Jet (Marked Men, #2)(69)

Silas looked even worse out of the dim light of the bar bathroom and I hated the way he ran appraising eyes over me.

“Where’s your bother?”

I wrapped my hands back around the coffee and met his stare head-on.

“I don’t know, but I’m going to find him and get the book back.”

He didn’t say anything for a long moment and I saw his gaze flicker to the bag on the floor where I had stashed the money.

“You think you can work this so he gets outta Dodge, scot-free?”

I shook my head a little.

“I’ll get the book for you, but Asa is off-limits. He gets to go to Canada, Mexico, wherever the hell he ends up, and you leave me and my mama alone.”

“The people he stole from aren’t the kind of people that work that way. Retaliation in blood, Ayd. You’re smart enough to know that. Hell, you were always too smart for the shit Asa dragged you into. None of us could ever figure out what you were doing there, not that we didn’t appreciate it while you were. Probably the only chance most of us were ever gonna get to have a piece as hot as you.”

It made me want to hurl, but I just rolled my eyes. I knew how to get guys like Silas to give me what I wanted. I could flirt, could make suggestive come-ons, could take him to bed and make him forget his own name, but the part of me that refused to let that Ayden back just gave him a bored look and tapped short fingernails on the table.

“If you want the book, that’s the deal.”

“How do you even know Asa still has it, or that he’ll give it to you?”

I didn’t, but my brother wasn’t the only skilled liar in the family.

“He will, otherwise I’m handing him over to you to do with what you will. I didn’t ask for him to show up and get his sticky fingers all in my perfectly nice life here. If Asa doesn’t want to play ball with me, he can take his chances with you and the bikers.”

He narrowed flinty eyes at me. “I’m going to need some kind of insurance.”

I didn’t even act like I was surprised by that. I bent down and dug out the five grand. I shoved it at him, careful to make sure no part of him touched me.

“This is the last favor I’m doing for Asa. If he wants to steal and tangle with people who would kill him just as soon as they would look at him, I’m done. I’ll get the book, Silas, but if you follow me, if you harass my roommate or my mama anymore, I’m telling you that there are plenty of people here in this town that are willing to make sure you never make it back to Kentucky.”

He watched me without blinking. I think he was weighing how serious I was, and considering the fact that I felt like I was leaking poison and pain all over the place, he must have seen whatever it was he was looking for.

“I need the book by tonight.”

I narrowed my eyes.

“I’ll call you when I have it.”

“Time is running out for all of us, Ayd.”

I scooped up my bag and pushed away from the table.

“It’s a good thing I’ve always been fast then.” I made him write a contact number down on a napkin before leaving the coffee shop.

When I got to the Jeep, the first thing I did was call home. I asked my mom a hundred and one times if she had anyway for me to contact Asa, but she stonewalled me at every turn. I tried to let her know just how bad things were, that she might be in danger, but as usual she just blew me off and told me that moving to the city had made me paranoid.

I called the strange Kentucky number on my phone over and over again. I even texted it a couple of times, but there was no response. I was going to freak out, and have a hissy fit because I couldn’t start to fix things if I couldn’t get my hands on Asa in the first place. I was about to bang my head on the steering wheel and scream in frustration, when a lightbulb went off. I called Adam with shaking hands, and felt even worse when I heard the genuine pleasure in his voice when he answered.

“Hey, Ayd. I didn’t think I would be hearing from you anymore. Is everything okay?”

I closed my eyes and rested my forehead on the steering wheel. I felt so cold, and not from the chilly Denver weather, just cold and frozen from how everything in my once perfectly normal life was going.

“No, no, nothing is okay.” I didn’t mean to blurt that out, but I couldn’t control myself.

“Uh, is there anything I can do for you? Are you all right?”

This guy was just inherently nice, just a good guy all around and it made me feel even worse that I just couldn’t return his affection. It also made it pretty clear that whatever I had with Jet was just so much bigger, so much more consuming than anything I was ever going to have with anyone else, and I had just walked away from it. My heart folded in on itself and made me gasp in acute pain.

“I just need to know if you’ve heard from my brother. He’s a pretty friendly guy and I figured since he was in town, he might have made good on his threat to get in touch with you if he was bored.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone and I had to restrain myself from tossing it against the windshield.

“Is that all? You sound pretty bad, Ayd.”

“Things with Jet didn’t exactly work out, and I’m having a hard time with it right now.”

He cleared his throat and it rasped across my skin like a bunch of tiny razors.