by Ryan Michele
He winked. “Oh, I do, Miranda.”
Her belly flipped, but she let the words fly anyway. “You seem very sure of this, Mr. Locke.”
His gaze narrowed and scanned over her face. Lower. And she felt it like it’d been a physical caress. “You really wanna tease me, Teach?” She was just about to reply when his cell phone went off. He glanced at it where it lay beside his drink cup on the table. “Oh, that’s Slider. Mind if I take it?”
“No, of course not.” Maybe the man would have some news about her car. Like how many thousands of dollars it was going to cost her to repair it.
“Hey, man,” Jagger said. And then, as Andi watched, Jagger’s expression made a slow slide from easy-going to concerned to angry. It was like watching a storm roll in across the horizon, and for some reason it made Andi’s stomach sink. Those dark eyes flashed at her from across the table. “I’m sorry, Andi. Gimme a sec?”
“Sure,” she said, watching as he slid out of the booth and stalked through the place and out the front door.
Andi set down her fork, her appetite suddenly gone. She had no reason to think that call had anything to do with her, except her gut seemed a hundred percent sure it did.
4
“There’s no doubt about it, Miranda’s brake lines were cut.” Slider’s voice came down the line, repeating the news that was currently whipping up the rage Jagger had been carrying around all these months until he felt like a bomb waiting to explode.
“So that’s why she couldn’t stop in time. It didn’t have anything to do with the damn rain.” Jagger looked both ways down the street in front of Dutch’s, his instincts suddenly on high alert.
“Agree. How do you want to handle this?”
Jagger raked a hand through his hair. “Fuck. I should probably bring her back over there so she can see what’s going on. And maybe we call Martin? She should file a report.”
“Sounds right. See you soon, then?”
“Yeah.” They disconnected, and Jagger heaved a deep breath. He regretted like hell that he had to give her this news—and he really fucking hated what it meant.
Miranda was in danger.
Forcing another breath that didn’t quite manage to calm him, he went back inside and laid his credit card on the counter. “Can I go ahead and pay, Haven?” With one look at him, Haven clocked that something was wrong, so Jagger worked harder to school his expression. Andi needed to know, but he didn’t need to go out of his way to scare her when she found out.
After he’d paid, he slid back into their booth.
Andi was so fucking gorgeous—he’d always thought so. But now here she was, spending the day with him, smiling at him, flirting with him, and wearing one of his favorite fucking shirts.
“Are you okay?” she asked, those big blue eyes so filled with concern. For him. When she was the one in trouble.
“I’m fine, but I have some, uh, troubling news.” He glanced around at the nearby tables of other diners. “I’m sorry to cut our meal off early, but I’d prefer to tell you outside if that’s okay with you?”
“Uh, sure. Of course.” He followed her out of the restaurant and down the street to his truck. He stuck close to her side, his central nervous system primed to react to the smallest threat. When they were in the truck again, she turned to him. “It’s about my car, isn’t it? How expensive is it going to be?”
Fuck, if it was just about money, that would be good news compared to this. “It is about your car, Andi. The accident…it didn’t happen because of the rain. Somebody cut your brake lines.”
Her whole face screwed up in confusion, and then her eyes went wide. “What?”
“Yeah,” he said, his gut knotted up for her. “I’d like to take you back over to Slider’s shop so he can show us what’s going on, and then I think you need to file a police report.”
“Why would someone…Who would even…?” She shook her head, her hand lightly rubbing against her chest. “I’m stunned.”
“Those questions are why we need Sergeant Martin. Is it okay with you if I have one of the Frederick sheriffs meet us over there?”
“Of course, yeah, that makes sense.” The expression on her pretty face was equal parts worry and confusion. “Thank you.”
The gratitude was like a knife to the gut. Because he hadn’t yet done anything to make this situation better for her. But he was going to. Whatever it took.
Jagger made the call, and the sheriff who was most friendly toward the Ravens agreed to meet them in thirty. Tension filled the truck’s cab on the short ride back across town, and Jagger couldn’t resist offering her at least a little comfort. He reached across the bench seat and took her hand. “We’ll figure this out, okay?”
She blinked at him. “We’ll?”
“Damn straight.”
“Okay,” she whispered, glancing down to where his hand lay atop hers. He thought maybe he’d overstepped in touching her, but then she flipped her hand over and laced her fingers with his. Her thumb played with the solid black ring he wore on his. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me until I’ve made sure you’re safe. And I will, Miranda. I fucking promise.”
She swallowed hard, then looked over at him again. “Why? Why would you want to go out of your way for me?”
He took the turn into Slider’s garage a little faster than he should’ve, but he needed her to know. Once he’d killed the engine, he turned to her and looked her eye to eye. “Because it’s the right thing to do. Because you go out of your way for people like me all the time. And because I think it’s pretty damn obvious that I like you.”
“I…I like you, too.” She gave him the sweetest little smile.
Intense masculine satisfaction flowed through his veins, escalating the protectiveness he already felt toward her. “Whatever you need, remember?” She nodded. “Okay, then.”
He came around to find her climbing out, so he gave her a hand—and she used it to step down and come right into his arms. ‘I know you said not to thank you, but I would be freaking all the way out if you weren’t here.”
Jagger wrapped his arms around her and reveled in the feel of her against him. Her face against his chest, her hands clutching his back, all of her soft curves against all of his rough edges. That moment right there might’ve been the best he’d felt in almost the entire past year, but he couldn’t take any satisfaction in it when it’d come about because she was in harm’s way.
Who the fuck would want to hurt her?
Just the question had his hackles way the hell up.
“I got you,” he whispered against her hair.
She nodded and then looked up at him, her eyes an absolutely brilliant blue. Their faces close, the world seemed to narrow down around them. Until it was just the two of them. In a place where this problem and the way they’d first met and even the rain didn’t exist. It was just them and the fucking intense desire suddenly lancing through his blood.
Her gaze dropped to his mouth, and that was all the invitation he needed.
Jagger kissed her. A soft claiming that quickly flashed hot. One hand around the small of her back and the other in her hair, he drew her closer as he deepened the kiss. She met him kiss for kiss, her tongue intertwining with his as he took his first sweet taste of her. The little moans she unleashed went right to his dick. Fuck, he wished this was happening amid different circumstances. For her sake.
He took her face in his hands and withdrew, swallowing hard as he reined himself in. “Let’s get you in out of the rain.”
He searched for regret or discomfort in her eyes, but he didn’t find either. Instead, her gaze was steady and warm as she looked at him. “Okay.”
Jagger took her hand and led her in, satisfied as hell when she smiled at him for doing it. He hadn’t even debated it, though. Touching her felt right way down deep.
Slider’s expression was as serious as a heart attack when he saw them. “Really damn sorry about this.” He nodded to Andi and clasped ha
nds with Jagger.
“It’s better to know, I guess,” Andi said. “Are you sure they were cut and not just damaged?”
Jagger could read the answer on his brother’s face before he said a word. “I’m sure.” He walked them over to where the car was up on the hydraulic lift. Sure enough, the cut to the front brake line was too clean—and too fresh—to be the result of a crack or a leak. And the rear brake line appeared punctured, which might’ve allowed her some braking ability when she’d first started out or at slower speeds, but that would’ve released all the pressure in the system so that when she hit higher speeds, they’d fail, too. “And it wasn’t just the regular brakes either. The cable to the emergency brake has been cut, too.”
“Sonofabitch,” Jagger bit out.
Andi’s face went pale. “Holy shit. Who would do this? And why? I’m nobody.”
Jagger’s gut clenched at her characterization. She wasn’t nobody. Not to him and not to a lot of other people, too. The thought raised goosebumps all down his neck. “You’re not nobody, Andi. Not by a long shot. But you do work in a prison, which means you interact with people every day who might think they have a reason to be upset with you. A bad grade or getting thrown out of class or feeling like you dissed them somehow.” For as well-liked as she was, no one was going to be liked by everyone. Add to that reality the fact that she was fucking beautiful, and who knew what kinds of reasons someone would concoct to do something like this to her.
Her jaw dropped. “You really think it’s because of my job?”
“I think it’s a possibility. That’s all.” He put his arm around her shoulders. “Come here.”
She turned into his embrace. Jagger felt Slider’s surprised gaze on them, but he ignored it for the time being.
A jingling bell out in the waiting room indicated someone had arrived. Jagger turned to find Sergeant Henry Martin take off his sheriff’s hat and lean into the service bay. “Hey, can I come in?”
Jagger nodded. “Thanks for coming, Martin.” After learning that another of the Frederick sheriffs had been a part of the scheme that’d sent Jagger away, he hated having to have anything to do with any of them. But that feeling wasn’t entirely fair to Martin, who’d believed in Jagger’s innocence from the beginning and had worked with the Raven Riders to find out who was behind the whole thing. So he trusted this man, even if he had major issues with the rest of his department.
“Of course, Jagger. Happy to help. And you must be Miranda.” Martin introduced himself to Andi, his easy-going demeanor helping to put her at ease—or as close as she was going to get in this situation.
Andi recounted exactly what’d happened, and then Slider followed by showing Martin what he’d found. Martin turned to Andi. “Can you think of anyone who would have a grudge against you or want to hurt you?”
The question parked a boulder of anger in Jagger’s gut.
She shook her head. “No, not really. I mean, even if it was a disgruntled student, most of them are still in prison.”
Martin frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I teach in the correctional education program at the Central Maryland Correctional Facility. Inmates can earn college credits through a collaborative program with Granger College.”
Slider’s eyes went wide as he realized how Jagger and Miranda knew each other, because of course the man knew where he’d served his time. But Jagger kept his attention on Miranda, especially when a frown settled onto Martin’s face.
“You think it’s related to that somehow?” Jagger asked him.
“It’s hard to say for sure,” the man hedged. “But it’s definitely an angle to work.” He sighed. “The real problem is, figuring out when this happened. And then obtaining proof of who did it. That would require the vandalism to have occurred in a place with security cameras.” The sheriff turned to Slider. “How much time do you think might’ve lapsed between the time of the vandalism and the time her brakes were completely out of commission.”
“It happened today,” Slider said. No hesitation, no reservation. “When a car brakes, most of its weight is distributed to the front brakes. So even if the puncture in the rear brake line was a natural occurrence and unrelated to this, she wouldn’t have been able to drive long or very fast before she would’ve noticed that it was taking longer to stop or that she didn’t have as much control of the car when she hit the brakes.” His brother looked at Andi. “Did you notice anything like that?”
“This morning, all my driving was in town, so it was all at lower speeds.” Her gaze went distant. “But now that I think about it, I did feel like I had to hit the brakes harder to stop at a light. I remember that now. Last night when I left work, though, I don’t remember having any of those problems. And I took Interstate 70 home, so if it’d been cut before then, I wouldn’t have been able to stop when I exited the highway, right?”
Slider nodded, and Martin made notes on his pad. “So that establishes a time frame, then. Can you give me a list of the places you went after you left your house this morning along with approximate times of arrival and departure?”
She reconstructed her morning for him, narrowing the possibilities down to a coffee shop, a dry cleaner, the post office, and a guitar store. Jagger was already mentally picturing each of the locations and thinking through the likelihood and location of potential security cameras at each. But then it occurred to him—there was a fifth possible location. Her house.
What if this had been done at her house while she slept?
The possibility sent white-hot ice through Jagger’s veins. Until they knew about any possible film evidence, her house wasn’t safe. Fuck.
Martin flipped his note pad closed. “I have enough to file a report and open an investigation.” He shook his head. “Frederick is small enough that you wouldn’t expect this kind of behavior. I’m sorry you’re in this situation, Ms. Everly.”
“Thanks,” she said. “What now? I mean, I know you’ll open an investigation, but how long will that take? And what should I do in the meantime?”
“I can’t say how long just now,” Martin said, “particularly with tomorrow beginning the weekend. But I can promise to make it a priority.” He nailed Jagger with a stare. A silent promise between the two of them.
Jagger nodded, appreciating the seriousness with which the man was handling this.
Martin turned to Andi again. “In the meantime…”
“We’ll keep you safe.” Meeting Andi’s gaze, Jagger made a promise of his own. One he intended to keep, no matter what.
5
And Andi thought she’d had a bad morning…
That was nothing compared with the reality that someone had tried to hurt her. Or even kill her. God, what if she’d hit another car? She could’ve hurt someone else, too. The thought made her queasy, and she wrapped an arm around her stomach.
Jagger was right by her side, those dark eyes burning with so much concern and determination that it was almost possible to believe that he could keep his promise. Except… “I don’t doubt that you’ll try, but it’s not like you can be with me every minute of the day.”
He grasped her gently by the arms and leaned down until he was looking her eye to eye. “That’s exactly what I mean. And if there’s ever a moment that I can’t be there, or you don’t want me there, my brothers will be. This is what we do, remember? You have my word.”
She rested her forehead against his, seeking out his heat and his comfort and his strength. “I want you there.”
“Good,” he said. She didn’t think she was imagining the satisfaction on his face even if she didn’t fully understand why he cared so much. She couldn’t deny that she was glad for it, though. Because this was quite possibly the scariest thing that’d ever happened to her.
Still, it was way, way above and beyond. “If you’re really sure,” she said, not quite able to let go of her doubts. “This is a lot to take on for a stranger, Jagger.” Her brain rejected the characterization even as the m
ore rational side of her knew that it was true.
He cupped her face in his hand, and it was a gesture that was as sweet as it was reassuring. He’d said he had her, and in this moment, it felt like he really did. “You don’t feel like a stranger to me, Andi. Whatever you need, remember?”
A pang set off inside her chest to hear him say it. Because, somehow, he didn’t feel like a stranger to her, either. Not really. And with everything he was doing for her, he deserved to know. “You don’t to me, either.”
He kissed her. “Good. Hang in there. I need to make a few calls, okay?”
“Okay.” She gave him a small smile, and watched as he turned and crossed the shop, his cell phone already at his ear.
The sheriff turned to Slider. “You know you guys can call me any time. Day or night.” The men shook hands. “And that goes for you, too, Ms. Everly.” He handed her a card.
“Andi, please.”
He nodded. “Okay, Andi. You’re in good hands here with the Ravens.”
“Thanks,” she said. The sheriff didn’t have to say that, but she was really glad that he did. Especially when she and Jagger arrived at her house and found eight motorcycles in her driveway. A group of Raven Riders stood in a circle chatting and waiting, all of them wearing their club jackets. The insignia on the back of the them depicted a raven sitting on a dagger that went through the eye socket of a skull. If that didn’t intimate her anonymous enemy, she didn’t know what would. A few of them waved as they pulled in.
Jagger squeezed her hand. “I know this situation isn’t okay right now, but it will be okay. And these guys are gonna help.” She nodded.
Andi was really glad these men were on her side, because they were a badass wall of muscle and leather with a long tradition of standing up for people who couldn’t stand up for themselves. Or at least standing at their side, just as they were doing now for her.
“These are my brothers,” Jagger said. “They’re up to speed. Everyone, this is Andi.”
“Hi,” she said, hugging herself. “I can’t thank you all enough for being here. This is such a crazy situation.”
