“You think I’m going to trust you? Even without this, you have a rap sheet, Lane. You’ve got a bunch of stuff on here.”
I’m not sure if Lane knew I was bluffing or not, but there certainly wasn’t anything related to the murder. He had a few speeding tickets and even one charge of resisting arrest, but that charge had been dropped for reasons I hadn’t examined closely.
“I am trying to help you here, Angela,” he said. “But it’s very obvious you have it out for us. In some ways, I don’t blame you. You want to help Shannon. I want to help her. But I need to protect myself too—”
“From what?” I snarled.
I’d lost control of my emotions, I knew that much. But there was no coming back from this now. Lane hadn’t switched to a neutral person because of some nice words at the beginning. He’d merely prevented me from getting angry, but that sure wasn’t the case anymore.
“From rogue agents like yourself,” Lane shot back. “You think Beth hasn’t worked like hell to solve this case? You think the daughter of a politician isn’t going to have full resources poured into her death? Look it up yourself, Angela—that is, if you have.”
“Oh, please!” I shouted. It was a really good thing that the door to my office was closed right now. “You think I get this role and don’t read the case files? I know what it says. You all stonewalled the investigation. You—”
“I already told you what you need to know,” Lane growled. “I told you my brother Cole and the Fallen Saints are the ones most responsible for all of this shit. If you think I’m here to give you some gossip or rumors, then you don’t know how much I loved Shannon. Goddamnit, Angela, I realized last night I hadn’t done a good job servicing her memory and thought I’d be helping you. But no, it seems you don’t want help. You have a story in your head where I’m responsible because it’s easier than accepting the fact that an MC didn’t do it, and someone else did. Well, go fuck off, Angela. See if I or anyone else in the Reapers ever helps you again.”
“Lane!”
But the line went dead. I pulled the phone back from my ear, stared at it for a very long time, and then slammed it back into its receiver, frustrated and pissed at myself. It was never a good thing to piss off someone who had wanted to help me, but it was even worse than that.
I couldn’t help but wonder if I had just killed my best chance at solving my best friend’s case once and for all.
Lane
Afull week had passed since Angela had stepped foot onto our property, and I was still goddamn pissed about it and the call the next day.
How fucking dare she question my love and my loyalty for Shannon. How fucking dare she think I would have actually murdered her. How fucking dare she come to my shop, threaten me, and warn me that she would be back.
It was unbelievable, the nerve that the bitch had. To say I had never felt so attacked in my life was an understatement. If Angela had said I had a grudge against Springville or some former member or that I had done some shitty things in my life, okay, sure, I could buy that. But that... that was akin to attacking Father Marcellus’ faith. That’s how much Shannon had meant to me.
It was so fucking repulsive, so... so fucking evil. I began to think of ways to strike back at Angela. I wanted her to know how I felt, I wanted her to know that what she had said was goddamn sacrilegious, and I wanted her to know... well, fuck, I didn’t know what I wanted her to feel, but it sure wasn’t good. It was the stuff of fucking nightmares.
“You okay, man?” Patriot said.
We were sitting in Brewskis late, well after even when most of the Black Reapers had called it a night. I hadn’t been able to sleep much since Angela’s attacks, and given that Patriot most loved the late nights of everyone in the club, it wasn’t much of a surprise that he was with me.
“No, I’m not fucking okay,” I growled. “We have to get rid of that bitch. Angela. We have to find a way to get her out of town. We—”
“Woah, man, woah,” Patriot said. “Take a timeout. Relax for a second.”
I did what Father Marcellus had always taught me in these spots—breath in the nose, out the mouth. I think the idea was that it was supposed to calm me by slowing my heartbeat through my breathing, but right now, it wasn’t much working. In fact, my heartrate was accelerating in lockstep with the rising tide of my anger.
“Think about it, man. We have Beth on our side. The DA! We go and cause trouble for one of her new employees, you know how much shit we’d be in? I agree it’s a pain in the ass. But, damn man, we don’t need to take care of her. Beth is going to oversee it.”
I did the breath in through nose-breath out through mouth move a few more times before dropping my head. This time, it worked.
“I just want that woman to learn a lesson,” I said. “Fucking hell. Who the fuck does she think she is?”
“I know, man, I know,” Patriot said before taking a swig of his Yuengling. “But you cause trouble with her, there’s a good chance we lose our standing with the DA. We lose that, and what have we got? We’ll have the Fallen Saints and the government up our ass, and we can push away one, but both... ”
It’d be much fucking harder to do.
If not impossible.
“Damnit, Patriot, stop making so much sense,” I said, drawing a laugh from him. “I know I’m just being hotheaded right now. But you know how you talked about the need to show my involvement in the club? To show the rest of the team I’m actually in it?”
Or at least the appearance of it, since God knows I’m still not ready to die?
“Well, if we let this bitch just walk on to our property, threaten us, and do nothing? What does that look like for me?”
