AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She looked around, searching desperately, for what she had no idea. Sarah looked horrified, Shooter pretty much the same. Abby and Tex were quiet. Daisy could see there was nothing for it. Whatever she had thought she’d found here was lost- or possibly had never really existed at all. She could lie and say it was all mistake, but they probably wouldn’t believe her. So she told a bigger lie instead.
“I want to go home,” she whispered.
Chapter 30
Things had settled down in the last week, or at least Sarah, Tildy, and Abby had gone from yelling at him to not really speaking to him at all. Daisy hadn’t answered her phone when they’d tried to reach her, and they blamed it on him. Apparently, she’d cleared out of her room at the Rainbow and hadn’t even told Maria she was leaving town. Easy tried to point out that it was more proof Daisy was unreliable and dishonest, but the girls were having none of it.
Work was the same as it always was, with the guys pretty much leaving him alone. Only Caleb had tried to talk to him about. Easy simply asked if Caleb had ever accidentally fucked a whore. Caleb had nothing to say to that and had since given up, or so Easy thought.
He barely looked up as an RCPD squad car pulled into the lot at the garage. Caleb got out and crunched the gravel with his heavy boots as he walked toward the open bay doors.
“What’s up?” Shooter asked him, since Caleb rarely stopped by the garage, especially when he was on duty.
“Been up to Lead,” he replied, glancing at Easy, but Easy wasn’t about to take the bait. He picked up a socket wrench and walked away, back to the engine he was working on.
Ignoring Easy’s attempt at indifference, Caleb said, “Thought I’d talk to the cop that arrested Daisy. See what his impression was of her.”
Since Easy didn’t respond, Shooter did. “Oh, yeah? What’d he have to say?”
Caleb shook his head. “Didn’t. I couldn’t reach him.” He hooked his thumbs into his utility belt and sighed. “Apparently, he’s doing his own bid right now. Year and half for sex abuse.”
Easy kept his eyes on the engine, but paused.
“Sex abuse?” Shooter asked.
“Seems a concerned citizen saw him in plainclothes heading into a no-tell motel with a young girl and called it in. Turned out she was fourteen, a runaway. He told her if she didn’t play nice, he’d take her right back to her step daddy who was already crawling into her bed at night.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Any asshole can be a cop,” Caleb replied darkly. “Least this one got caught.”
Easy fought back the black spots before his eyes as he gripped the wrench tightly. He stood up and turned on Caleb. “Did he hurt Daisy?” he demanded, gripping the wrench so hard his knuckles turned white.
“I don’t know,” Caleb replied quietly. “She pled guilty to all the charges right out of the gate. Never tried to make a deal. She did her whole bid with no behavioral issues, and they released her.”
“And no one’s looking into his prior arrests?” Hawk asked.
“They are, but they’re doing it quietly. They reached out to some girls, including Daisy while she was in jail, but she wouldn’t talk about it. The DA didn’t pursue it. Mostly, they just want it to go away. I had to go through five people before I could find someone who’d even tell me that much. For what it’s worth, Daisy’s got no other priors. Not even a juvie record that I could find. She’s lived her whole life in Nebraska and never got into trouble until she came up to Sturgis.”
Easy tossed the wrench toward the nearby workbench but missed, and it clattered to the floor. He turned and walked toward the parking lot.
“Easy,” Shooter called after him, but he ignored the man. “Jimmy!”
“I just need… a break,” he said. “I’m going home. I’m done for the day.”
They watched him go without trying to stop him. The last thing he needed was to be around people right now or have to look at their accusing glares. Nothing they could do or say could make him feel worse right now. He nosed the bike into traffic and drove home, but it turned out that being alone had its own pitfalls.
Easy sat at his kitchen table with a bottle of Jack Daniels, a belated Christmas Gift, and one hell of a guilty conscience. The truth was he didn’t need the box or the bottle, so he’d finish off one and toss the other in the garbage.
He was reaching for the bottle when the back door slid open. A shadow fell across the floor. He was reminded of the time Daisy had come into his house, uninvited but not exactly unwanted. He could say a lot of things about Daisy, about himself and how he’d treated her, but he’d always wanted her. It wasn’t that he didn’t want all of her, he just didn’t want to give all of himself.
