Page 34 of T-Bone
I rolled my eyes even though I felt more relaxed, easier than I felt yesterday. I refused to examine that too much and instead flipped him the bird. “Where is everybody?”
“Slate’s in the office with Diesel and Rocky.”
I nodded and made my way to the office, Falcon followed close behind me. Inside the office, Slate leaned back in his chair, his gaze focused on the screens on the desk while Rocky sat further back with his eyes on the monitors fixed to the wall. “What’s up?”
“Just tracking the Ghost Riders movements to see what the fuck they’re up to,” Slate finally answered. His eyes swung to mine with a tired smile. “The answer is not fucking much.”
I sighed. “That’s not completely true,” I answered and grabbed a chair, dropping down in it with a heavy sigh before I slowly revealed some of what Faith and I had learned.
“They were following you?”
I nodded. “In a sedan at first that Faith clocked. Thank fuck she did because we were close to the address and would’ve led them right there.” As much as I didn’t like trusting anyone but my brothers, Faith’s cop skills had so far proven useful.
“So where the fuck have you been?” Rocky asked the question, a hint of amusement in his eyes.
“We bunked at a motel, hoping we could lose them and get to the cabin the next day.” I told them about breakfast at the diner and Faith’s run-in with Blade. “So we decided to come back to Steel City. And to Ashley’s place.”
“What the fuck?” Pike’s voice sounded behind me, loud, angry and a little bit hungover.
Diesel stood behind him, his hand rested on Pike’s shoulder. “Let’s hear what he found.”
I nodded. “Faith figured they wouldn’t expect us to go there so we parked a few blocks away and entered through the back. All of Ash’s electronics were gone,” I finally admitted. “Laptop. Phone. Flash drives. All gone.”
“Definitely not an angry ex,” Pike muttered.
I nodded. “Faith thinks that whoever actually killed her, was looking for something that she refused to give them. Namely the location of the little girl.”
Pike smashed his fist on the table and let out an anguished grunt. “Fucking Ashley, that was so like her to help out other people without any fucking regard for herself.”
I realized in that moment that Faith was right. It was best to save anything else we found until the end. “She did a good job hiding everything. We brought as much of her belongings as we could,” I told Pike. “Faith didn’t think you should have to go back there with the place like it is.”
He nodded. “Appreciate it, man.” He clenched his jaw and shook his head, anger wafted from his body for long minutes until he got himself under control. “If Ash died protecting this little girl from the Ghost Riders, then we have to make sure they don’t get to her. We gotta make sure she’s safe and out of their clutches forever. I won’t let her death be for fuckin’ nothing.”
I nodded, happy he saw it that way.
Diesel cleared his throat. “You have our support to do what needs to be done. Just keep a close eye on her.”
Like I could do anything else. “I will. Her only focus is finding her niece.”
“Good,” Rocky nodded. “Let’s make sure it stays that way.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Faith
Ispent all morning bent over Ashley’s journals, reading them carefully because I was hungry to learn everything I could about the woman who gave her life to protect Gemma. Ashley was a good woman, happy and bubbly most of the time, able to take the bad things in life, the disappointments and find some positive element in every moment. She lived for her art and was always searching for ways to show her creations to as many people as possible. She volunteered at Steel City Community Center, teaching art to kids who came there to avoid getting sucked into trouble.
But like all of us, she had her secrets and one of them caught me by surprise. She talked about one drunken night when she’d kissed T-Bone. She called it bone-tingling, said she masturbated to it multiple times in the weeks after it happened. My mind froze for just a second because I knew that particular brand of bone-tingling. I still felt it down to my bones as I read and re-read her words.
There had been something between T-Bone and Ashley. I knew he was hiding something from me, knew there was a reason for his hesitation inside her studio and her home. My jaw clenched and pain turned the coffee in my belly to acid, cold and stinging.I can’t trust him.The only thing I asked for was honesty and he hadn’t been able to give me even that. “Dammit.”
I was annoyed but I wasn’t surprised at all. Men lied, it was their default response in just about any situation, and especially when it came to sex. I didn’t care about the sex—not much—but I cared that he lied, and I wondered why he would.
What else was he hiding from me?
I couldn’t come at him with suspicion, or he’d shut down, but I needed to be extra cautious about what I shared with him. I needed to watch T-Bone carefully to make sure he wasn’t hiding anything else from me. Just because we slept together a few times didn’t mean I could trust him completely.
I set my suspicions aside and continued going through Ashley’s diary. I wasn’t sure what else T-Bone was hiding from me or why, but something told me it had nothing to do with her murder.I hoped.There were other things I found interesting, and I jotted notes as I read, still a detective at heart.
