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The gavel banged again, the sound reverberating down her spine. “Miss Sweet, if you will take your seat.”
Glancing around, Miranda realized she was the only one still standing. Too confused to be embarr
assed, she plopped down into her chair and scrambled to remember her plan.
The doors dividing the holding cells from the rest of the sheriff’s department whooshed open. Logan’s head snapped up from the cot where he’d been trying his best to stare a hole into the jail cell’s ceiling and escape.
“Looks like somebody up there likes you. Judge Carter came back to set your bail.” The deputy buzzed the cell door open. “Hud posted it. You’re a free man. Come on.”
Logan’s heartbeat pounded in his ears as he popped up from the cot and hustled to the open door. With any luck, he’d make it before the emergency meeting ended. He had little doubt Tyrell had rigged things to go down just like he wanted. After the exposé in the newspaper today, he may not have much sway in Salvation, but he was going to put all of it behind Miranda. Please let it work.
He crossed the threshold, hoping like hell he’d never see the inside of a cell again, and followed the deputy down the hall. Empty cell after empty cell on the left side, cinderblock wall and officer of the month plaques on the right. The deputy slowed as they approached the last cell.
“Wake up. Time to go before the magistrate judge and get your bail set.” The deputy punched in a code on a number pad, and the cell door slid to the left.
Carl, his nose stuffed with cotton, made it out into the hall, spotted Logan, and took a hasty step back into the cell. His left eye widened. The other eye, still purple and swollen, stayed mostly shut. “What the fuck? I ain’t going nowhere with this asshole.”
Logan straightened to his full height and grinned scornfully at the other man. “What’s wrong, afraid you’ll get your ass handed to you again?”
“You attacked me without provocation.” Spittle flew from his lips, and his face darkened to an angry plum color that emphasized the purplish-yellow bruises circling his eye. “I told the cops how we were just talking and you sucker punched me like the spoiled little rich kid you are.”
“Are you as stupid as you look?” He stepped forward until he loomed over the shorter man, who took another step back. “You could have killed her. You’re damn lucky a broken nose is the worst of what you got.”
Carl gave the deputy a shifty-eyed glance. “I have no idea who or what you’re talking about.”
“Trying not to implicate yourself, eh, shit for brains?” Logan rolled back on his heels and shoved his hands into his pockets. “The troopers already have your confession. The one I recorded last night before knocking you on your ass.”
Carl’s face turned molten, and a splash of red bloomed at the base of his throat. “Why you—” The cell door rumbled closed, drowning out the rest of the other man’s words.
The deputy dropped his hand from the number pad controlling the doors. “Since you two can’t play nice, I’ll come back for you once the judge is finished with him.” He nodded his head toward Logan. “Maybe I’ll get lucky and you two will get assigned cells right next to each other. Watching that would be better than Pay-Per-View.”
The first part of the county council meeting flew by in a blur as Miranda’s knee bobbed up and down, her heel clicking against the floor. The council went through the roll call, the preliminaries, and a droning appeal from the First Baptist Church’s ladies auxiliary before Sheldon cleared his throat and leaned in close enough to the microphone that it caused a peel of feedback. People squawked in surprise and straightened in their seats.
“Sorry about that.” A deep red hue dominated the chairman’s cheeks. “Back to the matter at hand. The council has before it a motion to make it illegal to manufacture alcohol in Hamilton County. Salvation Mayor Tyrell Hawson has requested a few minutes to address this matter.”
The crowd murmured behind her, but Miranda refused to look back over her shoulder again at the man who caused this whole mess. He ambled up to the podium at the front of the room, smiling and nodding to folks as he passed them. Tyrell didn’t have any notes. She couldn’t detect a tremble in his hands or a nervous twitch around his eyes. This was a man who thought he had the whole thing tied up with a bow.
Too bad he was as wrong as mayonnaise on a MoonPie. If there was one thing a Sweet knew how to do, it was fight the good fight—even if it got a little dirty.
“Thank you so much for letting me have a moment of your time to discuss this important issue before the council. I come to you not as Salvation’s mayor, a position I’ve held for the past fifteen years, but as a father and concerned citizen.” He turned and looked meaningfully at his adult son and daughter as well as the gaggle of toe-headed children piled between them. “Not to mention, a proud grandfather.”
“And a little man with a big grudge,” Ruby Sue muttered under her breath.
Miranda shushed the older woman. She couldn’t afford to miss anything Tyrell said, not if she wanted to counteract it when her turn came.
“I am concerned about the serious, life-threatening dangers posed by alcohol manufacturing facilities. All having a brewery in Hamilton County does is endanger people. Breweries are treacherous places where explosions and fires are a distinct possibility. It’s only a matter of time. I’m sure every one of us here remembers when a worker at Gulch City Breweries sustained severe burns in a workplace accident. There have been other brewery accidents where people died.”
Annoyance heated her skin as effectively as a tanning bed. Uncle Julian was a lot of things, but he cared about the employees at the brewery. He’d made sure proper safety processes were followed, a plan she and her sisters adhered to now and would continue to do so. Her mouth was open, and the words of protest were on the tip of her tongue, but she snapped her jaw closed. Tyrell was playing to his audience already. She wasn’t about to give him a bigger stage by making a scene.
“My friends, let’s take a look at this specific brewery.” Tyrell shed the aw-shucks politician body language like a snake slipping off its skin. His jaw tightened, and his posture straightened. He slapped his palms flat on the podium and leaned his considerable weight forward. “We all know the Sweets. We know what kind of people they are. We know the trouble that nips at their heels like Satan’s puppy.”
The crowd buzzed around them in barely whispered comments to their neighbors. Miranda kept her head high and closed her hands into fists in her lap. She wouldn’t let them see how much she wanted to shrink down in her seat, just as she had all those times growing up, when people had shunned her and her sisters for being Sweets.
Sheldon banged his county council gavel, silencing the crowd.
The chamber doors creaked open, and Logan walked in with Hud and another man. Their appearance got the crowd murmuring again, but the men showed no sign of acknowledgement as they made their way along the far wall of the standing-room only chambers and squeezed in beside Mr. and Mrs. Franklin. Logan winked at her, and she wrestled with the competing urges to either melt in her seat or stomp over to chew his ass for putting himself in such a spot for her.
So this was what it’s like to fall for the now-tarnished prince of Salvation?
