"On the Kings?" Just how rose-tinted have my glasses been?
"No." He draws a deep breath. "I won't say any more than that, so don't ask."
We ride in silence for a few minutes, and my stomach turns more and more acrid with each block we pass. "Did Davis tell you why the Devil's Breed were here?"
"You don't need to know."
Like fuck I don't. "Yes, I do. Those creeps were about to use me for profit. Does that not bother you in the slightest?"
"You already sold yourself."
My anger simmers, rising with each shake of the car. "Davis said seven on Thursday. I thought he meant the time, but he meant women, didn't he?" I study my father while I ask the next question. "Was it seven women?"
Sheriff Green, the fine upstanding citizen that he is, chooses to say nothing.
"Was it seven women, Dad?"
His jaw flexes. "I don't know for sure, but I think so, yes."
"Why do you think that?" He can't stop now. He needs to explain this shit to me.
Just how corrupt is Temperance's underbelly?
"It doesn't concern you, Kyra."
"Bullshit, it doesn't." My words rebound off the car's interior. "It concerns me when I get caught up in it. It concerns me when I own property here and intend to make this my home again. It concerns every citizen of Temperance. They have a right to know if innocent women are held hostage—asslaves—in their neighborhoods."
"I don't know where they are," he snaps. "Ifthey're even here at all. It could be entirely unrelated."
"Has your instinct ever served you wrong?" I ask levelly.
He glances at me before taking a corner.
"Your gut instinct is why you're so good at your job." I hate paying the asshole a compliment when all he's done is insult me, but it's true. "And your gut tells you now they have women captive in Temperance. What are you doing about it?"
"What I see fit, which again, is a matter of the law and none of your business." He turns onto my street. "Until I have hard evidence, more than a few words uttered by a totally unreliable man, then there's nothing Icando."
"So somebody has to either escape or die for you to believe it?"
"Something has to happen to give me jurisdiction to act on it."
He pulls up outside my house as I mutter, "You're so full of shit."
The locks on the doors engage. "No, Kyra. I work within the rules given to me, unlike your criminal friends out there on East Levee Road. I do things the right way. And I make sure nobody gets hurt in the process."
"They may not be the same as yours, but they have rules too, you know." I twist to face him. "And they also don't hurt people if they don't have to."
"Is that why there were children's bodies under that building?"
I have no argument for that.
"I didn't think so," he sneers, leaning back toward his side of the car.
"Didn't think what?" I bite.
"That you were stupid enough to believe the Kings of Anarchy have any worthwhile place here in Temperance. That they have a single redeeming feature about them."
"You don't even try to get to understand them," I hiss. "You blame them for everything, chase them with an unhealthy obsession, and yet I bet you've never once sat down with them to understand what it is that they do. If you bothered, you might find they have plenty of that evidence that you need."
