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Not only would it be stupid to let myself fall for him, it’s not as if we could ever be anything more to each other.
Fugitiveplusbounty hunterequalscourtandprison—not happily ever after.
My heart tightens. Turning away, I stuff my dirty clothes into a plastic bag. “When do we have to leave?”
“Not for a while.”
“Do you have anything else you need to do?”
“Yeah. Investigative work.”
“Into what?”
“You.”
I jerk my head around to stare at him. “What?”
He lets out a short laugh. “Aside from being desperate to investigate your body from head to toe, I want to know what happened. Why didn’t you go to court?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” I twist my mouth. “If I stood a chance in court, I wouldn’t have needed to jump bail.”
He narrows his eyes. “Why don’t you think you stand a chance?”
“Because the stupid drugs were in my apron pocket when the police raided the club.” Frustration squeezes my chest tight, and I swallow past the lump in my throat. “I can’t refute the evidence, even if the drugs weren’t mine. I don’t do drugs, and I sure as hell don’t sell or distribute them.”
I sit on the edge of the bed. For reasons I don’t even understand, I want to tell him the whole sordid tale. He can’t do anything about it, and he won’t change his mind about me, but it will be a relief to havesomeoneelse know the truth. At the moment, Dane Armstrong is all I’ve got.
“Eddie, the owner of Zodiac, uses the club as a front for a drug ring,” I continue, “but he got off scot-free because he covered his tracks, and they couldn’t find any evidence against him. The police obviously didn’t listen to me or care what I had to say, and I guarantee you a judge won’t either.”
Dane puts his pen on the table and levels me with that sharp, penetrating gaze. “Start at the beginning. How did you end up working for that lowlife in the first place?”
I let out a heavy breath, smothering a surge of pain. “My mother raised me alone. Well. I guess we sort of raised each other. Selina had me when she was seventeen. Her parents kicked her out, and we had nowhere to go. I had to grow up pretty fast and spent much of my time alone.”
Memories push at the back of my head—crappy hotels and apartments, sleeping in our car, food pantries, homeless shelters.
“My mother was always changing jobs, moving us around, staying out late,” I continue. “She kept thinking she needed to meet the right person for a big break. We never had enough money, and she was up to her ears in debt. I managed to graduate from high school but went straight to work afterward to help us stay afloat. We scraped by for a few years…and then my mother hooked up with Eddie.”
Dane frowns. “How?”
“She interviewed for a job at Zodiac.” I pick at the edge of the bandage. “She’s very pretty. Blond and petite. Instead of hiring her, he reeled her in. She got caught up in his lifestyle. Fancy car, designer clothes, expensive restaurants. All the stuff she’d longed for but never had.”
“Did she know it was drug money?”
“If she did, she didn’t care.” I wrap my arms around my middle. “He gave her whatever she wanted or needed. She asked him to pay off her credit cards and bills. She kept thinking he was going to ask her to marry him. Of course, he never did…and finally, she threatened to leave him. But he used the debt to control her. Warned her that if she left him, he’d take her to court. She was stuck with him but had no way of paying him back. So I stepped in.”
Dane leans forward, tension threading his body. “And went to work for him.”
“I made a deal with him to pay off my mother’s debt,” I explain. “I wanted to get her away from him. She wasn’t a great mother, but she was still mine. So I agreed to work as a cocktail waitress at Zodiac. I’d get a minimum wage paycheck, but Eddie would get all my tips and put them toward her debt.”
“How long did you work there?”
“About a year. I had about eight more months before I could pay off the debt for good.” I rub an ache in the middle of my chest. “But the night of the police raid…at first, I thought it was a stroke of luck. Eddie and his goons would be arrested, and the rest of us would be free. Obviously, it didn’t work out that way.”
“How’d the drugs end up in your apron?”
“Because I got distracted,” I admit. “It was a crazy busy Saturday night. I was working a twelve-hour shift. Eddie had a bunch of new girls onstage, and the place was packed. This guy Maurice came in. He was a regular. One of Eddie’s men. When I brought him his usual drink, he stuck a packet in my apron pocket and told me to bring it to Eddie.”
I wince at the memory. “Of course, I knew it was drugs. I’d intended to go right to Eddie’s office, but one of the bartenders yelled at me to deliver another tray of drinks. It was so crowded and busy that I didn’t have a second to breathe, much less find Eddie. After a few hours, I totally forgot about the packet. So when the police raided the place and searched everyone, they found the drugs in my apron.”
