Page 36 of Broken Halo

After months of them trying to pin me, they found out it was my Uncle Dustin, who’s almost as big of a douchebag as my own father, and I was in the clear. By that time, Ellie was long gone attending Juilliard, and I’d made plans to leave for Stanford.

“You digging up bones, boy?”

I take a step closer and don’t miss it when his eyes flare. “You were buddies with Kipp and Kipp hated me. Seeing from all the articles I pulled on you, you’re about as straight and narrow as your hound’s back leg. It seems you’ve spent a lot of your career massaging the outcome of investigations to your liking … or the liking of your multi-millionaire friends. You’ve got nothing on the line and I promise not to rat you out if you tell me what I want to know.”

“You knocked-up Kipp’s daughter. You thought he wouldn’t do everything he could to keep you away?”

“What did Kipp do?” I demand. “Why wouldn’t she at least speak the truth to clear my name on the ephedrine purchases? She was my only alibi.”

“I don’t have to tell you shit.”

I figured it would go this way. I reach inside the breast pocket of my suit jacket and produce the ammunition I knew I’d need. “Two years ago, you testified on the stand that a certain crime scene was contaminated. So contaminated that the shithead’s case was dismissed on all charges for battery and armed robbery. That shithead is a second cousin to a barmaid two counties over who you regularly bang. My PI interviewed two of your deputies who corroborated that the scene was, in fact, not contaminated. They were instructed by you to look the other way.”

His eyes widen and he works his jaw, rubbing his thin, crusty lips together.

“Right. You’ve been out of the game for almost a year now, but I’m pretty sure you know it’s been a federal crime to lie under oath, since … let me think,” I take a breath, “oh yeah. For-fucking-ever.”

He takes the paper with the written statements on it from his incredibly disgruntled deputies. Disdain bleeds into his features like a bad rash and he angles his eyes to mine. “You did this?”

I shake my head. “No. You did this all on your own. My PI didn’t even have to work hard to find this, who knows what else there is if we dig a little deeper. Surprise, Logan—the law is mightier and higher than your self-satisfying ego.”

“Dammit,” he hisses under his breath.

“I also know from digging around that your friends who are bigger and more important than you ever were, like Kipp Montgomery himself, have distanced themselves from you after your career in law enforcement took a nosedive because of your shady behavior. No one’s going to come to your defense. Unless you want me to hand this over to the DA, you’d be wise to make me your new best friend—you do not want me as your enemy.”

His wrinkly fist tightens and the evidence I have against him crinkles into a ball.

I give him a fake smile. “Checkmate, asshole. Tell me everything about Ellie Montgomery and what went down ten years ago.”

He shakes his head and exhales. “Everyone thought you were in on the meth lab, we just didn’t have the evidence to prove it. Kipp’s baby girl gave you your alibi, but Kipp threatened her to keep her mouth shut. You’re lucky your ass didn’t land in jail for statutory rape once Kipp found out you two were together when she was seventeen.”

Ellie was eighteen when I got her pregnant. I had no clue Kipp knew we were together a couple months before her birthday. Fuck. Seventeen might’ve been the age of consent, but I was twenty-two, more than three years older than her. I didn’t know it then but I know the law now and he’s right. I could’ve been charged, and even though my life has had its shit moments, it would’ve been a whole lot worse sitting in prison for statutory rape.

He keeps talking and it all comes together. “I don’t know why—she’s a Montgomery and could’ve caught any boy in North Texas—but she retracted your alibi and kept her mouth shut when we informed her of the fact you’d rot in prison for who knows how long since you broke the age of consent law. Never seen a girl so messed up over some punk-ass kid. She wouldn’t utter another word and just clung to her sister.”

Fuck. I was even stupider than I gave myself credit for. I cut her out of my life completely.

My phone vibrates in my pocket and I pull it out and look to the screen. Charlie.

I ignore it and look back to Logan. “What else?”

His forehead wrinkles deeper. “What do you mean what else? You were never charged. That girl saved your ass. You would’ve been labeled a pedophile for life. Do you know what happens to them in prison?”

“I became a defense attorney for the sheer fact your sorry ass tried to pin false charges on me. I’ve been working in the legal system for years—I know what they do to everyone in prison.”

He shrugs like he doesn’t give a shit. He should because I’ve got dirt on him I could kick up at a moment’s notice.

I nod to the balled-up evidence. “Keep that for your scrapbook, I’ve got a whole file on you.”

Turning to jog down the stairs and back to my car, I hear him call, “How do I know you won’t use it on me?”

I open my door and look back one more time to the worthless piece of shit who fucked with my life like it was a game. “You don’t.”

I don’t give him anymore of my time or mind space. I’ve got shit to figure out.

The woman I cut out of my life ten years ago saved mine—and I was clueless. I don’t even know where to go from here.

I pull up my text thread to Jen.

---