“Steele!”
“First smart thing you’ve said all night, boy,” Sheriff Davis said. “Come on, get your ass up and get in the car.”
“Steele!”
Her crying out for me like that hurt so much. I refused to look back, refused to make this any harder on myself than I already had. Tara had never acted this way; she’d just hoped that I would learn my lesson and let me rot in the brig for a bit.
But Elizabeth…
I guess it was a damn shame she had been second.
Because I’d only had one real shot at making it work with a Rogers before I’d had to accept the painful reality that was living in Santa Maria.
* * *
There was no one else in the jail cell at the police district. There were only three jail cells total, a number far too low for how much crime went on here. If you went by the official township numbers, though, I suppose it averaged out such that three cells might have even too many.
When Sheriff Davis threw me into one of them, he was nice enough to unlock the cuffs and give me a room with a pillow. Granted, the pillow couldn’t have been any bigger than my foot, and the cold bed, devoid of a blanket, wasn’t anything I was going to fall asleep on. But it wasn’t my first rodeo in a jail cell, and I knew better than to complain. Anything beyond a cold floor to sleep on was considered a luxury.
At first, I just curled up, tried to use my body for warmth, and turned my back on the outside world. I tried to think of whom I would use my one phone call on. I had to pick wisely because Sheriff Davis would probably send me back to the cell if no one answered on even just the third ring. Brock and the rest of the Reapers would probably be asleep or home. I didn’t have Cole’s number. There was no way I was calling a Rogers.
Funny enough, for a brief moment, I considered calling my mother, if for no other reason than that she would yell at Sheriff Davis until he finally let me walk just to have a moment of peace, but my mother was just as likely to tire out early and hang up.
And then I heard footsteps approaching the jail cell.
I looked over my shoulder.
It was the sheriff.
I turned back away. The sheriff was corrupt, but he wasn’t violent. I didn’t fear a surprise blow to my back or anything like that.
He pulled up a chair, placed it in the entryway to the jail cell, and sat down.
“Let’s talk,” he said.
I gave no response.
“Who was that girl?”
I shook my head. I opened my mouth to respond, but I didn’t say anything.
“What’s going on with the repair shop you boys have built?”
Nothing.
“Is it a front for something?”
Funny enough, right now, the honest answer was no. We did nothing illegal, although I figured that would change in the coming months. Not that I was going to give the sheriff the satisfaction of an answer, even if he would have liked it.
“You know, Steele,” he said, sighing in exasperation, “I can cut a deal with you if you tell me what you know. If you tell me what’s going on with your ‘Black Reapers’ gang, then I can make sure you are protected while I go after the rest.”
That got me to turn around. I opened my mouth to rip him a new one, to tear him apart for thinking I would ever sell out any of my boys, but I saw that that was a trap. Either I would sell out Brock and Connor and everyone else—for what, I didn’t know, but Davis didn’t need a lot of pretense—or I would dig myself a deeper hole that I could not get myself out of.
So I paused. A slight smirk crossed the sheriff’s face. I sat up on the cold bed, took a breath, and looked the sheriff right in the eye.
“I’m not cutting a deal with you. You know why?”
I got a grunt. Good enough.
