Page 5 of Eight Years Gone

The door opened, and the short, balding man he’d been talking to walked in. “Mr. Tennyson, I think we have everything we need. You can go.”

Jagger stood in the scrubs he’d changed into after he insisted on driving himself over to the station in his blood-soaked car. “Did you get him? Did you get my brother?”

Detective Morrison nodded. “They just picked him up.”

“What’s he saying?”

“Not much.”

“Levi knows everything you need to close this case—who robbed him. It’s his fault Logan’s dead.”

“We’ll take care of this, Jagger.”

He nodded, understanding that the detective was urging him to let the police do their job—to not take matters into his own hands.

Long ago, he’d promised Master Isaac he would stay off the streets and out of trouble in exchange for free taekwondo lessons, but currently, street justice wasn’t out of the question. “Sure.”

Detective Morrison held out his hand. “Thank you again, Jagger. I’m sorry for your loss.”

He returned the handshake. “Thank you.”

Stepping into the hallway, Jagger paused when he spotted Steve Evans talking to an officer down by one of the vending machines. Jagger started the man’s way, never seeing him look so disheveled. “Steve.”

Steve’s head whipped in his direction, blinking puffy, bloodshot eyes. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“I’m sorry.” Jagger blinked back tears as he cleared the emotion suddenly clogging his throat. “I’m so sorry I didn’t get him to the hospital in time.”

Steve said nothing as Jagger stopped in front of him.

Jagger looked over Steve’s shoulder. “Is Grace—”

“You stay away from her.”

Jagger blinked his surprise at the venom in Steve’s voice.

Then Steve yanked him up by the V of his scrubs. “This is all your fault, you little bastard. My boy’s lying in the morgue because I was stupid enough to bring white trash like you into my home.”

Jagger swallowed hard, absorbing the insult. “Steve—”

Steve’s pointer finger was now in Jagger’s face as he gritted out each word through his perfect veneers. “Don’t you say my name. Don’t you speak my daughter’s. You will never, ever be good enough for her. The best thing you can do is walk away—get the hell out of her life because I swear to God, I’ll cut her off if I ever see you looking in her direction again.”

Jagger swallowed again because there was nothing that Steve had said that wasn’t true. He’d turned his grades around and graduated with honors. He’d taken the football and marksmanship teams to state three times. He was heading back to Syracuse University for his third year of college, but underneath it all, he would always be a Tennyson from East Wakeview.

“Grace’s spring internship with National Geographic,” Steve continued. “I’ll make it go away, Jagger. Her semester in Sydney will disappear.”

Jagger clenched his jaw as he stared at the man, knowing he would do exactly that—knowing that Steve getting what he wanted was more important than the fact that he would be hurting his daughter. “She’s worked her ass off—”

“That’s right. She has. No one knows that better than you.”

Jagger shook his head because he wasn’t going anywhere. “We’ll find a way.”

Steve laughed bitterly. “You’re going to pay for her downtown Sydney apartment? Her food? Her plane fare? And what about her tuition for Syracuse?”

Jagger clenched his jaw as he looked down, studying the scarred tile floor because he’d barely had enough to cover his car insurance this month after his car broke down.

“One phone call, and it’s gone. All of it will go away. You and that family of yours stay away from what’s mine. Do we understand each other?”

Jagger steamed out a quiet breath. “Yeah.”

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