Stay with Me (Wait for You, #3)(32)

“It was several bags of something that looked like brown sugar. I’m guessing that wasn’t it.”

“Fuck,” he muttered, sounding distracted. “Sounds like heroin. Little bags or big?”

Heroin. God, was Mom doing that shit now? “What do you mean by little? Like sandwich-bag size?”

“No.” He coughed out a laugh as he rose, facing me. “A sandwich bag of heroin would not be little. Talking this small?” He held up his finger and thumb, changing the space between them to a couple of inches. “What about that?”

“It was several Ziploc-sized bags, Jax. There were about eight of them, and they were full.” My heart skipped a beat when his face went blank. “That’s . . . that’s bad, right?”

“Fuck yeah.” He thrust his hands through his hair. “Sounds like there could’ve been a kilo or more in those bags. And, by the way you describe it, sounds like black tar heroin.”

I knew what a kilo was due to the kind of classes I took, but I had no idea what that translated into in the drug world. “Black tar?”

“More expensive shit from what I hear.”

The walls shifted suddenly. “How expensive?”

“Shit. Anywhere from seventy thousand to over a hundred thousand per kilo,” he explained, drawing in a deep breath. “Really depends on how pure it is—if it was high-end shit or not. Could even be worth a couple of million.”

“Oh my God.” My knees suddenly felt weak. “How do you know this stuff?”

His gaze landed on me. “Been around the block a few times.”

“You did heroin?”

“Hell no.” He didn’t elaborate. “Tell me what this guy looked like.” After I finished describing Greasy Guy, Jax looked even tenser. “Doubt that it was his shit he was retrieving. And I don’t think it was Mona’s, either.”

My stomach flopped. “You think she was . . . holding it for someone?”

He nodded. “Let’s f*cking pray that this guy was who she was holding it for. If not . . .”

Oh God, I didn’t need to be a drug kingpin to figure out what he meant. If Mom was holding drugs of that kind of value, the owner would eventually come looking for it, and with the drugs being gone, she was beyond being in hot water. She was drowning. All I could hope, like Jax had said, was that the crap belonged to Greasy Guy. He seemed to know exactly where it was.

As we headed downstairs, my phone rang in my hand. Lifting it, I saw that it was Clyde calling. “Hello?”

“You doing okay, baby girl?” came his deep, gravelly voice.

“Yeah.”

“Jax there?”

“Yeah.”

He expelled a long breath. “He’s a good boy. He’ll protect you.”

I frowned, not just because of Clyde’s words, but because Jax was in the bedroom, picking up the stuff Greasy Guy had thrown around, which included a couple of pairs of undies. “Uh, Uncle Clyde . . . I got to go.”

“I mean it, baby girl, he’ll do good by you,” Clyde went on, and his words caused the flutter to return to my chest, more powerful than before. “You hear me?”

“Yeah,” I whispered. “I hear you.”

“Good. Call me in the morning. Okay?”

“Will do.” I hung up and slowly entered the bedroom, my heart skipping around in my chest. I stopped just inside the door. “Jax, what are you doing?”

“What does it look like?” He righted the mattress. “I doubt this was your idea of rearranging a room.”

“No, but I can take care of it. You don’t—”

“I am helping, so don’t argue with me about it.” He bent down and grabbed a sheet, tossing it toward me. “And I’m staying the night.”

The sheet hit the floor. “What?”

“I’m staying with you.” He went about fitting the other sheet to the mattress. “I can take the couch.” His thick lashes lifted, and his eyes were back to the warm brown. “Or I can stay in here . . .”

I had no words.

He took the other sheet from where it lay in a pile, and I just stood there as he finished the bed and went back to picking up the strewn-about clothes. As he grabbed a handful of colorful, silky items, I snapped out of it.

I stormed over, snatching my undies out of his hand. “You’re not staying here.”

“Then you’re coming to stay with me.”

A minute went by before I could even process that. “I am not staying with you.”

“And then I’m staying with you.” He started grabbing what was left of my clothes on the floor as I shoved my undies in a drawer. “This house isn’t safe, obviously, especially when you’re opening the door to random thugs—”

“I’m not going to open the door again!” I shouted.

Pausing while closing a dresser drawer, he straightened, and as he did so, his lips tipped up at one corner. “What are you wearing?”

“What?” I glanced down at myself. The shirt was black, with a built-in bra, thank God, because I didn’t want to be all boobalicious, and the sleep shorts were a soft pink. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”

“Nothing.” Grinning, he closed the drawer. “Like the socks. It’s cute. You’re cute.”