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My cuffed hands are pressed uncomfortably against the seat. I have no doubt that the skin under the metal is broken. The asshole tightened the cuffs way tighter than necessary.
“I’ve been telling your brother for eight years that I would find a way to get you right back in there, and look, you did it all by yourself. I didn’t even have to do anything. I was just the lucky son of a bitch that took the call.”
“Truden,” the female cop whispers in warning.
“What? He knows what a piece of shit he is. He killed a kid, Rose. A fucking kid. He deserves to rot in prison.”
She turns back to the window, probably scared by the seething tone of his voice.
“He wasn’t a kid,” I mutter under my breath, unable to let it go any longer.
“He was 20 and on a full-ride scholarship to UT. You took that from him. You took my parents' son away from them.”
“He was trying to rape her.”
“Pretty sure my brother was fully fucking clothed when you murdered him in cold blood. You deserve way worse.”
“Truden,” Rose says, a bit more stern than the first time.
“You wanted a little bit of that underaged pussy yourself, so what did you do because you couldn’t handle that my brother was the one she was all over that night? You fucking killed him.”
“Michael!” she yells. “Enough, or I’ll report this.”
I take a page from Rose’s book and turn to look out the window for the rest of the drive to the station.
He has it all wrong. I didn’t want Lilah like that. All I wanted was to keep her safe. I didn’t want his drugged-out brother raping her and taking her innocence. So I did what I had to do to stop it. He wasn’t supposed to die. He was supposed to take the hint and leave her the fuck alone.
He wasn’t supposed to die.
* * *
“Emmett? I’m Kourtney. Your wife hired me,” the sharp-dressed woman says, reaching across the metal table in the small interrogation room to shake my hand.
“Call me Ringer,” I reply, shaking her small hand.
“Perfect.” She makes herself comfortable in the very fucking uncomfortable metal chair as she unzips a very fancy briefcase. “I’ve already petitioned the judge to release you immediately on the grounds of these fucking small-town, idiot cops not having a damn lick of evidence. They arrested you based solely on the small word of two druggies with rap sheets longer than a CVS receipt. I anticipate his response within the hour, but until then, I need you to tell me if you did, in fact, attempt murder yesterday so I know what the fuck I’m actually dealing with. Your brother told me that the cop that arrested you is the brother of the man you accidentally killed in 2013. Is that correct?”
My eyes widen at the woman’s no-bullshit attitude, with a damn sweet-as-sugar smile on her face. I shake my head a few times to clear it before actual words come to me.
“There are no cameras or mics in this room. You can speak freely, Ringer. Either way, I will not let you go back to prison. Now, your brother said you may not want to say certain things because of your history, but he told me about the bakery, and he told me about the box in the kitchen in full detail. He told me to tell you that he told me so that maybe you could trust me too.”
I nod, running a hand over my hair and chuckle. “I can see why my wife likes you.”
She shrugs, smiling. “I’m hard not to like.”
“I’m pretty convinced it’s all related, so after the last stunt they pulled at the clubhouse, I wasn’t going to let them get away. Another brother and I followed the two men on bikes. They started shooting first. . .”
I explain the entirety of the night, going to the hospital, then everything after, leaving not a single detail out. She asks me a few pertinent questions but mostly stays quiet while I speak.
She scribbles some notes on her Tiffany blue legal pad, and a few moments later, a knock and a lock disengaging echo throughout the room.
Michael and his female partner enter the room, and the man looks like he’s seconds from steam erupting out of his ears. “You’re free to go,” he spouts through gritted teeth.
“Ah! Wonderful.” Kourtney claps her hands together, dropping her heeled feet to the concrete floor with a clack. She turns a sugar-sweet smile to Michael and rises from her seat. “I will also be filing a request that you will no longer be handling this case. As you hold too much personal history with my client, I’m afraid your opinion of him may be altered. Should this case be extended to the courts, you will not be welcome in my courtroom, Officer–” she looks down at his badge, “Truden.”
She turns a smile on the female officer, and the dreamy look on the woman’s face is almost comical. “Officer,” she says with a wink before heading out the door. I don’t question it for a second as I catch up behind her.
“Holy shit.”
