“If all you are going to do is continue to ask questions that try to place my client in Mr. Lewis’ hotel room, then I think we are done here. My client is not going to be confessing to any crime, so you can either charge him with one, or we will be leaving.”
Laura was done and laying down the law.
Brooks and Clyne had opened up their questions with whether I had an alibi. Laura was speaking on my behalf, and had answered that question in much the same way I had to her. The weakness of that statement hadn’t escaped the detectives, who pursued it for a while, but got nothing else from her.
From there, they’d jumped to the claim that I’d threatened the fucker with the exact sort of violence he’d fallen victim to. Laura acknowledged the exchange had happened, but made the case that I was simply “utilizing hyperbole in order to get Mr. Lewis to vacate a premises where he was not welcome.” She’d gone on with, “If you would like to verify that Mr. Lewis was in fact there to harass Ms. Jones, I suggest you speak to her. I assure you she will be in full agreement with my client.”
After that, it was exactly as Laura had said. They were trying to get me to blurt something out in response to their increasingly aggressive questions that would work to prove I’d been in that room. I wasn’t fucking dumb enough to fall for their tricks, and Laura wouldn’t have let me speak anyway. Instead, she failed every question before I could have thought to, shutting down any implication I’d been the one to attack the dick.
This culminated with her making the bold statement that they put up or shut up.
The two of them stared her down for a long moment before Clyne responded. “Give us a few.”
While they ran off to get their orders, Laura got to her feet.
“I’m going to make a few phone calls. I don’t imagine they’ll be back right away. If there was a decision made on whether to charge you yet, we’d know,” she informed me.
Then, she left. And I was stuck there alone with my bitter thoughts for what felt like hours.
Someone would have to take over running Candy Shop. Maybe I’d tell the brothers they should trust Avery to do most of it. She and Roy had managed while I’d been out of town with Kate. I knew running a strip joint wasn’t what Avery wanted out of life, but it looked like I was going to be in no fucking position to offer her the rest.
At least then she wouldn’t be on that stage anymore. I fucking loved what she could do up there, but I’d lose my goddamn mind sitting in a cell knowing she was doing that for crowds of assholes.
I should have been a decent human being and let her go, but I wasn’t that. If she wanted out, she’d have to say it. I’d hold on to whatever scrap I could get however long they locked me up and after. I'd take anything she'd give me.
Because I fucking loved her.
Fucking wonderful timing to be admitting that shit when they’d probably be in to charge my ass any time now.
Hell, as I was sitting there, they were probably dragging her into this mess to back up the fucker’s statement that I threatened him.
What a fucking mess.
“You’re free to go.”
I stared in fucking shock at Brooks.
“Your attorney is heading in here to speak to you before you go,” he added before he walked away like he hadn’t just rocked my world.
What the fuck did he mean I was free to go?
How did Laura pull that shit off?
Fuck, it didn’t even matter. If I was off the hook, if I could go home to my girl and my family, I didn’t give that first fuck what she did to make it happen.
I was on my feet when she came in, ready to get the hell out of here. I was surprised when she shut the door behind her, closing us in. I was also surprised that she looked somber. She’d just pulled off something I thought was impossible. Shouldn’t she have been fucking thrilled?
“They won’t be charging you,” she started.
“You’re a fuckin’ genius. Don’t know what you did, just know I can’t thank you enough,” I started gushing like a damn schoolgirl. I didn’t care. I was fucking free.
“Daz, I didn’t do anything,” she said, haltingly, and it really penetrated through the excitement.
“What’s going on?”
“I need you to promise you will keep it together,” she started, and my excitement disintegrated into worry.
“What’s going on?” I repeated.
“If you go off half-cocked here, now, you’ll make things worse for both of you.”
Both of us?
“Tell me what’s going on.”
She sighed. I didn’t think I’d ever heard her betray actual emotion in that way.
“Stone showed about half an hour ago.” Not surprising, but the way she said it made me think that, for once, having the pres close was a bad thing.
Then, she dropped the fucking bomb.
“He confessed to attacking Aaron Lewis.”
“WHAT?” I roared.
What the fuck had he been thinking?
“You have to keep it down. There’s attorney-client privilege at play here, but if you go shouting everything, that doesn’t protect either of you,” Laura snapped.
My whole body was vibrating with the strain of keeping myself contained.
“He can’t do this. I’ll go out there and tell them everything,” I swore.
“If you do, you’ll both see a cell,” she warned.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“Why?”
She sighed again. We were wearing on her, but I didn’t give a fuck about that right then. “Because he confessed, signed a statement, and swore it was the truth. If you go out there and swear you did it, at best he’s looking a perjury charges. At worst, he'll go down as your accomplice.”
We’re your brothers. You don’t have to tackle it all alone.
Fuck.
“He knew,” I said the thought as it came to me. “He knew I’d be stuck if he confessed.”
Laura gave me another first. Her eyes filled with sympathy.
“It was possible they wouldn’t accept his confession if it weren’t consistent with the crime scene, but it was extremely detailed. He explained Aaron appeared to be a threat to an employee of a business he is a part owner of and whom he considered a friend. He established a proper timeline, a description of the room, and even was able to talk through the events of the attack in a way that was consistent with the victim statement and medical exam.”
There was a note of censure there. She knew Stone was innocent, but she did not want to know how he’d managed to create a statement that was perfectly in line with the evidence they had in the case.
Either Stone had called in one hell of a marker with Officer Andrews, or Jager had weaseled his way into their computer systems.
Regardless, someone helped him sell this lie.
Someone helped him protect me when they should have let my dumb ass pay for my mistake.
You start to succumb to the heat, remember the bodies sleeping in this house and think about how it would feel to get locked away from that.
Except it wasn’t just protecting me from my own mistake. It was protecting the people I’d let down. He was protecting Kate and Owen from having to take another hit while they were down. He was protecting Avery from losing anything else because of that fucking cunt.
“I’ll do everything I can for him. I'm hopeful we'll be able to get him a short sentence.”
A short sentence. As if lessening the time made this easier to take.
“I know this is hard to take, but I need to get back to him,” Laura continued. “Doc is out there ready to take you home.”
I didn’t argue with her. She was right, Stone needed her. There was nothing her staying could do for me.
I was a free man.
“Thank you,” I told her. For the work she did for me before this all got messy. For the work I knew she was already gearing up to do to protect Stone.
“For what it’s worth,” she said as she got to the door, “if I’d have known what he’d planned on doing, I would have tried to stop him.”
Yeah, I would have too.
I gave myself a minute to get it together. Walking out of the precinct was going to take everything I had in me. Even though I knew it would solve nothing, I still wanted to go out there and fucking demand they send me down instead. I wanted to scream that I was the one who attacked that fucker. Me. Not Stone.
But doing so wouldn’t free him. It would only be pissing all over his sacrifice.
When I came down the hall toward the entrance, I saw Doc right away. My eyes barely lingered on him though, because Avery was right at his side looking anxious as Doc rubbed a hand up and down her back.
She noticed me a moment after I saw her. She gasped and her face crumpled into tears as she took off toward me. Her long, red hair trailed behind her, and I knew I’d never forget that fucking sight for as long as I lived.
Her body crashed into mine, her face going into my neck as her arms locked around me. She trembled with the force of her cries. This was what she’d held in earlier when they’d come to bring me in. This was hours of holding it together, agonizing over what was to come.
Fuck, my woman was strong, but she was falling apart.
“I’ve got you, sugar,” I shushed her. “I’m right here, and I’ve got you.”
“He…he…” she stuttered, unable to catch her breath to speak.
“I know.” Just those two words were agonized, and I knew she could hear it by the way her sobs quickened. She knew what Stone had done for me—for us. “That’s not for here,” I warned gently, hoping she caught it through her hysteria. “Let’s go, okay?”
She nodded into my neck, but didn’t move.
“Sweets,” I coaxed, but she gripped me tighter.
“I can’t let go.”
I didn’t want her to even as I asked, “Why not?”
“I already did once. I can’t again.”
Fuck. My sweet woman.
Not wanting to be in this goddamn place a minute longer, I grasped her thighs just under her ass and pulled up. She got the drift, wrapping her legs around my hips and letting me carry her out of there.
I approached Doc, his face agonized. I knew he was happy to see me walk away, but there was no joy in the fact that it meant Stone couldn’t.
“Come here, boy,” he ordered.
Still not putting Avery down, I got close. Doc reached out and wrapped a hand around the back of my neck and I understood. It was that same gesture—the one that marked every big moment, even the tragedies. He couldn’t move his forehead to mine with Avery plastered to my chest, but it didn’t matter. I felt it all the same.
“Need to get my girl home,” I said to him, and felt Avery’s body buck with another sob at calling her that.
Doc’s eyes, those ones that never missed a thing, looked at the way she was clinging to me, the way I held onto her, and nodded without commenting.
“Let’s get you two home,” he agreed.