Page 32 of Reckless

Sixteen

Seb

I watch as Jamie leaves the room before levelling my sights on Rick and moving to sit in her vacated seat. It’s still warm from her pert little arse, and I can’t help the image that snaps into my mind. I shuffle awkwardly as I sit, trying to calm my dick down. Now is not the time for a hard on. But my dick likes her when she’s pissed at me. Pretty sure my dick likes her all the fucking time.

“So, how much did you hear?”

“Some of it.” I pour myself a glass of the good stuff. As I go to take a sip, I see Rick watching me. Doing the whole death stare shit he just did on Jamie. I would say that I’m at an advantage since I’ve known him for years, but that would be a big fat fucking lie. The bastard gets me and Blue every damn time. And Jamie too now. I lift my middle finger before taking a sip of JD. “Fuck you, man. You know I heard it all. Look don’t go getting self-fucking-righteous on me. You know I would have found out one way or another,” I say at the look of irritation on Rick’s face. “Pass me the phone,” I tell him, pointing to Jamie’s mobile she left on the counter.

Rick scrubs a hand down his face. “That’s not necessary, and besides, it’s locked anyway.”

“Like that’s ever stopped me before.” I hold my hand out and wait for Rick to give it to me. He knows full well I can get into it. What he doesn’t know is that I know Jamie’s passcode.

He lets out a sigh before sliding the phone my way. I pick it up and in two seconds, I’m looking at pictures that make my blood heat. My muscles tense, and as I scroll through, my jaw grinds so hard I’m surprised I don’t break a damn tooth. My fingers tingle with the need to get my hands on these arseholes and ring their necks for filming her. At least that’s what I tell myself. Nothing to do with touching what’s mine. Because she’s not mine is she.

I stop on the picture of her snorting coke from the stomach of one of them, zooming in, I see the colour is slightly distorted there. The lines of coke are jagged and almost appear to have been drawn on. To the naked eye and without a closer look, someone seeing this would assume this image to be real. And though it doesn’t matter how much I wish the whole image were fake, it’s obvious that except for the drug taking, the rest is very much real.

“Fuck!”

“I did tell you that you didn’t need to see them, but wo—”

“No, although yeah, I wish I hadn’t seen this shit. But this guy,” I turn the phone round to show Rick the guy. “I saw him at Tempest. This is the Noah bloke Jamie mentioned, and I’ll give you three guesses who he was with?”

“Jasper,” Rick says, and I nod. “Son of a bitch.”

I close out of the texts, locking the screen and dropping it back down on the counter, not wanting to see anymore. “We can run it through facial recognition and see if we get a hit?”

Rick snatches the phone up from the counter. “Let’s do it.”

I follow Rick down the hall to his office, where we scan the picture and wait for the results.

I sit the other side of Rick’s desk, knee bouncing impatiently. “Do you think this has to do with what’s going on with Dominic?”

Rick is tapping away at his keyboard, a look of intense concentration on his face.

“I don’t know. Something doesn’t add up. The message mentions Dominic, but the threat is directed at Jamie herself, not her dad. There’s no connection between Dom and Jasper from what I can see, so I think for now we just have to assume that they are separate.”

I nod in agreement, but my gut tells me there’s more to this than what we have at the moment. It’s not outside the realms of possibility that whoever is threatening Jamie, is also the person threatening Dom, but so far, the evidence suggests that Jasper is behind these pictures as the classic jilted lover.

After I first saw Jamie with him at Rosco’s, I did some snooping. Alex didn’t seem to like him very much, and while I put most of it down to the fact he’s in to her, I wanted to check him out for myself. Other than the death of his wife in a shooting at a club last year, his record is clean. What I have access to anyway. It also doesn’t rule out the possibility he’s dirty.

“Bingo. Noah James Huntingdon, ex-army. Did two tours in Iraq before leaving.”

“I say we pay him a little visit.”

“No. We watch and wait first. You already have a job to do, and for now Jamie is safe. I’ll see what I can dig up on our detective friend with my guy at the station. I’m going to call Ryder and set up a meeting with Dom too. There’s more to this than what he’s told us, and we need to find out if the two are connected. We need to be extremely careful how we play it because there’s a possibility Jamie will go looking for answers herself, and if, it’s a big if, but if they’re connected, then we need to have all the facts.

“Now, it’s late and you two idiots woke me up, so I’m going to try and get some more sleep. I suggest you do the same.”

“Yeah, I will soon. Night, arsehole.” Rick lets out a laugh and cuffs me round the head as he leaves. Bastard is always doing that.

* * *

Five minutes later,I find myself down in Rick’s gym, pounding the fuck out of his punch bag. There was no way I was getting any sleep. I didn’t bother strapping my hands, and now my knuckles are red and sore from going at it so hard.

I don’t hear her as she enters the room, but I sure as hell know she’s there as the scent of her wraps around me. It’s like it gravitates towards me, enveloping me, blinding me of all rational thought.

“You want to try that with someone that hits back?” Her voice washes over me, raising every hair on my body. And something else too. I ignore the growing tent in my trousers, turning my head towards her.

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