Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 72401 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 362(@200wpm)___ 290(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72401 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 362(@200wpm)___ 290(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
“Holy shit,” I breathed.
The blue and white lights on one police car was on at the bottom of the drive, and he stopped me when I turned in.
Coming to a stop, I rolled down my window and was blinded by the cop’s flashlight shining into my eyes.
“Ack!” I said as I flinched away from the light. “Why?”
“Ma’am, we have a situation here. You’ll have to turn around and go back the way you came.” The police officer said.
I blinked. “But…I live here!”
The cop turned his head, and then reached for the radio on his shoulder.
“Yeah, we have a woman down here claiming to live here,” the cop said.
I pursed my lips. Why on earth would I lie about that? Who in their right mind would say they live somewhere where there were five cops and who knows how many bikers all standing around looking pissed?
I put the car in park, and turned off the engine in just enough time to see Cleo coming out of the house at a full sprint, barreling straight towards me.
“Shit,” I hissed.
He looked really, really mad.
Why on earth was he running so fast?
I’d just gotten my belt off when my door was yanked open and, like a rag doll, was pulled into Cleo’s arms.
They felt like steel bands around me.
He squeezed so tight that I was having trouble breathing…not to mention tasting the three tacos I’d just eaten.
“Can’t. Breathe,” I squeezed out.
His arms loosened some, but just enough that I wasn’t in danger of losing my midnight snack all over his chest.
“What’s going on?” I asked awkwardly.
My arms were down straight at my sides, and my head was bent at an unnatural angle due to Cleo’s face buried deep into my neck.
He was shaking so bad that I started to get really scared, even more so when it took him nearly five more minutes of standing like that before he answered.
“Thought you were gone,” he rumbled into my skin.
Shivers raced up my spine. “I was…but your sister came over drunk and falling over, and there was no way I was spending the night with her whining about no air when I could just take her home.”
He laughed.
Not just a chuckle, either.
No, it was an all-out, body shake, throw your head back, kind of laugh.
One that you felt from down deep in the pit of your stomach.
I wiggled until I got one arm loose, and then smacked him on the shoulder. “What the hell, Cleo?”
He let me loose, allowing me to take my first full breath in ten minutes.
“I got a call from Dante Hail. He’d gone out to recover the vehicle that took out the power line out by my road. The man that did it was moaning about seeing a man dressed in black running across the road towards my property,” Cleo explained harshly.
I looked at him like he was crazy. “And? And anyway, why would you know him well enough for him to call you? You only met him a few months ago.”
He shrugged. “Seen him around. We’ve made nice. He uses my boat ramp now when he goes fishing.”
I blinked. “The power company said it was a drunk. Maybe he just hallucinated that he saw something.”
Cleo shook his head and took my hand, leading me through the multiple vehicles, past the scary looking men of The Dixie Wardens MC, around the front of his house, and up the back porch steps.
That was when I gasped, and felt bile running up the back of my throat.
“When did that happen?” I asked quietly.
He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into his chest. “Within the last two hours. My guess was as soon as the lights went out. The power company said they’ve been out for two hours and five minutes now. The guy that hit the power pole only did this guy a favor by taking out all the lights.”
“It was my fault, wasn’t it?” I asked quietly. “She was raped because of me.”
Cleo didn’t give any false platitudes. He knew it just as well as I did. Oh, God. Oh, my God. Audrey.
“Audrey must hate me,” I said on a deep inhale.
I didn’t want to cry, but I could feel the ball of sadness welling in my throat, and my eyes were filling up with tears.
“She doesn’t hate you, honey. She knows you didn’t want this,” Cleo rasped.
I read the words that were splashed across Cleo’s deck in white, bold letters.
I told you what would happen. Back off the case, or this’ll happen to someone else.
“What happens if I don’t testify?” I asked as I surveyed the hundreds and hundreds of pictures that were laid out all over the deck.
Some of them weren’t too bad.
One of me leaving the grocery store. Another of me walking out of my apartment. One talking with Cody as I left the hospital.
Then there were the ones of me naked.
Or the ones of me and Cleo pressed against each other in an intimate embrace.
The ones that really got me, though, were the ones of my friends.
Cody and his husband. Their daughter.
Cody’s mother.
Cleo.
Cleo’s sisters.
The club.
And Audrey. The girl that was raped…all because of me.
There were pictures of her on the ground with her pants and panties around her ankles.
Some of her on her hands and knees with her face smashed into the grill of a car.
I closed my eyes, not wanting to see anything else.
“This can’t be happening,” I cried, finally letting the tears spill over.
Cleo turned us, and started heading down the back stairs. “We’ll go to your place tonight, and then tomorrow I’ll get some security sensors and a generator so the system doesn’t go down again.”
I nodded, numbly. “Okay.”
***
Cleo
I walked out of Rue’s apartment door, closing it quietly behind me before turning the corner and coming to a stop on the side of the building.
Loki, Trance, Torren, Sebastian, Silas, Tunnel, and Kettle were all there, waiting for me.
“She asleep?” Loki asked once I’d made it close enough to them.
I nodded. “Yeah. She wasn’t doing too well.”