Bad Boy Criminal: The Novel Read Online Free

he bring a broad to a prison break gig?
    She inspected my wound carefully and pronounced it a “simple flesh wound,” promising me and my brother that I’d survive.
    Dom visibly relaxed at the news. “Let’s get him to the truck. Hand in there, little bro, I’ve got you,” he mumbled, helping me up into the cab.
    Then we fled the scene, heading to Dom’s warehouse. There wasn’t much time. I was hardly any safer outside of that truck than in it, and I hated to think about where they would send me if I was caught again. More maximum than maximum? That would have to be ADX Florence, home to some of the most unsavory motherfuckers you’ve ever seen.
    But the first step was just to get out of the orange jumper.
    What time had that been, then? I wondered, staring out of the rescue shed window; it was dark outside now. Isabelle must have been gone for the past hour, at least. I wondered what she was having for dinner, and if she’d really bring me some tonight. I thought of it melting in her mouth...
    As soon as we were in the warehouse, I wanted to talk to Xander, my other brother and Dom’s twin.
    Dom grudgingly handed me his cell. “He’s gonna meet up with us at the warehouse. He’s bringing some money for you, just to tide you over till we find a better hiding place.
    I pushed Xander’s name on the display.
    “Hey, big bro.” I smiled into the phone.
    “Ash? Shit, Dom did break you out, huh? I thought he was half kidding when he told me of the plan.”
    “Yeah. We’ll tell you all about it. Hey, he said you’d bring me some cash so I can disappear. I was just wondering when you were coming because I don’t feel like staying in the same place for long.”
    That much was still true. It would probably be true for the rest of my life, wouldn’t it? Would I ever be able to settle down somewhere like Turner Dairyfarm? A real home, for the real family I might have someday? Would I ever be able to spend a sunset relaxing, instead of glancing out windows, into rear view mirrors?
    Or was that all as much of a fantasy as a science fiction novel now?..
    “Cops are going to be everywhere soon…and I need to get the fuck out of here,” I’d told Xander.
    “Where are you?”
    “Dom’s warehouse…the one used by the club.”
    “Don’t you think the cops will look there?”
    “That’s why we need you to hurry the fuck up.”
    Xander wasn’t the kind of guy I would normally tell to “hurry the fuck up,” but he found the movement of the police motivation enough, and he arrived with a change of clothes for me and five hundred dollars in cash.
    Only a few minutes later, Jade had called. What time had that been? I wondered at the moon. Could it have really been only, what, one o’clock? Two? The moon and I both knew the truth; it only takes one breath for the trajectory of your entire life to change. From jailbird to fugitive… It wasn’t a huge step up, but I’d take it.
    Jade said she’d made good on her promise to dig deep and had discovered proof of my innocence. Her spider-like fingers, always blurring gracefully over some or other cryptic keyboard, were rat-tat-tatting in the background as we spoke. “It’s like the tattoo says: ‘These chains are strong, but so am I,’” she’d boasted. “But you’ve gotta come to me, man. You know that. I can’t travel, not with all those warrants after my ass.”
    And that meant one thing and one thing only: road trip.
    Road trip over the border. Juarez…Mexico, where Jade was currently in hiding. Ten hours, if we made good time.
    In what car? With whose money? And which fucking identification?
    I’d figure it out, I told my brothers. I’d already gotten them both with aiding and abetting—not that I had asked anyone to do that. I wasn’t looking to see them arrested with me. I would go alone. I would go alone, and I would figure it all out.
    “You’ll need more money,” they’d said. “We’ll be back in a few hours.”
    But I left on foot,