~~~Lance~~~

“Jax?” He looked closely at her. “Did you hear me?”

Shaking her head she said, “Yeah! Sorry Lance. Elvia makes a killer latte. I guess I just got a little lost in it.”

“I’ve been there. She does weird and wonderful things with that machine back there. You want a hit?” He offered her his box.

He expected her to be repulsed by it. But if anything she seemed interested. “No. Wait. Yes.” She blushed a little. “Sorry. Former cop. Habits, you know?”

“I was meaning to talk to you about that.” He hesitated. “Uh. Why did you want to come work for me? I mean, you have to know that being what you are, or were, is not going to make for an easy transition into my company. They’re going to talk. A lot. About you. About,” he paused. “About us, Jax. They’re going to talk about us. About why I trusted you with a place here.” He could feel himself rambling, but he couldn’t stop. Beating around the bush was so much easier than just saying it outright. “Why did you come to me? There are so many other things you could have done with experience like yours. All the cases you’ve been on, your successes, your collars. I know you know what we really do here. Why join a cartel when you could be doing almost anything else?” He exhaled. Between last night and this morning, he’d forgotten how to talk to her all over again.

~~~Jax~~~

She sighed too. “Lance, I’m not going to lie to you. This wasn’t an easy decision. But after what the Sweenys did to Hunter, I guess I’m looking for some kind of revenge.” Uh oh. This was not what the Captain had suggested for her cover story. The truth was the last thing she’d wanted to tell him.

~~~Lance~~~

Lance could tell that she was trying her best to keep the shock of sharing the truth with him off of her face. He was surprised too. He’d expected her to share some bizarre story about always wanting to live on the wild side or needing to stick it to the Captain for firing her. When he’d heard about Hunter shortly after she’d quit the club, two main thoughts had pervaded his mind. First, his heart broke for her. He knew how close they were. And he knew how hard she would take it. Rule keeper’s brother goes to prison for sex trafficking? He’d only met Hunter a handful of times, but from everything he’d seen of him, he wasn’t anything like what the tabloids had painted him to be. Trashy, sociopathic, villainous. It just didn’t seem to fit with his character.

Second, he knew that Jax’s retribution would be slow moving and devastating. She’d take her time, she would be thorough. The Sweenys probably wouldn’t see it coming, whatever she had planned. And if he knew her well enough, it would probably also completely tear their cartel down. Hell, she’d be doing him a favor. That had to be good enough for Darius and the rest of them, right?

In a moment of pure concern and sorrow, he put his hand over hers. “You know, I never got to tell you how sorry I was for all of that, Jasmine. Hunter seemed like a genuinely good guy.”

~~~Jax~~~

“He’s still alive, Lance. Don’t act like he’s dead. He’s just rotting in a cell.” She pulled her hand out from under his. She was not in the mood to explain to one more person that her brother was framed. No one ever believed her, so she didn’t even try anymore. The media had done a stellar job in painting him as a monster. And that was all anyone ever saw.

He closed his eyes for a moment. She was grateful for the break in his searing gaze. She hated the pity. “I’m sorry Jasmine. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“No. It’s fine. Let’s just talk about work. What kind of openings do you have?” She brushed the stupid curl behind her ear one more time, and forced herself to unclench her shoulders.

“We have an opening in payroll, security, admin, and custodial.” As he skimmed the database, he found himself fixated on getting her a position either in his office, or as close to it as possible. “Any of those sound interesting?”

“Security? With my cop-ing experience, that might be a good fit. Definitely not payroll. No one would get their checks on time. I’m the worst at paperwork. I could also do admin...especially if I was working with Elvia.” Not having control over this was a big hurdle. She needed access to the company. Real access. The kind where she could get real information for the Captain. But she had to leave the ultimate decision up to him. Especially if she wanted to seem like she just wanted a job.

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“So, let’s just talk about the elephant in the room,” he said bluntly. “My people aren’t going to trust you all that easily. Hell, I had someone in here this morning telling me not to allow you to join our operation. The position in security is to be Darius’s bodyguard. But you have to trust your bodyguard implicitly. And I know it would take the two of you a long while before you established anything remotely close to that level.” He hesitated.

“I get it, Lance. I’m coming into this with black marks all over a brand new record. I know how it’s going to be.” Taking a deep breath, she plummeted deeper into her cover, “But I need to be able to get intel on the Sweeny’s. I need to be able to take them down. You doing it for me wouldn’t be right. I need to do it myself.” It was a gamble. He might just kick her out right now. Here he was doing her a favor, and she was making demands. She was sounding like one of her bad dates.

He didn’t say anything. Just raised his eyebrows and looked at her. It was a look she’d seen many, many times on his face.

She laughed uneasily. “Too intense?”

“Jasmine.” Her whole body flushed. “I’m going to need more than that, love.”

They stared at each other in shock. Five years. It’d been five long years since he’d called her that. She savored it like a delicacy.

Fighting her libido to keep her head in the game, she did her best to continue their train of thought from before. “Y-you…ah…You wanna know why I got fired, don’t you?” she asked hesitantly. She curled her fingers in the hair at the base of her neck, trying to get her mind to re-focus. The oil she’d put there this morning was still there. Rubbing her fingers together, she steeled her mind with the ritualistic movement.

His eyes didn’t leave her hands at their movements. But he, as always, was able to keep up with her. “You know that I’ve gotta know, Jax. Standard question for any job. I’m not trying to pry past what you want to share. But knowing will give me control over how the information is presented to the staff. And if its something I can’t work with, its best that we both know now.”

Setting her mug on the coffee table, she stood up. This was it. The lie she was going to have to sell perfectly. Failing this, she’d lose her chance at revenge on the Sweeny’s. She’d be a burned cop. As much as she still cared for Lance, and trusted him, she had no idea what he might do if he found out what she was really doing.

“So, it’s a complicated story. I can’t tell you everything because of the privacy laws and everything. But ultimately, it was willful disobedience and police brutality.” His eyes bored into her back as she faced the city skyline.

“Police brutality? I mean…The willful disobedience, I can understand. I do know you after all. And no one can change that much…But brutality?” When she turned to face him, there was no disgust in his eyes. Only disbelief.

Hearing the shock in his silence, she continued, “Didn’t your men get all of this when they checked my story?”

“Honestly, I didn’t read their full report. I just checked to confirm that you were, in fact, fired.” He looked at his hands, as they twisted around his dugout box. He was fidgeting. That meant he was uncomfortable with the information. Good. That meant he had to be buying it.

She sat back down next to him. “The file is supposed to be sealed. I’d be impressed if they were able to get all the details. What exactly do you need to know?”

“Well, I mean...what the fuck happened, Jasmine?!”

A smile slipped through her perfect facade. Always to the point, was Lance. “We had a perp in custody. There was a countdown on a little girl’s life. You know..one of those classic TV show situations. He wouldn’t tell us anything unless we promised him immunity, which my Captain doesn’t do. She always thinks there’s a way around it. So I did what I had to to get the information out of him. He was stubborn at first, but in the end he told me where she was. I got there just in time. They had to use the paddles on her, but she made it.” She sighed and put her face in her hands. “Since there’s a kid involved and it made the department look bad, they sealed the case file. But they also fired me.”

“What about the perp? Is he pressing charges?” Lance ran through the list of criminals in the city in his head. He’d shake down anyone he needed to. Jasmine had done the right thing, and he didn’t want her to get penalized for it.

“For now, no. He might change his mind. I’m not too worried, though. It was all ultimately off the record, and he said some incriminating things while I was...interrogating him. If he presses charges for this, the department could press charges for a whole host of other things that he admitted to.” Thankfully, not all of this could be officially corroborated. Lance could do all the digging he wanted, but an officially off the record alibi was easier to sell.

Lance drew closer to her. “We’ll make this work, Jax. I don’t see anything wrong with what you did. Hell, in our line of work, it will be respected.” He touched her arm. The air between them thickened again, but she had to keep it the line of information open. Let him think he got her guard down just this once, and then she’d never have to talk about it again.