Page 10 of Clubs

Tyler glared at me and sighed. Then, after reaching into his briefcase and pulling out a folder, Tyler slid a photo across the table. A pretty girl. Blonde hair, brown eyes, pale skin. Not someone I recognized. “You know who this is?”

“I can say with absolute certainty that I do not. But basic deduction skills tell me this is probably the girl you found behind my bar.”

Clenching his jaw, Tyler ran a hand down his beard. “And that’s your response? No remorse?”

“Jesus Christ. Look, if she’s dead, I feel bad for whoever’s missing her. But no, I don’t feel remorseful, because I didn’t fucking kill her. I don’t even recognize her.”

“So she has never been into your bar?”

That, I couldn’t say with certainty. I knew she wasn’t a member. The members, I all knew by name and by face. This girl? She wasn’t ringing any bells.

But that didn’t mean that she had never been inside. It was possible somebody else had escorted her. If I had her smell, I could confirm whether she had been there while I had been there. Smells, I rarely forgot. Those stuck out clearer in my mind than physical appearances.

But I knew enough about this line of work to see what he was doing. He wanted me to trip. He wanted me to say that she had never been in my bar, then show me proof that she had been. “Not that I can clearly remember. But I can check my guest book. She’d be in it if she’d been inside at any point.”

“You gonna make me get a warrant for that?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but the door swung open again. “We absolutely will.”

A woman in her early forties entered the room, wearing a black jacket and slacks with a white button up underneath. Her hair was in a slicked back ponytail, blonde waves descending to the middle of her spine. She wore a thin dusting of makeup, but nothing fancy, with a pair of glasses. She looked sharp, if a little tired.

“Ashley Montgomery. I’m Declan’s attorney, and he will now execute his right to remain silent.” She took the empty metal seat beside me. “So, let’s get this over with, shall we?”

Tyler looked at her, then at me, and laughed. “Only guilty men lawyer up this fast.”

“Or smart men.” Ashley relaxed in her seat and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Especially in a case like this. One where the cops have an obvious vendetta against someone who’s never committed a crime.”

Tracing his tongue along his teeth, Tyler gave a witty, sarcastic half-smile. “Let me grab you something to drink, Miss Montgomery. I’ll be back in a moment.”

Once he was out of sight, and the door shut behind him, Ashley turned to me. “You say nothing. And you sit the hell back. Stop giving him those ‘I’m the alpha’ eyes. You’re going to get your smart ass thrown in jail if you don’t swallow your pride and shut the hell up.”

Fair enough. My mouth had gotten me in trouble more than once. I lifted my thumb and forefinger before my lips and twisted, as if turning a key.

“Good.” She turned back to the table, then set her eyes on the photo. “You don’t recognize her?”

I shook my head.

Ashley nodded. “Good. That’s good. As long as you have nothing to do with this, we’ll get this thrown out.”

“Did Emory call you?”

“I didn’t catch her name. Saw her outside though. Pretty redhead?”

Huh. Brooke. I wished I could say I wasn’t surprised, but I had a hard time figuring out how, exactly, Brooke felt about me. She wasn’t on the list of people I would count on bailing me out or finding me a lawyer in the middle of the night. But she had come through for me after all.

* * *

After a few long hours, they wound up letting me go. And who was waiting in the parking lot? The pretty redhead who’d gotten me the attorney. Apparently, she’d already paid the fee, because as soon as we walked outside, Ashley told me she wasn’t concerned about me going away for this. as long as no evidence was attached to me. Just to get used to saying, “I want to speak with my lawyer.”

As I thanked her and said my goodbyes, Brooke rounded the corner in a sprint. There were very few times had I seen Brooke sprint, especially with a smile like that. When she practically leaped into me, heat gathered in my chest.

Wrapping my arms around her waist, I whispered into her ear, “Thank you.”

She kissed my cheek. “You would’ve done the same for me.”

I would have, but that wasn’t the point.

A lot of the time, it was hard to tell if Brooke cared about me at all. She was the center of every one of my days. And she’d said I was the center of hers, but I was never sure how much I believed that. How much I could believe that.

---