Page 66 of Dark Horse

“Shut up, and let’s get out to the car so I can read you your rights.” He tugs on my arm and drags me toward him, shuffling us both across to the door.

I look back at Hayley, who has a helpless look on her face.

“What can I do?” she calls after me.

“Call Grant. Or Hazel if he doesn’t answer. Whoever you can get a hold of,” I call back to her.

As he walks me to the car and I watch the crowd flood out onto the streets, dispersing to other bars and back to their cars, I curse my luck. It would be the first night I start doing well again that creates a problem likethis for me.

Two hours later,once I’ve been read my rights, driven across town, and booked into the local jail, I see a familiar face. Grant.

He’s furious. It’s written all over his face, and I’m not sure if I even want to get up and walk over to him. I’m not ready for a lecture about how I never should have done those shots, how he warned me, how he told me exactly what he knew the cops would tell me if I kept it up, or how I’ve made my bed and now I’ve got to lie in it. Mostly because I’ve already spent the last one hundred and twenty minutes doing just that, then trying not to cry over it, then lamenting that I’m dressed in shorts and a lace corset when the entire room is a freezing cold concrete box, and then restarting the cycle of self-loathing. I’m going to need to talk to my doctor about upping my antidepressant and anxiety meds whenever I manage to get out of here. Maybe find a new therapist. Because clearly, I’m fucking up left and right.

Tears start to form in my eyes when they buzz the door open for me, but Grant doesn’t say a word. He just stoically escorts me through the corridors and out the double doors to the parking lot where my truck is waiting. That’s when they nearly fall. I’m grateful to see Jesse’s old pickup. I just wish he was here.

If it wasn’t the middle of the night, I’d take it tearing down a backroad with the music turned up to a hundred while I screamed the words at the top of my lungs. I could use the escape. But I’m pretty sure that would just lead me right back here, and I’m in enough trouble already.

Grant opens the door when we get there and holds his hand out to help me climb into the passenger seat. The silence is killing me by the time he rounds the front of the car and gets in.

“Aren’t you going to say anything? Say I told you so?” I ask as I run my fingers along the edge of the worn doorpanel.

“The only thing I’m planning to do is put my lawyers on every single one of those fucking cops for the way they handled you. The way that fucker grabbed you off the bar; he’ll be lucky if I don’t fucking tear his throat out tonight myself.” His tone is low and lethal as he pulls out of the parking lot.

“Wait. Who told you what he did? Hayley?” I sniffle, trying not to let any tears fall. “I’m sorry she called you. I didn’t know who else to call besides you or Hazel.”

“She didn’t call me. My brother did.”

“Ramsey?”

“Levi.”

“Levi?” I feel like we’re beating around a bush here.

“Levi saw what happened and called me. I came as soon as I could, but they insisted on drawing every last damn step of your release out like it was a fucking ceremony.”

“How? He wasn’t at the bar. Are there videos? Did someone post them?” I’m so confused, and now I’m worried the bar will be at the center of a notorious social media scandal.

“I have cameras in the bar.” He says it nonchalantly, but it hits me like a ton of bricks.

“You have cameras in the bar?” I swivel myself to face him, and my jaw drops. I knew he took his role a little too seriously, but literally keeping an eye on me remotely was a bridge too far. Even as upset as I am about everything else, maybe worse for it.

“Yes, I have cameras in the bar.” He glances over at me like he’s clocking my reaction. “Don’t look at me like that. You wouldn’t get security, so I had to make sure someone was covering things.”

“Who is someone?”

“They’re wired to the main security room at the Avarice. My staff watches them.”

“Your staff watches meevery day?”

“Every night, technically.”

“Oh my god! It is not the time for exacting language.” I huff in irritation.

“Before you get too far into your self-righteous indignation there, think for a moment about the fact that that footage is probably exactly what’s going to save you in this scenario. They can toss the body cam footage, take him at his word. But they can’t get rid of the recording we have.”

The man has a point. Not to mention I might still be sitting in the jail cell right now if it wasn’t for the footage. But I still wish he’d been transparent about it.

“You still could have told me.”

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