Jack & Coke (The Uncertain Saints Book 2) Read online

  She was dressed all in white…her wedding dress…with her dad standing at her side looking down at her adoringly.

  She was younger, of course, but she was still the same woman I saw every morning as I walked to my bike on the way to work.

  The same woman who I’d dreamt about every night since she’d moved in next to me.

  “I’m ready,” Annie said from behind me.

  I turned, giving one last longing look at the picture before turning to her.

  “Cool, let me have your keys,” I instructed.

  She raised her head, but nonetheless dropped the keys into my palm.

  “Be nice to my baby. She’s on her last legs,” Annie instructed.

  I nodded. “Okay. I’ll try.”

  In truth, I didn’t think I’d have a problem being gentle with her.

  We were on our way, twenty minutes later, with Annie in the passenger seat next to me.

  “This has got to be the smallest car I’ve ever had the experience of sitting in,” I grumbled, shifting the gears once again.

  Annie laughed.

  “Well, you’re six foot three; what’d you expect?” She teased.

  I turned onto the road that would take us to the mall and looked over at her.

  She was even more beautiful in the morning sun.

  The light from the sun shone into her hair, making it have a shimmery, fiery look to it.

  She’d changed into a pair of jeans and a plain black t-shirt.

  She put black boots on that resembled the female version of my own, an expensive pair that I wore nearly every day because they were safe to ride in.

  Her hair was in a ponytail up high on her head.

  And her hair was still just as messy as the moment she’d answered the door, and I found that I quite liked the look on her.

  “I don’t like that you’re meeting out here,” I muttered to myself.

  However, Annie picked up on it the moment I spoke and started to look around with me.

  “I really don’t see what’s wrong,” she grumbled.

  She wouldn’t. She was a woman, after all.

  “Shit,” Annie said suddenly. “Pull in there and let me get a bag. They asked me to wrap it.”

  I thought that weird, but I didn’t say anything as I pulled into the Dollar Store and watched as she hurried into the store, bought the first thing she could find close to the register, and immediately went to the checkout.

  “Okay,” Annie said, dropping into the seat as she tossed a smile my way.

  I lifted my brows up at her.

  “Tell me about selling your stuff online. What does the process entail?” I asked, backing up.

  I couldn’t see shit with her tiny ass mirrors.

  So I rolled the window down, turned my head around and contorted my body into a weird angle so I didn’t take anything out with her car.

  My luck I would total it.

  “I put the stuff I want to sell on a specific Facebook group geared towards garage sale items, and people comment whether they want it or not. Then we meet in a specified spot and complete the transaction,” she informed me, pulling up her phone and scrolling through it.

  She turned the phone to me when I reached a stop sign, and I read the post she’d made in Uncertain Garage Sale Page, Buy, Sell or Trade.

  “Do you make any money doing this?” I asked, pulling out and speeding up to the required sixty miles an hour speed limit.

  “A little bit. Mostly, I do it because I don’t like clutter,” she said.

  I nodded.

  I didn’t like clutter, either.

  And I really didn’t like it now.

  Jennifer was notorious for not cleaning up after herself.

  How hard was it to put the coffee cup away that you used?

  Even more, would it kill her to wash the fucker out in the sink?

  “He’s going to be in a blue car on the side of the building,” Annie said.

  “FYI, I still think this is a stupid idea.”

  Annie laughed. “Noted.”

  Chapter 5

  It takes 200 muscles to fake an orgasm. One bearded man can save you a lot of trouble.

  -E-card

  Annie

  “This isn’t what I ordered, bitch. You said it was a Coach purse, not a…” he never had the chance to finish what he was saying.

  Mig struck like a snake.

  One second he was leaning against a tree talking on his phone, and the next he had the guy by the throat and he was throwing him across the small parking lot.

  The guy hit the gravel with a hard thud and skidded.

  The rocks on the ground underneath his body made soft tinkling noises as he moved over them, making me wince.

  The man would have one hell of a road rash after that landing

  “Don’t fuckin’ put your hand in her face. What the fuck are you thinking?” Mig snarled, standing over the man.

  “Mig…” I started, but he held his hand up to stop me from continuing.

  “I’m not some fuckin’ man that’ll stop just because you want me to. I’m me, and me is what you get. Right now, you’ll let me handle this little piece of shit,” Mig said with a deadly quiet tone.

  I nodded, backing up to sit on the bench at the side of the store, to watch the scene before me unfold.

  “Now, how’s about you tell me what made you so upset that you’d get into a woman’s face like that.” Mig ordered the man at his feet.

  “She didn’t give me what I ordered. Tried to fuck me over,” the man said petulantly.

  Mig’s head tilted. “You didn’t comment on her post on that online garage sale site?”

  The man nodded.

  “And what’d you expect to get? She explained to me on the way here how it all worked,” Mig growled.

  “I ordered a Coach purse, wrapped. She had it in her post that she’d wrap it,” the man screamed.

  “I did wrap it!” I screamed right back, pointing to the pile of tissue paper and torn bag I’d purchased on the way here.

  “You lying bitch! I just gave you a hundred and fifty dollars! You owe me two ounces!” The man spat.

  Mig froze at the mention of ‘two ounces’ but I didn’t.

  I picked up the bag that he’d thrown on the floor.

  “This weighs more like a pound. What the hell does two ounces have to do with anything?” I fumed.

  But before I could hand the money that I’d just ripped out of my pocket over to the man, Mig stopped me in my tracks.

  “Call Griffin and get him here,” Mig ordered, handing me his phone.

  I took it and opened it, then began searching through his contacts for Griffin.

  I didn’t dwell on the fact that I had to pass an Angel, Barbara, Brianne, Cathy, Caty, DeeDee , Diane, Dora and Giselle to get to Griffin, though.

  Okay, maybe I did a little bit.

  If the first seven letters in his phone book had seven women in it, how many did the rest of his phone hold?

  Once I found Griffin’s name, I hit call and held the phone to my ear as I watched Mig continue to question the man.

  “Yeah?” A rough male voice grated from the other end of the line.

  “Umm,” I hesitated. “This is Annie. Mig asked me to call you and ask you to please come out here.”

  Griffin snorted. “I’m sure he asked real nice, exactly like that, too,” Griffin laughed. “Where are you?”

  “The mall,” I answered.

  “The actual mall in Marshall or the mall in between Jefferson and Uncertain?” Griffin clarified.

  “The one in between Jefferson and Uncertain,” I answered quickly, flinching when Mig hauled the man up by his shirt and shook him. “And you might want to hurry before Mig goes all hardcore on this man.”

  “Be there in fifteen, maybe less,” Griffin rang off, and I shoved the phone into my back pocket.

  “He said he’d
be here in fifteen minutes,” I answered, deciding to leave off the ‘maybe less.’

  Mig didn’t acknowledge me, and I wondered idly whether I should call the police or not.

  I decided against it, however, when Mig started to punch the man.

  I bit my lip and watched.

  I was ashamed to admit it, but the sight of Mig being so upset and bothered about me nearly being hurt was really turning me on.

  I watched as the muscles in his arms bunched and released.

  Mig’s grip on the man’s shirt loosened, but only long enough for Mig to put his entire hand across the man’s neck and squeeze.

  I don’t know why I wasn’t more worried than I was.

  I knew Mig wouldn’t hurt him too badly.

  And he sure wouldn’t kill him.

  “I asked you to tell me what you meant,” Mig ordered slowly.

  The man started to cry.

  “I was trying to buy drugs!” The man finally wailed. “Coke, man. I was trying to buy some fucking coke!”

  I blinked.

  He thought I was a drug dealer?

  “Why would you think she was giving you drugs? She showed me the post. Nowhere in that post are drugs ever mentioned or even hinted about,” Mig snarled, leaning close.

  I wanted to laugh as the man started to cry.

  I was such a bitch!

  “She used the code! Wrapping it. ‘Got it. Red tissue paper.’ She said that in her reply, man!”

  I wanted to throw my hands up in exasperation.

  Seriously?

  I’d used the code back to him?

  I’d been teasing about how I had to wrap it, never even realizing that I’d inadvertently set up a drug deal!

  “I thought you weren’t working today,” Griffin said from behind us, making me squeak in surprise.

  Mig looked up at Griffin and glared. “I haven’t had the chance to do what I needed to do yet because of this little shit head.”

  Mig shook the man for emphasis.

  “What’s going on?” Griffin asked, making no move to stop Mig from hitting the man one more time.

  “Motherfucker tried to hit Annie when his supposed drug deal went south. Annie had no clue she was agreeing to deliver drugs. Seems the garage sale site she uses sets up code words in the posts to place their order and set up the deal. They settle on a meeting place, and the seller uses the code phrase in the reply,” Mig answered, standing up.

  When the man tried to stand up as well, Mig fixed him with a stare.

  “Stay where you are.”

  The man flopped back onto the ground, and I would’ve laughed had this situation not been scary.

  What would’ve happened if I had been by myself like I’d originally intended?

  Would I be dead?

  Chapter 5

  I used my manners today. Bitch, please is adequate, right?

  -Annie’s secret thoughts

  Annie

  If you’d have asked me two weeks ago what I would be doing today, it would’ve never been what I was doing.

  “Are you sure this is legal?” I asked once more.

  Mig glared at me.

  “Yes,” he insisted. “It’s my car!”

  “Actually, it’s your wife’s car,” I informed him. “And what are you hoping to accomplish by having me move it?”

  “I’m hoping that she’ll try to call someone,” he informed me, shutting the door on my retort.

  I moved his wife’s car behind the building, parked it in the back behind a dumpster and got out.

  I headed back to my car, while Mig dutifully followed behind me the entire way.

  “You know the phrase stealing from a baby?” I asked him as I dropped into the passenger side of my car.

  My eyes went down to the junk in the floorboard.

  Since I never sat on this side of the car, I never realized just how dirty it was.

  It needed a wash…bad.

  “Yeah, why?” He asked, whipping the car around so fast that my head spun.

  “Mig!” I cried out, grasping the ‘oh shit’, or ‘OS’, handle and holding on for dear life.

  Mig laughed.

  I wanted to punch him.

  “That’s what it feels like I just did. Stealing a pregnant woman’s car,” I admitted to him.

  He pulled up beside the store, just to the side of where Jennifer’s car had been parked, and got out.

  I followed suit, and we leaned against the hood as we watched the front doors.

  “It’s my car. And I won’t let her walk home. She’ll find a ride, and if I’m right, she’ll find one with someone that’s not me,” he informed me.

  I blinked.

  “What makes you think it won’t be you she calls?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Jennifer never calls me. Never. She barely talks to me unless it’s to bitch about something…or someone.”

  I still didn’t know what to think about all that was Jennifer.

  She always had a perpetual scowl on her face.

  She’s never once waved hello the few times we’d seen each other

  She didn’t speak to me. Didn’t ever help Mig out in the yard.

  And with Mig’s explanation about what had really happened to bring the two of them together, it all seemed to make a sick sort of sense.

  Why I never saw them hug. Why she watched him leave every day with a glare on her face. Why I’d never seen them be affectionate to each other. Often, I could hear them both screaming at each other.

  Mig’s phone chimed for the fourth time in less than ten minutes, and I looked at him with a questioning gaze.

  “Need to leave?” I asked hopefully.

  He shook his head, pulling his phone out, tapping out a few words, then replacing it.

  “No. It’s Griffin giving me updates on Carl Copeland,” he said. “He’s got quite a bit of interesting information.”

  I nodded.

  Carl Copeland, as I’d later learned was his name, was a small time boy just looking for his next fix.

  But, apparently, both Griffin and Mig had thought there was more to the story, so he was escorted by Griffin to their office where he would continue asking him questions, hoping to get more information out of him than he originally had.

  “And?” I asked, bored out of my mind.

  Who knew a stakeout would be so boring?

  “Got a few names we need to track down. Griffin’s sending them to the computer people to get dossiers on them,” Mig explained. “You need to be careful, though.”

  I blinked. “What? Why?”

  He raised a brow at me that I saw over the top of his sunglasses.

  “You nearly got yourself caught up in a botched drug deal, and everyone else saw the message you sent to that man. You may have deleted it, but that shit always comes back to bite you in the ass,” he explained.

  “You think someone else is going to contact me about getting drugs?” I asked in alarm.

  Mig shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not.”

  Oh, great. Now I was freaking out.

  “What do I do if I get contacted about that?” I asked worriedly. “What if they show up at my shop?”

  Mig looked at me, studying me so long that I worried I asked a stupid question.

  “Do you have an alarm at your shop?” He asked.

  I shook my head.

  “No. There’s nothing really in it to steal. While I’m doing massages, I lock the door. The only thing they could get to if they broke in is about two hundred bottles of shampoo, conditioner, mousse and lotion,” I answered.

  He nodded, turning back to the door when someone came outside.

  My breath caught in my throat when I saw Jennifer standing there with a huge bag in her hand.

  She looked around the parking lot, her face showing her confusion as she turned in a slow circle.

  Her arms crossed over her chest, her large bag sla
mmed against her stomach, and Mig growled.

  My breath caught as I watched Mig watch her.

  He may not love Jennifer, but he did love their baby.

  And when Jennifer stomped to a bench on the side of the store, fell heavily into it, then pulled out her phone, I hoped beyond hope that Mig’s phone would ring.

  Instead, I waited with bated breath as she called someone else, spoke for a few long minutes with wild hand gestures, then dropped the phone back into her purse.

  She crossed her arms over her stomach angrily and glared at the parking spot where her car had been sitting.

  Mig slowly let out a breath at my side, and I turned to him once again.

  “Do you want your baby?” I asked carefully.

  He nodded.

  “Yeah.”

  Simple as that.

  No more, no less.

  That was totally Mig.

  Would he change his mind about Jennifer when she gave birth to their child?

  Children changed everything, absolutely everything.

  My parents like to talk all the time about how they had grand plans on traveling the world.

  Then I was born, and all their plans were derailed…not that they were that upset about it.

  I was supposedly the ‘best thing that ever happened to them.’

  Although, I’d heard my mother say the same thing to my sister, so I knew she was lying to one of us.

  But children were used as pawns in divorce all the time.

  Would this child be?

  I hoped not.

  The child deserved to have two parents who could at least be cordial to one another.

  And I hoped beyond hope that the story of the baby’s conception forever stayed a secret.

  We waited for long minutes, and just when I was about to suggest we go over there, Mig leaned forward.

  “Bingo,” he growled.

  I blinked, studying the parking lot.

  That was when I saw the white Mercedes.

  Mig started to repeat letters and numbers to himself as he pulled out his phone, then he typed it in before shoving it back into his pocket.

  I wondered what those letters had meant until I saw Jennifer round the car and open the passenger door.

  And the brief glance we got of the driver had my stomach plummeting.