AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m sure you have, but—”
“This one time, me and one of the female bartenders got down and dirty right behind the bar with a packed house looking on. She was one of those chicks who liked an audience. Whaddya they call them . . . voyages or something.”
“Mr. Hammond.” Her voice resembled his fourth-grade teacher. “You are completely missing the validity of this serious charge.” She pulled out the metal chair, sat down, and flipped open his file. “You’re being accused of assault.”
“I never touched those bouncers.”
She laid three black-and-white photos in front of him and waited.
“What the fuck?” The pictures showed a girl with a black eye, split lip, and severely bruised cheekbones. “I didn’t do this.”
“She’s saying you did.” Syd placed another picture of the same girl without the banged-up face on the table. “You sure you weren’t with this girl last night?”
“Nah, never saw—” Mamba snapped up the latest photo for a closer look, and a clammy sweat prickled his neck. “Fuck.” His mystery woman.
“Youwerewith her?”
“She was the one who convinced me to climb up on the bar.” Mamba rubbed the back of his neck as his tequila-addled brain ran through a hazy timeline. “The place was packed, but she squeezed in next to me and bought me a few drinks.” Mamba massaged his temples. “She had on this smokin’ hot red dress. I think we danced.” Or was that in his dream? “Then she dared me to get up on the bar and strip.”
“Hmmm, interesting.”
“But I didn’t do this.” Mamba stabbed his finger at the other photos.
“And you never saw her before last night?”
“I never even got her name.” Which wasn’t unusual for him, but no matter how much he drank, he never got physical with a woman.
Syd flipped through some more pages in her file. “Her name’s Miranda Brooks. Goes by Mandy.”
Mary. Maddy. Yeah, right, Mandy.
“In her statement to the police, she named you her attacker.”
“Total bullshit. I never touched her.”
Syd cocked her head. “A beautiful woman in a bar came on to you, bought you drinks, and you kept your distance?”
His hazy dream skirted around the edge of his brain. “Maybe I kissed her or some shit, but I didn’t rough her up.” Mamba shifted, and the cuffs rattled against the table.
“I do see some past assault charges, so I think it’s safe to say violence is in your nature.”
Mamba slammed his palms against the table. “I never hit a woman, and I didn’t hit her. Any assault charges I had were against men.”
“Like your last conviction, which sent you away for two years?”
“That was in the cage.”
“But the plain fact is, you have a violent temper, and this—” she pointed to the pictures—“could’ve been your doing.”
“Fuck no!” Mamba bellowed. “The shit you’re talking about is completely different.”
Syd leaned back in her chair and folded her hands, silently observing him. “For some crazy reason, I believe you.”
“Then why are you amping me up with all these questions?”
She leaned in. “Because I wanted to see how you would react.”
Mamba examined the pictures and fragments of his memory and recalled a soft laugh and a sexy-as-hell voice. The longer he studied them, the more he remembered how her long, wavy hair fell over the shoulders of her striking red dress. It was the same girl from his dream earlier. “I don’t know who did this, but it wasn’t me.”
