Page 96 of Prohibited

Fuck. Ryan resisted the urge to grit his teeth. “I’ve never been a gardener’s apprentice.”

Never kissed her under the magnolia tree. Never felt her lips graze his neck behind the rose bushes. Never picked her up, set her on the potting bench in the shed and knelt before her, a sacrifice to a goddess.

“You are, frankly, starting to irritate me.” Roberts straightened up and walked slowly into a circle. Anger was becoming apparent on his face. “I feel that I’m being generous. But if you prefer to make things difficult for me, I assure you I will make things difficult for you.”

Ryan laughed. He couldn’t help it and he didn’t want to, either. This prissy copper could flay him alive and he still would never talk. Evelyn didn’t want to be found and he wasn’t going to give her up. Especially to a man who may or may not have been in league with Walter Stanley. Stanley likely actively wanted her dead by now. If he knew that they had her, or at least suspected, then he had set fire to that building knowing she may have been there and hadn’t cared at all.

Without warning, the copper hauled off and punched him across the face. Ryan felt the inside of his cheek split against his teeth, and the hot, metallic taste of blood was suddenly filling his mouth. He gritted his teeth and then spit blood onto the concrete floor.

“Allow me to continue refreshing your memory,” the copper said, a little out of breath. And then he hit him again. And again. And again, until Ryan’s brain felt rattled and his face was battered, radiating pain into his scalp and down into his neck, his mouth full of blood. Pain exploded in his nose and he felt blood erupt from his nostrils, drip over his lips. Dazed, he looked down into his lap and saw huge, black drops of blood on his khaki trousers.

Then he looked up at the Lieutenant, who was panting, blonde hair out of place. “Did that loosen anything for you, Lockwood?”

Ryan spit another big mouthful of blood on the ground.

“Fuck you,” was all he could muster.

The Lieutenant punched him again, and this time the blow knocked one of his molars across his tongue. The break made him grunt and fury rose in him as he spit the tooth out onto the concrete. “Fuck,” he said, staring at the white peeking through the dressing of bloody spit. He looked up at the Lieutenant and spit another mouthful of blood at him, red globs of red landing on his pristine white shirt and his blue trousers.

The Lieutenant moved forward, swift as a snake, and grabbed Ryan by the throat so hard that it completely cut off his air supply. The copper was losing his composure.

“I warn you, Lockwood,” said the Lieutenant, breathing hard. “I warn you for the last time. Tell me where she is.”

“Fuck. You,” Ryan rasped. He flexed his hands, feeling the bite of the cuffs. Helpless, impotent rage boiled through him, nearly choking him with the heat of it.

The Lieutenant’s expression changed. The anger subsided and it was, instead, replaced by a cold determination. Subtle, but it was enough to cause Ryan’s belly to prickle. The Lieutenant turned away and addressed the two men awaiting his command. Ryan did his best to regain his breath without desperately choking for it.

“Rice. Uncuff one of his hands. Baker, move the table here and hold the lamp.”

Chapter thirty-three

Evie

“I think you should wait in the car,” Evie said, wishing she had some lipstick or something to put on. She hastily tried to make herself look as presentable as possible before they left the cabin, stockings and all, but she probably looked dreadful. Saoirse had given her a small touch of perfume, a pair of gloves, a hat, and a handbag that had belonged to her mother. Evie didn’t look the most fashionable, but at least she looked put together.

“I’ll come in,” Saoirse said in a voice that brooked no argument.

“I was thinking that if something– if something were to go wrong,” Evie said. “You could alert the others. And… there’s a lieutenant on the Force who is a friend of my father’s. He’s been after me for years and I’ve always turned him down.” She swallowed hard. “I thought that if I go in alone, I can do… whatever it takes to get them out.”

Saoirse took in a deep breath through her nose and let it out. They were parked a block away from the jail, sitting in the dark while they formulated their plan of action.

“I don’t like it,” Saoirse said, reluctantly. “But you do have a point.”

“Stay here,” Evie said. Her heart jumped in her chest when she put her hand on the door handle and opened it. It was a hot, sticky night that made her wish she wasn’t wearing anything.

“If you aren’t back in half an hour, I’m coming in,” Saoirse said. Evie couldn’t see her expression standing outside the car, but she could see how her hands tightened on the steering wheel of the car. “Good luck.”

“Thank you,” Evie said, wishing she didn’t need it. Roberts might not even be in tonight, but she would call him if she had to. She was going to pull every string she had to get them out.

Slowly, she shut the door of the car and walked down the road toward the police station with a backward glance at Saoirse. The sound of her heels clicking against the pavement rattled her nerves and turned her spine to jelly.

You’re not doing anything wrong, she reminded herself. You haven’t done anything wrong. There wasn’t anything illegal about what she was planning to do. She was just going to go in and explain that there had been some kind of mistake. So why did she feel like she was putting herself in the way of danger?

Perhaps because she was certain that Walter was behind this. She knew it. She had known it from the moment Ryan had told her so confidently that one of their people was setting them up with one of Walter’s guys. Isn’t thatexactly what had happened with the situation with Tommy?

He was too blinded by his desire to strike at Walter Stanley.

And Walter’s connection with the police force went deeper than she had originally thought. It was true that Roberts had introduced her to Walter, but it didn’t occur to her that Walter might have had the influence to have them arrested on his say-so.

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