Page 41 of Ace (The Deuces Wild #4)

Keller woke to the harsh dig of splinters in his cheek, one helluva cramp in his lower back, and a mouth full of cotton.

Groggy and unsure where he was, he stayed upright, apparently caught between two roughhewn slabs of lumber that hummed.

He scrunched his eyes, then blinked to clear the fog in his head, not sure where he was or how he’d gotten here—wherever here was. It most certainly wasn’t the Ritz.

The Ritz. Savannah! Clarity slammed him.

Shit. He’d left her sleeping at the Ritz this morning.

He’d gone after RJ and… Fumbling for his shirt pocket, he located Junior’s tiny warm body, still protected.

Not flat. Keller’s cheeks ballooned as he blew out an honest to heaven sigh of relief.

He still couldn’t tell if the bird was going to make it or not, but knowing he hadn’t squished the tiny body while he’d been passed out, and that Junior was still warm, was relief enough.

Savannah wo uld never forgive him if he’d accidentally killed this little guy.

Carefully, Keller tucked Junior back into his pocket as more of what happened came back to him.

RJ. Fontenette. Being gassed. Damn, he was still in the trailer.

He’d been drugged along with every animal and bird in this illegal cargo, which told him plenty.

Whatever cocktail RJ used could take down an adult male as well as a bird the size of a teaspoon. Interesting.

Disengaging his sore as shit body from between the crates, Keller stretched to get his blood flowing again.

Man, people who reduced living, breathing creatures into commodities were greedy sons of bitches.

Yet that was what all mankind did to survive.

If he couldn’t tame it, he hunted, ate, or hounded it into extinction.

Survival of the fittest at its most intelligent and its most lethal.

It all came back to Mother Nature’s brutal yet ingenious circle of life. But fifty percent? What a waste.

Feeling for his flashlight, Keller backtracked to locate his cell. He found it face up between the crates. And still turned on. Damn. All this time his cell had transmitted nothing but noise and darkness.

He turned it off, then on again and… it was mid-afternoon!

He’d been passed out for five hours. What the hell was in that gas?

And his cell was down to one measly bar.

Unsure when he’d need that bar, Keller flicked his cell and flashlight off as he sank to the floor, his back against the container wall.

He wasn’t so sure he was traveling by truck anymore.

The drone inside this container felt different, as if he were airborne.

Fo ntenette wouldn’t have airmailed this container, would he?

Not like it mattered. Without a way to reach Tucker, Keller was trapped like Junior and his friends.

But Keller wasn’t worried. He’d be plenty capable by the time this trip ended.

Besides, all FBI cells were ruggedized and contained tracking chips—GPS locators with internal lithium batteries.

Whether lost in shallow water or buried six feet under, his phone would track him, and the Deuces Wild team would eventually locate him.

They might be on their way now. He wouldn’t have to fight Fontenette and his greedy goons alone. There was comfort in that.

But Savannah? By now, Roger Tanner would’ve come and gone. The dogs would be fed and walked, but eventually, they’d need more exercise. When Keller didn’t return like he’d said he would, she’d worry. She’d think he deserted her, that she wasn’t good enough. Which was so untrue.

The misconceived notion that she was somehow less than him tugged at the hollow spot in Keller’s chest. If anything, it was the other way around. She was the one who was happy with her life, even as meager as it seemed. But him? That was just another sad story not worth the telling.

Until Carol Marie came into his life, he never knew how much he craved feminine concern, care, and gentle affection.

Or how badly he missed it after he lost her.

Nor how much Savannah’s eternal optimism had buoyed him, lifted him…

inspired him. Even now. It was as if she’d always been his missing half, more so because sh e seemed to have accepted that possibility easier and quicker than he had.

He could still recall the soft blue light in Carol Marie’s eyes. Blonde curly hair fluffed around her head like a halo. Keller was pretty sure she glowed from the inside out that day in high school. He’d noticed her plenty before he’d ever spoken with her. Even then, she’d started the conversation.

It was early fall. He’d never forget the unexpected cheerfulness of her first words to him, the place or the time.

They were in the school library. He needed to return all the books he’d checked out before he left school that day.

Despite being nineteen, he’d still been in eleventh grade.

Held back for missing too much school, he was an underclassman, a pitiful junior.

She was a rah-rah-rah senior, ahead of the game because of her AP classes and already accepted by some bigtime college out west.

Carol Marie was going places, while he was on his way out that day, never to return. He’d missed too much school. He would’ve been lucky to graduate with his class, but he couldn’t bear being held back. Not again.

Summer school wasn’t in the cards either.

Elaine’s antics made regular attendance impossible, but school had always been Keller’s one safe place.

He didn’t have to like the teachers who looked down their noses at him, but he’d always adored math and science.

A kid could get lost in Algebra as quickly as American Lit.

Or Robert Frost. Or Carol Marie’s pretty blue eyes.

‘Excuse me, sir, but could you reach that book for me, the one on the high shelf. See it? The one with a green spine. It’s my book of Robert Frost poetry. Jamie Whitaker thinks it’s funny to put my things where I can’t reach them.’

She’d called him sir. The irony of anyone addressing him respectfully took his breath. By the time he’d stretched one arm way over her head and dragged her book off the top bookshelf, his lungs had closed off and his throat had gone sandpaper dry.

Jamie Whitaker was the class jerk, but Keller suspected he had a crush on Carol Marie like every other guy in high school, didn’t matter if they were freshman, seniors, or about to drop-out—like him. She was the prettiest girl, the one to be seen with.

But Keller was a loser, dressed in rags and hand-me-down pants, doing a favor for the school sweetheart, and having a heart attack while he did it. ‘Here you go,’ he’d told Carol Marie, making sure she had a good grip on her book before he let it go.

She had a good grip on him by then, too. Her tiny fingers fluttered light and soft on his callused, much larger hands. ‘You don’t say much, do you?’ she’d asked, her head cocked to one side like she was trying to figure him out.

He’d already figured her out. She was hands-off beautiful, but in a kind and gracious way. ‘Guess I don’t have much to say.’

‘Would you help me study?’

He’d nearly laughed out loud at her needing anything from a bastard son of a bitch like him, but he didn’t.

He couldn’t. Those gentle fingers on his hand seemed to pour something warm and shiny and good into his usually bleak existence.

For the first time Keller could remember, he didn’t feel like the biggest dolt in school.

He wasn’t just the voodoo priestess’s worthless son.

Carol Marie made him feel like he was—more.

‘Um, sure. Yeah, I guess.’ Man, he’d sounded like an idiot back then. ‘What subject you need help studying?’

‘Robert Frost. I’m writing my term paper on his understanding of rural American life. Did you know he was published in England before America?’

‘Did you know I don’t read poetry too good?’

‘Did you know I’m not really asking?’ she asked, blinking those big blue eyes at him and sucking him into the tenderest trap of his life at that point.

Well, okay then. Instead of packing up his locker and moving on like he’d planned, Keller walked her home.

The next day they put their heads together in study hall.

They whispered, giggled, studied together, and he was a goner.

The next day she took him shopping for clothes.

He paid for everything they bought. It depleted his meager savings, but she told him he looked manly, and he believed her.

The next day she asked him to take her to the homecoming dance.

The next thing he knew, he’d graduated ahead of schedule—with her class.

Little did either of them know that was the beginning of the end.

Elaine never wanted happiness for her son.

She’d hated Carol Marie on sight. Yet Keller wasn’t yet man enough to know how to walk away from the best thing in his life, not when his pretty wife owned him, heart, body, and soul.

Not when she was the one saving grace in life .

Yet that was exactly what he should’ve done. He should’ve told Carol Marie ‘no’ that first day in the library, that she shouldn’t be seen with lowlifes like him. She might still be alive then.