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Fear for Mateo ate away at Olivia as she rubbed her cheek, bruised from stumbling into the brick wall, and followed him toward the police car. A small hand wrapped around her wrist, stopping her.
“Nothing you can do for him right now,” Ruby Sue said as she tugged her back toward The Kitchen Sink’s front door. “Best thing to do is to get your ducks in a row for bail.”
Still trying to process what had just happened, her brain hiccupped. “Bail?”
Ruby Sue shook her head. “Come on, girl, it hasn’t been that long since you had to get your parents out of the county jail.”
“More than ten years.” Her dad had protested the closure of the drama club, her most loved extracurricular activity, by sitting down buck naked on the fifty-yard line during the high school homecoming game.
Ruby Sue shrugged. “When you’re my age, ten years is an eye blink. Come on inside, we’ll get you some pie and figure out what to do next.”
They weaved their way through the gossiping crowd surrounding Larry as the paramedic evaluated his obviously broken nose. Everyone there was determined to get a good look at the damage Mateo had inflicted, no doubt so they could exaggerate it sufficiently at the Boot Scoot Boogie honky tonk later that night.
The cold march of ants up her spine told her the exact moment Larry spotted her in the crowd. She knew she shouldn’t look. She should just keep moving.
“Unless you come up with the cash,” he hollered, “I’m going to sell that video to the lowest bidder!”
Something inside her snapped and she jerked to a stop. After everything, he still thought he could cow her into doing what he wanted. The man was a moron, and so was she for ever thinking she saw something in him. The crowd buzzed around her. She and her sisters may be the only Sweets left in Salvation, but the town still knew what Larry had no clue about. You could push a Sweet only so far before they let their freak flag fly and invited the world to come sit down and see all their ugly up close.
The initial blast of anger gave way to a crystal clear understanding of what had to happen next. He thought he had a bargaining chip? He had nothing, and she was going to show him just how little of nothing he had.
“You lost whatever hold you had over me with this video when I came back home. In Salvation, I’m just one more in a long line of crazy Sweets. We’re expected to do things that cross the lines like get naked in an elevator. Hell, my grandmother allegedly burned down the DMV; we, of course, maintain it was an electrical fire. Do you really think that video would harm my reputat
ion in this town?” She laughed. Hard. For once, being an unhinged Sweet was going to work in her favor. “You want to sell that video? Go for it.”
“I will.” He tried to smirk but the way his lips were swelling up made it impossible.
Now to turn the screws. “Just remember that everyone here heard you threaten me unless I gave you cash. That’s blackmail.”
“Semantics.” He shrugged, but his gaze darted around the crowd as if confirming they’d heard. “I was giving you first right of refusal.”
“The cops won’t see it that way. Not to mention that video wasn’t a gift to you, so you can’t sell it like you did the photos. You stole it from a hotel’s security system. I may not be able to hire every attorney on the West Coast to go after you for that theft, but I bet a massive high-end hotel chain like that one can.” She paused to let her words sink into his thick skull. “After all, they don’t want their guests to think they sell security footage to the highest bidder.”
“They wouldn’t come after me.” His voice was firm but there was no missing the sweat making his forehead wet.
“And that’s just civil penalties.” Time to bring it home and scare the ever-loving shit out of Larry so well that he’d never bother her again. “The theft would still catch the prosecuting attorney’s eye—especially a high-profile, sexy case like this would be. I still know a lot of media folks and I won’t be the least bit shy in asking them for coverage. Everyone in the western hemisphere would know what a scumbag you are and that the video is stolen goods. You’d never be able to sell it. Even the shittiest of porn sites would know not to touch you with a twenty-foot pole dipped in hydrogen peroxide. Face it, that video is worthless.”
Heart hammering in her chest, Olivia savored the rush that went with taking an asshole down a couple pegs or twenty. Then she turned on her heel and left, leaving Larry and more than a couple of gawkers with their mouths hanging open, and stormed into The Kitchen Sink. Only a few people remained inside, including her least-favorite mayor, Tyrell Hawson. Just the sight of him leeched some of the fuck-yeah adrenaline from her. The man sucked the joy out of everything.
Unlike the others, who were glued to the diner’s front windows, he sat with his back to the hubbub outside and sipped coffee from a bright-red mug. “Looks like your chickens have come home to roost and have shit all over our police chief. He had a promising career going until you came back to town.”
Mateo. Her gut twisted. She hadn’t thought of his job. An arrest was a day that ended in Y for previous generations of Sweets, but not so for the Salvation Police Chief.
She lowered her voice, hoping against logic that the few people in the diner weren’t doing everything they could to overhear. “Larry took the first swing.”
“Looked to me like your protector returned a lot more than one swing’s worth.” He glanced up from his half-empty coffee mug. “Oh no, our police chief is done carrying a badge, unless someone who has a lot of influence were to go to bat for him.”
She snorted. “Someone like you.”
“Now that you mention it, that does sound like me.” His lips curled in a cruel mockery of a smile.
The air wheezed out of her lungs and she sank down onto the chair next to his. How did she get here? Bargaining with the man who loved to bedevil the Sweets at every turn. “What do you want?”
“Cancel the fundraiser for the veterans’ center.”
“But that’s something good that will benefit the whole town. Why does your hatred for my family outweigh the good we can do?”
He sat his mug down on the counter and swiveled his chair so he faced her. Loathing rolled off him in waves as a crimson flush crept up his neck.
