondered when it started going downhill, because he wasn’t always like this, but in retrospect I can see the signs.”
“Hindsight’s always twenty/twenty,” I say.
“What about you?” she asks. A wash of sunlight beams through the windshield, making her dark hair gleam.
“What about me?”
“I want all the gory details of your past relationships,” she teases.
I laugh, tossing her a glance. “There haven’t been that many in the past few years. This lifestyle doesn’t exactly encourage stability.”
“I’ve noticed,” she says dryly. “Well, who was your first kiss?”
I raise my eyebrows. “Oh, we’re going way back.”
“All the way.”
“Sheila Mendoza in the eighth grade. Had a huge crush on her,” I reveal. “I kissed her when a bunch of us were out trick-or-treating.”
“What did she look like?”
“Long, black hair.” I smirk, tugging one of her curls. “Big brown eyes. Freckles. ”
“Was she your first girlfriend?”
“No, that was Clara Howell a few years later. She was cute, but a little crazy.”
Maeve leans toward me, intrigued. “Why, what did she do?”
“She was my first, but I didn't find out until later that I wasn't hers.”
“And that upset you?”
I shake my head. “No, I just didn’t like that she’d lied about it.”
“That is kinda weird,” she agrees. “Were you a jock type? Or geeky, or what?”
“I was just average.” The light up ahead turns red and I drift to a stop. “I didn’t really hit my stride until college.”
A mock serious expression falls over her face. “And is that when you become a slut?”
I squeeze her high on the thigh, enjoying the way her lips part. “Not a saint, but never a slut.”
“I don't know,” she says, resting her hand on mine. “You’re kind of a saint to me.”
We grab lunch from a taco shop in San Francisco. There are plenty of them all over the Bay, but this one is especially good and I’ve been wanting to bring Maeve. We hold our breath as we cross the Bay Bridge, making it as far as Treasure Island before Maeve starts accusing me of cheating. Which, I was. But so was she.
Back in the East Bay, we drive up into the hills until we find a secluded spot way off in the cut. It’s nestled in the trees and remote enough that I feel safe with Maeve.
She sits on the hood of the car while we talk and eat loads of messy, delicious tacos. I finish before she does, and after we’ve cleaned up with napkins and washed everything down with Mexican Coke, we fall silent, letting the forest sounds of trees rustling, birdsong, and little animals replace our chatter.
I glance at Maeve. She’s got her eyes closed now, her delicate face turned toward the sky. Pretty soon this will all be a memory. Maeve will be safe, and I’ll be long gone, maybe preparing for another case. I hope she finds someone that can make her happy. She deserves it, this brave, pretty girl. Her eyes drift open, and she catches me staring.
The short, gray sweater dress and thigh-high socks she’s wearing have been my undoing since we left the house. Parting her thighs with my fingertips, I step between her legs. “Hi.”
Her mouth quirks up a little. “Hi.”
I slide my hands up the warm skin of her thighs just a little and she shivers. “Back to wearing clothing that isn’t warm enough, I see,” I say, my touch turning into a tickle.
She tries to squirm away, but I hold on tight, pulling her closer to the edge.
“This is warm enough,” she protests, laughing. “And besides, your hood’s nice and hot. It’s been keeping my butt toasty.”
“ Your hood’s nice and hot,” I say in a low voice, running my hands up and down her thighs. Her skin is so soft.
Maeve’s mouth drops open. “Are you being a perv?”
“Never.” I stare into those emerald green eyes, committing them to memory. I’ve never seen eyes like hers and I doubt I’ll ever see them again.
“I used to think about you, sometimes.” Her lashes flutter as she looks down. “When I was with Callum. I’d … fantasize.”
I rub my hands up and down her thighs. “I used to think about you, too.”
She looks up quickly. “When you were with other girls?”
I dip my chin, giving her a small smirk. “What did you fantasize about?”
“About being with you. The way we were at Wolf’s.”
“What else?” I ask, brushing my thumbs back and forth over her skin.
“I imagined you kissing me.” Maeve swallows, her lips parting again, her eyes hazy. She’s aroused. “Everywhere.”
Sliding my hands beneath her knees, I wrap her legs around me and kiss her. It’s a slow, lingering kiss, my tongue gliding against hers like we have all the time in the world. Her fingers twine into my hair, like they always do, and I reach beneath her dress, fingering the lace on her underwear.
“Whatcha doing?” she whispers, smiling against my lips.
I lower her down so she’s lying flat and set her heels on the edge of the hood. Leaning down, I hook her panties to the side and kiss her clit. She giggles, her knees drawing in as she whispers my name, but I spread them again and begin to lick every part of her.
It’s good. So good. When I went down on her the last time, it was so she could relax enough to take my dick. But I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the sweet, salty taste of her, her smoky vanilla scent and that natural musk, so this time it’s as much for me as it is for her. When she starts squirming beneath me, her pretty, pink pussy slippery and wet, I know she’s close.
“God, Jaime,” she breathes, and I know she’s coming. “I love how you feel.”