Page 116 of Snitches and Serpents

A low chuckle rolls from my chest, and I give Derrik a nod of acknowledgement. “You’re good, I’ll give you that. Coming in here, dripping with confidence, and just laying it all out like it’s an already open and shut case. I’m sure it has worked on lots of nervous lowlifes.”

He says nothing, looking as if he’s caught between being pleased with my praise and angry that I’m not responding the way he expected me to.

“But you see, here’s what you’re missing.” I sit forward and brace my forearms on the table so that I can truly lock eyes with him when I say, “You don’t actually have anything.”

“Of course I do. I have you and Elle with a bag of drugs.”

Pain slashes through my heart at the mention of her name, and it takes all of my willpower to stop it from showing on my face.

“No, you don’t,” I reply instead, keeping my shredded heart firmly locked away. “Here’s what you have. You found two college students, who had snuck away from a charity event, about to have sex in a deserted room. We had no idea that there was a bag of drugs hidden in there.”

“Of course you did! You brought it.”

“Do you have any proof of that?”

He grips the pen again, squeezing it hard. Anger burns in his gray eyes. But he doesn’t respond. Because he knows that I’m right.

There is nothing tying us to that bag. It was hidden behind some chairs in the corner. We weren’t touching it or even moving towards it when they burst through the door. I was on the other side of the room, three seconds away from fucking Elle hard against the wall.

Another stab of pain sears through my heart.

Fuck, I can’t believe that I fell for it. That I fell for her. I had finally started to admit to myself that I love Elle Summers. And then she goes and does that. Fucking rat. I should’ve known that it was a setup. I should’ve known that she was always going to betray me.

Across the table, Payne lets out a grunt that sounds like equal parts frustration and grudging respect. “This really isn’t your first rodeo, huh?”

I just flash him a sharp smile in reply. Then I lean back in my chair once more, making an effort to look as calm and relaxed as possible.

“Well, then I suppose I will skip all the half-truths and get right to the point,” Payne says. “I’m willing to make you a deal.”

“What kind of deal?”

“I will let you walk out of here a free man. Today. No charges. No record of any wrongdoing. Nothing. If you testify that you personally saw Rob Bracken hand that bag of drugs to Elle and say that you personally heard Bracken tell her to sell drugs at that charity event.”

My heart jolts violently behind my ribs, and it takes everything I have to keep the shock from my face. He wants me to pin it on Elle? But I thought she was his informant.

Confusion and wariness swirl inside me.

“Like I said, I’m not a snitch,” I reply, hedging a little since I’m no longer sure what’s going on here. “And as we have just established, you don’t have any proof that the drugs are in any way connected to me.”

“Unless I have a sworn statement from a direct eyewitness.”

My heart stalls. “What?”

He smiles. It’s a mocking, victorious sort of smile. “I have just offered Elle this exact deal. If she testifies that she saw Bracken give you the drugs, she will be released without charges.”

Everything inside my head goes deafeningly silent. And it is in that silence that I realize with shocking clarity that I was wrong.

Elle was arrested too. She is sitting in a room somewhere down the hall, facing the same drug charges and the same ruthless interrogation as I am.

Which means that this wasn’t a setup.

She didn’t offer to pay off my debt or offer to work for Bracken simply to get me in the same room as a bag of drugs. She wasn’t out for revenge. She did it solely out of love.

My lungs constrict.

Fuck. What have I done? I was so hurt, so fucking devastated, by the thought that she had betrayed me that I couldn’t think straight. All I could feel was that searing pain in my chest. I shouldn’t have doubted her.

But I did.

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