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I straighten my spine, trying to remind myself that I’m a grown woman. I can do as I please, but the weight of the choice I made pushes back down even harder.
As much as I’d like to point the finger at Maddox, as much as I feel like I deserve the guilt swimming around inside of me, I know the man didn’t do this.
There’s more damage from the fire than there was in the Burr case, but not enough that it burned for the hours in between me driving away with Maddox in my car and Colton getting the call. The timeline doesn’t fit, and as great as I like to think I am at my job, even if I wasn’t, I could figure that out.
I’ll have to consider why I automatically jumped to that conclusion when Colton told me of the address over the phone.
It took all I had not to throw up on the way to my car with those thoughts swimming around in my head.
“The bike out front,” I begin, knowing he noticed it too, but before I can make my confession, yelling fills the air coming from the front yard.
Chapter 20
Ugly
“What is your fucking problem?” I growl.
“I said turn around and put your hands behind your fucking back.”
It’s bad enough that Bishop and I ride up to the house and see the yard is swarming with fucking cops, realizing this is where Lennox had to have been heading, but this douche of a cop getting in my face is only pissing me off.
“Just be cool,” Bishop says, and it makes me wonder just how much of my back the man actually has.
If I lunge at Dresden, the same piece of shit cop Colton and I discussed the other night at Jake’s, would Bishop get into the tussle with me?
I look at my teammate and determine he wouldn’t.
The cop pushes at my shoulder, forcing me to take a step back, and I see fucking red.
My hands are shaking, and I’m seconds away from tearing into this man.
Instead of picking up an assault charge on a police officer, something I have no doubt Kincaid would not appreciate, I step around the man. All of this is taking place in Rochelle’s front yard, which can only mean one thing. The woman I saw safely home earlier isn’t safe.
Bile fills my throat as the cop slips his foot in between my legs and takes me down to the ground. It’s an effective move, one I’ve used many times. The wind is knocked out of me, leaving me stunned for the second it takes for him to put his knee in the middle of my back and get the cuffs on my wrists.
I squirm, pissed and ready to beat his ass. I’ve been through the innocent but let’s work this out at the department shit before with Lennox. I’ll be damned if I go through that fucking strip down again.
I open my mouth to argue further, but he pushes my face into the grass. I vow to ruin this fucking douche despite not being a vindictive man.
“Another victim?” he hisses in my ear. “How stupid could you be to leave your fucking bike outside after raping her and setting her on fire. There’s certain corners of Hell reserved just for men like you.”
I already expected to hear about her death, but knowing for a fact that Rochelle is gone makes me deflate. The failure swimming around inside of me doesn’t leave much room to think about what the man is accusing me of.
I can see how this looks. I’ve followed her home every night she’s worked for the last week, waiting for the flash of her lights to make sure she was safe before driving away. Tonight, I was inside her house. Tonight, I failed her.
Was the guy waiting inside? Should I have walked through every room to make sure she was alone rather than bolting after she tried to kiss me?
I’m no more than a sack of potatoes when the cop pulls me to my feet. No less than half a dozen uniformed police officers are glaring at me as if they all came to the same damn conclusion as the guy that put the cuffs on me. The rage in some of their eyes tells me that they’d cross over that protect and serve vow and beat me bloody with the slightest of provocation.
“What the fuck is going on?”
I snap my head to the right, watching as Chief Monahan walks up. The look on his face tells me he’s wishing he never even got out of bed this morning.
“His bike was outside the victim’s home,” Dresden says, his tone sounding like he expects a fucking commendation for his policework. “He was released after his last arrest, but we got him dead to rights this time.”
