I look out the small window in the door once again and notice Ace is walking back to my door with his phone to his ear.
“Benny, please? I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t an emergency.” He sighs loudly then throws his keys at me. “Thank you. And Benny?” He stops to look at me. “I’m sorry.” His eyebrows draw together and he looks at me as if I’m going to say more, but I don’t.
Quickly, I slip out the back entrance and to Benny’s car.
15
Jasper
“Boss, the door’s locked,” Ace says into the phone.
“Where is she?” I ask him as I’m driving back from the mansion to get her.
“She went into the club. Said she isn’t getting paid enough because of lost shifts, so she was picking up extra.”
“She’s fucking lying.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Where exactly did she go, Ace? Find her. Now.”
“She hasn’t left the club, Jasper. What’s the matter?”
“Kick that door in. Now,” I tell him.
“Fuck, okay. Hold on.”
I wait for him. I hear the sounds of boot meeting wood and then the door swinging open on its hinges to meet the wall with a loud thud.
“Fuck.” He doesn’t have the phone to his ear, but I can still hear him. “Gabe! Oh fuck! Shit. Fuck.” I hear rustling and Ace swearing but that’s all.
“Faster,” I tell the driver.
“I am, boss.”
“Ace,” I yell into the phone waiting for him to respond.
“Boss, you aren’t going to like this.”
“Tell me,” I urge.
“Gabe’s dead. Bullet to the head.”
“Where is she?” I seethe.
“You don’t think?” Ace asks.
“It makes perfect sense. Now, find her.”
“Got it, boss.” He doesn’t hang up. Instead, he awaits further instructions from me.
“Don’t touch her, only to contain her until I get there.”
“Right.” And then he hangs up.
It takes five more minutes until we arrive at her place, and when we do, Ace is standing out the front with his leg kicked back on the wall as he scrolls through his phone.
He stands up straight when I step over to him, looks behind him to the door that’s shut and shakes his head.
“Where is she?” I ask, checking around.
“She left.”
“How?”
“She took Benny’s car.”
I smile. Good! Because that car has a tracker on it.
“You’ve tracked her already, I hope?”
Ace shows me the screen, the blip shows she’s paused at a warehouse not that far from here. “Seems she’s stopped. Should we pay her a visit?”
“Yes, but first…” Opening the door, I see Gabe lying with a pool of blood around his head. “She did this?”
Ace nods. “Checked the security camera footage myself… camera’s just over there.” He points to a shitty looking convenience store. “Seems only Isadora and Gabe were here at the time. It had to be her.”
“Fuck.”
“Yep, who would have thought?” Ace states out loud, but you can tell he actually meant to keep it to himself.
“You need to run a background check, make it as deep as you can. She’s been hiding something. I want to know what it is, and I want to know now.”
“You got it, boss.”
I fell asleep next to her and didn’t think she was capable of this. I liked her, I liked her a lot, and that is very unlike me. Maybe it’s the crazy I attract because I’m fucking crazy. I step away as Ace calls the cleaners and I call her.
I’m surprised when she answers.
“Jasper.” Her voice sounds off.
“Isadora,” I breathe into the phone. “You’ve been a bad girl, it seems.”
“So, it seems,” she says right back at me.
“You know you can’t hide from me, right?”
“Oh, but I’m not hiding. I’m currently staring at Carter. Maybe you should say goodbye to him, while you still can.”
“Isadora…”
“It makes me crave you when you say my name like that.”
“Where are you?”
“You don’t know where your men are? Carter was easy to find, and you idiots helped my cause.”
“And what cause is that?” I slide in the car as the cleaners arrive to get rid of Gabe’s body and remove any trace of the murder taking place. I don’t want this to come back on us.
“You still haven’t worked it out yet, Jasper? I heard you’re smart. What’s happening?” I run my hand through my hair. “Are you planning all the ways you want to fuck the truth from me, Jasper? Or, all the ways you can kill me?” she asks. I hear the soft sound of music coming through the speaker of the phone.
“Bit of both,” I tell her honestly.
“I bet you’re wishing you kept me tied to the bed right now,” she says as the music becomes louder.
“I do.”
“Carter, say hey to Jasper.”
“Hey, boss.” I hear Carter’s voice and turn to Ace, while covering the speaker of the phone. “Call Carter, right now.”
“Jasper, do you think what you do is okay?” she asks quietly. “That taking lives which aren’t yours to take… that it’s okay?”