Take Me Deeper by Jackie Ashenden Read Free Book Online

snitches tended to die.
    Cursing under his breath, Zane got back into the truck and stared out the windshield for a couple of moments. Then he reached over and grabbed the file Quinn had given him from the glove compartment. In it was all the information Lone Star had managed to find about Iris Callahan, which wasn’t much. Only her place of work and the address of a motel near the airport that appeared to be where she was living. Wouldn’t take long to get there from here and at least he could see to that scratch properly.
    He didn’t ask himself why he felt the need to take care of the woman in the backseat, because that was something he really didn’t want to revisit. So he busied himself with figuring out the quickest way to get to her motel and checking the rearview mirror to make sure no one was tailing them. There was a reasonable chance that the guy back at the bar who’d been shooting at them would also know where Iris was staying, so Zane was going to have to be careful. Not because he didn’t think he could handle an idiot like that, but because dealing with the prick would be an added complication, and he really didn’t need any complications.
    Too late.
    Yeah, okay, Iris was a complication, but only a minimal one so far—if you didn’t count the guy who was chasing her, that was. And he could keep her minimal, if he got her cleaned up and then delivered her back to Lone Star. Quinn and Rush could handle anyone trying to hit her before she was delivered safely back into custody, and once she was, that was the end of the complications. Easy.
    Yet for some reason the whole idea of doing that sat uneasily in Zane’s gut, and it was still there some fifteen minutes later when he finally pulled into the motel parking lot, a cheap, shitty place, probably built sometime in the fifties and hadn’t had anything done to it since.
    Seeing no point in waking Iris just yet, he went to the reception desk and managed to talk his way into getting another key to her room, telling the fat, balding, and distinctly uninterested guy behind the desk that he was her boyfriend. The guy didn’t ask any questions, barely even looking at Zane as he pushed a key over to him.
    Zane scowled at that too. What kind of setup was this when a complete stranger could talk a staff member into giving out the key to a woman’s room? Without even a request for ID?
    Unimpressed, he went back out to the truck and opened the door. Then he pulled the still soundly sleeping Iris into his arms and carried her up some stairs to the motel’s upper story where her room was located.
    The inside was as cheap and crappy as the outside. Two queen beds, worn orange carpet on the floor, a TV with a cracked plastic case, and a mural on one wall featuring a desert scene with lots of cacti. The whole place smelled too, of mold, old cigarettes, and desperation.
    Zane glanced down at the woman in his arms. She was so light, so insubstantial she barely weighed anything at all, and yet her sleep was the heavy, deep sleep of the exhausted. Her black lashes, lying on her pale cheeks in lush, silky fans, couldn’t quite hide the dark shadows beneath them, and there were lines around the full softness of her mouth.
    Disturbed for reasons he couldn’t name, Zane laid her on the bed and then stood back, gazing at her. Her arms were caught behind her back because of the cuffs. He bent, shifting her slightly so he could unlock them. She didn’t move, not even when he chafed her wrists to make sure her blood flow was okay.
    Dammit. He wanted to leave her hands free, but he suspected that the moment she woke up, she’d probably try to get away from him again. Which wasn’t happening, not with that other guy still out there. So after a moment of internal debate, he raised one hand above her head and cuffed her wrist to the headboard. She gave a little snort at that and turned onto her side, pillowing her free hand beneath her cheek in a curiously childlike posture.
    A