Rampant by Gemma James Page B

a spectator, though I was the main star. I’d watched the police haul me from a training session, hands cuffed at my back. What I found most disturbing about that piece of footage was the guilty look on my own damn face.
    As if reading about the trial wasn’t torturous enough, I dug into Jax’s background too, which I found nothing on. I wasn’t sure he’d understand my need to know more about him, so I didn’t tell him I was looking into his life, but I couldn’t swallow the idea of a stranger living on my father’s island.
    What bothered me most, however, was Alex’s disappearance. The media had yet to report on her miraculous return from the dead. Going by the news reports of her “death,” authorities had found her car in the Columbia River two and a half weeks ago. Jax said we’d pushed her Volvo in after taking her from Portland. He also said I’d decided to let her go hours before I got shot.
    So where the fuck was she?
    I could think of only two possibilities. Either she was terrified by what I’d done and had gone into hiding…or something unimaginable had happened to her. While I agonized over her whereabouts, my partner in crime was too busy working or disappearing to care about what had happened. Jax’s only concern was staying out of jail. As long as Alex didn’t surface, we were safe from being charged for kidnapping. He also suspected she’d had something to do with the shooting, which didn’t make him her biggest fan.
    My amnesia ensured I didn’t remember shit, and it was frustrating as hell.
    There was only one person in this new reality I trusted. Certainly not the stranger at my side, or my own brother. No matter what Adam said about reconciled differences or how he thought I should come back and work at Mason Vineyards—familiar routines and all of that—I couldn’t talk to him.
    But fuck, I needed to get out of my own head or I was going to go crazy.
    I took a deep breath and climbed the steep staircase that led to the front door of Nikki Malone’s house. It had taken some needling of old friends, but I eventually got her address out of a girl who’d had a crush on me in high school. Nikki’s place was up the mountain, nestled between clusters of Douglas firs. The Columbia River peeked through the branches, and I wondered if she had a view of the island from the porch wrapping around her home. The place was huge, built more recently if the modern angles and vinyl siding accented with stone was any indication. She’d done well for herself.
    I hesitated, feet planted on the welcome mat, my fist poised to knock. She was engaged to the enemy. Jax would probably rip me a new one for trusting her, but I’d known her too many years not to. I rapped on the door and waited. A white BMW sat in the driveway, and I assumed it belonged to her. She had to be home.
    I lifted my hand again, knuckles nearing the wood, and halted at the unmistakable thud of steps.
    She pulled the door open, and her eyes widened, her mouth gaping. Same golden hair, same seductive brown eyes, but something fundamental had changed in them. Like most things these days, I couldn’t put my finger on it. Nikki was not the same Nikki I’d known before my mind decided to check out on me.
    “Rafe,” she said with a smile that lacked the warmth I remembered. She ran a thumb along the edge of the door.
    “I should’ve let you visit me at the hospital,” I said, figuring her less-than-enthusiastic welcome stemmed from my turning her away. “I’m an ass.”
    “It’s okay. I can’t imagine what it must be like to lose so much of your memory. Confusing?”
    “Something like that.” I gestured toward the door she held close to her body. “Can I come in? I really need to talk to someone, and you’re the only one I trust.”
    “What about Jax?”
    I tilted my head. “How much do you know about him?”
    She shrugged. “We talked at the hospital. But he goes on about you like you’re his brother or something.