Burnout_ A Legal Heat Novella - Sarah Castille Page 0,48

would find a way to fix the problem. He always did.

“I’ve got an idea,” Ryder said.

“Lay it on me.”

Ryder’s face tightened. “If we run with it, you might never be able to ride again.”

Ace’s breath left him in a rush. He’d bought his first bike when he turned sixteen, upgrading as he made more money until he could afford the Harley he needed to be considered as a prospect for Hades MC. His bike was his life, his freedom, as much a part of him as his arms and legs… He stiffened his spine, firmed his resolve. If his bike were the only thing that stood between him and the new life he wanted to make, and the girl he wanted to make it with, he would give it up.

“Okay.”

“You might also lose a leg.”

“Christ, Ryder.” Ace threw himself back in the chair. “What the hell kind of plan is that?”

Ryder shrugged. “It’s one that depends on how good a cop Sophie really is and how well she can shoot a gun.”

Chapter Twelve

Heart thudding, Sophie grabbed her duffel bag containing two hundred thousand dollars in one-hundred-dollar bills and slid out of her car in the parking lot of the North Vancouver Sulphur Works. Despite the darkness, the iconic twenty-five-meter-high, 160,000-ton outdoor stockpile of sulphur was clearly visible, a neon-yellow beacon marking the edge of Coal Harbour. She’d heard rumours about the smell allegedly emanating from the sulphur pile, but aside from a faint whiff of rotten eggs, the air was dominated by the scent of fish and seaweed as a cool breeze blew off the ocean.

She checked her phone yet again for a message from Ace. He hadn’t answered her texts or calls since she’d left him at the clubhouse three days ago. She had no idea if his injuries had gotten worse, if he was angry she’d walked out when he was asleep, or if he was disappointed she had turned to the police to help her save Jason.

Maybe it was a good thing he wasn’t around. He wouldn’t be happy with what she planned to do.

“Can you hear me?” she whispered into the stillness. The “wire” the police had given her was unlike anything she’d seen on television. Lacking any actual wires, the transmitting device fit into her phone, and the receiver was the barest sliver of metal affixed to her ear.

“We got you, but keep the noise down. You don’t know who might be watching.” Dan, her handler for the exchange, had been brusque and efficient when he’d prepped her, and not at all reassuring about her chances of success at retrieving Jason. Although the undercover officer, deeply embedded in the Red Dragons, had managed to convince the Mountain Master, head of the Red Dragons, to accept her offer to pay a ransom to free Jason, Dan told her these scenarios usually went wrong. Even with a SWAT team standing by to move in after the drop, he calculated her chances of success at less than thirty percent.

Not what she wanted to hear.

Her phone buzzed and she checked the message.

“They want me to go inside,” she whispered as she read the message from the Red Dragon contact.

“Don’t go in,” Dan barked through the earpiece. “That wasn’t the deal. You agreed on an outdoor exchange. If you go in, we won’t have a visual. What’s to stop them from killing you both? You’re a witness to a crime. Stay outside. Make them come to you.”

Sophie texted her position to Jason’s captors. A minute later, she received another text threatening to cut off Jason’s fingers.

Her heart skipped a beat. “They’re going to hurt him.”

“Stay outside.”

Sophie gritted her teeth and clutched the duffel bag. A minute passed. Then another. The next text was so vicious it ripped the breath from her lungs, and she was running before her mind had even processed that she had moved.

She thudded the door open and whispered, “I’m inside.”

Dan shouted an unsupportive “fuck” into her ear as the door closed behind her.

Still, she had her weapon, a small .22 strapped to a holster on her leg. Although the Red Dragons had been particular about the details for the exchange, they hadn’t told her to come unarmed.

Taking a moment to orient herself in the suffocating darkness, she took a few deep breaths and then called out, “Hello?”

A light flashed. And then another. A spotlight came on, illuminating a figure slumped in a chair.

Her pulse kicked up a notch, and she tried to shield herself from the