Page 103 of Snared Rider

Chapter Twenty-Six

Comingout of my recollection of that day, the day he left me high and dry without an explanation, I double blink at him. Prison? He put me through hell because he was looking at doing time in prison?

I try—and fail—to compute his words. Nothing is penetrating or making sense. I trawl back through the vaults of my mind, trying to recall any hint about Logan potentially going inside and come up empty. I have absolutely no memory of anything along those lines happening, and I would remember. That weekend is seared into my brain.

Logan looks annoyed—at himself or me I don’t know. Then, he seizes my arm and pulls me towards his office.

“What’re you doing?” I demand.

“I need to explain, but I’m not doing it in the corridor. There are too many nosey fucks in this place.”

He’s not wrong. Dean listened into two of my conversations last night, the second of which ended with him and Logan scrapping like teenage boys.

So, I let him steer me into his office.

He closes the door behind us but I remain close to it, just in case I need to make a quick exit. Logan, for his part, moves into the room and starts pacing like a caged animal.

His nervous energy puts me on edge, so I focus on the room. His office isn’t how I imagined it would look. There is a large wooden desk, a filing cabinet, several shelves filled with box files and a sofa pushed against the far wall. It’s almost too corporate; dressed in leather and denim Logan seems out of place.

The silence lingers between us, uncomfortably so. After a couple of minutes, when he doesn’t speak, I do.

“So, are you going to explain?”

He shoots me a look, even as he continues to wear a hole in the carpet as he moves back and forth.

“Beth, this can’t go any further than us. It’s Club shit. Fuck, I shouldn’t have even mentioned it in the first place, but I need you to know what happened. You deserve to know.” He stares at me, weighing up his words before he says, “I’m trusting you here; you can’t let anyone know that I told you this. Derek’ll kick my arse and take my kutte if he finds out I’ve spilt this shit.”

Whoa.

I try not to let my anxiety show at his statement, but I’m filled with dread. What the hell is he going to tell me?

Despite the fear, I steel myself and demand, “Start talking.”

Nervous energy rushes through me at the realisation I’m about to get the answers I’ve been looking for since the day he dumped me.

“The weekend of your birthday—I was gone the whole time, do you remember?”

“Yeah, Logan, I remember.” My voice holds more than a hint of censure.

“When I left you that morning after we stayed in the house, I went on a Club run. It was supposed to be simple. There and back in a couple hours, no dicking about. It didn’t go down like that. The police stopped me on the way back. I was carrying a handgun.” His fingers go into his hair and I see the tightness in his body as he recalls past events—clearly, traumatic past events. “You get caught with a firearm, you’re looking at five years inside—minimum. Given who I am, the links to the Club, my solicitor said the police would likely throw the book at me.” He stops pacing and drops his hands to his hips. “No way in hell was I taking you on that journey with me. You were twenty, Beth. You had a life to lead.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. The pieces of the puzzle are falling into place, although I don’t like where they’re falling. Did he really throw away the start of something good, a relationship that would have been consuming, passionate and perfect because of some sense of selfless pride?

“Five years…” I do a quick mental calculation, which is a feat given how foggy my brain is right now. “I would have been twenty-five years old, Logan. We still could have had a life. A good life.”

He shakes his head.

“Kingsley police were trying to find a way to end the Club, to get us out of town. It wasn’t about the gun charge. Five years was nothing for them. They wanted the Club gone—permanently. That meant hitting us with more. With my name, I was fucked, babe. They were never letting me go. They wanted to say they put a Harlow behind bars for life, and they were determined to do it. They came at me, trying to make anything they could stick. They were digging up charges faster than the Club could bury them: assault, theft, murder… They threw the book at us—at me.”

My mind is stuck on one word and one word only.

Murder.

Shit.

My stomach fills with ice. I know the Saxons aren’t the Breakfast Club, but knowing the police thought they could get murder charges to stick makes my body recoil.

Logan notices and without invitation he comes to me. His hands cup my face, forcing my gaze to meet his. I tremble, not out of fear, although I’m not sure what. I’ve known Logan my entire life. Do I think he’s killed people? I don’t know. I don’t want to know.

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