My body shakes uncontrollably, and I wrap my arms around my knees, huddling in the corner of the cold, dark isolating cell. The yells, screams, and clanking of metal doors slamming echoes around the cell and pierces my skull as fleeting visions of a few hours ago spin around my head like a tornado.

I was stupid. My stubborn streak superseded any logical thought, and it placed me in the worst possible place at the worst possible time.

And now I’m here.

In a lonely prison cell, left with nothing but my own torturous thoughts.

What happened to Ram, Ruck, and Dev?

Ruck told me to run before he was taken. The fear that shredded his voice to a desperate cry told me we were in real danger. Then he was gone. Vanished into the night with a squeal of tires and nothing to say he was ever there at all. But he wasn’t arrested, like me. Deep down I know who has him, and no matter how many times I play it out in my head, it doesn’t change the grim outcome.

The White Wolves came for retribution.

If he weren’t charged with protecting me, he would still be safe.

It’s all my fault.

Tears build in my eyes, and I blink, causing them to cascade down my face. I thought I was restoring balance. I thought karma would see the good I was doing. But I knew it was too good to be true. Karma shows no mercy, and I’m feeling its wrath.

The cell door swings open, and I wipe my eyes as a girl is thrown in my direction.

“No…” she cries out. “Please don’t …”

“Shut up,” the officer barks, pulling his baton from the holster on his belt and raising it above her as she lays cowering at my feet.

“Hey!” I yell, leaping between them before I can think about the consequences. 

“You think you’re tough?” He laughs. “Wanna take me on?” The officer swings his baton through the space between us, making me jump back. My ankle twists as I land on the girl I was just shielding, and I hit the ground hard, both of us winding up on the cold cell floor.

What happens next comes so fast.

His steel toe-capped boot hits my ribs with such sheer force that I swear I hear a crack. The instant shock and piercing sharp pain forces the air from my lungs and elicits a sound akin to an animal being slaughtered, and no sooner do I manage to take a small, shallow, excruciating breath, another blow lands in exactly the same place.  My head swims with the shock of it all, and I curl into a ball as best I can, wrapping my hands around my head and bringing my knees up to my chest.

“Leave her alone. Leave HER!” the girl shouts wildly, springing to my defense.

The rest is a blur. There is noise. Screams. A loud thwack. The cell door slamming.

Then silence.

My ragged breaths are the only thing I hear in the still, putrid air of the cell. I uncurl myself, wincing at the pain shooting through my ribs.

I look around for the girl—concerned for her, and seeking her presence. As a solitary person, being content with my own company has its benefits in most instances. But here, in a police cell, in the most fucked up situation, having someone to stick with seems like a good idea. Safety in numbers.

I crawl over to where she lays on her side. “Hey.” I reach over and shake her shoulder. “Are you okay?” She doesn’t respond, so I shake her harder. She groans, curling tighter into herself. “It’s okay, he’s gone,” I tell her. She pulls her head out and twists to look at me. “Are you okay?” I ask once again.

“Do I look okay?” She frowns, wrenching her shoulder from my grasp.

“No, you don’t,” I grumble, not liking her attitude. “That’s why I came over to you.”

“Well, you can fuck off back where you came from.” She pushes herself up and shuffles back until she’s resting against the wall, her wide eyes darting around the room. She tucks her knees into her chest and silence stretches across the room as a leaky pipe starts to drip outside the small, square window on the other side.

I shuffle along the ground, and sit against the wall, too. “What did you get thrown in here for?” I ask, keeping an eye on the cell door.

“What’s it to you?” She side-eyes me, then goes back to resting her chin on her knees and staring at the ground.

I shrug. “Just curious.”

She doesn’t immediately reply, but her voice softens when she speaks a few moments later. “Why are you here?” she asks, feigning disinterest in her voice.

“How long do you have?” I laugh at the irony. “I was arrested at an underground fight.”

“You?” She pulls her head up and scrunches her brows in disbelief. “You were arrested at an illegal, underground fight?”

“Yes,” I reply, sitting straighter and feeling defensive at her tone. “What do you mean by that?”

“It’s just that you…” She shrugs. “You look too much like a good girl to be doing shit like that.”

“You know nothing about me,” I snap. “Nothing.”

“Fair enough. Not judging.”

Neither of us speaks for a few moments. I sit and stew on her comment. I look like a good girl? What does a good girl even look like?

“I’m Carrie.” She stretches her hand between us. I hesitate, but when I see her eyes, I realize it’s a token of apology.

“Sadie,” I reply. Shaking her hand. “You’re cold,” I comment, feeling her palm against mine.

“I’m always cold.” She laughs. This makes me look at her. I mean, really look at her. She’s painfully thin. Her bones poke out from under her skin, and it’s noticeable even through her clothing. Her cheeks are drawn in and hollow, and her eyes sunken amongst dark rings. “Drink. Drugs. It does nothing for your figure, darlin’.” She waves away her words as though they mean nothing. But I feel the pain behind them.

“Why?” I ask.

“Why the drugs?” she replies.

“Yes, I mean, look what they’ve done to you…”

“Girl, when you have a life like mine, it’s not worth living anyway.”

Her words break my heart. Possible scenarios run through my mind as to what her story is. I know what it’s like to live with demons. But I’m fighting mine and winning. She’s given up and lost.

The cell door flies open, and an officer I’ve not seen before steps in.

“Ms. Foster,” he announces, making me shudder. “Follow me.”

Carrie grabs my arm desperately. “Just do as they say. Follow their orders, and you’ll be fine.”

I close my hand over hers and smile. “Thanks.” I stand, glancing down at her. “But what about you?” Despite only being a matter of minutes in each other’s company, I feel a connection with this broken woman.

“I’ll be the same person tomorrow as I was yesterday. Don’t let it happen to you.” She gives me a sad smile and the police officer starts to get impatient and bangs his baton twice on the cell door.

“Sometime today, Foster.”

I smile back at Carrie. I feel empty and sad, my feet are heavier than ever and my body aching from the kicking I took and holding myself tightly for so many hours as the officer walks me to an interview room.

I’m seated at a table in the middle of a white-washed room. There’s a tape recorder and another chair opposite which sits empty while I wait. I glance around, looking for secret recording devices or two-way mirrors, then laugh to myself. This isn’t CSI.

But, after the panic at the fight, a night in the cell, and the fear of the officer that has quite possibly broken my ribs, I hadn’t thought further back than yesterday. Being in this room—the way it feels so official, makes my heart beat harder and faster as I remember back to Donny Carden, and the pedophile in the woods. What if I wasn’t arrested because of last night? What if they know everything? My palms start to sweat, and I rub them on my dirty jeans.

“Ms. Foster,” a man announces as he strides into the room. He’s fairly short in stature, but he commands the room with his presence. “I’m Sergeant Miller. I’ll be interviewing you this morning.” He takes a seat opposite and arranges some papers on the table in front of us. When he looks up at me, he smiles kindly. I don’t know what to do with that gesture. My experience with Reno PD in the last few hours hasn’t exactly been stellar.

“I believe you’ve already been read your rights, but just in case you had forgotten… Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to consult an attorney before speaking in this interview, and to have an attorney present during questioning now or in the future. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you before any questioning if you wish. Do you understand this?”

“Yes,” I whisper, barely being able to meet his gaze.

“Would you like an attorney?” I pick at the skin on my thumb with my hands in my lap as he speaks. His voice is calm, controlled, and totally neutral like he’s done this a million times before. He probably has done this a million times before, but I haven’t, and I’m fucking terrified.

“Um …”

He raises his brows while waiting for my answer.

“No.” I look from him to the officer standing guard at the door. Do they think I’m stupid enough to try and run?

“Do you know why you’re here?” he asks, giving me that smile again. I want to wipe it off his face. To tell him to stop with the niceties and be fucking real. I’m in deep, and I wish he would stop trying to sugarcoat his treatment of me.

“Yes,” I snap, sitting back in the chair with a huff.

“Well …” he indicates for me to elaborate.

“Well…What?” I reply in annoyance. With him, the situation, and everything taking over from my fear. His pleasant demeanor slips for just a split second as something flashes in his eyes.

“Care to share?” he presses.

“Care to share?” I choke out a strained laugh. “What is this, a counseling session?”

“Ms. Foster, I urge you to consider your answers carefully. You are currently under arrest, and, through your own choice, have no attorney …”

“So why don’t you tell me exactly what you’re charging me for, and we can all go back to what we’re supposed to be doing?” I realize that to survive this, as I have survived everything that has come before, I have to brave through it. I have to at least show that I’m not weak and that I have nothing to hide, even if the two things couldn’t be further from the truth.

He continues with a frown. “You were arrested at the scene of an illegal fight. Were you aware that you were breaking the law by being there?”

I sit straighter and answer in the most innocent voice I can manage. “No, sir.”

“Who were you at the fight with?” he probes, narrowing his eyes as he asks the question. And the penny drops. He doesn’t know anything about me, or about what I’ve done in the past. He wants info. Info I refuse to give him.

“I was on my own,” I answer. Mainly because it’s the truth. I wasn’t there with Ram or Ruck. It just so happened that they were there, too.

“You…” He asks pointedly in disbelief. “You went to an illegal, underground fight…on your own.”

“Yes, sir.” I nod, trying to stifle a grin.

“Why did you go alone?”

“No comment,” I state.

“Didn’t you think it would be dangerous for a lone female to be in a warehouse full of sweaty, chemically impaired, drunk, testosterone-fuelled men?”

I shrug but don’t answer. He wants me to admit that I was there with someone. I won’t.

He slides a photograph across the table to me. “Do you know this man?” I take a breath before answering. and the officer’s gaze doesn’t leave my eyes. The photograph is of JJ. The man that everyone fears. The President of the Steel Souls MC. The man who stroked my hair and spoke softly to me to calm my racing mind when I had a panic attack.

“I’ve seen his face before. I don’t know him, though,” I say calmly, knowing it’s not the reaction the officer wants from me. It’s not really a lie. I have seen him around, but I really don’t know him very well at all.

He places another photograph on top of JJ’s. “What about this one?”

It’s Ramsey.

I push a breath past the lump in my throat. Do I know him? Do I really know him? What’s more pressing in the back of my mind, after what I did--is he still going to want to know me?

“No,” I answer, completely unconvincingly.

“Did you see these men at the fight?” he asks.

“No,” I answer immediately. Suddenly it feels like all the oxygen is being sucked out of the air. The walls start to close in, and the noise in my head starts to play on repeat. White noise. A deafening, panic-inducing, silent roar.

“Do you—” He’s interrupted by another officer entering the room.

“Sorry, sir,” the officer apologizes, scuttling to his side and whispering in his ear before leaving again.

Sergeant Miller scoops up the photographs and papers from the table and stands to leave. “We will continue this in a few moments. Excuse me.”

I breathe a huge sigh of relief. With the pressure off, if only momentarily, I close my eyes and listen to Ramsey’s familiar, soothing voice in my head telling me to ‘Breathe in …and out.” The way he did at the bar. It worked then, and I hope to God it starts working now.

Only a few minutes pass, and the door is opened by Sergeant Miller. “Ms. Foster.”

“Yes?” I reply.

“You’re free to leave,” he announces with a huff.

“What?” I blurt out. It’s the last thing I expected him to come in here and say, and he’s clearly not happy about it.

“There’s a Mr. Vaughn Campbell at the front desk waiting to collect you.”

“Vaughn is here?”

“If I were you, I’d take the opportunity and run.” He raises a brow at me, holding the door open. I don’t miss the double meaning in his words. He knows as well as I do that I have a connection with the Steel Souls. He just didn’t have enough time to get me to admit it.