Page 19 of Texas Hold Em’ (The Devil’s Luck MC #3)

JAMESON

I was about to head back home, hoping I’d find Carrie there with a hand on her hip as she asked me where the hell I’d gone off to.

But as I turned a corner, I spotted her.

Relief flooded through me even though I could tell as I took the speed off my bike and approached her that something was wrong.

She sat on the curb across the street from the police station.

She had her knees drawn up and her elbows resting on them while she buried her face in her hands and her fingers in her hair.

Her hair was a mess actually. It looked as though she’d been running her hands through it for hours.

One foot tapped anxiously on the pavement, and she looked up from her hands when she heard my bike coming.

I pulled over in front of the Chevelle, which she’d parked at the curb about eight feet from where she sat.

I got off the motorcycle and hung my helmet on the handlebars.

Carrie hid her face from me as I walked over and sat down beside her.

“You okay?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“Where did you go?” I asked.

Either she didn’t hear me or she chose not to hear me because she acted as though I hadn’t spoken.

She looked back up and gazed longingly across the street at the police department.

I saw heartbreak in her blue eyes and I knew the weight of her burden.

Like me, she’d made decisions that compromised her career as a Ranger.

Like me, she very well might have to walk away from her job at the end of this.

It was obvious how much it was eating her up inside.

“I fucked up,” Carrie whispered. “I… I think I fucked up really bad, Jameson.”

I couldn’t recall a time where she’d called me by my first name.

Tears glistened in her eyes and she shook her head as if to dispel them. Her hands balled into fists and she pressed her knuckles into her thighs, punishing herself with pain. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I thought… ugh. I don’t know what I thought. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“What are you talking about?”

Carrie finally looked at me, and as soon as our eyes met, she fell to pieces and started sobbing. Her tears glistened on her cheeks, and I noticed for the first time that her right cheek was bruised. Someone had hit her.

Shit.

What did she need? Should I wrap an arm around her?

Console her? Tell her it would all be okay?

Did she need tough love—someone to grab her chin and tell her to pull it together and tell the truth?

I felt entirely out of my depth as I tried to process how to be there for her without crossing any lines, all the while simultaneously wondering what she could have done that could possibly be this bad.

I glanced at the police station.

Had she turned us in?

I had too many questions and decided she was in no shape to answer them all right now, so I got to my feet and offered her my hand while she sniffled and wiped at her tears.

“Let’s go home,” I said. “Can you drive?”

She nodded.

I told her to follow me back to the apartment, and I drove slowly.

She trailed along behind me, the lights of the Chevelle glinting off my mirrors on straight roads.

It wasn’t too long of a drive back to my place and by the time we got there she’d stopped crying.

Her eyes were still puffy and her nose was pink, and I resisted the urge to tell her she looked adorable.

In my experience, crying women never liked to be told they looked cute when they were crying. It was almost as dangerous as telling them they were cute when they were angry.

Almost.

Carrie followed me down the humid hallway of the warehouse to my unit.

It was cool and dim. The sun had just come up to the east and shone through the single window above the kitchen fridge.

The light painted everything in an orange haze, and Carrie’s shadow flickered across the far wall as she walked to the sofa and fell into it like a defeated woman.

I grabbed her a glass of water before joining her.

“Tell me what happened,” I said.

Tell me what you did that was so bad.

Carrie sipped her water. “I thought I was helping. I need you to know. I really thought I was helping.”

“I believe you.”

She bit her bottom lip. “Okay… well… as you know I tracked down Caroline the other day. I’ve been waiting around for her or her father to reach out to me and I started to worry that they weren’t going to.

I couldn’t let them forget about me. I couldn’t let this opportunity slip through my fingers.

So I went out looking for her again, and I found her. ”

“At the bar,” I said.

She nodded and didn’t ask how I knew she’d been there. Instead, she continued. “She took me out the back door and jumped me.”

That explained the bruised cheek.

Carrie touched her face gingerly and surprised me by laughing bitterly as she remembered her fight with Bates’s daughter.

“Sneaky bitch. I should have seen it coming. But it doesn’t matter.

She didn’t have the upper hand for long.

I was her equal, and when she knew neither of us were going to gain any ground, she stopped.

And then she took me to see her father.”

I wasn’t sure how to feel. Furious that Caroline had struck her or in awe that Carrie had held her ground and struck back.

I said nothing and waited for the fierce woman on my couch to continue.

She took a shaky breath. “I went to his estate. He was there waiting for me, and he said he was willing to hear this plan of mine. I proposed I give him the Devil’s Luck on a silver platter, and in exchange, he grant me safe exit out of Reno and back to Austin.”

As I listened, I considered the fact that she might very well be lying to me.

There was no way for me to truly know if what she was saying was true or whose side she was really on.

For all I knew, she’d gone to Bates and they’d struck a bargain to do just as she said—deliver Jackson and the rest of us to Bates.

Still, I wanted to believe her.

“I thought it would be easy,” she whispered.

“I knew I had him right where I wanted him. I knew I was offering him exactly what he wanted and that he’s too damn narrow minded and greedy to say no.

But I should have seen it coming. I should have known he’d want to make sure he had power over me. That he’d want to twist the knife.”

“What do you mean?”

Her eyes slid to me and once more filled with tears.

“He agreed to my terms, but he had a condition. In order to prove my loyalty to him, I have to murder you, Jameson. I have to murder you and I have to prove it to him.” She pulled a small flip phone out of her jean pocket and tossed it to me.

“He gave me this to stay in contact with him.”

My chest tightened.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to make things worse.

And if he hadn’t brought you into this, everything would have gone according to plan.

But now I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go.

He’s going to call me in the next few days, before Friday obviously, and he’s going to tell me to end your life, and if I don’t do it, well, he’ll kill me too. ”

I stared at the phone in my hand .

Carrie knit her fingers together and her knuckles turned white. “Please say something.”

“You were reckless.”

“I know.”

“You could’ve been killed.”

“I know,” she said again.

“But,” I said slowly, “I think you succeeded in creating the window of opportunity we’ve been trying to get but have failed to achieve at every corner.

You got us a promised location with Bates and all his men, and it’s away from town so there won’t be any collateral damage.

I don’t think this is what you want to hear, but I’m going to say it. I’m impressed.”

Carrie blinked rapidly.

I grinned. “This could be the finale we’ve all been working toward. This could be justice for William.”

Carrie snatched the phone out of my hand. “Did you not hear me? I have to kill you in order for the deal to go down!”

“Oh, I heard you.”

Carrie shook her head incredulously. “Really? It sure as hell doesn’t look like you heard me. Why are you smiling?”

I chuckled and got to my feet. “You underestimated Bates, and you’re underestimating us, too. Come on. We have to go.”

“Where?” She eyed my hand suspiciously as I held it out to her.

“To talk to Jackson,” I said simply.