Page 42 of Ride or Dies

They both shook their heads, but it was mostly Becca I was watching. I didn’t really trust her, but I would definitely take her word over Randall’s any day.

“One more question,” I said, keeping my eyes on Becca. “I read some of your other articles. You seemed to have a lot of personal information about Evie’s past. How’d you get that when no other reporter has?”

“No one else wanted to look deeper,” Becca said. “They just wanted to pretend she was some perfect little princess, above us all.”

“She has a source,” Randall blurted out. “I might’ve told her about the kiss, but that’s all. Evelyn never told me anything about where she was from. Becca’s the one who knew she came to Bedford in the first place, because someone told her.”

“Who?” Levi asked.

“I don’t know.” Becca raised her hands in surrender. “I swear. Right after I wrote my first negative piece about Evelyn, I got an anonymous email saying that I should start looking into her past. Every couple weeks, I’d get another one with some other bit of information. They never said who they were, and I never tried to find them.”

“You didn’t want to risk them not giving you anything else,” Mason said.

“Exactly,” Becca admitted. “But I promise I’m done with that now. Randy and I will go back to Nashville, and you’ll never have to hear from us again.”

“You have two hours to get out of Kentucky,” Levi said. “And I don’t ever want to see you anywhere near Evie again. I don’t care if you’re in the same store. You stay away from her.”

Becca and Randall both nodded, and Levi turned to Mason and me.

“Let’s get back to our girl and tell her what we know.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Evie

As soon as the guys left me alone in Tucker’s bedroom, I grabbed my phone and saw my missed calls and texts from Jenna. Pulling up the message thread, I quickly typed out a response, letting her know that Mason and Levi had shown me the article and that they were on their way to confront Becca James.

It didn’t take long for her to reply.

I’m surprised you didn’t go with them.

I rolled my eyes. I wanted to but your brothers said no. Something about how I’m safer here.

Idiots. If I’d known they were just going to leave you at the clubhouse, I never would’ve asked them to protect you.

Even though I’m pissed that they left me behind, I can’t really regret agreeing to them watching out for me, because if they hadn’t, that one kiss from Levi was probably all I ever would’ve gotten from them.

Still, that didn’t mean I wanted to sit on my ass all day and wait for them to come back and tell me what happened.

I’m gonna go stir-crazy if I have to sit around here all day by myself.

I knew I wasn’t technically alone, and I could’ve gone out and talked to whoever else was here, but I’d seen the way the other women here looked at me. Like I was infringing on their territory. Lara had been nice, but I didn’t know if she was here. As for the other members of the MC, I had no idea what the Bradshaws had told them about me, so if I tried to strike up a conversation, they might think I was fair game. I didn’t think they’d hurt me, but I also didn’t want to make things awkward.

Let’s go to Rocky’s.

I grinned. I knew I’d be able to count on my friend. I’m gonna need a ride.

Figure out how to get to the road and I’ll be waiting.

Years of sneaking around my mom made it easier than it probably should have been to sneak out of the clubhouse and meet Jenna at her car. I made a mental note to tell the guys that they didn’t have the best security, and then I put them out of my mind. Too much had been going on in the past couple weeks and I needed a break.

It was still fairly early, so Rocky’s wasn’t too full. Since we had our pick of places to sit, Jenna and I chose a table near enough to the bar that getting drinks wouldn’t be an issue, but not so close that when things picked up we’d have people bumping into our table while they were trying to order.

“Hey, ladies.” RJ smiled widely as we leaned on the bar. “Good to see you both. What can I get for you?”

We stuck with food and a beer for each of us rather than anything harder, then headed to the table. As we settled there to wait for RJ to bring us our food, movement on the stage caught our attention. Clayton scanned the audience as he sat on the stool and adjusted the microphone, his expression hardening for a moment when he saw me. The look vanished quickly, but I knew I hadn’t imagined it. I gave him what I hoped was a polite smile before turning to Jenna.

“So…” Jenna’s eyes sparkled. “Do you have something to tell me?”

---