Two Hitmen: A Double Bad Boy Mafia Romance (Lawless Book 1) (57 page)

Barclay cut in, “We’re aware of how well you do understand it, Careena. That’s another reason this matter is so extremely serious. It’s clear that you assaulted Mr. Sage, and he has told me as much.”

Her mouth sagged open. “But I…”

“There really is only one possible outcome here, Careena, as I’m sure you know.”

She deflated and her eyes widened into wide almond shapes. Barclay went on, “At the casino we very much hope that Mr. Sage won’t press for criminal charges to be brought. It will be a matter for him to decide.”

Careena roused. Her foot stamped. “Play that recording again. Play it with the audio.”

“There is no audio on that recording, Careena. Chay tells me that the channel was faulty. But the evidence is unambiguous. Collect your things. Anything that’s owing to you after deductions will be forwarded forthwith.”

She stared. His voice hardened, “Now leave.” Her eyes glowered like hot coals at Jackson as she turned to go.

“Please wait, Mr. Sage.”

After the door slammed behind Careena, Barclay said, “Casino employees don’t usually bring charges against other members of staff. It isn’t usually felt to be helpful or necessary.” His dark beady eyes searched Jackson’s. “Will you find it helpful or necessary, Mr. Sage?”

Jackson shook his head.

Chapter 5

Not too many of Jackson’s law classmates rocked up to class in shades and on low, fat Harley Davidsons. It was the one trace of Karl’s blood that Jackson could never get out of his veins. He didn’t crave the clubs, the outlaw lifestyle or the biker fraternity, but he was hooked on the bikes.

Once time when Jackson was fourteen, Karl had let him down for the third weekend in a row. As always, his excuse was something to do with the bike. Jackson saw the gleaming Harley as the key to his revenge, and he fired up Karl’s low-rider.

When he pressed the ignition, the sound and the powerful, controlled shake of the engine got him fired up too. He had no idea what he would do when he got the bike out of the driveway, but he knew that Karl would come running as soon as he heard the motor kick into life, so he didn’t wait around.

The smooth power of the throbbing beast between his thighs raised his spirit. He felt the cycle lift as he twisted the throttle. The machine surged forward as if it was alive and eager as he let out the clutch. He leaned out of the drive and the huge mass of metal was almost down to the pavement.

Jackson turned the throttle and the bike straightened up and leapt forwards. The sensation of raw power was electric to Jackson as he swept out onto the highway with the wind in his face. As he learned to guide the low weight of that sure machine, Jackson was smitten.

He’d been around bikes and bikers enough to know how to operate the controls, but he was unprepared for the sensation of raw energy that he got from having the big v-twin engine and two wheels pulling underneath him.
 

The connection between him and the cycle as he controlled the motor with his hands and feet and steered the bike with his hips swelled him with a charge of freedom.

Jackson rode Karl’s bike around until after midnight. He rode through town, to the freeway, out in the desert, up in the hills. Anywhere and everywhere. The combination of freedom and thrill was the best thing he had ever felt. He would have ridden on forever but he didn’t have any money and he didn’t know how to fill the tank.

When he finally rolled the Harley back to the front of the shabby apartment building, Karl was waiting on the steps. He had a joint in his hand and raw anger in his eyes. When he saw Jackson riding, though, he softened. They had something in common after all.

Jackson worked at grocery stores, delivered newspapers, cleaned up in a diner; he took any work he could to get the money to buy himself a bike.

The Nevada bar is reckoned one of the toughest in the US, along with California, and the fact that Jackson passed on his first take impressed all of the local law firms. From the first seven that he visited with his CV, four offered him a desk right away. Joel Ellis, the senior partner at Ellis, Francis and Crane was himself an ex-Marine in his late thirties. His firm handshake was the one that Jackson went back for.

Ellis said that he didn’t mind Jackson finishing out the month at the Mirabelle, so long as he was in good shape for court days. His first few weeks there likely wouldn’t be too many, so he should just spend some time around the courthouse while the clients got to know about him. That suited Jackson.

In his last week dealing at the
Mirabelle
, two men he knew from the corps, Hendricks and Wiley, sat down across the card table.

To Jackson’s eye, Wiley’s bullet-head wasn’t much improved by his having grown out his Marine flat-top into a kind of a pineapple sprout. Hendricks’ blond thatch was still in the Marine cut, and he looked relaxed in denims and a bike jacket, as if they were a part of him. Wiley, not so much.

Wiley said, “You look great in the monkey suit, Sage.”

“Good to see you, too, Pete. I see you didn’t re-enlist. Oh, unless you’re on an undercover detail.”

The start of a smile pulled Hendricks’ lips. Jackson gave him a look of greeting.

Wiley said, “So deal, monkey-man.”

Jackson said, “I can’t do that, Pete. I know you.”

Wiley rolled his eyes, “Who’s going to know, monkey man?”

Hendricks’ voice was like a minor earth tremor. “You called him by name.”

Wiley’s face flinched. He said, “The monkey suit’s got a name tag.”

“Yes,” Jackson said, “Which you didn’t read.”

Jackson’s tag said, ‘Vincent.’

Hendricks asked him, “Did you ever find yourself a Vincent?”

Jackson smiled, pleased that Hendricks recognized the name of the vintage foreign bikes that he had a passion for. “I found a Black Lightening that I’m restoring. It’s going to be a long project.” He spread his hands on the table, “Guys, it’s great to see you, but I can’t chat now.”

Wiley scowled but Hendricks rested a huge hand on his shoulder. Before the men left, Jackson wrote his cellphone number on a card, in big numerals for the cameras to see, and he handed the card to Hendricks.

“I’m starting in law practice next week and I may need an investigator now and then. Call me if you’re interested.”
 

When Chay came by to pick up the chips, he asked about the two men. It was standard procedure. Any time a dealer had a conversation with a guest, security would follow up on it.

Jackson told him, “Hendricks is a man you’d be glad to see in any combat or field situation. In the four years I knew him, he always did what he said he would do and he never once told a lie.”

Chay’s brow furrowed as he looked up from the ledger. “never telling a lie is a good thing, right?”

“With Hendricks, things don’t always mean what you’d expect them to mean.”

Jackson remembered the intricate red patterns on the ornate rug in the tent, and the cracking of the tent flaps on the cold hillside near the Syrian border. Hendricks led the mission, and he had brought a goat farmer to the tribal warlord. The warlord sat, in a chair draped in rugs. He wore robes with intricate decoration and embroidery.

An arc of men stood behind him with bullet-belts crossed over their robes, massive curved daggers in their belts. All of them carried Kalashnikovs. All of them wore sunglasses by Porsche, Ferrari or Hermes.

Hendricks negotiated, and Jackson could just about follow the conversation. Hendricks’ Kurdish dialect was perfect. The warlord claimed that the farmer had molested children in nearby village.

Rumors around the hillsides had confirmed it, but the evidence was far from conclusive. Jackson believed it, although the fact that the farmer’s land was right between two patches of disputed territory made him suspicious.

Right in front of the warlord, Hendricks lifted the farmer by the scruff of his neck. The farmer’s eyes popped wide as his feet left the floor. “You promised I would be safe.” He babbled, “You swore I’d come to no harm.”

Hendricks’ voice was as dry as his coal-black eyes. “You didn’t listen. I promised that
he
wouldn’t harm you.” With his other hand, Hendricks drew out a long combat knife. “He won’t. You’ll be safe from him the rest of your life.”

The men behind the warlord’s chair all jumped forward. They seized the edge of the rug and dragged it away. Jackson and Hendricks had to jump back. Hendricks put the farmer’s feet back on the floor. His face broke into a sweat of relief. Then Hendricks reached down and swung the little man up by his ankle.

His blood splashed onto the sand and dirt, the way that a goat’s does, when it’s slaughtered in the Halal tradition. Jackson didn’t share that story with Chay, and he shook his head to try and lose the recollection.

As Chay sorted the chips into neat piles to count, Jackson told him, “Hendricks was the only man I knew who could tell you he was working an intelligence detail and you wouldn’t have to stifle a laugh.”

It was strange to see men that he knew from the corps out of uniform. The
Blades
patch on Wiley’s back was unsettling.

Chapter 6

Jackson’s first cases with Ellis, Francis and Crane consisted of defending men, all men, whom everybody referred to as ‘assholes.’
 

Men just like his old dad.

Men like McGhee.
 

McGhee’s rap sheet read like the plot of a cheap, sordid thriller. Crimes of violence and against property, possession and dealing in the sleaziest kinds of drugs and a long list of vehicle felonies. The violence stood out, though.
 

Charges of assault with a deadly weapon and the attempted homicide of a biker named Bo Treacher were what brought McGhee’s boots dragging into Jackson’s cramped, windowless office. McGhee was sneering, arrogant and forceful, a big, bearded man in leathers and worn denim. A biker with the look of a man that a jury just loves to convict.

McGhee stomped and jangled across Jackson’s office and scraped a chair in front of Jackson’s desk. His manner was to show that he’d done this all before. He’d hired lawyers. He was onto their game.

“Just tell me what it’s going to take to make this bullshit charge go away, lawyer.” Jackson’s office door opened behind him as he spoke and she slipped in.

She slid against the wall with her hands behind her back. Didn’t say a word. Jackson’s mind raced and he tried to ignore her. His body wasn’t ignoring her though. One particular part was rising to point at her so hard Jackson though it might bang the bottom of his desk.

He kept his eyes off her at least, as he took McGhee through the standard terms and conditions speech. It boiled down to,
if you tell me anything that implicates you in a crime, I can’t defend you for that crime.

She leaned against the far wall, out of the light. Her soft hip cocked, her plump red lips pursed as she bit on the inside of her cheek. Throughout the meeting she didn’t speak. Her eyes fixed on Jackson when she walked in. They didn’t move off him.

A faint mauve patch under the skin on her cheekbone looked like a bruise that was healing. Jackson guessed that the dark circles around her eyes were not all mascara and lack of sleep. The look was still on her face, in the slight purse of her lips, like it hadn’t moved in five years.
Show me
.

Jackson told McGhee, “If you want a cast-iron assurance that you’ll be acquitted or that the charges will be dropped, it’s going to cost you the high end of five figures.” He saw that he had McGhee’s attention. “You won’t get that assurance from me, and I couldn’t tell you where you will get it. I will tell you this, though, Mr. McGhee. Anyone who guarantees they can get these charges magicked away will have to be a liar as well as a thief.”

The big man sagged. Now, for the first time, Jackson felt what he’d seen in his father’s lawyer. He was certain nobody else talked to McGhee the way that he just had. McGhee looked up at Jackson, “What are my chances?”

“With the evidence as it stands and without the weapon, I’d say they’re not great, but it’s not a sure thing. If the weapon shows up, then that will probably clinch it,” Jackson watched McGhee’s eyes flinch as he finished up, “one way or the other.”

He watched McGhee pretend to make a choice. Whether he appointed Jackson as his lawyer or shopped for a much more expensive defender was a decision that had already been made. Jackson knew it. McGhee did, too.

McGhee hunched like a customer who wanted to haggle about something. Crack a deal that made him look good in front of the lady he’d brought along to impress. Jackson hadn’t any optional extras, yearly service or insurance deals to offer him.

Late that afternoon the phone on Jackson’s desk rang.
 

As soon as he heard the quiet voice, “Jack?” he knew it was her. “Can we meet somewhere?” All he could think of was her eyes. The way they were on him from behind McGhee all that time that he’d been in Jackson’s office. Sat across the table while his woman stood in the shadows

Jackson started to wonder how McGhee had come to choose Jackson for his defender in the first place. It could have been just by chance. Or it could be that somebody thought it would be a good idea and told it to him. Her voice in the phone was like raw silk. Dirty raw silk. “Somewhere private?” Everything told him that meeting her was a bad plan.

Well, nearly everything. One part of him rose to the sound of her voice, like it had risen to the memory of her. Time and time again.

He knew that this could turn out very badly. There were a thousand ways that meeting the client’s partner could be the wrong thing to do. And he heard criminal intent on her breath. Definitely a bad idea.

Jackson arrived early at the barely-lit downtown bar he’d named on the phone. He picked out a dark booth in a far corner to wait for her. When he’d crossed the carpet that clung to his shoes, she was already there with two glasses of bourbon.

Maryette sat back in the corner and spread her arms along the tops of the banquette. Under a tasseled black leather vest she had on a soft cream blouse, open down to her deep butterscotch cleavage. Her black leather skirt was short enough for the tops of her fishnet stockings to peek out.