BANG!
26
SHAYNE
After hours of rotting in the back of the Escalade, the decaying body only goes to fuck with my day some more. “What the fuck?” I demand, interrupting Jasmine’s description of her kidnapper as the door opens and the smell all but smacks me in the face. Marcus smirks, barely having taken his eyes off me since I decided to take control of my life and put a bullet through my father’s brain. “Don’t just stand there. Do something about it. I’m not driving all the way back to your stupid haunted castle with this big bastard stinking it up. I mean, what even is that? Did shit leak out of his asshole now that it’s not clenched? It smells wet.”
Marcus just smiles, watching me like he’s in awe, hanging off my every word, and after a long, narrowed stare, he finally opens the trunk before reaching in and gripping the body. He hauls it out and dumps it straight into the old beat-up Jeep parked beside us—a Jeep that wasn’t there when I parked the Escalade in the early hours of the morning.
With the back cleared out and free, Levi dumps the three duffle bags of my clothes into the vacated space and my face twists in disgust, wondering just how much of that dead body is left behind and now marinating my things.
Roman starts the engine and puts every window down, cranking the air conditioning to relieve the Escalade of the smell, and the way Roman gets down to business suggests this isn’t the first time a dead body has been rotting in the back.
A minute passes and with the early morning sun beginning to creep into the sky, we get a move on. It won’t be long before people start making their way to work or getting up for an early gym session, and we do not want to be here when they do.
I take the center in the back, assuming that Jasmine isn’t comfortable enough to sit directly next to one of the boys, considering the way she flinches every time they come near, but I can’t blame her, especially after the bullshit she’s been through over the past few weeks. Roman takes the driver’s seat as usual, but when Marcus goes to take the back beside me, I shake my head. “No fucking way,” I tell him, pointing toward the front. “You have decaying body juice all over you and I just showered. You’re sitting up front.”
Levi smirks and shoves him out of the way before climbing in beside me and hooking his heavy arm over my shoulder, making Jasmine jump as his fingers unintentionally brush over her fragile shoulder. Not wanting to make this harder than it needs to be, he keeps his hands to himself and we get the fuck out of here.
Keeping only a few of the windows down to mask the boys from the rest of the world, we pull out of the darkened underground garage into the lonely city streets. Roman takes off at full speed, his dark, obsidian eyes narrowing in the rearview mirror as he takes in Jasmine beside me. “Right,” he says, getting back to business. “Who is this guy? Start from the top.”
Jasmine swallows hard and gives the same explanation she’d given me while we were cuffed to the column, only taking all the emotion out of it. “He broke into my house a few weeks ago. I’m not sure how many days have passed. I lost track of days after the first week. It was the middle of the night and my baby was asleep in his room. I tried to get to him first but I was banged around and taken. All I really remember after that is the sound of my baby crying. The noise had woken him up.”
“Do you know what the guy’s name was?” Roman questions, casually skimming over all the other details that guys like Roman and his brothers are already too familiar with. Bad guy breaks in, roughs up the girl, takes her as his own. Hell, it’s similar to my story.
Jasmine shakes her head, her eyes filling with unshed tears. “I don’t know. He made me refer to him as master, but one night he had a visitor and I could only hear a muffled conversation, but I think the person referred to him as James.”
Marcus lets out a frustrated huff. “That could be anyone,” he says. “What else? Any distinctive features? Hair? Height? Tattoos?”
She swallows hard and shrugs her shoulders. “No tattoos. He’s just like everyone else. Looks like a normal guy. Dark hair, dark eyes, average height. There’s nothing special about him, nothing that makes him stand out.”
“She’s right,” I say. “I saw him when he put her up on that podium. He looks like some kind of try-hard CEO in a fancy suit. He gave me the creeps. He stopped and asked me who my master was and when I said I wasn’t for sale, he acted like that wasn’t going to be a problem for him. I’d recognize him if I saw him again.”