Femme Fatale

Chapter Twenty-Four: S.O.S.

"Jax, wake up!" Corey cried, rushing into his boss's bedroom. Jax opened one eye and squinted at the pale blonde at his bedside, looking crazier than ever. He groaned and threw a pillow at Corey.

Jax was hoping to sleep in until the late afternoon, and Corey knew better than to wake him unless there was an emergency. 

"What do you want?" Jax growled.

"It's Emma," Corey said nervously. He began to wring his hands. 

Jax sat up immediately, causing the sheet to slide down his toned torso. He was wearing only a pair of boxers and his blonde hair was a disheveled mess.

"I think something's wrong," Corey continued. "Her phone is going straight to voicemail. Her landline is disconnected, too."

As Corey's words sunk in, Jax started to panic. He flew out of bed, ran his hands through his messy hair, and hunted for a pair of jeans. Emma always picked up her phone when they called. She could be in the White House riding the President of the United States like a cowgirl, and she'd still pick up the phone if Jax or one of his boys called. She was on their payroll, after all.

Jax grabbed his cellphone and dialed his sister's number.

Voicemail.

He gritted his teeth, then tried her landline.

Disconnected. 

Jax pulled on a t-shirt and rushed out of his bedroom, with Corey following not far behind. It was always in the back of Jax's mind that something might happen to Emma. He had a long list of enemies, and he worried that one of them would use her to get to him. That's why her house was tricked out with state of the art security measures, but nothing in their line of business was foolproof.

"Frank! Michael!" Jax barked as he banged on their doors.

"Frank went out," Corey said. "He should be back soon."

Michael's door opened and he popped his head into the hallway. "What's going on?" 

"Get the car ready," Jax said. "We need to check on Emma."

"Got it," Michael said with a nod. He could sense the urgency in Jax's voice.

"Corey will fill you in," Jax said as he started down the staircase. "I'll grab the guns. Meet me out front."

Five minutes later, Michael pulled the black Mercedes Benz up to the front of the house with Corey in the backseat. Jax was standing outside with a metal briefcase, talking to Frank on his cellphone. Michael popped the trunk, and Jax shoved the suitcase in before slamming it shut.

He opened the passenger's door of the Benz and stepped in, still on his phone. "Fine. Hurry up, though. I want someone at home." Jax ended the call and turned to Michael.

"Let's go."

Michael slammed his foot on the gas pedal and they peeled out of the driveway.

Meanwhile, Frank was sitting by himself in the surveillance room, drinking a glass of scotch, neat. As soon as the car left the driveway, he turned off the surveillance cameras. He finished his scotch and made his way to Jo's bedroom.

*****************************

Jo woke up feeling like a steaming pile of shit. Her head was pounding painfully and her mouth was as dry as cotton. She groaned when she got a whiff of herself. She reeked of booze, stale smoke, and sex. The stench did little to help the waves of nausea rolling through her stomach.

Taking a deep breath, Jo slowly got up out of bed with the grace of a zombie. Moving hurt her head, but she pushed through. She shuffled to her bathroom, hoping that a hot shower could baptize her into a fully functioning person.

As Jo stood under the rainfall of scalding water, flashbacks of the previous night danced in her head. She groaned to herself again.

The opium haze was amazing while it lasted. She was floating in the clouds last night, and the out-of-body experience made sex all the more intense. But once the buzz started to fade away, she had fallen from the clouds and plunged swiftly to the hard ground, getting the wind knocked out of her. She was foggy, slow, and off her game.

Jo didn't fuck up terribly – they did pull off the heist successfully, after all – but her performance was less than perfect. And to her, that was unacceptable. Jo mentally ran through a checklist of her mistakes, vowing to fix or to learn from them.

First of all, she felt deeply when she made love to Michael. Jo quickly chalked that up to the opium, pushing out the tiny voice in her head that said maybe it wasn't just the opium.

But the hallucinations of her father last night were absolutely drug-induced, and they had thrown her through an emotional loop. Jo was angry at herself. 

It had been six years since her parents had died, so why wasn't she over it yet? Because you're a weak bitch, she thought to herself. Just get over it. 

And in her moment of emotional weakness, Jax had said the worst thing possible.

Stay.

Jo became even angrier. Jax told her to stay when all she wanted to do was go home. He told her to stay when her heart was aching to leave. And then Jo reacted emotionally. She had sounded cold when she should have been warm. She had been silent when she should have been purring coaxing words into his ears.

Oh well. Today was a new day, and what happened last night wasn't anything she couldn't fix. She firmly believed that Jax was a man of his word. Not a lot of men were, but he was. She would talk to him, patch things up, and then she would leave on good terms.

Jo rinsed out the conditioner in her hair and the last of the suds on her body. As she reached to turn off the faucet, the shower curtain was suddenly pulled back. The sound of metal shower rings sliding along the shower rod sounded like a knife being sharpened in one swift motion. Ching.

Jo yelped in surprise, reflexively covering her breasts with one hand and her nether regions with the other. 

Frank was pointing a gun at her with a sinister smirk on his face. 

Her heart stopped beating and she struggled to breathe. Jo could feel all the blood drain from her body and pool at her feet. Despite the hot water pounding her naked body, she felt as cold as a cadaver. Jo was frozen in sheer terror, the likes of which she had never experienced before. 

Frank's fish-like eyes bore into her as he scanned her body. Jo's heart was in her throat, and she was sure she would puke it up at any second.

Frank turned off the shower faucet. His hard, chiseled face was eerily devoid of any emotion when he finally spoke. 

"I'm going to have fun with you."