Lane looked at Butch and Patriot, shrugged, and then looked at me, that damn smirk returning.
“Is that so?” he said. “Let me ask something, Angela. Are you... afraid of these crooks? Or maybe you secretly think it’s... exciting what we do?”
I didn’t want to use the word that came to mind, but I was so floored—and frankly, embarrassed—that I blurted it out.
“Are you fucking flirting with me?” I said, getting up in his face, the temptation to smack the shit out of him rising faster than I could control it. “Do you think this is some sort of fucking game?”
“Duh.”
I had to clench and unclench my fist to avoid smacking the little prick. God, what a fucking arrogant son of a bitch.
“Let me tell you something in case you have not picked up on it, or you’re too dense to realize, Lane. I am a state official. I am not some skanky whorish piece of ass that you and your little club picked up along the way. You are going to treat me with respect, and I assure you that if you don’t, you’ll have no choice but to when you’re behind prison bars.”
Lane stared at me, his eyes wide. I stared back, determined not to break first.
And then Lane started laughing.
He thinks it’s a goddamn game.
Okay. Okay, fine. Two can play that game. But I’m going to play it much better than he is.
Perhaps this was some manipulative effort on his part to get me to crack so that he could report me. There was definitely something to be said for trying to discredit me to make me act in a very unprofessional manner.
That was the curse of working for the office, though. I couldn’t take things into my own hands like the Black Reapers or the Fallen Saints. I wasn’t an outlaw, I was a pro-law. I wasn’t going to be able to fight fire with fire. I’d have to fight fire with water and hope we had a large enough bucket.
“Look,” Lane finally said after his exaggerated laughter died down. “Whatever you think we are? Whatever idea you have in your head from the media or from tall tales or whatever? We’re not, okay. We’re not thieves. We’re not criminals. We’re not drug lords. We’re not murderers. We’re—”
“You killed my best friend a year ago,” I growled. “I saw you weep and act all sorrowful at her goddamn funeral, but I know the truth, Lane. You fucking killed Shannon Burns.”
Even Patriot and Butch took two steps back as Lane’s smile faded and he got so close to me he actually bumped me backward. But I wasn’t the least bit intimidated. Lane was too much of a coward to actually hit me.
He was, ironically, being smart for once.
“Are you this fucking stupid?” he snarled. “I loved Shannon. Say what you want about me, say all the stupid lies and whatever, but don’t you dare make up a fucking lie about us. I fucking loved her. I was going to marry her. Do you think I would kill her?”
“I don’t give a shit what you would and would not do, Lane, I care about what you did. You took her to your father’s house that night. She never saw another house or another day again. And am I supposed to believe that you didn’t know she would die? That you didn’t kill her?”
“Shut the fuck up!” he snarled.
He had to turn away, walk over to a wooden wall, and slam his fist through it, withdrawing a bloody knuckle seconds later.
“I would never, even fucking kill her,” he said. “Of all people. I’d sooner… I made a mistake bringing her that night. I had to go to my father’s house for club business. I brought her because I needed her by my side. And then the Fallen Saints attacked us. I told her to get down. But when it all finished, I saw my brother standing over her, gun in hand, safety off.”
He whirled back to me. His voice was very emotional right now. I didn’t say a word, not while Lane was more or less confessing what I needed to know.
“If you want to know what happened to Shannon,” he said, biting his lip and shaking his head. “You go find my brother and talk to him. Although, don’t expect him to talk—assuming you can even fucking find him. He’s run like the fucking coward he is.”
“And none of you have seen him since then,” I said.
“No,” Lane said. “Which is just the way I like it. If he ever shows his fucking face here again, I’ll run over his goddamn mug with every goddamn chopper in this goddamn yard.”
I suppose that in all the times I had interacted with Lane or thought of Lane, I had always held him responsible for the death of Shannon, though I had never really clarified if he was the one to have pulled the trigger. While I wasn’t one to just believe a person’s confession at face value, most especially someone as arrogant and haughty as Lane... something about the way he spoke led me to believe that he was telling the truth, or at least there was an element of truth to what he was saying.
But just because he had not been the one to fire the bullet into her heart did not mean he was free of responsibility. Far, fucking far from it.
“You would do well to let me know if you have any knowledge on the whereabouts of Cole, Lane, or if you get anything in the coming weeks and months,” I warned. “I am going to bring Shannon the justice she deserves. It’s been a full year and no one, absolutely no one, has gotten arrested. There haven’t even been any warrants made yet. That is absolutely insane and absolutely a sign someone is not facing their day in court.”
“You realize I’m on the same team as you on this one, right?” he said. “I don’t know you, Angela, and I don’t like you for this little stunt you tried to pull. You got some fucking nerve. But I can tell you this. When Cole killed Shannon, that instantly made him my worst enemy. He was the Cain to my Abel, except instead of killing me, he killed my woman, which was almost worst, because at least if he’d killed me, I wouldn’t fucking be in this much pain.”
