The Ringer Read Free Page B

a room, Lane never once wished her clothes would spontaneously combust off her body.
    A super-steamy relationship wasn’t in the cards. Her cheeks heated from embarrassment from her moment of weakness, but Jax even had a damn strong jaw.
    “Are you okay?” he asked. His politeness was probably a cautionary measure to make sure there would be no more freak-outs in his near future.
    “I’m not going to fall apart on you,” she murmured, still raw. She tried to close her ill-fitted blazer over her too-small T-shirt. After her little panic attack at the bar, Lane believed she couldn’t have come off worse. Uncomfortable in her own skin, she just wanted to go home.
    “Can you tell me what happened?”
    Uh no!   She wanted to say, but instead she took a deep breath, trying to get her bearings. It seemed like the beginning of her evening had taken place a year ago instead of a mere hour.
    They drove at a quick clip along Lake Front. Anxious, she pushed herself farther into the seat. “My mark.” She splayed her hands out, not sure what to do with them. “I call the cheating husbands marks. Someone from the service told me to meet the guy at the pub.
    “When I got there, he appeared nervous. Looking behind his back every few seconds…twitchy—worried about his wife, maybe. So I suggested we get out of there.” Lane swallowed. “As soon as we left out the back, he was all over me. The next thing that happened… pow! ” She pulled the trigger of a fake gun, putting her hands down before he could see them shake. “Dead.”
    “Your decoy agency—”
    “Honey Pot,” she offered.
    “Yeah, did they tell you to leave with the…mark?” He concentrated on the road ahead of him. He slid the dead man’s vehicle in and out of traffic while still managing to pay close attention to her story.
    “No,” she admitted, more than a little ashamed. “I am never to leave with them.”
    Lane always made it a priority to not regret anything. Well, up until this very moment . Because tonight, she regretted an awful lot.
    “How many of these dates have you gone on?”
    “Uh.” She didn’t want to confess to her naiveté but had a strong sense he could already tell. “Three. Maybe if I got the guy at ease, he’d give up the goods faster.” Lane shrugged. “Then I could go home.”
    “Hmm.” Jax steered the stolen car onto an off-ramp.
    No one said anything for a while. Since Lane deemed herself too stupid for words, she gladly melted into the silence.
    He pulled the BMW through the open entrance of a parking garage. “Give me a second.” He swung the car into a remote corner of the lot before he hopped out. Jax crossed the street, disappearing into the attendant’s booth.
    Exhausted, she dropped her head back on the seat and tried to think about the highlight of her day. Often, she would tackle this chore before she went to sleep at night, a strong believer of positive affirmation. However, the dead guy in the parking lot of the pub put a damper on her efforts.
    The image of his big body, facedown on the pavement, ran through her mind on repeat. Sure, she may not have liked the cheating bastard, but somebody did. He may have been screwing around on that somebody, but at one point, she had to have loved him. Lane tried in vain to convince herself of a silver lining, but conceded one wouldn’t be found tonight.
    A small earthquake rumbled from beneath her. She blinked, unaware she had closed her eyes. Jax wasn’t back yet, and she was still in her stupid outfit. Groggy, Lane opened the car door and planted her feet on the pavement. “What are you doing?”
    He worked his way from underneath the car with a boxy unit in hand. “Getting a souvenir,” he said before he nodded at her boots. “How much mileage can you get out of those things?”
    Five-inch heels, black and shiny leather made its way up her leg to the top of her thigh. “Three blocks give or take one.”.
    “Good, let’s put them to the test,” he