Jacked Up (Bowen Boys #4) (21 page)

True. He couldn’t care less. He’d fought them for scraps in the street.

“I’m still strapped for cash,” Maldonado admitted. It wasn’t as if he could walk to an ATM machine and withdraw a couple of million dollars to settle the score.

Exxum’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Unfortunate what happened to Aalto. Did you have a talk with the witness?”

Maldonado was not too thrilled to have Exxum in his business, but he’d had to give some explanations as to why he needed more time to pay for the guns. “Not yet. Nico is on it. She’s under federal protection, but not through the official channels.” He would have found her by now if that were the case. Too much paperwork and too many ears. Whoever had her was keeping everyone in the dark.

“Well, I wish you all the luck in the world with that. As for the money you owe me, this is not a good time. I’ve withstood some heavy losses myself.”

Maldonado didn’t know any specifics, but several of Exxum’s deals had fallen through, the police intercepting the supply lines. Which garnered him a measure of comfort. At least he wasn’t the only one going through difficulties.

“So if you’ve come for financial aid,” Exxum continued.

Maldonado shook his head. He wasn’t here for handouts. “I came to propose a deal. I have some logistical issues you could help me with. After all, a big part of the humanitarian relief operation is taking care of the logistics.”

David Exxum, apart from being a huge advocate of animal rights and doing sports like a nut and eating the weirdest things, was a very influential, respected, well-connected businessman who devoted himself to sending humanitarian relief to countries in need, Maldonado’s included. And selling guns to whatever faction needed them. Or both.

His cargo containers went through customs in a much-expedited protocol.

“What’s in it for me?” Exxum asked.

“Aside from helping an old business partner?”

Exxum made a scowl. Yeah, Maldonado guessed as much.

“Once the product has cleared customs, my cash-flow problems are gone, which means I can pay you what I owe you. Plus an increase of, let’s say, ten percent for the help provided.”

Exxum stared at him cockily. “Twenty-five.”

Maldonado gritted his teeth, but before he could answer anything, they were interrupted.

“Mr. Maldonado? There’s a gentleman outside who wishes to talk to you. Mr. Nico Grabar. He—” Nico was already walking toward them, Exxum’s bodyguard moving to intercept him. “You can’t—”

“It’s okay,” Maldonado said, “he’s with me. What are you doing in Boston? You already tired of Hawaii?”

Nico greeted Exxum with a nod and waited for the hotel security guy to leave. Then he said, “The person we are searching for is from Boston. Elle Cooper. Closest relatives are a mother and sister. Father and older brother deceased in a car accident over two years ago. The Coopers own Rosita’s, a small Italian restaurant on the outskirts of town. She’s the one that dispatched your flight. Marlene had a family gathering and they switched IDs.”

“So that’s the loose end,” Maldonado murmured, looking pleased. “Switching IDs. How cleverly stupid of them.”

Nico handed Maldonado a copy of Elle’s driver’s license. “Now we just have to find her.”

Maldonado stared at the picture. Son of a bitch. “I think we just did.”

Chapter Fourteen

They were headed up north. At some point Elle had realized yelling at him wasn’t going to do squat. He wasn’t going to answer or stop, or drive slower for that matter. Jumping out of the truck wasn’t an option and even if he stopped for gas and she managed to slip away from him—which she doubted she could because judging by the murderous look in his eyes he would only walk away from her after cuffing her to the wheel—she was dressed in a ball gown and had no money or decent shoes for walking. So she did the only thing she could: cross her arms and give him the silent treatment. Not that it seemed to bother him in the least.

Asshole. Making decisions that concerned her behind her back. And now they were going under, whatever the heck that meant.

After getting off the highway and several hours of driving on secondary roads, she no longer could tell if they were going east or west. Just forest and deserted, crackled asphalt. Until there wasn’t even that, just dirt and rocks and deeper forest.

He took a sharp left onto a steep, narrow road, the branches and twigs scraping at the truck until they reached an A-frame cabin in the middle of nowhere.

So that was what going under meant.

He killed the engine, reached in the back, and opened some sort of compartment she hadn’t noticed before, grabbed several duffel bags, and gestured for her to get out.

She remained furiously still.

“It gets very cold up here, and there isn’t a human being for miles. Move it.”

She was angry, granted, but stupid she wasn’t, so she followed him.

“What’s this place?” she asked, as he unlocked the front door.

“Hunting cabin. Generator should kick in soon.” He dropped the bags and produced a flashlight.

She glanced around. No TV. No computer. Heck, no decent sofa either. Two wooden benches flanking a massive table. A fireplace with several O-rings in a wooden beam with some utensils hanging from them, and a mini-kitchen that must have been a century old.

His Pilgrim wife would love to live there, skinning the rabbits he would hunt and cooking over the fireplace, or sewing quilts on the porch, swaying in the rocking chair he would make for her.

“Do we pull water from a well?”

“No. Rain-recycling system. Toilet outside.”

Of course.

Jack went to the back and probably did something, because the lights kicked in. Sadly, the place didn’t improve one bit; it got worse. Now she knew what Heidi had felt, stepping into her grandpa’s cabin for the first time.

“I’ll grab some wood,” he said, striding for the front door.

“So you know, I don’t eat rabbit.”

He frowned, turning to her. “What?”

“Nothing,” she mumbled.

While he was outside in what she supposed was the woodshed, she inspected her surroundings. Jack had left the duffel bags in the only bedroom, on top of the hardest bed she’d ever tried. Then again, she hadn’t been in the Siberian gulag. Maybe they had harder ones.

The celestial sound of a phone buzzing almost stopped her heart. Oh God, there was service. That was her ticket out of the Stone Age.

She rummaged through the bag where the buzz was coming from, trying to ignore all the guns in there. On the flip side, if he refused to let her go, she could shoot him.

Finally, she fished out a satellite phone. She didn’t recognize the name on the screen but answered nevertheless.

“Yes?”

“Elle?” said a female voice. “Ronnie here. You guys okay?”

“Define okay.”

“What do you mean? Is my brother there?”

“Yes, the ass is out front.”

A startled pause and then a soft chuckle. “What has he done?”

“Ha! What hasn’t he done would be more accurate. When I finish talking with you, I’m calling 911 and tell them I’ve been kidnapped by the Unabomber.”

Ronnie broke into laughter. “So you are at the cabin.”

“Unfortunately. How do you know?”

“I’ve been there. And Jack sent me an encrypted message, which means he’s disappearing.”

“Lucky you. I didn’t even get three words out of him.” It seemed Elle was the only one left in the dark.

She really didn’t know squat about this guy. Not a damn thing.

“Jack is not big on giving explanations. But he’s damn good.”

“I’m not big on being ordered around and ignored. Why haven’t you been ‘ordered’ to hide?”

Ronnie snorted. “You remember V-2’s huge bouncer? Jack pays him, and his job is not only to watch the door, believe me. He’s on my ass twenty-four seven.”

It figured.

“Say,” Elle started. “If you’ve been here, you could come to pick me up.”

“Sorry. Couldn’t find the place if my life depended on it. And the bodyguard from hell wouldn’t take me. Besides, if Jack brought you up there, it means you’re in deep trouble. You’d better stay put.”

“Sure, what else can a pet do?”

“Pet is good, Elle. Pet is very good,” Ronnie answered.

“Meaning?”

“Before I forget; I left a pair of jeans and some toiletries in the chest of drawers,” Ronnie said changing the subject.

As cryptic as her brother.

Elle was about to push the issue when Jack came through the door and shot a nasty look her way.

“Wait a second, the ass just came in.” Elle handed the phone to Jack. “Your sister.”

A couple of nods and “yes,” and he hung up. Probably reading her mind, he put the phone on the pocket of his jeans, glaring at her.

“How long do you think you can keep me incommunicado here?”

“As long as it takes,” he replied arrogantly.

“So you had the time to stay in contact with Ronnie and talk to Mullen and whatnot but you don’t have the smidgen of decency needed to answer my questions, right?”

“I don’t give a shit about decency,” he grunted, piling the wood near the fireplace. “And you don’t need to know.”

Didn’t that say it all.

She was so angry she turned her back on him while he got the fire started. She wasn’t spending any more saliva on this moron.

“You hungry? There are some MREs.”

She didn’t even dignify this with an answer. She went to the bedroom and slammed the door.

Apparently, Jack didn’t speak Woman fluently, because he thought that was an invitation to follow her.

She gathered his duffel bags and shoved them at him. “You take the sofa.”

He grabbed them, left them on the floor, and then looked at her defiantly. “No.”

“Fine,” she retorted, picking up her things. That was, the shoes she’d taken off and her useless, empty minipurse. Such irony; this was the first time she’d left without her own phone. “I’ll take the sofa.” Or bed of nails. Whatever that was.

Before she could fully comprehend what was happening, she was airborne, and then landed on the bed, Jack between her legs, looming over her.

She was totally overpowered, so she went for dignified and stayed furiously silent. Defiant, while he kissed her ravenously, forcing his way into her mouth, his tongue pushing in.

When he let her up for air, she tried to make her voice sound even. “Not talking to you. You don’t need to kiss me to shut me up. I’ll appreciate if you’d get off me now.”

He didn’t budge an inch. Eyes fierce. His expression a snarl. “I tried to stay away from you. I warned you. You didn’t stay away. Now you have to face what you find. Own it. You don’t get to run when things don’t go your way. You knew what you were getting into when you asked me to fuck you.”

Pardon? “I didn’t ask you to take over my life and nullify me. Turn me into a wallflower.”

“A wallflower doesn’t have this effect on me,” he said, pressing his erection against her.

She was pissed, but she was turned on, too, so she threw herself into the kiss, pushing for dominance, stuck in a loop of anger and excitement that was swallowing them both.

But dominance with Jack, she wasn’t going to have. In spite of all her thrashing and writhing, he managed to pin her down, rip the dress off her, and get naked himself. He rolled them over, putting her on top for about two seconds, before sitting up and forcing her legs around his waist.

“What do you think you’re doing? Don’t dare take me for granted.”

“I don’t. I’m taking you, period.”

Without preamble, he slid inside her, full of arrogance. The arrogance of a man sure of his lover’s welcome. A man who knew his woman trusted him and wanted him. And he was right because she did. It infuriated immensely, but she did. Her body trusted and wanted him, conceited bastard that he was.

“You don’t withhold sex from me because you’re pissed. You don’t go to sleep on the sofa. You don’t give me the cold shoulder.”

“So what the hell do I do, uh? What?” she spat in broken pants, looking straight into his eyes as he filled her and her core flexed trying to accommodate him.

“We hash it out, pet. Talk.”

Now he wanted to talk. Asshole. “You prefer your women silent.”

Tightening his embrace, he gripped her locks and forced her to hold his stare. “Talk,” he bit out, his huge cock pulsing inside her, the hair of his groin tickling her folds.

Her hands were trembling, even as her nails were sinking into his shoulders.

Her voice came out shaky, a thin thread of almost nothing. “I’ve been demanding answers from you for hours. You didn’t give them to me. I don’t want to talk now.”

It was a power game. Everything with Jack was a power game. He had the upper hand. He was holding her tight, his chest rubbing her nipples, his cock impaling her, and they were supposed to hash it out? When she couldn’t breathe, much less think?

“You truly are a Borg. Made of steel. Nothing affects you. I, on the other hand, can’t turn on and off my feelings. Compartmentalizing all.”

He opened the hand at the small of her back and pushed her even more flush against him, pressing her aching clit against the cold piercing. She didn’t want to respond, but she couldn’t stop the shiver running through her, her womb contracting, her pussy clasping around him. He stood still, looking grim, his teeth locked. All his muscles bulging.

He might have been playing power games but he was far from unaffected.

She withstood his glare, doing her damnedest not to whimper. “I am not the kind of woman who needs or wants a man to make decisions for her. If you don’t treat me like an equal, you are not worth my time, not even temporarily.”

“We are not equal, but I am worth your time.” He pushed on before she could show her outrage at that statement. “You are under my protection. I’m in charge of keeping you safe. We are not on equal ground. You have to trust the decisions I make are in your best interest.”

“I want to have a say.”

“You will. As long as your say agrees with mine.”

The gall of the guy. She squeezed her core as tight as possible, almost sending herself over, and watched the vein at his temple pulse, feeling his erection growing even bigger inside her.