The Con (19 page)

"Hungry?"

"It’s a stakeout, Jagger. In all my favorite
mystery books there's snack food eaten while watching a place. It
helps the time go faster."

"Or it's the perfect distraction and you'll
miss something important you would have seen if you weren't nose
deep in a bag of chips."

He doesn't even look at me as he talks. His
eyes stay trained on the building down below while I continue to
eat my chips, my hands getting covered in potato grease.

Once I’ve finished half the bag I decide
I've had enough and close it up before placing it on the floor near
my feet. Jagger has his window rolled down as he smokes a
cigarette, his eyes moving across all the buildings below, and then
back to the warehouse.

"What are you expecting to see from up
here?"

"Not sure, twinkle toes, but I like to know
exactly what I'm walking into before I walk into it. We'll see
Matteo arrive and hopefully be able to read a little bit of what he
has planned by his movements once he gets here. Does he sit in his
car patiently, or get out and take a round of target practice? I'll
tell you one thing, he's not getting his hands on this money until
I'm absolutely sure you're safe and will stay safe."

"Until we're safe, Jagger. He has to
guarantee both of our safety."

He peers out at me from the corner of his
eye. "That's what I meant, twinkle toes."

Taking one last drag he flicks the filter of
his smoke out the window. "When it's almost time to meet up I'm
going to drop you off at a diner down the road that we passed
before pulling in here. You're going to take the money with you.
Don’t move from there until I come to get you."

"Wait, I'm not staying with you?"

"It's too dangerous, twinkle toes."

"I'm not leaving you alone with him,
Jagger."

"Yes, you are," he says sternly. "This isn't
up for negotiation. I know how men like Matteo work. He'll have
less respect for me if I bring you into the meeting with me. I'll
have less respect for myself if I bring you with me. Plus, he's not
going to touch me until he has the money in his hands so you're my
lifeline. As long as you have that money I'll stay breathing if the
meeting goes bad."

Jagger stops talking as we see movement down
below. Four black Escalades pull into the parking lot of the
warehouse and sandwiched between them is a classic blue Monte
Carlo. The vehicles stop and park in the middle of the lot and a
young, well-dressed man steps out of the driver's seat of the Monte
Carlo. This must be Matteo Esposito. Another man, larger than
Matteo and dressed a little less flashy, gets out of the passenger
side. In seconds another ten men surround them, all coming out of
the surrounding Escalades.

"It's a trap," Jagger mumbles under his
breath as his vision stays trained below.

"What?" I ask perplexed, looking over at
Jagger.

"He's setting me up. The meeting was
supposed to be between the two of us. He promised to come alone but
he's going to ambush me. If I go down to that meeting I'm not
walking out alive."

Looking back down below, the man who was in
the passenger side of the Monte Carlo with Matteo walks over to one
of the Escalades and opens up the back hatch. The other men
surround Matteo, who looks as if he's giving out orders to an army.
It's hard to make out what the big man is doing at the back of the
Escalade because most of his body is out of my vision, but then I
get a glimpse of something when part of his hand is revealed for a
brief second.

The man has a gun in his hand. It's easy to
paint the rest of the picture now. He's at the back of the Escalade
getting the weapons ready, loading them with ammunition.

"What should we do, Jagger?" The tremble in
my voice can't be masked.

I knew I should have asked him earlier what
his plan B was. I should have come up with a plan B on my own like
I had planned, but I let Jagger and hot sex get in the way.

"I'm not sure, but we're not staying here."
He sticks the key back in the ignition and starts the car before
peeling out of the parking lot and driving out of there like he's
in the Indy 500. "It’ll only be a few minutes before those men in
the Escalades do what we we're doing now. One of them is bound to
come over to the same location we were just in. It has the best
view of the warehouse below."

Leaving the industrial park, we pull out
onto the main road and head east. "Are you going to call him?
Explain that we saw him and maybe set up a different meeting?"

"It's over, twinkle toes. Any meeting we set
up with him is going to go exactly as today went. The only
difference is he'll be smarter about his pregame and get his men
there days before instead of an hour. We are never going to be
free–he wants our heads on a platter."

His last words echo in my head and I start
panicking, my breathing becoming short and quick. What does he mean
we'll never be free?

I lean forward in my seat and place my hands
on the dashboard as I try to get control of my breathing. When
Jagger notices, he pulls his car off to the side of the road,
placing it in park and then he's leaning over the center console
and wrapping his arms around me in a side hug.

"Breathe, twinkle toes. You need to take
deep breaths. Breathe in... breathe out." I try to follow his
breathing pattern as he continues to tell me when to inhale and
exhale. After a few minutes I've finally calmed myself down enough
to speak.

"When you say we'll never be free, what do
you mean by that?"

"I mean Matteo Esposito wants me dead, and
since you did the job with me he'll want you dead, too. We can't go
back home, twinkle toes. It's too dangerous."

"Where are we going to go?"

"I'm no sure yet, but for now we'll head to
El Paso. It's about a four hour drive and by the time Matteo
realizes we're not showing, we'll already be halfway to Texas."

I drag a hand through my long hair before
pulling the hair tie off my wrist and pulling my hair back in a
ponytail. Jagger starts the car back up and pulls out onto the
road.

"Jagger," I say his name hesitantly.

"Yeah, babe?"

"We'll be able to go home eventually though,
right? He won't be after us forever. It doesn't seem fair that
Angelo gets to continue on with his life while we're on the
run."

He doesn't respond and just keeps driving,
his silence on the subject says everything I need to know. A
decision I made two weeks ago is going to affect the rest of my
life. I'm not going to be able to go home, which I guess in the big
picture isn't a bad thing since I wasn't the biggest fan of the
trailer I lived in and my trailer park, but what about Pearl? Will
I ever be able to see my sister again? We weren't the closest as
far as sisters go, but that wasn't her fault. She was put in the
parenting role at such a young age with me, and then between her
job and school, I pretty much raised myself. It was what she had to
do to give us a better life. Now that she's going to achieve the
goal she worked so hard for, she won't have me to help her
celebrate all of her success.

Tears pull at the corner of my eyes and I
blink rapidly, doing all I can to stop them from falling. Turning
to face the window of the passenger side door, I rest my arm on the
top of the door where it meets the glass and lay my head down on
it. I sleep most of the ride to El Paso, only waking up when Jagger
pulls over so we can ditch the car we're in and steal a new
car.

He takes out his burner phone and surprises
me by calling Matteo. Our meeting time has passed and we're hours
from Albuquerque, but getting things out in the open must have been
weighing on Jagger's mind.

He keeps the call short, apologizing to
Matteo and telling him how sorry he truly is. He never should have
listened to Angelo and Damien. He tells Matteo how they set him up
and aren't to be trusted.

When he finishes the call he takes the
battery out of the back of the phone and tosses the phone into a
nearby pond. We drive off in the silver wagon he just stole and get
back on the road. My eyes close as I try to forget about all the
revelations today has brought.

Chapter Sixteen

When we walk into the doors of our hotel
room at the Wyndham near the airport, I practically collapse onto
the bed face first. Although I've slept for most of the past four
hours, I'm still emotionally and physically exhausted, but I'll
take the little victories as they come. The fact that we were able
to get a room in this hotel at all is a small victory.

The difference between nice hotels and
sleazy motels is sleazy motels will let you pay in cash, but nice
hotels want a credit card on file and Jagger didn't have one to
give them. He could no longer use the stolen ones in his wallet
because by now the Esposito organization might know about them and
be tracking their activity.

It took a lot of persuasion, and the hotel
manager required a security deposit of a thousand dollars on top of
the nightly fee, but we were able to rent a room for the night.

"What's the plan?" I ask, mumbling my
question into the comforter that's under my mouth.

"There is no plan, twinkle toes. I'm just as
lost right now as you are and we need to come up with something
before they have a chance to hunt us down."

Flipping over on the bed I rest my hands on
my stomach and stare up at the white ceiling, focusing on all the
little bumps and ridges in the drywall. "Well, at least we have
somewhere close to two million dollars to help us figure it all
out," I laugh out humorlessly.

"Yeah, there's that," he replies quietly as
he places the black duffle bag and Target bags into the hotel room
closet before joining me on the bed. "We could go to Mexico. We're
already near the border. We could cross over and deposit the money
in a foreign account. I could wire some money to my sister for her
and my nephew, and you could wire money to Pearl and then we go
from there. Live down in Mexico for a while until we figure out our
next move."

Turning my head to the side so I can see him
I respond," I don’t like that idea. Mexico is dangerous right now
for Americans. Don't you watch the news? Plus, I don't speak the
language, and isn't it a little cliché to flee America and run to
Mexico? I've seen it and read about it so many times before. I
don’t want to be a cliché, Jagger."

"Well, I don't want to be dead, twinkle
toes. I'm okay being a cliché if you're still breathing."

"Can we just talk about all this in the
morning? I'm tired and my head hurts. I just need a night to forget
all about the chaos our life is in. We literally have the rest of
our lives to worry about where we'll live and who is following
us."

"Whatever you want, twinkle toes."

I close my eyes, prepared to fall asleep
like this, when I feel the weight of Jagger's body fall on me. He
kisses the small amount of exposed skin at the top of my chest
before sliding down my body and lifting the bottom of my t-shirt.
He pulls it up until it reaches the bottom of my bra and then he
kisses my soft stomach, starting at my ribs and moving down to my
navel.

My breathing begins to falter as his tongue
traces the inside of my belly button before his kisses move lower.
I squirm on the bed, my skin lit with anticipation.

He unbuttons the top of my jeans and slowly
lowers the zipper.

He whispers across my skin, "I have the
perfect way to distract you tonight, twinkle toes."

His voice is low and screams sex, turning me
on and making me so wet.

Grabbing the waistband of my jeans he pulls
them down, past my hips and down my legs. Standing up he pulls them
the rest of the way off before pulling himself back up my body and
assaulting my aroused flesh with his lips again. He kisses the
sensitive skin right above the top of my panties and then he brings
his lips lower, kissing my mound over the thin layer of
material.

He bites down gently before licking at the
dampness between my legs that's seeped through my panties.

"Fuck," I groan out, arching my back as I
bring my pussy closer to him. I want to touch him the way he's
touching me, but if I move right now he'll stop what he's doing and
I need the diversion of his hands and mouth right now.

He raises his head, smiling up at me before
his hands dig into the sides of my panties, lowering them off my
body and leaving me naked from the waist down.

His hands curl around the back of my thighs
and then he spreads me open to him. My neck arches back and I close
my eyes as I feel the first trace of his tongue against my swollen
flesh as the scruff on his cheeks rub against my inner thigh.

"Jagger," I pant out as he soothes me with
his talented mouth.

He teases my clit with the tip of his
tongue, applying just the right amount of pressure before sliding
his tongue back down and circling my core with the tip. I lower my
hands, knotting them in his messy mane and pulling him closer to
me. He chuckles against the lips of my pussy and then his mouth is
on me again, sucking my clit between his lips before tracing his
tongue in a circular motion over and over again against my bundle
of nerves.

Oh God, it feels so good. It's just what I
need right now. I'm not thinking about anything other than Jagger
making me come.

"Don't stop... don't you dare fucking stop,"
the animal inside me demands.

He slides a hand between my legs and pushes
two fingers inside me, thrusting them in and out of my wet heat,
rubbing me just right against the soft textured spot inside. Spots
cloud my vision as all the blood in my body gravitates below and
I'm preparing for an explosion so intense, my body won't know
what's happening.

His free hand slides up my skin, caressing
my covered breasts before moving up further until the tip of his
index finger is lingering on my bottom lip. I part my lips and lick
the tip. He slides his finger between my lips and I suck on his
finger, simulating what I'd like to be doing to his cock and he
moans out against my clit... and it pushes me over the edge. I
climax, coming hard against his hand, gyrating against his mouth as
he continues to rub my g-spot just right. I'm biting down on his
finger in my mouth, hoping it'll suppress the screams and whimpers
escaping between my lips.