Up In Flames (Club Chrome 3)

It was too late to turn back now. Angel forced a smile past rubbery lips. “You don’t know me but I used to live here. I know this sounds crazy but I just wondered if I could come inside and take a look around.”

“Why?”

Her eyes watered. “Because I miss my sister and the last time I saw her, we lived here.”

The girl’s expression softened and she nodded stepping aside so Angel could come inside. She gathered up the toddler and held him close. “What happened to your sister?”

“She was killed.” Angel spared the details. She was sure the woman didn’t want to know that someone had died in her apartment. She cast a glance toward the toddler with a small smile. “Is he yours?”

“Yeah, teen mom,” she answered with deprecating smile as she adjusted the healthy boy on her hip. “But I love him. I don’t regret a minute. Do you have kids?”

A lump stuck in Angel’s throat as she nodded. “A daughter. About the same age.”

The apartment looked different but she could close her eyes and picture how it was when she and Ashley had lived there. She gestured toward the second bedroom. “May I?”

The girl nodded. Angel walked into the bedroom and saw that it was the little boy’s room. The last time she’d stepped into this room, she’d been a 16-year-old girl with posters on the wall and boys on her mind. Angel didn’t even recognize that person anymore. Now the walls were covered with stencils of airplanes and there were toys everywhere. It was obvious this kid was loved. The girl lowered her boy to the floor and he immediately ran to one of his toys to show Angel with a toothy grin. She smiled through a wash of tears. “What do you have there? That’s an awesome fire truck.”

“He’s kind of obsessed with them,” the girl admitted. “But that’s okay I think there’s worse things to be obsessed with right?”

Angel modded. “My daughter is obsessed with,” her throat closed. Maybe coming here had been a mistake. She shook her head. “I’m sorry to have bothered you. I thought coming here would make me feel better but it didn’t.”

The girl nodded and walked her to the door. Angel smiled at the little boy and gave the girl a bit of unsolicited advice. “Never lose sight of the fact that this little boy is the most important gift in the world. I lost sight of that for a while and now I’m paying for it.”

Then Angel turned on her heel and practically ran away. Tears blinded her but she didn’t stop running until she was so winded, her lungs screamed for mercy. She leaned against a stop sign, breathing hard, wondering how she was going to get herself out of this jam without killing Mila or Pyro.

It seemed one of them was going to die.

No matter what she did.

-11-

“There’s no record of this kid,” Bronx told Jax and Hunter in a low tone. Things had gotten real, real fast and he wasn’t about to let his best friend die for something that’d happened years ago. “By all accounts, the kid should’ve been taken into custody.”

Zoe, Jax and Hunter’s woman, looked troubled as she pulled some research of her own. “I did some searching around on my own and I’ve found a distressing pattern, one that probably would’ve been overlooked by most detectives. Five out of the seven recent deaths due to this ‘frazil’ drug had kids but none were logged into the system. None of the kids are in state custody so where are they?”

Jax and Hunter shared dark looks. “I got a bad feeling about this.”

Bronx agreed. “Yeah, and it feels like this goes deep. This is more than just a cover up about cops taking drug money. I told Pyro it didn’t feel right. Cops on the take don’t hand out drugs that kill the cash flow. No repeat customers, no cash. However, what if the cash flow wasn’t coming from the drugs but something else? Something more easily lost in the shuffle and hard to track?”

Zoe looked ill. “Please God, you’re not talking about human trafficking are you?”

Jax nodded with Bronx. “Sounds like it to me. Jazzy should’ve been logged into the system once the cops found Roxy’s body. The fact that there’s no case file for Roxy, tells me that the officers who took the call, knew not to file the report, therefore leaving no paper trail for anyone to follow.”

“And then, they could just swoop in and take the kid without anyone batting an eye because they’re cops.” Zoe growled, practically vibrating with righteous anger. “I fucking hate dirty cops.”

“If this Benton guy is all about the money, then trafficking kids on the black market is a sweet cash flow if he’s got the right people behind him, covering his tracks,” Hunter said.

“Fuck me,” Bronx muttered. “So what do we do? Pyro’s walking into a death trap and it’s not even over what happened to Ashley. He’s getting ready to fall on the sword for a nonexistent cause.”

“I have no doubt they want to snip the loose end but it’s really not about your friend,” Jax said. “It’s about the kids. So that brings me to the next logical question…is Pyro’s girl in on it or is she unknowing bait?”

Bronx shook his head. “I don’t know. She’s definitely hiding something but I don’t know how deep it goes.”

“Only one way to find out,” Hunter said gravely and Bronx agreed, though he hated to be the bearer of really bad news. Pyro had suffered enough. The man deserved a fucking break.

“What are we going to do about these fucking dirty cops?” Zoe asked, her fierce stare hungry for justice and Bronx didn’t blame her. Once they were all enemies but a common concern for kids stuck in the system had brought them all together. Since then, he’d gotten to know Zoe and she was a hella cool chick. Not to mention his wife’s best friend. And she was an award-winning journalist in her own right. The woman’s pen was definitely mighty. “I know a few people in Internal Affairs I could call. They’d love to get their hands on a few dirty cops.”

“We’d need proof,” Jax said. “Something tells me they’re not going to just spill their guts on principle.”

“Well, seeing as Angel is already playing a part, let’s just let her keep playing,” Zoe said slyly. “Here’s an idea…”

***

Angel returned around midnight and the moment he heard the door open, he was there, a towering, pissed-off, relieved-as-hell, sonofabitch. “Where the fuck have you been?” he demanded as she sidestepped him. “Angel!”

She refused to look at him and his first fear was that she’d used again but she seemed clear-headed, if not distant. “I told you not to wait up. I had things to do.”

“Such as meet up with Benton?” he couldn’t help but ask.

She scowled. “No.”

“Then where have you been?”

“Why do you care? Honestly, chill out. We’re not anything to each other so stop acting like you have the right to demand answers.”

He narrowed his gaze. She was deliberately pushing him away. He recognized the tactic as one of his own. He almost laughed at the irony but he was too riled up. “If you don’t fucking care about your own well-being, then why should I?” he shot back flippantly. “Hell, maybe you’d be doing me a favor. You’ve been nothing but trouble since the day you showed up.”

It was a split second reaction but he saw the hurt and it only confirmed that she was pushing him for a reason. He shouldn’t care but he did. He cared so hard it left a bruise on his heart and he was both confused and overwhelmed by the knowledge. Times like these called for immediate, brutal action, one way or another. As she attempted to move past him, he pulled her to him, sealing his mouth to hers in a deep kiss that left no room for anything else between them. He sensed sadness and despair deep inside her and it called to the bone-deep guilt that rode him everyday. They were a fucked up pair. He swept her in his arms and carried her to the bedroom. He stripped her clothes, practically ripping them from her body and she didn’t resist, in fact, her deft fingers were working on his jeans, just as frantic. Within moments, they were naked and moving against one another. It was rough and urgent, almost painful, but he couldn’t stop.

He had to touch her. Had to taste. He was delirious with the need to know that she was safe even if she was determined to push him away for covert reasons. He framed her face and rained kisses on her face, down her neck, and to her breasts. He sucked on the nipples, hard and wanting, then moved to the dewed lips of her pussy. He buried his nose between her folds, inhaling the unique scent that drove him wild, and then lost himself in the art of driving her fucking wild. He didn’t stop until she was bucking beneath him, crying out and shaking as she came. His cock raged, rock-hard and straining, desperate to sink into that willing, slick heat, and when he did, he nearly lost his mind with the soul-searing pleasure that rocketed through his body. She was everything — everything he shouldn’t want and couldn’t have — and yet, in this moment, she was his.

“Jesus, Angel,” he groaned as he lost himself, jetting deep inside her, not caring that he hadn’t gloved up. At that moment, he didn’t care about anything but the bliss found between Angel’s thighs. He collapsed beside her, his heart thundering wildly as he fought to slow his heart rate and it was then he realized Angel was crying. Alarmed, he pulled her into his arms and held her tightly. “Baby, I’m sorry,” he said, cursing himself for being so careless. “I swear, if you’re pregnant…”

“It’s not that,” she said, between giant racking sobs. “I have an IUD. I’m not worried about getting pregnant.”

Confused yet relieved, he asked, “Then what is it?” She clung to him but didn’t answer and he felt helpless. “Baby, I swear to you, I will rip anyone apart who tries to hurt you. Just let me help. I won’t let you down. I will die before I let anyone put a hand on you.”

She raised her head and met his gaze, tears still streaming down her cheeks as she revealed, “Benton called” and he tightened his grip on her. She sniffed back more tears. “I’m supposed to meet him tomorrow night at the abandoned shoe factory at eight. I wasn’t going to come back. I got the call and I swear I was going to keep walking so you wouldn’t get involved with this shit but I couldn’t. I couldn’t leave. I had to see you again. It was stupid. I was selfish to come back. I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry!”