Theirs to Ransom Read online

  She’s nothing to you.

  And he was about to offload her, thank fuck.

  The man held out his hand for the bag of gold but before he could snatch it, Jagger pulled it back. “She’s gassed up? I don’t want to be running out of gas and be stranded ten miles out.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “Dad told you she’d have half a tank. You calling Dad a liar?”

  Shit. Hillbillies and their fucking pride. The smallest misstep could get your head blown off.

  “Of course not,” Jagger said magnanimously. “Just wanted to double check and make sure there was no miscommunication.”

  He held the bag of gold back out. After all, if Bill really wanted to, he could order them all killed so he could just take the gold, but Bill was usually a longer-term thinker. If he killed Jagger now, that meant one less stop he’d be able to take his pussy-posse to for business.

  Well, no doubt whoever took over in Carlsbad if Jagger were dead would still welcome them, but Bill knew with Jagger he’d have no trouble coming with his girls, but more importantly, leaving with them. And fuck knew it was far safer bringing his girls to Carlsbad than it was venturing into Texas.

  And sure enough, Bill Jr. or whatever the fuck his name was, handed the keys right over. And when Jagger and a dour-faced Sophia climbed in the Jeep a few warehouses down, she fired right up.

  Sophia had changed clothes and was back in her jeans that the other women had washed and dried by the fire, with a small backpack over her shoulder and the boots he’d given her on. Her jaw was rigid, like she was working hard to look strong and determined.

  Jagger didn’t know which of them she was trying to fool.

  Not your problem.

  He shook his head, put the Jeep in drive, and sped out of the warehouse as soon as Bill Jr. pulled the door open wide.

  Jagger drove for hours, roads he knew were clear—both of debris and trouble. He didn’t head straight east. Whenever he and his crew ventured into Texas, they always made straight for Hell’s Hollow. Taking the same path now took them a little out of their way, but knowing the roads were more important.

  Sophia fell asleep almost immediately.

  Well, she pretended to at first. Her eyes were shut but her body was tense and strung tight. It took a good forty-five minutes before she finally relaxed and her breathing evened out.

  Not that he gave a fuck.

  He had one mission. Get her to Fort Worth and offload himself of the gigantic headache that was Sophia Wolford.

  He’d get his money for her and be on his way.

  His jaw tensed and he glanced her way again as the sun rose, bathing the baby-soft skin of her cheeks in light.

  Fuck but she was beautiful. Why’d she have to be so goddamned beautiful? And sweet, too. Well she could be a damned firecracker when she wanted to be, but underneath was a core of caramel. Soft and gooey and just sweet as hell. She wanted to pretend she was so hard but he didn’t know who she thought she was kidding.

  They’ll eat her alive in Fort Worth.

  Jagger jerked his eyes back to the road, grinding his teeth.

  Not his problem.

  She wasn’t his problem anymore.

  He’d made his peace with who he was and the life he lived. She wasn’t the first girl who’d had a harsh wakeup call to the brutal realities of life.

  It happened every day. Well, it would, if there were any innocents left. The fact that girls like her were rare only meant that her fate was all that much more inevitable.

  So what if he facilitated bringing that reality check on sooner rather than later? He was only giving her what she wanted. What she asked for. She was walking in with eyes wide open.

  No, she’s not. She has no idea, not really. She can’t even comprehend what they’ll—

  The Jeep hit a pothole that was especially deep because he hadn’t been paying fucking attention to the road like he should.

  Sophia jerked awake, letting out a little surprised yelp and grabbing for the door and dashboard.

  Jagger managed to keep the Jeep going though the shocks got another workout as the back wheels hit the same pothole, jostling them just as hard a second time and rattling his teeth.

  “Wanna watch where you’re going?” Sophia said, looking behind them at the road. “God.” She put a hand to her forehead and then scrubbed it down her face.

  Jagger just glared at her. “Do I look like I need a backseat driver?”

  Sophia crossed her arms over her chest and turned firmly toward the passenger seat window, giving him her back.

  Fine with him. The less said between them, the better as far as he was concerned.

  “Where are we?” she asked after several long moments of silence. “How long have we been driving?”

  “About seven hours. We’re passing just north of Hell’s Hollow.”

  Sophia drew her knees up to her chest at hearing that. “We’re not going there, are we?”

  Jagger sliced a glance over at her. “Might be able to get more for you if I sold you there,” he muttered. “And without half as much bother.”

  Her mouth dropped open and he rolled his eyes.

  “I said we were passing north of the city. That’s what I meant. We’re just passing by, all right?”

  “Have you done that before? Sold women in Hell’s Hollow?”

  He hadn’t. But he just shrugged. “Gotta make coin one way or another.”

  Sophia withdrew as far from him as she could get without pushing the door open and jumping out of the Jeep.

  “You aren’t even capable of human feeling, are you? God,” she shook her head, “you’ve never loved anyone or anything in your whole life, have you?”

  “Shut up about shit you don’t know anything about,” he said, a warning in his voice.

  But of course she had to just keep pecking at him. Pecking and pecking and pecking.

  “Oh please. Whores you fuck don’t count. Come on. Can you tell me you’ve ever cared about anything? Mr. Nothing Matters There’s No Meaning in the World.” She scoffed. “I bet you would have sold your own family if it could have turned you a profit.”

  Jagger stomped the brakes, stopping the Jeep in the middle of the desolate backroad. Then he turned and got right in Sophia’s face.

  “I said to shut the fuck up about shit you don’t know the first thing about.”

  Her eyebrows shot to her hairline. “Wha— I don’t understand.”

  Jagger yanked back from her, slamming his head back on the headrest. “Fuck!” he shouted. He banged the steering wheel with the palms of his hands. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

  Sophia jumped every time he swore and he wished he was beyond caring. He so fucking wished.

  “I had a sister, okay?” he finally said, staring out the front windshield. “A twin fucking sister. We were triplets, actually, but we were born premature. Our brother died the day we were born and my sister, she was—” He broke off and sucked in a long breath.

  Jagger had been small as a kid but he’d eventually caught up with the other kids. But Marilee, she always stayed small. His little dolly, he used to call her.

  And it felt like from day one it had been his responsibility to take care of her. He was the strong one. He could learn things quick but she always had trouble. She had to be kept back, put in special classes.

  Jagger had to be the best he could be because everything he achieved, he was doing for both of them. He got top grades and a full ride scholarship to UT and went on to law school. It all had to mean something, right? He had to accomplish something great, to be extraordinary. He couldn’t waste a single day of his life.

  Because otherwise, what was it all for? They’d been in the same womb—why had it been him who got to thrive and not her? If anyone deserved the best in life, it was his sister Marilee.

  “She had developmental disabilities and only got to about a third-grade learning level. She was the best person I ever knew.”

  He swallowed and closed his
eyes, remembering. Marilee had her days, of course. She could throw tantrums to end all tantrums and they were harder to manage the older she got. Her own limitations frustrated her. She always wanted to do the things Jagger was doing. She wanted to go to dances and out on dates and she loved the fantasy of going to college and living on her own even though it wasn’t a real possibility. She was so curious, too. She had an infinite curiosity about the world.

  “She got sick when Xterminate hit Texas.”

  “Oh Jagger,” Sophia murmured but he ignored her. She didn’t understand. Everyone knew someone who’d gotten sick, he knew that. It was different with Marilee. At least it had felt like it was, like it should be. It was Marilee. His twin. He’d been with her from the moment of his conception. She couldn’t die.

  “As soon as she started showing symptoms, I packed her up in my SUV and started driving to Georgia. To the CDC. They’d have the cure first, I figured, and I was going to make sure my sister was first in line.”

  Jagger shook his head at how stupid he’d been. How fucking naïve. It had just literally been incomprehensible that he’d lose her. She was too good. So much better than him. So much more deserving.

  It all had to mean something. Her life couldn’t have been for nothing.

  Except of course it could be.

  “We got there and the doors were locked, of course. No one was getting in. Tons of other poor fucks had the same idea as me and there were sick women as far as the eye could see. Marilee suffered for weeks, all of us out there hoping a cure would come any day. Right in time before the end.”

  “But it didn’t,” Sophia said.

  Jagger smiled thinly and finally looked her way. “Marilee died in my arms, terrified and confused about what was happening to her and begging for me to make it better.”

  Sophia’s eyes closed. “Oh God, Jagger, I’m so sorry.”

  He turned away from her, looking back out the front window. He didn’t want her sympathy. He just wanted her to understand.

  “So I started driving back to Texas. I thought, at least I can give her a good burial. I was going to bury her under the weeping willow in our back yard that she always loved playing under. Maybe give her some peace in death at least.”

  He blew out a sharp breath. “I even made it all the way back to Texas. I was thirty minutes away from my house when rioters blocked the road. They broke the windows of the SUV. And when they saw her body in the back, they set it on fire.”

  Sophia gasped but Jagger just kept going. “I jumped out of the car. I got clear of it before the whole thing blew.”

  “So you see,” he said, still staring out the front windshield, “there’s no fucking point to anything. I kept wanting there to be meaning—in her life. In her death. But I finally saw the truth. Life is just fucking chaos. Random and cruel. The only way to survive is not to let any of it touch you.”

  “No,” Sophia cried. “No, you’re wrong. You’re so wrong. Do you think this is what your sister would have wanted?”

  “Oh fuck you.” He couldn’t stand being in the car with her another second. He shoved his door open and jumped out of the Jeep, stomping down the empty road. At least she’d decided to throw her little shit fit while they were in the middle of nowhere.

  But of course she couldn’t leave well enough alone and let him blow off steam by himself. Her door slammed shut and then she was right beside him.

  Fine. She wanted to press the fucking point? Well he wasn’t going to hold back.

  He spun on her and pointed his finger in her face. “Don’t pretend to know what my sister would have wanted. She wouldn’t have understood this world. Her world was small and nice and safe. When she got sick and everything became so chaotic, she was only confused and constantly upset and begging me to make it better and I couldn’t. I fucking couldn’t, don’t you fucking get it?”

  “At least she had an excuse for us sheltering her. She couldn’t understand. She literally couldn’t comprehend what was happening on an intellectual level. But you—” He shook his head.

  Sophia looked down at the ground but he could also see she was hardening her jaw. “So it’s my fault my dad wanted to keep me safe? That he loved me the way you loved her? If she hadn’t been disabled you wouldn’t have taken her to the CDC or wanted to honor her after she died?”

  “Don’t fucking twist my words,” he spat.

  But she shook her head. “I’m not the one twisting shit. You’ve come up with this nice clean justification for the way you live your life. The world’s fucked and shitty things happened to you, so nothing you do is really your fault. That’s handy.”

  “You’re such a fucking princess. Looking down on everyone from your ivory fucking tower and pretending you understand an iota of what it means to suffer—”

  Her scoff was full of so much bitterness for a second she looked and sounded nothing like herself. “You ever think there’s a reason I don’t talk about my mother?”

  Jagger frowned. He’d never thought about that. He’d just assumed there was a Mrs. Wolford, tucked away fat and happy somewhere while her husband went to war and her wayward daughter snuck out of the safe little nest.

  “Maybe because I hid upstairs in the closet while she got raped to death. But you know, it’s not usually one of those topics you bring up at a get-to-know-my-new-fiancé dinner. Not that we had one of those. No, you made sure to seal the deal before I could really take stock and think through my options. Then again, if I had, I guess you might have just killed me and Finn. Or Finn at least. I suppose I was still too valuable. You can’t ransom back a dead girl.”

  Jagger bit the inside of his cheek. “Every time I start to feel a little bit of sympathy for you, you just go and keep talking and then you piss me off again.”

  “Oh no, am I making the big, bad gangster mad? I’m shaking in my boots.”

  Jagger stepped into her space, making her back up all the way to the Jeep until she was pressed against the passenger side door. “You just never know when to stop, do you?”

  “You don’t scare me,” she said furiously.

  “Like I said, you’re a little fool.”

  She spit in his face.

  The little—

  His hand flew to grip her around her neck and her breath caught. He didn’t squeeze but Christ, he could feel her fluttering pulse against his thumb. “Somebody needs to teach you a lesson before it’s too late.” He held her life in his hands.

  “Oh yeah?” She hiked her chin up defiantly but Jagger didn’t miss her nervous swallow. Or the spark in her eyes as her gaze locked on his. “And who’s gonna teach me? You, I suppose?”

  “You bet your tight little ass,” he growled before crushing her lips with his own, never letting up his grip on her throat.

  This goddamned woman. He never knew which way was up around her. He didn’t feel like himself. She made him feel— She made him want—

  But her hot body against his felt too good and the next thing he knew, he was pulling her around the Jeep, yanking open the back door, shoving the bags of supplies to the ground and dragging the back seat down flat.

  Then he hoisted her up and came down on top of her.

  He had to be inside her.

  Right the fuck now.

  Apparently she was on the same page because in the same short space of time, she’d kicked her boots off and shoved her jeans down. He helped pull them off one leg, dragging her panties off with them.

  He had to be inside her. He had to get in-fucking-side her.

  He jerked the button of his fly undone, yanked his jeans down, and then finally, Jesus, finally, he gave one hard thrust.

  “Fuck,” he yelled as he went hilt deep inside her, her wetness giving smooth passage. Smooth, but not easy. Because fuck, she was so tight. Always so goddamned tight. Her sweet, fresh, all but virginal little pussy.

  She felt so good, so fucking perfect, and it pissed him off.

  “Why the fuck,” he pulled back and then slamm
ed back into her, “do you have to piss me off,” he did it again, rotating his hips and grinding down against her in a way that made her mouth drop open with pleasure, “so fuckin’ bad?”

  She reached up and grabbed the front of his shirt, all but ripping it as she dragged him down to her mouth. She stopped just short of kissing him.

  “Maybe because it’s the only way you’ll let yourself feel anything,” she said, sounding no less pissed.

  She wrapped her legs around his waist and tried to control his pace from below, shifting her hips up and down to fuck herself on his shaft.

  “Oh I don’t think so,” he growled, shifting her so that he held her ankles up near her head. “You take what I give you. When I give it to you.”

  She started to protest but then he started to fuck her again. Long, slow strokes he made sure she’d feel, right where she needed it.

  And finally, fucking finally, she stopped fighting him. He wasn’t sure what flipped the switch. If him repeatedly hitting that spot inside her finally pushed her over the edge of pleasure or what, but her eyes went all soft.

  She looked at him the way he caught her looking at Finn sometimes.

  “Oh Jagger,” she sighed, reaching up like she was going to touch his face.

  He shook his head and grabbed her wrist, pinning it to the bed of the Jeep. But she just kept… looking at him. Like she— Like she—

  “Don’t,” he snapped.

  “You can’t stop me,” she whispered. “It’s too late. I see you. I see you, Jagger.”

  Wisps of her dark hair fanned around her face and he wanted more than anything in the world to let go of her wrist and her ankles, to push them back, to cover her face with kisses—

  No. No. He wanted to fuck her. That was all. She’d pissed him off and she was still his wife, his property for the next 24 hours so he’d fuck her if he—

  “Maybe I’m young and we both know I’m naïve. But it does mean something,” she said. “It means something, the two of us being here. In this moment. You being inside me and me loving you.”

  Why the fuck did she have to go and say that? If he had another hand available, he’d have slapped it over her mouth before she’d ever gotten the words out. But he didn’t and she’d said it.