“You aren’t charged with anything. Yet.” He shrugged. “Help me out. This looks suspicious to me. Here you are, walking closely with the children of Maverick Badd on the day of his daughter’s wedding. And then, after we raid their estate to find the illegal weapons they’re holding, you walk in here with thirty grand in your pockets from the family itself.”
“I didn’t walk in, you guys dragged me in, and—wait.” I stiffened. “Hold on. You’re saying you raided their estate because they were hiding weapons?” Reality tap-danced across my guts.
Stapler said, “The Badds have always been lawbreakers. Blackmail, greasing the palms of dirty politicians to keep things the way they like in this city. You name it, and they’re involved. I’ve even got a few homicides I suspect they’re responsible for.”
Homicides. The wobbling, too-tangible memory of Kain’s naked flesh crept through my memory. How his torso had rolled like the waves in a dark storm. How he’d been so perfect . . . except for that single, puckered scar on his stomach.
Weapons. Bullets. The leap was easy to make. How dangerous was a man like Kain? I’d been worried that he’d be wild, maybe kind of crazy—and definitely too alpha for me.
Being a murderer had never crossed my mind.
“Holy hell,” I whispered. “You think I had something to do with all of that?”
Stapler—honestly, who had a name like that?—reclined in his seat. The photocopied checks sat between us like nuclear weapons. “You’re carrying funds from an illicit source, paid by a family known for bribery and selling black-market goods. How else do I look at it?”
Lifting my hands, I flailed them side to side. “Slow down. I had no clue about any of this.” Is he serious? Are the Badds that kind of family? “Francesca walked into my store the other day. I’ve only been back in the state for a few months, I’d never met her or her brother before.” Chasing my thoughts in a circle, I wondered how to prove I was innocent.
Wait. Narrowing my eyes on the detective, I hesitated. Maybe I don’t have to.
Tilting his head, he smiled curiously. “What are you thinking, Miss Sage?”
“I’m thinking . . . that you already said I’m not under arrest. You don’t actually have anything to charge me with, do you?”
He went so very still. “Not yet.”
Breathing faster, I pushed myself unsteadily to my feet. “Then I guess I’ll be going.”
“Miss Sage?” he asked. Peering at him, I grabbed the doorknob. “I’ll say this once. I’m not the bad guy here.”
Sucking in my lower lip, I weighed my words. “You might be right about them. I don’t have a clue if anything you’ve said is a lie. It could easily be all true. But between the both of you?” I opened the door. “You’re the only one who’s tried to frighten me. Good guys don’t do that.”
He said nothing as I made my exit.
It would have been much more dramatic if I wasn’t carrying a glittery pair of stripper heels.
- CHAPTER SIX -
KAIN
My shoe kept tapping on the busted tile floor. Every few minutes the cop behind the front desk would glare at me with distaste. When he did, I made sure to smile and wink. Every time the same smile, the same cocky wink.
I hated cops. Had since I was a kid. Plus, it was easy to dislike the guys who’d dragged me in here and left me in a cell for two hours. To be fair, it wasn’t very long—but our family lawyer was usually much faster.
It probably didn’t help that he represented both sides of my family, and in the span of one morning, needed to assist all of us.
Simon Finch was one of those men who just appeared out of thin air, often with his hair wobbling in the breeze like he’d sprinted straight from wherever he’d been waiting. He’d pointed out how the arrest had been made without cause, that they had no proof to keep anyone here, and then he’d e-mailed my father his invoice and traipsed away to help other would-be convicts out of prison.
I admired him. It’s not that I thought I deserved to be in jail, but Finch definitely got me out fast enough each time that if I was doing something wrong, I could go right back to it before the cops could even get another warrant.
After things were straightened out, my brother Hawthorne had brought me my motorcycle and a change of clothes. It had felt good to get out of the suit, even if I knew I looked amazing in it.
Recrossing my legs, I leaned forward, trying to peek around the corner. Sammy was back there; I didn’t need to see her to know. Fuck, in a way, I even felt it. That made no damn sense, but the tugging in my stomach acted like there was a bit of bait hooked inside of me, and Sammy had the fishing pole.
I didn’t need to be here. I definitely didn’t need to try and explain things to her nonexistent lawyer about how to help get her out of trouble—I still couldn’t believe she didn’t have one. Who didn’t? Either way, once I was confident that they had no plans to actually arrest her, I’d parked my ass to wait.
I just . . . felt sort of responsible for Sammy getting caught up in the raid. But I’d warned her from the start; she didn’t know who I was, who my family was. If she had, she wouldn’t have gotten so involved with my sister.
And then we wouldn’t have kissed.
A kiss. Fucking hell. Was I really mooning over one of a thousand pairs of lips? Yeah, it had happened under a perfect starry night in a rose-filled garden, but harping over those little details was something a wannabe pretty princess did. Not me, and probably not Sammy, either.
She was a no-nonsense kind of woman, even if she did reek of high-end prissy New York City life. Spending time with her as her guard slipped, more and more of her genuine, hard-edge, ball-busting, heart-of-Rhode-Island attitude slipped out.
No, she wasn’t the fairies and glitter type.
Not at all.
Sammy walked around the corner, sparkling high heels swinging in her hand. My heart pulled side to side; I wanted to laugh. I could have rolled on the floor and made the whole room stare at me.
She spotted me. Her rich green eyes flipped from uncertainty to molten lava. It was the sort of look reserved for roadkill stuck to the tires of your brand-new Corvette. Pulling her dress layers over her full hips, she spun to face the thick man behind the front desk.
“Hey,” she said. It took him a minute to look up from his newspaper. “I need my things.”
Yawning, the cop raked his bored eyes over her. “Name?”
“Sammy Sage.”
The plastic box he dropped on the counter contained a purse, some earrings, and a cell phone. He pushed some yellow papers at her as well. “Your car was taken to an impound lot, info is on there.”
Sammy dug through everything, shoving the items into her purse. “Excuse me.” Tapping the counter, she waited until the large man was staring at her again. He looked as uninterested as ever. “There’s some stuff missing.”
“What stuff?”
“Two checks, both made out to me.”
His face remained frozen. “Confiscated.”
When I saw her pretty features twisting, I felt a stab of guilt. “Why would they be confiscated?”