“That’s not what it looked like to me. That was quite a scene you were about to make, right there. I should arrest you for disturbing the peace.”
“I…”
“I should have known you were connected to everything that’s been going on around here lately.”
“You’ve got it all wrong.”
“Is this what you’ve become now, Hanagan? Looking up to your step daddy for guidance? Fighting in the street late at night? You’re more of a waster than I ever even thought.”
Fuckingstep daddy.
“Chief, I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t talk about me that way. I haven’t done anything wrong. I’ve done nothing that you can arrest me for. I’d just like to go home.”
Sutton laughed roughly. “Despite what you and your biker friends think, y’all can’t do what you like in my town. You do what I tell you. And right now, you’re going to get in the back of my car so we can have a little civilized chat. You got that?”
Tate reached up to scratch his chest hard, immediately causing the ruffling of the material to make way too much noise for either of us to be able to hear anything. My face creased up as I pulled it away quickly, hovering it over my ear as I waited for him to take his hand from it, but he never did. He didn't once stop scratching at his damn chest.
“He’s fading us out,” Slater warned, sitting upright again and positioning his hand over the key in the ignition. “He’s going dark, Drew.”
“Which means he’s about to do something really fucking stupid,” I growled back, both hands moving to the door handle as I got ready to jump out.
Just like that, it all happened quickly again. One minute Tate was toe-to-toe with the chief of police, the next, Sutton had taken a punch to the jaw and Tate was running.
He was running in the opposite direction of us, shoutingdown into the mic on his chest. “Get the cut. Get the fucking cut! There’s something on there you need to see.”
Then his wires were ripped off and thrown to the ground, the air filling with shrieking sirens again as Sutton mowed Tate into a corner and all the plans and promises I’d made to Ayda suddenly went to shit.
My head hit the dashboard hard as my shaking hands gripped hold of it and I roared as loudly as I could.
“FUCKINGkids!”
Chapter Fifteen
Ayda
It was the longest night of my life. From the moment Tate was ushered out the door, I found myself pacing while everyone else went about their business as usual. Only Deeks seemed to understand my agitation, and he was sitting on a stool at the bar, nursing a beer as he watched me walk from one side of the room to the other.
No matter how many times I looked at the clock, the hands didn’t seem to be moving. They barely inched to the next number on every pass, until it felt as though it was going backward.
“Why haven’t we heard anything yet?” I demanded, stopping and spinning to face Deeks. He froze, his beer halfway up to his mouth, his eyes fixed on me like I was a wild animal about to pounce. He wasn’t that far off the mark. The uncertainty that bounced around inside of me was almost too much for one person to deal with. I was beginning to understand why people put their fists through walls. The energy that was building up inside of me had nowhere to go.
“Just sit down and drink a beer. You’re not helping matters.”
“Drinking a beer isn’t going to help anything, Deeks. Should I call them? Kenny always has his phone on him,right? Maybe I could call him and he could give me an update or something?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“You don’t know what the hell’s going on, Ayda. Just give them time to get it done.”
“But—” The syllable had barely finished when my phone started singing to me from my back pocket. Hopping forward and twisting awkwardly, I slipped my hand inside and dragged it free, sliding the bar over the bottom of the screen as quickly as I could before finally getting a good enough grip on it to hold it to my ear.
“This is Ayda.”
“Ah, Miss Hanagan, I knew it was only a matter of time until I was calling you in this capacity.”
My heart stopped in my throat as I froze on the spot. I would know Sutton’s voice anywhere. His forced twang made him sound like a Wyatt Earp wannabe. It was the one thing that drove me crazy about him, even when we got along.
