J. Lynn - Stay With Me

He answered on the third ring. “You okay, baby girl?”

It was late, and he was probably still at the bar. “Some guy was here.”

There was a pause, and then his voice got real low and real serious. “What happened?”

I told him everything in a rush, and then he told me to make sure the door was locked—good point—and to hold still. He was coming over. There wasn’t anything he could do now, but I appreciated it. Admittedly, I was freaked-out. Way freaked-out.

I made sure the closet door in my old bedroom was closed, reapplied my makeup even though it was only Clyde, and then the next twenty minutes or so, I sat on the couch, clutching the phone to my chest until there was a quick, loud knock on the front door.

I checked the peephole again, and this time I saw someone out there—someone that sent my already overworked heart into cardiac arrest territory.

Jax was standing on the other side of the door.

“What the hell were you thinking?” was the first thing out of Jax’s mouth when I opened the front door.

I had a better question. “What are you doing here? I called Clyde.”

“And Clyde told me, so I’m here.” He pushed inside, pulled the door from my grasp, and pushed it shut, locking it. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Having not come to terms with the fact that it was Jax that was suddenly standing in the foyer, I blinked slowly. “What question?”

“Why in the hell did you answer the door in the middle of the night?”

“Oh. I checked the peephole first, you know.”

Jax stared at me.

“And I didn’t see anyone,” I added in my defense.

He folded well-defined arms across his chest. “So, let me get this correct. You heard knocking on your front door, went and actually used the peephole, but when you didn’t see anyone, you thought, Oh, what the hell, I’ll just open the door ? Did it ever occur to you that someone could’ve been hiding?”

Oh wow, he looked and sounded pissed, but he could kiss my rosy red behind. “The guy wasn’t hiding. He was sitting down.”

His dark brows flew up. “Did you know that when you opened the door?”

“Well, no, but—”

“So, why in the hell did you answer the door?” he demanded again, eyes turning dark.

“Look, I get that answering the door was stupid.” My hand tightened around my cell phone, and I sort of wanted to slam my other fist into his chest. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“No shit,” he growled.

My eyes narrowed. “I get it. I don’t need you to keep pointing it out.”

“Jesus Christ, Calla, I’ve told you about the kind of shit your mom was messed up in, and I told you not to stay here. The least you could do is not answer the door in the middle of the night.”

I drew in a deep breath as I reached up and brushed the still damp hair back behind my right ear. “Got it. Thanks for hand-delivering your message. Now you can . . .” I trailed off, eyes widening.

A scary look entered his eyes, and then he was right in front of me, moving like he had in the office earlier in the night. I backed up, hitting the wall, and there was no other place to go. The tips of two of his fingers pressed lightly under my right temple. His gaze, troubled and stormy, was fixed to that area.

My heart was pounding as fast as it had when Greasy Guy had busted up into the house. “Jax . . . ?”

His gaze swept over to mine. “Did he hit you?”

“No,” I whispered.

“Then what happened to your temple? It’s red and swollen.” His voice was icy and hard.

“It was the door. When he pushed it open, I was kind of standing in the way.” Anger flashed in those eyes, and his jaw tightened. “He actually didn’t try to hurt me, Jax. He just wanted to get to what was in this house.”

The tension in his jaw didn’t ease and a long moment passed where I didn’t think I took one single breath. “Are you okay?”

Our gazes were locked. “Yeah. It just . . . it shook me up. I didn’t expect that.” It sounded stupid considering what he’d warned me about. “I didn’t know that stuff was in the house.”

“I know.” His voice dropped, softened, and the longer he stared at me, the more tiny flutters grew in my chest, which caused a dozen or so warnings to fire off. “Clyde said you told him that the guy found stuff?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Upstairs in my old bedroom. The closet.”

“Shit,” he muttered, clearly disgusted. His fingers slowly trailed off the side of my head, and then he pivoted around, moving deeper into the house.

A moment passed where I just stood there, the hand holding the phone pressed close between my breasts. Then I forced myself away from the wall. Still having no idea why it was Jax who had come instead of Clyde, I followed him. He was halfway up the stairs, and neither of us spoke until he was crouched down in front of the closet, holding the piece of drywall.

“Did you see exactly what he got?” he asked.

“It was several bags of something that looked like brown sugar. I’m guessing that wasn’t it.”

“Fuck,” he muttered, sounding distracted. “Sounds like heroin. Little bags or big?”

Heroin. God, was Mom doing that shit now? “What do you mean by little? Like sandwich-bag size?”

“No.” He coughed out a laugh as he rose, facing me. “A sandwich bag of heroin would not be little. Talking this small?” He held up his finger and thumb, changing the space between them to a couple of inches. “What about that?”

“It was several Ziploc-sized bags, Jax. There were about eight of them, and they were full.” My heart skipped a beat when his face went blank. “That’s . . . that’s bad, right?”

“Fuck yeah.” He thrust his hands through his hair. “Sounds like there could’ve been a kilo or more in those bags. And, by the way you describe it, sounds like black tar heroin.”

I knew what a kilo was due to the kind of classes I took, but I had no idea what that translated into in the drug world. “Black tar?”

“More expensive shit from what I hear.”

The walls shifted suddenly. “How expensive?”

“Shit. Anywhere from seventy thousand to over a hundred thousand per kilo,” he explained, drawing in a deep breath. “Really depends on how pure it is—if it was high-end shit or not. Could even be worth a couple of million.”

“Oh my God.” My knees suddenly felt weak. “How do you know this stuff?”

His gaze landed on me. “Been around the block a few times.”

“You did heroin?”

“Hell no.” He didn’t elaborate. “Tell me what this guy looked like.” After I finished describing Greasy Guy, Jax looked even tenser. “Doubt that it was his shit he was retrieving. And I don’t think it was Mona’s, either.”

My stomach flopped. “You think she was . . . holding it for someone?”

He nodded. “Let’s fucking pray that this guy was who she was holding it for. If not . . .”

Oh God, I didn’t need to be a drug kingpin to figure out what he meant. If Mom was holding drugs of that kind of value, the owner would eventually come looking for it, and with the drugs being gone, she was beyond being in hot water. She was drowning. All I could hope, like Jax had said, was that the crap belonged to Greasy Guy. He seemed to know exactly where it was.

As we headed downstairs, my phone rang in my hand. Lifting it, I saw that it was Clyde calling. “Hello?”