Chapter 14

Real women ride men who ride Harley’s.

- Fact of Life

Sawyer

“I asked you a fucking question, you cradle robbing son of a bitch!” Dallas continued.

“Jesus, Dallas, chill the fuck out!” I yelled a little too loudly.

Dallas and Bristol were at the back steps of their house, watching the five of us, taking us in and sizing us up.

Well, Bristol was.

Dallas was upset over something that was quite ridiculous.

“That’s your brother?” Ruthie whispered from behind me.

I looked at her over my shoulder.

“Yeah, that’s one of them, anyway. The oldest of the four of them,” I told her.

I’d yet to see the other three. They were all in the Army and each one was currently deployed.

Cole, Brody and Johnson were all the most badass badasses that I knew, and I was so damn proud of them that I could barely see straight.

I just wished I could have seen them in the past eight years.

Hand written mail just didn’t cut it sometimes.

Dallas, though, was making up for their lack of being there.

In spades.

“I asked you a fuckin’ question, old fuckin’ man!” Dallas continued to scream.

My eyes rolled over to Silas to see his eyes smiling, but his mouth set in a thin line.

“I guess we’re not a secret anymore,” I whispered. “Maybe we shouldn’t tell him that we’ve used his car as a ‘fuck stand.’”

He snorted and aimed his eyes down at me.

“You’re not helping,” he growled.

I shrugged. “I was always good at really fucking shit up,”

“Obviously,” Ruthie said.

Bristol finally broke from her husband, an official looking document in her hand.

“Um, this just came for you. I had to sign for it. It’s from the state,” she said, handing it to me.

I frowned, brows furrowing, and took it from her.

“What is it?” I asked worriedly.

The last time something official had been delivered, it was at the hands of two police officers saying I was being arrested for the death of those four people.

Scared as hell to open it, I clutched it to my chest and looked at Silas worriedly.

“It’s okay. Open it,” he urged.

My brows rose. “What is it?”

He smiled. “Just open it.”

So I opened it, with my brother fuming at my front, and Silas and Ruthie at my back, giving me silent encouragement.

And what I saw the minute my eyes met the paper astounded me.

“What…how…why…” my brain wasn’t working.

I couldn’t get my thoughts together.

“The charges against you have been dropped, and restitution has been delivered to you from the state,” Ruthie said in awe as she read over my shoulder. “$25,000 is all they’re going to give you for them being wrong? What the fuck is that supposed to be?”

“I don’t understand what’s going on. Why would I be proved innocent? I killed four people!” I burst out, surprising everybody.

“I don’t understand,” Dallas said, reluctantly adding his two cents into the conversation.

“How about we all take this inside, and I can explain. It wasn’t supposed to happen until next week,” Silas said. “I was going to ease everybody into this before it blew up in y’all’s faces.”

Everyone followed, even the two big guys.

Torren and Kettle, a.k.a. Mohawk Guy.

Dallas entered first, being sure to toss ugly looks over his shoulder at Silas the entire way.

We both ignored him.

“When did you do this?” I asked him, holding back from the others.

He shrugged nonchalantly. “That was who I was on the phone with the day you showed up to help with the tornado aftermath. I’d been working on that for nearly a month, trying to figure out just what the hell happened.”

I looked at him. “I killed them, that’s what happened.”

He took me by the hand and led me through Dallas’s house, like he owned the place.

Must be a skill, though, because he did the same in my apartment.

“Sit down and let me explain this, okay?” He asked.

Reluctantly, I did so, sitting down in the chair that was facing the room as a whole.

I loved this house.

It was the same house that I’d grown up in when I was a young child.

My parents had turned over the payments for the house to Dallas about a year after I’d been incarcerated. They had moved what was left of the family to the lake house.

Something that’d burned since I’d expressed interest in taking over payments since they’d hinted at wanting to move out to the lake as soon as we were all out of the house. It was easier to make one house payment, so they had moved sooner.

And it’d burned when my mother had told me she’d given the house to Dallas and Bristol.

Burned deep and became a wound that would never heal.

The whole entire house was an open floor plan. The dining room, kitchen, living room and entry way were all part of a single, massive room.

There were four bedrooms, three of which we’d had to share between five kids.

“Alright, cradle robber. We’re all here,” Dallas growled deep in his throat.

Instinctively I grabbed for the nearest object, which happened to be a throw pillow, and launched it at him.

It smacked him in the face, and he turned his glare on me.

“We’re not allowed to throw stuff in the house,” Dallas said sarcastically, pulling the pillow into his chest.

I rolled my eyes. “Says who?”

“My wife,” he shot back.

My brows rose. “And since when does your wife have any control over me?”

His eyes narrowed. “You’re in her house, so you need to have more respect.”

I was sure that my eyebrows were even with my hair-line at that moment in time.

“I’ve lived in this house longer than she has. So if anybody has claim over the happenings, it’s me. I’m the eldest, after all,” I countered.

“Yeah, but mom gave it to us, not you. I’m the one making the payments on it, not you. That’s where you’re wrong,” he hissed. “This isn’t your house anymore. And hasn’t been since you killed those people.”

Dallas realized what he said when it left his mouth, but the damage had already been done.

I turned my tear filled eyes to my Silas and said, “If you could tell us, that’d be great.”

Silas’ eyes were not on me, though.

They were on Dallas.

He was acting like an ass, and Silas noticed.

Hell, everyone in the room noticed.

Ruthie was sitting on the side of my armchair now, and sometime during the spat between me and my brother, Kettle and Torren had migrated to stand directly behind me, giving me their silent support.

I wasn’t sure how I’d won over these two men, but I was thankful.

I could use all the help I could get right then.

“Silas,” I said again.

Reluctantly, he turned his head to me, then squared his shoulders.

“The boy that was driving the car with the Neeson’s in it, his father, Rydel Jones, was understandably upset, and he paid off everyone involved to make sure that you went to prison for the maximum amount of time that you could,” Silas said without hesitation. “It took a while, but I realized the boy’s father was involved heavily with the government. He knew the right people, and he made sure he could fix it to where you went to prison based on evidence that wasn’t actually viable. You, although technically had some hint of alcohol in your system, had nowhere near enough to be considered legally ‘drunk.’ Although it’s still technically ‘manslaughter,’ it’s not something you should’ve been imprisoned for. And once I followed up with a few of those involved, I started to see a trend. I followed the money trail, something that Jones didn’t do a very good job of hiding.”

“But how?” I asked, stunned. “What now?”

“Nothing now. A judge has already reviewed the case and ruled in your favor. That’s what this is,” he said, tapping the paper in my hand. “Although $25,000 isn’t nearly enough. I’ll be making a call to the club’s lawyer. We’ll get this taken care of quickly.”

“So what… I still killed them. It doesn’t seem right to me,” I said softly.

Silas’ hand touched my chin, and I looked up as he urged me to do.

“That was an accident. Something that could’ve happened to anybody in this room. I can name off fifteen people right now that drink a beer with dinner every time they go out to eat. Then they drive home. If it’s done in moderation, like you’d done that night, then it really would’ve been an accident if something happened similar to what happened to you. He pulled out in front of you. Not to mention it was raining, and they didn’t have their lights on,” he informed me. “Ask yourself this, could you have done anything differently?”

I thought back to that night.

It’d been very dark.

The storm was raging around us, and there wasn’t a single streetlight where we the accident happened.

The only thing I was able to go by were the truck’s headlights, and with the amount of rain coming down, there was only about a ten-foot section of road in front of me illuminated.

And the Bronco had come out of nowhere.

One second I’d been yelling at Bristol and the jackass to put on their seatbelts, and the next I was looking at the hood of a truck pulling out in front of me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It really wasn’t…”

I shook my head, unable to articulate what I wanted to say.

Silas dropped down to his knees in front of me, and it felt like every single person in the room disappeared.

“I swear to you,” he said. “That you didn’t mean to do what you did. You know it, and I know it. Hell, everyone in this room knows it. I spoke with the chief of police about this, went over what had happened, and he agrees.” He leaned forward. “The lead detective that was on your case is dead. The judge retired. Your lawyer’s dead. Now does that seem like a coincidence to you?”

I blinked. “My lawyer died of a heart attack.”

He shook his head. “Your lawyer died of a suspected heart attack. There was no autopsy performed on him, so they don’t know what exactly he died from, and there are medications out there that can stop the heart and make it look like a heart attack.”

“So then…what? Do I have someone out there that’s going to try to kill me now that I know? What about the rest of the people in this room?” I asked worriedly.

“As of right now, there should be a man serving a warrant,” Silas said. “Rydel Jones should be in police custody.”

My eyes were wide.

How had he accomplished all of this without me knowing?

He grinned.

“Ex CIA, darlin,’” he whispered so only I could hear. “Just trust me. He’s going down.”

Then I started to cry.

“Can I go get my nursing license? Can I finish that? I was almost halfway through!” I whispered fiercely.

To think of all those years wasted.

Where would I be right now had I been able to finish?

I only had another year.

He nodded. “You should be able to. I’m not really sure how any of that will work out, or even when it’ll all be finished by. But yeah, you are being pardoned, your record will be expunged, you’ll no longer have any criminal record at all.”

I looked at him and knew, had this awful thing not happened to me, I wouldn’t be sitting where I was right then.

I wouldn’t have this wonderful man in front of me.

He may seem harsh and hard to everyone else, since I’d heard no less than twenty people say that, but he was a big ol’ marshmallow with me.

He had an ooey gooey center that only I could see.

“I lo…thank you, Silas,” I said. “Thank you so much.”

His eyes flared at my near slip of tongue, and I thought I detected a note of panic in his eyes before they cleared.

“You’re welcome, Sawyer. I’d do anything for you,” he said roughly. “Anything you need, I’ll give to you if it’s within my power.”