Driven to the Edge: A Bad Boy Hitman Romance (8 page)

No,
I try to tell myself.
There are limits. You can’t fuck him. You can’t do this.

Jake groans as he grinds his body against mine, the hard panes of his muscular chest pressing me down into the couch. I feel small and powerless beneath him, utterly at his mercy--

And then the persistent jingle of a cell phone cuts through the otherwise silent hotel room.

G
od
. Damn. It. God
fucking
damn it.

My phone’s going off and if it were anyone else, I’d say to hell with them. I’ve never wanted anything so bad as I want to be inside Alicia right now, filling that tight little body with every inch of my cock.

But the phone that’s ringing is the burner phone.

The only person who knows that number is Vin.

And as much as I want Alicia, I remember why I’m here.

Panting hard, I roll off her without a word and hurry to where I draped my jacket. I fish the phone out of a pocket and try to get my breath under control. I can still taste Alicia’s pussy on my tongue. I lick my lips and answer.

“Vin.”

“Jakob.”

There’s a silence over the line. I can’t hear any background noise. I have no idea where Vin is.

“You in town?” I finally ask.

“You know it. Assuming you made it?”

I look over to the sofa, where Alicia has sat up. Her bright, flushed cheeks and hard-kissed lips just get my dick even harder. I force myself to look away and stalk into the bedroom. But I don’t shut the door.

“I looked into that name you sent me. Hedberg, the guy who works at Augustine’s.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You aren’t gonna believe this. He’s Marton Császár’s head of security.”

Which means my suspicions were correct. Al Hedberg, the man who took an unspecified child from Long Beach to Las Vegas, works for Marton Császár, heir to the Császár crime family. There’s no way he can be anyone but the man who kidnapped Eloise.

Maybe even the man who killed my brother.

My stomach clenches. My dick immediately forgets what it was so excited about.

I’m so close.

“So what can you tell me about him?” I ask.

The entire outside world fades away while Vin fills me in. Nothing else matters. I’m almost there.

Unfortunately, a lot of the information Vin gives me isn’t of much use. Vin knows that Al Hedberg has a wife and two kids, but even if I were the type to threaten a guy’s wife and kids, we don’t have that much time. If they’re moving Eloise through one of their human trafficking trails, she could be gone by the weekend.

“Email me all the information you have,” I finally say. “There has to be something here we can work with.”

“You’ll come up with something,” Vin says. “If nothing else, you can just get into trouble at Augustine’s until he comes knocking to throw you out.”

I snort. That’s so very not my style. But it’s nice of Vin to keep me grounded.

I take a deep breath, settling down onto the side of the bed. My heart is hammering; my blood’s boiling. Part of it is residual arousal. Part of it is being so close to these murdering fuckers that I can almost fix things.

“How you holding up?” Vin asks. Like he knew how pissed I was getting.

I take another deep breath. The champagne hasn’t helped my temper, either.

“I’m good,” I say at length. “I’m good.”

“All right.” Vin sounds like he doesn’t quite believe me. “I’ll email that stuff over. Take care of yourself. Let me know if you need to meet up before you do this.”

“Why would I need to do that?”

“I don’t know, to say goodbye?”

I pause, cradling the phone in my hand. He’s just voiced the thought I’ve had all along: that even if I can save the kid, I probably won’t live through this.

“Ha. Well. You know me. I’ve never been the sentimental type.”

“Of course not,” he says.

“But. Thank you. You did right by me when nobody else would.”

“You and your brother are good kids,” Vin says after a while. “Fuck anyone who messes with family like that.”

“Absolutely. Fuck ‘em.”

“Let me know if you need anything. Especially if it’s a ride out once all the dust has settled.”

I don’t need a ride,
I think, amused.
I’ve still got the chauffeur you hired me.
But I don’t tell him that, because Christ, he’d lose his mind at me.

When I finally hang up the phone, Alicia is standing in the doorway, her arms folded across her chest. I’m not sure how much she heard, but I immediately bristle like a cornered dog.

“Didn’t your parents ever teach you not to eavesdrop?”

“Didn’t your parents ever teach you not to kidnap people?”

“I grew up mostly by myself.”

We stand there for a moment, eyeballing each other. For a crazy half-second I wonder if she’s actually going to throw a punch at me. But instead she settles down, exhales hard. I can still see the traces of leftover flush on her face. God, she’s beautiful. But even if I were still in the mood, knowing I’m so close to my goal, I just can’t let myself get pulled away.

She’s studying me, her peculiar eyes shifting hazel-blue-green-brown in the dim, glittering light of the room’s many lamps.

“Whatever it is you’ve been planning on doing, you’re getting ready to do it soon, aren’t you?”

She observes me with a nakedly calculating stare as she says this. I almost feel defensive. But then I remember: I’m the one in charge here.

“Sure am,” I say. I stand up, brush off my legs.

“The way that phone conversation sounded, it almost sounds like you don’t expect to live through this.”

“I might not.”

“So you’re just some crazy suicidal murderer?”

“Maybe.”

We reach another standoff. She purses her lips for a second, then shakes her head. She looks like she wants to say something, but whatever it is, she keeps it to herself.

Suddenly, I feel like I need to get out. I haven’t smoked in a long time, but that horrible itch-for-a-cigarette feeling comes back. Mostly because I need something to do with my hands. And I need something to do with my mouth other than have psychological discussions with my fucking hostage.

I stalk over to the phone and call up the front desk. I ask for a cigar. Because fuck it, if I’m going to die tomorrow, I can smoke a goddamn cigar.

I ask Alicia if she’s hungry, more out of force of habit than anything, but she shakes her head. She’s still just watching me.

When the room service guy brings the cigar and matchbox up, I tip him and throw my wallet on the table. Then I stomp toward the balcony.

“I need a smoke.” I snap. “I need to think.”

Alicia doesn’t move. She hasn’t for a while. She’s still just got her arms folded, regarding me like a puzzle.

“Stop eyeballing me and go lie down or something. And if I see you move for that door, I swear to fuck...”

She shakes her head just a bit.

“I won’t,” she promises.

“All right.”

Out on the balcony, I snip the tip off the cigar and slide open the matchbox. A smoke will help me think. I need to formulate the rest of my plan.

I
watch
the balcony’s heavy doors swing closed. For a moment, I stare at Jake’s silhouette on the other side of the glass. He’s barely visible in the twinkling city lights, but I can see his face illuminated when he strikes a match to light his cigar.

I watch him and I
wonder.

We seem like we’re standing on the edge. Just a day away from whatever horrible thing he came to Vegas to do. The horrible thing that he apparently needs me for.

I turn and look toward the other doors. I wonder how far I could make it before Jake started shooting indiscriminately.

But is that just an empty threat? Or would he actually do it? He seems so invested in whatever plan he’s made. I saw the look on his face when he was having that hushed conversation on the phone. Like he was grimly determined to do something, to succeed at all costs.

He doesn’t have the look of a madman about him.

Moving away from the door, I catch sight of his wallet on the table. And again, I wonder. I wander over to the tabletop and pick it up. It’s a smooth, soft black leather piece embossed with a small eagle logo. I don’t recognize it but it looks expensive.

Flipping the wallet open, I’m immediately floored by what I see.

There’s a family photo inside.

I wasn’t expecting that.

I was hoping for a driver’s license, a social security card, something identifying. Loyalty cards for a favorite restaurant or something.

But instead there’s a photo of Jake and a little girl, fussing on his lap, not quite looking at the camera. She’s got a mischievous twinkle in her eye and unruly sandy blonde hair. She can’t be older than about four, maybe five.

I study the photo in silence, my lips pursed. After a moment, more details jump out at me.
Hold on, that’s not Jake in the photo,
I think. He’s just a bit too skinny. But in the sense of his narrow build more so than body fat. There’s no way it’s just Jake before he got cut. This man has a thinner face, more sunken eyes.

But they look so similar. They have to be related.

My heart skips a beat as I ponder the significance of this picture. It never occurred to me that Jake was anything other than a lone wolf, a hired gun. But a man like Jake wouldn’t carry a photo like this in his wallet just for cover purposes. It looks too personal.

... is it possible he
took
the photo?

That leads me to wonder yet further possibilities: are they alive or dead? Is it possible Jake is avenging them, or doing this for them somehow? Is it possible he’s not some grim mafioso shooting people in the face for millions of dollars, or whatever the fuck?

I don’t know what to think.

I’m so stunned by this revelation that I don’t even try to hide the wallet when Jake comes back inside. He’s only smoked half his cigar, but he’s ground it out. He looks tired, worn out around the eyes.

When he spots the wallet in my hand, he doesn’t even get angry. He just licks his lips and then nods toward the table.

“I’d appreciate you not going through that.”

Which is a far cry from the usual threat of violence I imagine he’d throw at me.

“I couldn’t help it.”

I put the wallet down on the table without complaint.

Jake doesn’t say anything. He stares off into the middle distance like he’s entirely alone. Like he’s thousands of miles away.

I’m tempted to say something like
cute kid,
but I worry the child in the photo might not be alive anymore. The death of a young child would certainly turn a man down this path.

Instead, I ask him the questions I’ve been afraid to. I confront him point blank.

“This job you’re doing tomorrow, is it just something someone’s paying you to do?”

Jake’s eyes harden. His shoulders go stiff.

“You should mind your own business,” he says. But not this time.

I take a step closer to him.

“How about no? I’m involved in this whether you planned on it or not. Whether you like it or not. And you told me I’m part of your
plan.
I don’t need to know what the plan is or how this all came to be, but I think I deserve to know one thing.”

Jake lifts his head and looks me in the eye. His strange, hawk like eyes have a hard edge to them now.

“What one thing?”

“I deserve to know if you’re doing this for a
reason
or because you really are just some cold-hearted bastard.”

Jake lifts his shoulders, deferential.

“I’m a cold-hearted bastard,” he says, casual.

But somehow, I can tell he’s lying.

“Liar.”

Jake doesn’t flinch away from the accusation.

“Why does it matter why I’m doing what I’m doing?”

And briefly, I wonder the same thing. Why does it matter to me? He’s still a murderer. He still took me hostage. And yet...

Yet there’s that attraction I have to him. Those glimpses where he seems like such a good guy. Those moments when I wonder if maybe, just maybe, the murdering kidnapper side of him was just a man pushed too far by the world, backed into a corner with no other option.

I have no idea when I started to wonder these things, but I can sense them there, under the surface of my thoughts.

Is it... is it because I’m developing feelings for him?

Or do I still just want to get free?

“It matters to me because I want to believe you’re not like that,” I say, my voice quiet. I don’t extrapolate on the many reasons why.

“We don’t get everything we want.”

I wonder why he’s being so cagey. It’s obvious he’s into some bad shit. He wouldn’t have guns and extra cell phones and the ability to cold-bloodedly shoot a stranger if he wasn’t.

But why all the secrecy now?

Is it because I’m getting too close to the truth?

I think back to the photo in my wallet and something clicks into place. I can see what’s happening, clear as day.

“Someone hurt your family, didn’t they.”

I say it with the quiet conviction of certainty. And I can tell by the tiniest hint of a flinch in Jake’s hard eyes that I touched a nerve.

“The man and the girl in the photo. Something happened to them. The reason you’re so focused on this job, the reason for that phone call... this isn’t just a job for you. This is personal.”

I feel a stab of sympathy for him deep in my stomach. Back when I was with Erik, I’d wondered at the idea of having kids. We never got that far, but I’d imagined it a few times. How would I have reacted if someone hurt Erik and I’s would-be baby? With blind, overwhelming rage.

There aren’t that many people in my life that I’m close to. In that way, I imagine Jake and I are similar.

I
can’t
just forgive all the violent things he’s done, can I? But suddenly, a lot more of it makes sense.

Maybe if I understand his motivations, I can talk him down from whatever he’s going to try to make me do.

“Jake,” I start. I step in close to him. And this isn’t faux seduction, this is a genuine appeal to his better side. I put one hand on his shoulder, hesitant, my fingers on the fine fabric of his dress shirt.

“Jake, whatever you’re doing, it doesn’t have to end with you saying goodbye to your friend on the phone. Or if you think it does, you don’t need to drag me down with you.”

“You’re right. But that was never the plan anyway. Regardless of what happens to me, you’re walking out of there. I only needed you as a cover to move around unnoticed.”

I flinch back. So he doesn’t need me as a driver after all?

“What do you mean?”

“I know these people. I know exactly who most of them are. Some of them might recognize me. But they know me. I travel alone. I usually dress inconspicuously. A flashy rich guy with a new fiancee is someone they’ll automatically ignore. People like that just fade into the background in Vegas.”

“So you only need me to get into the building you were casing? And then what?”

Jake twitches his shoulders tensely upward. I can feel the powerful muscle under his shirt when he moves.

“Then you can go. Take the stuff I bought you and walk away and never come back.”

I knit my eyebrows together, watching him, trying to unravel what’s going through his head.

“And you?”

Jake shakes his head just once. He reaches up to take my hand in his, brushing it calmly off his shirt.

“It doesn’t matter what happens to me. Someone took the little girl in that picture. All that matters is I get her safe. Who gives a shit about the rest.”

Wait, he’s doing all this to save that little girl?

I feel dizzy. And it’s not just the remnants of the champagne. But before I can ask anymore questions, Jake pushes past me, moving for the bedroom again.

“I’m going to sleep,” he states, flatly. “I need a clear head in the morning.”

He leaves me standing there, more questions than answers, wondering if my idea I had of Jake Hawthorne was all wrong.