Page 27 of Texas Hold Em'
Jackson’s eyes narrowed on her. “What the fuck did I just tell you to do?”
Carrie planted her hands on her hips. “Listen, Jack, I know you’re the big cheese around here and your boys have to listen to you, but I’m not one of your fucking boys.”
Mason whistled. I looked back and forth between Jackson and Carrie. If she wanted him to trust her, this wasn’t the right way to do it.
“Last night got out of hand,” she continued. “Killing anyone wasn’t my first, second, or even third choice. But our backs were up against the wall. Like Tex said, it was us or them. Personally, I didn’t want to die on a backroad in Reno. But that’s just me.”
“Bates is getting bolder,” I said as I blew smoke. “If not for Carrie, I’d be a busted pile of bones on the side of the road. One of these times, Bates is going to succeed, Black Jack. He almost did last night. And like you said, he almost killed Mason, too.”
Jackson never took his eyes off Carrie. “And our little Ranger happened to be there both times to save the day.”
“Yeah, you’re welcome.” Carrie rolled her eyes and marched out of the bedroom doorway to the bathroom. “Shit talk me all you want. I’m going to take a shower.”
She slammed the bathroom door behind her. Seconds later, we heard the water turn on.
Jackson glared hotly at me. “I don’t like it.”
“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” I said dryly.
Mason leaned up against my kitchen cupboards. “We thought you were dead, Tex. The news didn’t report whose bodies they found, only that there were three of them, and two were motorcyclists. You weren’t answering your phone.”
Oops.My phone must have died in the middle of the night. I’d been too tired to think about plugging it in. Too tired and too distracted by Carrie’s body.
I rubbed the back of my neck. “My bad, boys. But I’m all right. See? No harm done.”
“No harm done.” Jackson sighed, shaking his head and closing his eyes. He looked like he’d aged a decade in the last couple of months. “We have no idea what the ramifications of this will be.”
“Would you rather I let them kill me?” I asked. “To save you the headache?”
“Of course not,” Jackson said. “But it’s still a fucking mess, and I have no idea how to clean it up.”
Nobody said anything for a few minutes. We looked everywhere but at each other, and I could practically hear the thoughts of my friends raging in their heads.
Who’s next?
Bates hadn’t been playing coy with us. He’d boldly placed hits on Jackson, Mason, and me. We’d be idiots to think he wasn’t already planning a fourth attack. For all we knew, it was already under way.
For all we knew, he had all our pictures in a drawer somewhere and a giant red marker close by to draw X’s over our faces once he’d taken us out.
I heard the shower turn off.
“We don’t have a choice,” I said finally. “We need to find a way to get close to Bates so we can finish him before he has a chance to finish us. He’s showed his hand multiple times over. He has no intention of letting any of us walk away in one piece, Black Jack. It’s time we stop affording him the luxury of air.”
Jackson rubbed his jaw. “And Caroline?”
“What about her?” I asked.
“Once we cut the head off the snake, she’ll take his place,” Jackson said.
“So we kill her, too,” Mason said matter-of-factly.
Jackson grimaced. As a rule, we didn’t hurt or kill women. Sometimes it didn’t seem like there was much that separated us from the riffraff, but there was that. Women were off limits.
Mason saw Jackson’s hesitation. “She’s worth making an exception for. As you said, she’ll step into Bates’s shoes. She’s as cruel and ruthless as he is. Hell, she might even be smarter than him. What if he’s the one keepingherin line?”
“I don’t like it either, Jack,” I said. “But we can’t leave her on the board. She’s too dangerous.”
The bathroom door opened. Carrie came out wrapped in one of my towels. She had her hair up in another one. She didn’t look in Jackson’s direction as she walked past, but she shot me a glance, and I cleared my throat and tried to look unbothered by her long bare legs glistening with drops of shower water.
