Call My Name (Fallen Angels MC Book 3) (7 page)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

She was barely three blocks away before her phone started to ring. At a red light, she glanced at the caller ID: Teddy. She sighed. Mason had probably called him, or something; she couldn’t bring herself to answer.

The night she’d driven out of town, she’d been so distracted that she had no idea how long it would take her to get back to Emily’s clinic. And once she got there, it was something of a crapshoot as to what she’d do. Take a long weekend to get her head on straight? Take a leave of absence and spend some time hanging with Gloria, maybe take a trip to the ocean? They’d done it once before, and there was nothing quite as bizarre and hysterical as watching a dog try to herd waves. It would be a balm for her soul, as people said.

She pulled over for a moment, long enough to set the GPS in her car, and then pointed her hood ornament to the south. Her phone rang again, and she tapped it to ignore the call, forcing herself to focus on the road.

She needed country music. Wasn’t that what people listened to when everything had gone to hell, and they needed a good breakup song? She’d never really gone in for all that twang and misery herself, but she didn’t think she could stand the grungy, industrial hard rock that she’d loved in college right now, either. She turned on her radio to try and find a station that didn’t make her cry harder.

That was when Caroline saw the flashing lights in her rearview mirror.

She thought she might throw up; she thought she might slam her foot on the gas and head for the hills. A year ago, she would have sworn, and pulled her car over to the side of the road, not be convinced that someone had put out an APB on her car and was about to have her taken to jail.

But slamming her foot on the gas wouldn’t work, long-term, and vomiting would just make her car smell awful. She probably had a taillight out or something; she’d been so distracted that she wouldn’t have noticed. She pulled the car to the curb and shut off the engine, her hands in her lap as she waited for the officer to approach with the familiar refrain of “License and registration, please.”

Only that wasn’t what happened. The flashlight shone in her eyes so bright and distracting that she put her hand up, ducking away and trying to focus. “Hey,” she said, her tone sharp and mean, and her heart was beating too fast, too afraid.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Detective Randall said, his tone dripping with sarcasm. “On the entrance to the interstate. You wouldn’t be heading out of town, would you?”

“Am I under arrest?” Caroline knew her tone was snippy, the response of a white, middle-class accountant, not the girlfriend of a drug dealing biker, but at the same time, she was well aware of her rights.

“You’re a person of interest in a potential homicide,” he said, and everything froze, every cell and every fragment of time. “We’re going to go to the station and talk. You’re going to drive nice and slow, both hands on the wheel, and I’m going to follow you. And we’re going to play awfully nice. How’s that sound to you?”

“Do I need a lawyer to meet me there?” She was incredibly proud of the way her voice only shook a little, and she was still able to meet the spot—well, where she figured his eyes were, above the shocking beam of the flashlight.

He chuckled, all Gomer Pyle aw-shucks-ma’am, and the flashlight moved down, leaving an ugly afterimage on her eyes. “I can’t think why that would be necessary. After all, lawyers are for people who have something to hide. And you keep telling me that you have nothing to hide.”

The way the light shimmered over his face, blocking out his eyes, his mouth, whatever she tried to focus on, made him look even more like a demon, even more like a monster. He didn’t wait for an answer, just turned and walked away, and she blinked, trying to clear her vision well enough to feel like she could drive. She grabbed her phone and tapped to the favorites screen. Both hands on the wheel, he’d said. She had to be quick.

She tapped on Mason’s picture, and sent the shortest message she could think of that would make any kind of sense at all.
cop. get lawyer. ask jack.
She hit send, and then she turned the key, starting the car, and drove across town to the police station. Her hands were shaking, and her stomach was twisted into knots, but in a weird way, she felt confident. Strong. This was all coming to a head now. She could feel that in her bones.

As she pulled into a parking spot, she saw her phone’s screen light up with a text, but she didn’t get a chance to even read it, much less reply. As soon as her car was parked, Randall was there, opening her door and escorting her into the station. He didn’t touch her; that was for the best. She was pretty sure she might have screamed and maybe hit him if he had. And assaulting a police officer on the grounds of the police station would possibly be the stupidest thing she’d ever done.

She held her head high as he paraded her through the station. She’d never actually been inside of a police station before; it surprised her how much it looked like any other state bureaucracy. A counter with a cutout in the glass, and an officer sitting at the desk behind it. They were buzzed through a door, and then he sat her down in a room that could have come straight out of any Prime Time TV cop drama. A metal table, a couple of battered chairs, a long mirror on one wall. She was seated at the table, and Randall gave her a smile. “I’ll be with you shortly,” he said.

She settled down to wait. She had a feeling it would take a while.

It wasn’t, in fact. He let her sweat for just a couple of minutes, and then appeared wearing that aw-shucks smile, and carrying two cups of coffee. He set one down in front of her; she glanced down at the light brown liquid and tried not to wrinkle her nose.

“Cream and sugar?” he asked.

“No, in fact.” She gave him her prettiest smile. “I take my coffee black.”

He reached out and switched the two mugs, taking the offensive sweetened coffee himself, and putting what had been his own unadulterated brew in front of her. She nodded a thank you and took a sip to be polite. It was swill, tasted like it had come out of one of those single-cup brewers that were so popular now. And as a gesture, she felt sure it was supposed to soften her up, make her feel safer, more compliant. And maybe it would have, if everything else about Randall didn’t set her teeth on edge.

“Am I suspected of something, Detective Randall?”

He shrugged. “Should I suspect you?”

She resisted the urge to sigh. It was fascinating how quickly he became the adversary. “You haven’t read me my rights.”

“We’re just having a conversation, Ms. Lewis. There’s no need to get adversarial.”

She nodded, took another sip of the disgusting coffee. There was a phrase, she’d read about it somewhere, and she struggled to pull it out of her memory as completely as possible. “I apologize, Detective, but I’m unable to answer questions at this time. If I’m a suspect, then I would like to request a lawyer now. Otherwise, I would prefer to leave the station.”

His eyes darkened. “I know that you’re associated with that dirtbag. I know that you’re Mason’s girl, and I know that you know what happened to Declan McDermott. You are going to tell me what happened.”

Her pulse throbbed, and she could see the movement of her chest with the force of her heartbeat. “Detective, I’m sorry, but I would prefer not to answer any questions at this time.”

“Do you think that liberal shit is going to work on me? Just because we’re in Vermont, you think you can get away with that sort of crap? I am the goddamned police, and you are not as important as you think you are.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Caroline could see his pulse pounding in his temple, harsh and fast, and saw his knuckles edging into white. Once, a detective had interviewed her in her office about a client who’d had some shady side businesses going on; it had been a polite conversation, felt like a meeting between colleagues.

This was something entirely different. It took everything she had to fight the power structure inherent in the room, but she met his eyes, reminded herself that she was being recorded, and kept her voice calm and quiet. She was safe. He couldn’t hurt her, not really. This wasn’t some show about police on TV, where they were allowed to be abusive and mean in order to try and get confessions. She would be safe here.

“Detective, I apologize again, but I would prefer not to answer any questions at this time.”

It happened so fast that she had no time to prepare, no time to try and duck, or scream, or hit back.

Randall came over the table at her, shoving her back into her chair. The coffee cup flew out of her hand, smashing against the wall in a loud crash that made her ears ring more than they should have. The liquid splashed up her arm, but the sensation of burning was far away, distant, indistinct.

The sensation of two hundred pounds of angry cop leaning over the table, pushing her chair back onto its rear legs, was much more immediate. She grabbed onto his arms, not trying to pull herself back up, but trying to keep herself from going over.

She was full of screams, so many screams, but she clenched her teeth on them, finding some tiny corner of courage in the refusal to give in and give him what he wanted. She’d gotten a message out to Mason. As long as he wasn’t so pissed at her that he wasn’t even looking at his phone, it would be okay.

He’d get her out of this. She hated that she was thinking of it that way, but holy shit, she’d be a feminist tomorrow—today she just wanted this horrible monster off her before he hurt her.

“Listen, you bitch,” Randall hissed into her face, spittle flying, “I don’t know how you did it, or how you’re involved, but I know that he’s gone, and now IA is in my face, and if I’m going down, I will bring you and your goddamned boyfriend and the entire world down with me if I have to, do you hear me?”

She wanted to repeat herself again, tell him in that same calm voice that she didn’t want to answer questions, but there were tears streaming down her face, unauthorized tears, and if she opened her mouth, she’d beg and cry, and he couldn’t have that. He absolutely was not allowed to drag her that low.

She shook her head furiously, back and forth. Why hadn’t someone come in and stopped him? Wasn’t that the point of taping things like this? Wasn’t that the point of the one-way glass, so that this shit was monitored, and people weren’t unfairly questioned?

He shook her so hard her teeth rattled together. “I don’t think you’re listening,” he whispered, so quietly that she wondered if the cameras would even catch it. “If you don’t start fucking talking to me, I will make what Declan did to you in that kitchen seem like prom night. I will obliterate everything that matters to you. Are you understanding me?”

She couldn’t shake her head again, but she could refuse to answer. She looked away, up past his shoulder, anywhere but at his eyes. She could feel the tremors in her hands. Not Gloria. Please, God, let him not know about Gloria. Anything else, anything could happen to her in the entire world, and Mason and Teddy could keep themselves safe but not Gloria. Gloria had to be safe.

“Yeah,” he said, stroking her cheek like a lover, making her stomach twist.

She swallowed hard on the bitter, slimy taste that was trying to climb up the back of her throat.

“Yeah, I know all about it. He called me after, told me about this cute little accountant and what he was planning to do to her after he got back from our meet. How he was going to do all sorts of filthy, nasty things to you, and then leave you where Mason could find you, to warn him off screwing with what was his. Think it would have worked?”

The fear vanished, suddenly, in a wave of adrenaline so sharp that it took her breath away. The urge to scream to was replaced with an urge to fight like a wildcat, vicious and efficient and mean.

But she’d done that before, and it hadn’t particularly gotten her anywhere she wanted to revisit. She shoved the urge to reach down his throat and yank his testicles up into his belly, and found the strength to offer him a crazed, wild grin. She could feel her cheeks threatening to split with the intensity of the expression, but she also saw the evil cold in his face falter, just a little, as he paused.

In that pause, as her eyes sparkled with manic laughter, she said it one more time. “I really am sorry, Detective, but I do not wish to answer any questions at this time.”

The blow came snakefast, and she screamed as her cheek erupted into pain. Part of her mind, distant, was screaming that she’d never been hit by another person before in her life; she’d never even been spanked.

Well, not like this, not in anger, not without consent. She was turned inside out with fear and rage, as her chair rocked on its legs, only his grip on her shoulder seeming to keep it from going over.

He whispered something, something mean and nasty, and she couldn’t quite make out the words, but he was drawing his hand back to hit her again, and she wanted to be strong and brave, but she couldn’t help it, she flinched. She flinched away from him, from the pain, and then she heard the door open. It sounded like the door to a crypt creaking over, and the light from the offices spilled into a room she hadn’t even thought was dim until right now.

“Detective!” she heard someone call sharply, and then when he didn’t respond, a second and more urgent plea. “Mike.”

He stopped, then, and she watched a bully wilt down to nothing, deflate like a popped balloon.

“It’s over, Mike. You gonna come quietly?”

He stood up, straightened his jacket, and then his hand flew, coming around to strike her with the back of his hand. She flinched again, her hands coming up now to protect her face, but the blow never came. She heard an ugly grunt from Randall and looked up to see Mason holding the cop’s hand in his own white-knuckled grip. She didn’t know where he’d come from, but she’d never been so grateful to see another human being in her life.

“You never touch her again,” Mason said, quiet and clear. “Never.”

Randall yanked at his hand, and Mason didn’t let it go for a minute, offering his own crazed smile before intentionally releasing his grip. Randall straightened his jacket again, but it was the motion of a man who’d lost everything, including his dignity, and was just trying to get out of the room. She could hear the other cop reading him his rights, but all she wanted to do was to crawl inside Mason and never come out again. She found herself on her feet, diving into his arms. He wrapped her up, lifting her up on her tiptoes. She leaned her cheek against him and winced at the sting from the insulted flesh.

“Everything’s okay,” he said into her ear, and she suspected he was deliberately loud enough for the cops to hear his words. “Munch told them about how he heard Declan talking to Randall that night. They understand now who he is, and what he’s been doing. We’re safe, Caro. I promise. We’re safe now.”

“You’re free to go, miss,” another voice said. She looked up into the face of an older man, wearing a suit and tie. He exuded authority as he extended his hand to her, and she shook it almost on reflex. “I’m very sorry for the inconvenience. Let me know if there’s anything the department can do to help you in the future.”

“I just want to go,” she said, hating how small her voice was in that moment. She could feel a deep tremor starting up in her insides. She was minutes from falling to pieces, and she would not let Randall see how close he’d come to truly breaking her. That was not acceptable.

“Agreed,” Mason said. “Let’s get you home.”