Page 63 of A Love So Hard

“We have her in custody, ma’am. I just need to go over things with you one more time.” Gretchen nodded her head. The man glanced around and then ordered us all out. “You all can wait out in the hall while I speak to Ms. Tierny.”

“That’s not going to happen,” my wife snapped.

“Excuse me?” The detective responded.

“This girl just lost her baby, my grandbaby, and we are still waiting to hear news about my son who is currently in surgery.”

“Your son is Tobias Brothers?” The man asked as he glanced around at the other people in the room.

“Yes, and we are all family so don’t even think about dismissing anyone.”

“Shit,” I heard him hiss under his breath. He wasn’t stupid. We might not wear the patch of the one percent anymore, but our club’s history was still marked in the eyes of the law around these parts. They all knew what we’d pulled ourselves up from. They also weren’t stupid enough to think we wouldn’t be seeking our own club justice for this. He pulled up a chair, and then took a tablet out of the bag hanging from his shoulder that I was just now noticing.

“Okay, let’s start from the beginning. You said this woman had been following you around?”

Gretchen shook her head. “She wasn’t following me. It was Toby. She’d gotten it in her head that he was going to be hers.” Her nose scrunched up in distaste. He had been with her once before, at the club.”

The detective threw a look over his shoulder at the men standing at his back. “The Aces High Motorcycle Club?” He asked for confirmation.

“Yeah, she was one of their whores,” Gretchen insisted.

“A hang around who fucks the men when it pleases them,” Merc insisted. “Not paid for services, and not against her will.” The clarification was important when you started using the word whore with local law enforcement.

The man nodded. He knew. I was pretty sure he was part of the local Blue Ride Chapter. Cop bikers. From what I understood they had their own form of groupie bitches that hung around their place too. “You mentioned she followed Toby around,” the man prompted.

“It’s been months,” she whined. “It started when Toby and I began dating. I didn’t want to get involved with him then because of,” she glanced at Ever and offered her a sad smile. “I met him when he was there about the tattoos,” she informed Ever.

“I know that,” Ever returned with her own hint of a smile.

“Tattoos?” The detective questioned.

“We work at Permanent Marks,” Gretchen informed him. “Ever tattoos there and I work the front desk. Toby is her brother.”

The detective glanced at my daughter appreciatively and then moved his eyes back to Gretchen. “Why didn’t you want to date him?”

“That’s a family matter,” Ever stated. “It has nothing to do with this. It was about me.”

“Still,” the man prompted.

“I was angry at my brother then. We’ve since reconciled. I’m guessing Gretchen was feeling a bit disloyal to me when she took a liking to my brother. She shouldn’t have felt that way. My brother is a charmer, but he’s also a good man.”

Gretchen’s breath hitched with Ever’s words. “We had gone out a handful of times, and I liked spending time with him,” she admitted with a blush on her freckled cheeks. “Then we were coming out of the movies one night and this woman was standing there by his motorcycle, waiting for us. She started making claims that Toby was hers and she simply didn’t mind sharing, but that it was time for him to come home to her now, because I’d had my turn.”

Lucy’s gasp of surprise caught everyone’s attention. “When was that?”

“About six months ago, I guess,” Gretchen answered.

“Six months,” Lucy whispered back. “She’s been following him around and causing trouble that long? I thought it was something new.” Her eyes found mine and I saw the despair in them. I knew what she was feeling, because it was hitting me square in the chest too. We should have known this was going on. He hadn’t told anyone until it was so much that he had no choice but to tell them.

“What happened after that?” The detective asked Gretchen.

“We broke up for a while, but then he sweet talked his way back into my life. He told me about how he had been with Gretchen once, what her purpose was at the clubhouse, and that she was just crazy because he wouldn’t be with her. We spent that night together, making up.” The furious blush on her cheek that wasn’t ravaged by the road rash made me wonder how uncomfortable that must have made the side that was hurt.

“The next day, she saw us out together and tried to pull the same shit. Only this time, she must not have been following him that night. She really did accidentally run into us that day. She tried to tell me she had been fucking him all night long, and asked how I enjoyed her sloppy seconds. I laughed at her, which pissed her off in pretty serious way. I knew she was lying because I’d been with Toby all night.” She was busy picking non existent lint from the blanket covering her legs. “After that, we would see her places she had no business being. A few times it was outside Permanent Marks. Sometimes it would be when we were walking through the grocery store. She didn’t approach us again, but she was always there. Most of the time it looked like she was legitimately there, you know. So, we couldn’t really say something to anyone about the fact that she happened to be shopping in the same store when she had a cart full of crap. We would see her at a club, but she would be dancing with someone. I thought it was just me going nuts, jealousy, or something.” She shook her head. “Then Toby told me he’d seen her car following him one day a couple months ago.”

“I’ve seen her outside of our house whenever he’s been around the past few weeks. At first, I thought I was seeing things too. But she was just there earlier this week. I didn’t even know Toby was home, but I saw her outside of my bedroom window, and then when she realized someone had caught her there, she ran off,” Lucy informed him. “What I need to know is what happened today.”

The man took a deep breathe, glanced around at everyone in the room, and then explained what witnesses had told the police. “Seneca Davis was seen standing on the corner near the accident site talking to herself. A woman who had been waiting on a friend to come out of a shop overheard her saying something about how ‘He is mine. He has always been mine. We’ll be together again. This is the only way.’ It was about that time that Mr. Brother’s motorcycle came riding down the street. Seneca took the bottle she’d been drinking out of and tossed it at just the right moment. Toby lost control and they went down, slid for a bit. Ms. Tierny was able to get free of the wreckage, but Toby’s leg was pinned under the bike.”

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