Chapter 23

I would be the first person to die in a horror movie. I refuse to spend my last few minutes running.

-Kennedy’s secret thoughts

Kennedy

An hour and four minutes later, I was walking into the club with Hannah at my side.

Atticus let us in, just as Travis had said he would, and we were now walking in the direction of the raised voices.

I looked over at Hannah, my eyes wide, and stopped just outside of the door.

Listening.

See, here is the thing about alpha men.

They thought that women were incapable of hearing and dealing with the hard stuff.

Sure, there were times that we couldn’t…but this wasn’t one of them.

They thought to protect us by keeping things from us—big things. Things that I would never keep away from them had the situation been reversed.

So to make sure that I didn’t miss anything, I stopped and listened to the men talking, just to make sure I got all the information.

“Called in a few markers.”

I didn’t recognize the voice.

“Know a cop out of Louisiana, and his club president is some fucking mastermind when it comes to getting information,” the voice said. “He’s going to call his president and get back to me.”

“I called in a few favors, too,” another voice, this one somewhat familiar, agreed. “He’s fucking amazing with computers. He’s going to do some digging in the PD’s files, see what he turns up.”

Rafe. The man that’d been with Evander—his friend that was in town to help him.

“I called my ex brother-in-law,” Travis said. “He’s actually not too far away, so he’s going to drop by. He’s a Texas Ranger…he has no problem doing some investigations into the bullshit swirling around this goddamn town.”

“Should’ve called him a long time ago, to be honest.”

One of Travis’ brothers, but I couldn’t tell which one.

“What are we going to do about his woman?” the man I didn’t know asked. “She’s not going to sit tight and let him sit in jail.”

I chose that moment to edge around the corner and cross my arms over my chest.

“You’re right,” I said evenly. “I won’t.”

My eyes roamed around the room, and I took in each man, making sure to make eye contact, and then turned to Travis. “What was their reason for arresting him?”

I knew that he hadn’t been caught going out of town. Something like that wouldn’t have warranted the reaction that it did.

“Woman vet across the road is dead, and Evander’s prints were found on a gate at the scene.”

I blinked.

“You’re full of fucking shit,” I said. “Evander wasn’t at the scene. I was with him for the last five hours.”

“Where?” Walter snapped.

I’d seen him, of course, but I hadn’t acknowledged him. Piece of shit wasn’t getting anything from me. I’d rather talk to the devil himself than him.

I couldn’t tell him where, exactly, because then that’d be putting Evander in violation of his parole. But he hadn’t been doing anything wrong. I knew that, so I did what I had to do.

“Where, honey?” Travis asked softly. “This would be best if you gave us all the information you had.”

My eyes turned to the dark, dangerous looking man in the corner. The one who had come here to help Evander with his revenge.

He knew where I’d been, yet he wasn’t saying anything either.

“He was with me, on his bike…doing stuff,” I said, a blush suffusing my face. “I was upset, and he and I were talking.”

Travis grunted something and Walter growled.

“Where were you?” he asked. “It’s not going to be enough if you don’t have some sort of proof that he was with you.”

I turned to Travis.

“What’s the time frame?” I asked, digging through my purse. “We stopped two towns over and got some food. I have the receipt right here.”

Thank God we’d stopped closer to home.

“About two hours ago.”

“There’s still a possibility that he could’ve made it home,” Walter snapped. “That’s not good enough.”

I gritted my teeth. “Well, when I got home, my chickens had all been slaughtered, which you already know. We took about twenty minutes cleaning that up and ensuring that none of them were suffering before we went to the clinic, where we sat for another half an hour waiting to be seen. That’s about four hours right there that he has an alibi for, and the night before that, I was with him sleeping in our bed.”

Walter growled. “I’m not trying to be an asshole here, Kennedy. I’m trying to tell you that it’s not going to be good enough. Not with his prints found at the scene.”

“Circumstantial,” I said.

I’d watched enough CSI to know that finding prints at the scene was nothing like finding a murder weapon in Evander’s car.

“How was the woman done?”

That came from the man I’d never seen before.

“Who are you and why are you here?” Walter mumbled, looking away.

“I’m Brock,” Brock announced. “And I work here. Why are you here?”

Walter looked at me. “She said I didn’t care about him. I’m here to prove that I do. I’m supposed to be at work right now. Instead I’m here, trying to fucking help.”

I narrowed my eyes at him.

“Your chance to help was a long time ago.”

“Kennedy,” Travis sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Not helping.”

I shut my mouth.

He was right. It wasn’t.

But I couldn’t help myself.

I took a seat, though, and crossed my arms over my chest.

“You wanna know what I think?”

That was Rafe.

“What?” Travis groaned.

“I think that the chief is corrupt. I also think that shit’s going down in this place that y’all have no fucking clue about.”

Rafe’s words, although impassive, were unnervingly correct.

“That officer hurt me, and he didn’t need to,” I agreed, lifting the sleeve of my t-shirt up and showing the room at large. “Evander’s going to lose his mind when he sees this.”

Breaths were drawn as they saw the bruises.

They looked pretty gnarly, that was for sure. Dark black and purple splotches in the shape of a handprint about the size of one particular police officer’s hand.

“What I think is that Balthazar has people in this town in his pocket.”

My brow lifted in surprise.

I hadn’t actually witnessed anything first hand, but I’d heard about him through Evander. I knew that he was targeted by this man. I knew that, more than likely, this Balthazar character had dirt on everyone and was either blackmailing those people into helping him or those individuals were just as dirty as him.

If that were the case, then I was a little confused and a whole lot more suspicious as to why Walter was even here.

It was more than obvious that there was no love lost between these two brothers, but maybe there was still some loyalty towards each other left. Walter had to feel something for his brother, even if it was just mutual respect.

Rafe’s words about the town being in Balthazar’s pocket weren’t all that surprising considering the way things happened here.

And suddenly I was mad all over again.

Crossing my arms over my chest, I squared my shoulders and sent a rather impressive—at least I thought so—glare toward Walter.

“Can’t you do anything?”

My words were simple, but the meaning behind them couldn’t be denied…not by anyone in the room.

I’d pretty much implied that Walter was no good here if he wasn’t going to do anything about his brother being in jail.

Walter opened his mouth to reply when someone’s phone rang.

I looked in the direction it’d come from, and stared as the new guy, Brock, lifted the phone to his ear and said, “Yeah?”

I studied his features.

He was quite eye catching.

He had dark brown hair that had hints of red in it when he turned just right and the light caught it. His eyes were a muddy brown that, at first glance, weren’t all that impressive.

What was impressive, however, was watching that color change before my eyes.

So not brown eyes, but actually hazel.

He was strongly built with large, muscular arms. His shoulders were wide, and from what I could see of his waist that was above the table, it was trim and taut.

He was wearing a black, long-sleeved shirt and dirty blue jeans.

His hands had black staining on them, likely meaning that he’d come straight from work and hadn’t even had a chance to wash his hands yet.

For some reason, knowing that he hadn’t even taken the time to wash up caused my eyes to fill.

I dashed my hand under my eyes, and I looked away, only to spot Hannah looking at me. Looking was too vague, actually. She was watching me so intently, it was like she was trying to bore a hole into my face with her eyes.

“What?” I whispered.

“I think you should file a complaint, too.” She nodded toward her arm. “I’ll do the same. He intimidated me. My brother’s actually been texting me. He’s not happy.”

“Fuck.”

I looked over to see Travis run his hand through his hair.

“What?”

“Michael and Travis don’t get along,” Hannah explained. “In fact, that’s too tame of a description for the animosity that they have for each other.”

I sensed a story, and if this were any other situation, I’d demand to know more.

But this wasn’t a normal situation. This was a fucking tragedy and I was literally at my breaking point.

Any more information at this point might very well kill me.

I nodded but looked away.

I didn’t know what to do.

Didn’t know what to say.

The only thing I knew was that I wanted to go down to that police station and file a report…which is exactly what I was going to fucking do.

Right the fuck now.

I turned around and left, my feet taking me to Evander’s truck before I even knew where I was going.

Time for operation: Get Evander Out of Jail So He Didn’t Kill Anybody.

***

I stomped up the front walk of the police station and went straight to the first person I saw, which was a woman behind a glass partition.

She looked startled to find me in front of her as fast as I was walking and smiled a little nervously at me.

“How may I help you?” she questioned, crossing her hands over the desk calendar in front of her.

“I’m here to file a complaint against a police officer,” I told her. “Who would I do that with?”

She looked around nervously.

Maybe she was new?

“I…” she hesitated. “Hold on one moment.”

She got up and scurried away.

“You’ve scared the poor girl.”

I looked up at mystery man, also known as Rafe, and shrugged.

“I don’t care.”

“Huh,” he grunted. “What are you going to do?”

I clenched my hands in front of me, and stared at the glass like it’d done me a grievous wrong.

“I’m going to file a complaint against Officer Rogers, and then I’m going to demand they let me see Evander to make sure that he’s all right,” I told him honestly.

Rafe snorted.

“They won’t let you see him to make sure that he’s all right,” Rafe replied. “But they’ll take your complaint.”

He pulled out his phone and dialed a number, said a few words, and then hung up.

I lifted my brows at him, and he shrugged.

Obviously, he wasn’t going to tell me. Whatever.

I waited for a few more minutes for someone to come back to the window before I finally had enough.

Pulling out my own phone this time, I dialed 911.

Rafe didn’t say a word, though I knew he’d seen the numbers.

“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”

I gritted my teeth.

“A police officer hurt me. I’m standing in the police station but nobody is coming to help me.”

“Ma’am…”

I knew what she was going to say. This wasn’t an emergency.

Well, I really didn’t give a fuck. Not at this point.

“I’ll need you to find someone to get out here and take my statement, or I’ll be calling the local news station as well as the newspaper next. If that doesn’t work, I’ll start calling national news stations,” I snapped.

Then I hung up.

I only waited two minutes before the doors on the side of the room opened up, and a haggard looking police officer came out, his eyes weary.

I smiled at him and that seemed to make him even more wary.

“Ma’am.” He offered me his hand. “How may I help you?”

I grinned. “You can take my statement.”