Page 90 of Surrender
“So you’ve been stalking my client and his friends and family?” Dane said casually, not even looking up as he jotted something in the legal pad in front of him. “Perfect. Please, continue.”
It was hard not to be outwardly amused by Dane shutting Carrington down. We didn’t hire Dane because he was handsome in a suit. Dane was brutal in court and always ten steps ahead. If there was a loophole, he would have already threaded a needle of doubt through it and knitted the judge a Christmas sweater before court had even begun.
Carrington ignored him, silently pulling some photographs from the inside of the file and turning them to face me, sliding them across the table. “Were you and Roxanna—”
“Roxie,” I corrected sharply.
His eyes lit up like he’d struck gold. He knew what he was doing, trying to make out like she was just some dead woman he was investigating, as if she wasn’t important to the club.
To me.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized with a grin. “Were you andRoxiehaving an intimate relationship, Mr. Brooks?”
I leaned in to get a good look at the images. They were of Roxie and me at Vesey. The grainy shots were clearly taken by some rat who should have never been able to get that close.
In one, I was leaning in to hear her over the music. In another, she had her finger poked against my chest, and that gleam in her eye, where she knew she was pushing my buttons and having the damn time of her life while doing it.
I hated it.
But did it matter now?
No, because she was fucking dead.
I swallowed back the rage, forcing it back down into the depths of my stomach.
“We were not,” I said sternly, pushing the photos back toward him. “She worked for the club. I was in charge of making sure she didn’t get hurt.”
“Wouldn’t put that in your résumé,” he mumbled under his breath, pulling some more images from the folder and pushing them across in front of me. “What about these? They were taken early hours of this morning from the security camera in Roxie’s building.”
At first glance, every protest I had built up instantly died on my tongue.
These had to be fake.
They had to be.
I lifted my cuffed hands to the table, pinching the corner of the photograph and brought it closer to my face. It showed a figure in the hallway outside of Roxie’s apartment.
The jeans. The boots. The club cut.
They all looked like mine.
From the stains on my denim to the patches and scuffs on my leather.
He had gloves on, his hoodie up, and a bandana covering his mouth. Standard gear for a ride late at night—any of us couldhave worn it.
But Carrington wasn’t pointing at any of us.
He was pointing at me.
And he was smiling like he’d already solved the case.
“A couple of the other girls who live in that block of apartments and work with Roxie also said they heard a motorcycle pull up not long after they had gotten home after their shift,” Carrington continued, skimming through some notes in front of him. “Apparently, it left about fifteen minutes later. They figured someone had forgotten something, and it was being dropped off.”
I was already shaking my head before he could finish. “No. That’s bullshit,” I snapped, jabbing my finger at the image of ‘me.’ “What time was this taken?”
Dane snatched it off the table before Carrington could sweep it back into his folder of lies. “It looks like…” he said, having to squint to read the small text on the photograph. “2:43 a.m.”
I choked out a sharp laugh. “Not possible. I didn’t leave Maison Vesey until after three this morning.”
