Keys To My Cuffs (The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC Book 4) (10 page)

“Channing...” I started.

“I know you think that’s for the best. And I’ll give you the days. I won’t look at you. I won’t talk to you. I won’t text you. But I need the nights. I need the nights, or this is over
before we take it any further. Don’t leave me, too,” she whispered, and a fresh trail of tears started running down her cheeks.

I walked hastily towards her and cupped her face in my hands. “I only want you safe.”

She shook her head quickly. “I know. I will be. I’ll do everything you tell me to do. But please, don’t leave me. Not again.”

Fuck. How could I say no to that?

That’s right, I had no backbone when it came to a crying woman.

Instead of going through all the reasons this was a horrible idea, I wrapped her into my arms and hugged her to me tightly.

“I won’t.”

And I wouldn’t. Not now. Not ever.

Never judge a book by its movie.

-T-shirt

Loki

Monday morning

0900 hours.

Strong v. The State of Louisiana

“All I’m asking, your honor, is for a hold to be put on the trial until after the holidays.” Varian’s lawyer, Joshua Fine, said pleadingly.

The judge, Abraham Keen, glared at him from under bushy eyebrows. “And like I said, Mr. Fine, you need to get your client to work with the DA, and this could all be over before the holidays. If not, they we’ll be starting the trial tomorrow. Is that clear?”

Even me, a lowly paid detective for the BPD, knew better than to contradict Judge Keen; obviously, Varian’s bozo lawyer did not.

His gavel clanged hard against the wood of his desk. “Mr. Fine, the next words out of your mouth better be something related to the case and not your Christmas break, or you’ll be held in contempt of court.”

Fine’s mouth thinned into a pissed off line as he held his tongue and took his seat. Then he motioned with his hand in Dortea’s direction.

“We offer you a reduced sentence of twenty five years if you will give us the names of the men who’ve been helping you while you were incarcerated over the past five months,” Dortea said stiffly.

“On one condition.” Varian said ignoring his lawyer’s attempt to beckon him to stop speaking.

“Mr. Strong, I advise you to take counsel with your lawyer before you go making deals that you can’t get out of,” Judge Keen said in a bored tone.

“We’ve spoken at length about this already. I’d just like to have my thoughts on record, and then we can discuss a deal,” he grinned at the old man.

Judge Keen’s eyes narrowed, but that was the only outward sign that he was annoyed.

“And that would be, Mr. Strong?” Dortea asked sweetly.

“I want to speak to Rector. Alone.” Varian smiled.

They all turned to me at once.

I was sitting in the back of the room.

I was only supposed to be there in case any of the facts were needed on the case. I wasn’t supposed to actually be needed.

That motherfucker.

I nodded once, and they all stood, emptying the room out in less than a minute.

Varian’s lawyer was the last to leave, and he glared at me, as if saying with his mind that I’d better watch it.

What did he take me as? A vagrant?

“What do you want, Strong?” I asked once the lawyer closed the door.

“Nothing. I’m going to take the plea. I just wanted to see your face when I said what I had to say,” he said smoothly.

“And what exactly did you have to say?” I asked just as smoothly.

My outer tone didn’t portray the inner turmoil. What was he going to say? Did he know something I didn’t?

“You know, you’re not the only one who watched that neighborhood,” he said in a bored tone.

Outwardly, I was as cool as a cucumber, but inwardly, I was wary. On the edge of my seat. Where was he going with this?

“Is that right?” I asked.

“Yep. Saw you watching that girl next door to you. Saw you running behind her every morning. Saw that your windows are real close to each other’s,” he smiled widely.

My body froze. My lungs stopped producing the oxygen that my blood needed. Everything in me came to a standstill, waiting to see where he was going with this.

My jaw tightened until it was clenched so hard my molars hurt.

“I was just wanting to make an observation. You can have the lawyer brought in,” he smiled.

Standing up stiffly, I walked to the door and opened it.

Once they were seated, I left.

I was no longer needed, and I was in a hurry to make sure Channing was all right.

The drive took less than nine minutes.

I’d just pulled onto the street that ran outside our subdivision when I saw her sitting down on the curb. I would’ve passed her by had she not fallen backwards as I passed.

She was wearing a tight pair of black running shorts and an oversized t-shirt, and her hot pink running shoes that she always wore when she ran.

Pulling over quickly, I came to a stop directly in front of her and shut the engine off.

“Jesus Christ,” I snapped. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” she wheezed. “I just forgot my inhaler; I needed to take a break before it got too bad.”

Reaching for her hand, I lifted her up until she was in a sitting position. “Get on, I’ll take you home.”

I was relieved. Not that she was having an asthma attack, but that she was alive to
have
an asthma attack.

“Loki, you said we couldn’t be seen together. You made me promise, in fact. What’re you doing?” She asked breathlessly.

I got her to her feet and directed her to sit in front of me so I could keep an eye on her on the last mile stretch of road before we reached our homes.

She sat stiffly for all of three seconds before leaning back against me and resting her head on my chest.

We rode back slowly. Pulling into her driveway, nearly up to the house, I shut the bike off and helped her stand before following her.

“Loki, seriously, what the hell are you doing?” She asked alarmed.

“Inside, I’ll tell you there,” I rushed out.

She looked at me worriedly, but walked into the house.

Without punching in the code to her alarm.

Pinching the bridge of my nose, I said, “Please tell me you didn’t leave your house unarmed.”

When I looked up, it was to see her eyes wide, and her teeth nibbling worriedly on her lip.

“I forgot,” she said lamely.

“You forgot,” I tried the word on my tongue. “Well how does being raped sound?”

She flinched as if I’d hit her, and suddenly the word choices I’d used didn’t sound like the best idea anymore.

Pushing my hands through my spiked hair, I started explaining. “Listen, I’m sorry if I was too blunt, but I really don’t want anything to happen to you. Today, Varian pointed out that he’d seen us together quite a bit over the time I was undercover. Then he took a plea bargain that’ll only give him twenty-five years. He took it too easily, in my opinion. He’s got something planned, I just don’t know what.”

Pacing now, I continued. “Yesterday, two women were raped and murdered. One was the one who hired me at the construction company. The assailant left a note. For me. Said if I didn’t withdraw my statement, they’d kill two people a day until I did.”

“But...but,” she said confused. “He’s in jail. If he was in jail, how could he threaten you with a note? Does he really have that far of a reach?”

“I have two theories on that, but it’s not good either way it goes. One way, it’s Varian having some sort of hold on the men in his employ. Something he’s doing for them that they can’t get anywhere else. Or he’s blackmailing them, forcing their compliance. The other is that there were two people raping, and both of them were working together. My sole focus had been on Varian. It never even entered my mind that he could be working with someone to accomplish his goals. Either way, I fucked up,” I sighed.

She’d sat quietly throughout my explanation, contemplating her hands, and then an invisible piece of lint on her shirt.

Needing to change the subject and stop dwelling on it until I’d slept on it, I asked, “Did you use your inhaler?”

Her eyebrows raised. “No, but I’m okay now. I don’t like using it when I don’t have to.”

“How did you forget something like that? You always have it with you unless you’re here. In fact, I’ve always seen it in that little pocket in the waistband of your shorts,” I asked with a raised brow.

She walked to the table and sat. “God, I don’t know. I forgot my lunch yesterday. I couldn’t find my keys today. Then I was in the depth of my run before I even realized I didn’t have it.”

I sighed. “Maybe you should be a little more careful next time.”

“Thanks,” she said dryly. “I’ll try to remember that.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “How about you go cook us dinner then?”

She sneered at me. “You have two hands.”

I looked down at my hands. “Look at that, I do.”

A smile kicked up the corner of her mouth. “I’ll bet they can cook, too.”

“I can make French toast, fried eggs, and grill. That’s about the extent of it.”

She stood and walked to the fridge and reached to the top for the bread. “I have a half a loaf of bread,” she said as she dangled the bag from her hands. Then she opened the fridge. “And nine eggs. Is that enough to make eggs and French toast?”

“It’s enough to make eggs, or French toast. But not both,” I told her.

She pursed her lips. Then she started digging through the fridge. “Okay, well I don’t have any syrup. So eggs it is.”

I watched as she shoved everything back in the fridge, closed it, and then stood, holding out the eggs to me.

“Okay, what are you having with the eggs?” I asked as reached for the eggs in her hand.

Turning my back on her, I had to laugh when I heard her curse and yank the fridge door back open, causing the bottles in the door to cling against each other.

“I don’t have any bacon. Or sausage. Or any breakfast meat. I do have sliced baloney and turkey, though,” she said over her shoulder.

“Give me the butter and the turkey. Bread. Cheese too.”

As I cooked egg sandwiches, we spoke in length about what had gone on that day; this was the first time in years I’d actually told somebody about my entire day.

It felt right and freeing somehow.

“What do you do to work out?” She asked as she eyed my three sandwiches once we both took our seats.

I shrugged. “Run. Lift weights. The usual.”

“I run and lift weights,” she observed dryly. “And I don’t look like you do.”

“Thank God,” I muttered as I took a bite of my sandwich. “Otherwise we’d not be in the same room as each other. Good for those chicks that want to look like men, but my woman has to be soft. I want to be able to fuck you hard, but I don’t want to be worried about you snapping me in half when your legs wrap around my waist.”

She snorted. “You have something against female body builders?”

I shook my head. “No, I just like to be the one with the dick in the relationship.”

She started giggling, and my eyes went from the spreading yolk that had broken when I’d taken a bite, to her face.

Her eyes were so expressive.

Light and mirth danced in her eyes, and it made something inside of my heart melt a fraction of a bit.

“What?” I asked.

She waved her hand in a shooing gesture. “Nothing.”

My eyes narrowed on her.

If I’d heard the word ‘nothing’ from a man, I could safely assume that he literally meant ‘nothing.’ Now, when a woman says ‘nothing,’ it could be one of many things. One, it could mean, literally, nothing. Two, it could mean ‘everything.’ Three, it could mean, it’s something, but I want you to do the dirty dishes, and I’m still mad at you for looking at that girl while we were out to dinner last week where you ate the last bite of food off your plate, instead of offering it to me. Oh, and you forgot to pick up your socks off the bathroom floor.

Which was why I went the safe route, and assumed everything.

“What’s wrong?” I asked cautiously.

She stood and placed our dishes in the sink before grabbing the frying pan off the stove.

“It’s nothing really, to be honest. I was just trying to figure out what exactly you were trying to get at with your earlier talk about those poor women. What precisely do you want me to do here? Stay away from you? Stay with you? Are you done coming over now? Is this our last time together? What do you want from me?” She finally opened up.

I got up guardedly and started helping her; she washed while I dried.

“In answer to your question, yes I want you to stay with me. I want you. I’ve wanted you for months now. I’m tired of hiding us. I want to start over, and I want this fucking cloud of shit to get the hell away from me. With Varian taking that plea, he should start his sentence immediately. The threatening note I read, at the murder of those two women, should be obsolete,” I said as I placed a plate I’d dried in its spot.

Turning back to her, I leaned my hip against the counter and continued.

“Then again, today he pointed out that he knows about us, or at least thinks he does. And he would’ve had no other reason to tell me about that fact, unless he had plans that I’m not privy to,
yet. So, yes, I want to be with you, but I want to be careful; I want to be mindful of everything we do together or separately. I’m hoping that once I have the names of the men that helped Varian, that I’ll have the murderer
of those two women. If not, then I still have a fugitive out there being a vigilante for Varian Strong’s ‘purpose’ and we’ll have to adjust accordingly,” I told her.

She nodded. “I have to work today.”

My heart sank a little bit when I realized she wouldn’t be here for much longer. “Will you come over to my house tonight when you get home?”

She nodded. “Sure. It’ll be late though.”

I rolled my eyes at her. “You do realize, right, that I watched this neighborhood for a full four months. I know everyone’s schedules. Including yours.”