by L. N. Pearl
“All right, I’ll tell you what you wanna know. Just don’t fucking hurt my bike. Okay? Put the lighter down. Please.”
“No. I’ll close it. How about that? I’ll keep it closed, but I’ll hold it. Deal?”
“O—okay. Deal.”
He rubbed his hands down the front of his thighs. He was obviously worked up.
“So? Tell me.”
“Man, you gotta believe me. I didn’t know that Angela didn’t know about the deal with Drake. Yeah, I picked her up, and I expected to make good on what we talked about. But she wouldn’t let me touch her.”
His eyes were wide and I knew he was telling the truth. He would never admit something like that unless it were the truth.
He wanted people to think he was a real ladies man—not like anybody ever would. I couldn’t imagine a woman wanting to be with him, the slimy shit.
“So what happened, then?”
“She hit me. Okay? She fucking hit me upside the head so hard, I saw stars. Then she punched me in the balls and ran off.”
“Her dad was a fucking cop, asshole. He probably taught her how to take care of herself.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t know that. All I knew was, I was pissed as hell. I’d already paid Drake the five thou, too. I wasn’t gonna spend that kinda money just so I could go home and jerk off. So I chased her down.”
I thought about that. Chasing a girl on a bike. How desperate did a guy have to be?
The girl was on foot, for Christ’s sake. How much lower could he go?
“Then what? Did you catch her?”
“No, man. She ran into that chick, what’s her name…You know, she lives right by you…in your building…”
I almost dropped the lighter. “Sabina?”
“Yeah, that’s her. The little light skinned girl. She’s cute. Anyway, uh, she was there. Just driving by. Angela flagged her down. So, Sabina, she gets outta the car and asks what’s wrong. I told her to mind her own fucking business.”
He shrugged. “But Angela got into Sabina’s car and begged her to drive. So that’s what she did. They took off together.”
I was speechless. Sabina? Why didn’t she tell me about it?
“Angela was cryin’ and shit. I figured, good riddance. It wasn’t worth it.”
His eyes were intense when he stared at me.
“I’m tellin’ you, Tyler. I didn’t kill her. That was the last time I ever saw her…when she got in Sabina’s car, and they took off. I went home after that. I let it go.”
“It doesn’t add up. You were the last person she was with who was capable of hurting her. If Sabina was with her, why didn’t she tell me so?”
“I don’t fucking know! Ask her! What I’m sayin’ is, it wasn’t me, man. I swear to God, it wasn’t. Maybe she went to Drake, I don’t know. They had a huge fight that night. That was why I picked her up to begin with. She was crazy, so was he. He was drunk as hell, too. Maybe he thought…”
Marco’s eyes were wild, searching the room like he was coming up with something new.
“Maybe he thought I did it with her. You know? Like I took what I paid for. Maybe he couldn’t live with it, even though he needed the money. You know how he is, man. He’s your friend. He’s weird about his shit.”
Marco had a point on that. Drake was infamous for his temper when it came to people touching his things.
“Maybe he was so drunk he doesn’t even remember killing her, man. Right? Think about that. All I know is, I didn’t kill her. I didn’t touch her again, didn’t see her. You can’t pin this shit on me.”
His voice got higher, to the point where it was almost a squeak. I was tired of him. It wasn’t even worth fucking with him anymore.
“Fine. I believe you.” I put the lighter in my jeans. “No hard feelings, huh? Your bike is fine.”
“Sure, fine. Whatever. Go talk to your pal.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
I walked out of the hangar, more confused than ever. I was so sure it was Marco. The whole thing fit him, right down to having to pay for a woman to sleep with him.
But I realized something…he might have been a dirty cheat, always having to win, but he wasn’t violent.
He never did his dirty work himself. It was always his crew. If he was alone with Angela, he wasn’t a threat to her.
That tiny little girl knocked the shit out of him when he touched her, for Christ’s sake.
It was somebody with a temper. Somebody with enough anger to strangle another person.
And it all led to Drake... again. What the hell?
Chapter 8 - Trinity
I was exhausted when I went to bed that night. My emotions had run at such a high rate all day, I felt wrung out.
I thought I would fall right into a dreamless sleep the minute my head hit the pillow.
I was wrong. All I could do was toss and turn. I kept seeing the poor, dead bird every time I closed my eyes.
Who would be depraved enough to do something like that? How desperate were they? Had they been that desperate when they killed my sister?
It was all I could believe. Whoever left it there knew I was getting close. I was threatening them. They had to stop me.
Little did they know, I wasn’t about to stop—especially when I knew I was so close.
Still, it didn’t make me feel much better to know there was a sicko out there with a thing for killing animals. Well, they killed an innocent person. Why not an animal?
Suddenly, there was a flurry of chimes from the doorbell. I jumped a mile, torn between rushing downstairs and hiding under the covers to protect myself.
Then, I heard my dad’s voice calling me, sounding tense. “It’s Tyler.”
Oh, crap. I scrambled out of bed, hurrying downstairs. The tension was palpable.
“Hey, quick tip,” I said, still shaking. “Call me first. Especially when I just found a dead bird outside the door today.”
He smacked his forehead. “Ah crap, sorry…I didn’t think. I was in such a hurry to get here, to tell you what happened tonight.”
He glanced at my dad, as though he didn’t want to go any further with him in the room.
Dad stared back at him like they were having a contest.
I rolled my eyes. “Come on, you two. Can’t you put this aside for a little while, please? For something bigger?”
“I won’t let anyone hurt my daughter,” Dad said with a clenched jaw.
Tyler nodded. “That’s why I’m here. To protect her.”
Dad seemed to accept that. “If you have anything to say while you’re in my house, you’ll say it in front of me. Besides, the two of you might have forgotten, but Angela was my daughter. I have the right to hear this.”
“You won’t like it, Dad.” I touched his arm. “Really…it’s pretty bad.”
“Worse than losing my child?” He nodded at Tyler. “Talk.”
Tyler shrugged, then launched into his story about Marco and the bikes. I admired Tyler’s ingenuity.
I thought I saw a flash of grudging admiration on Dad’s face, too. It took balls to do something like that.
“Do you think he was telling the truth?” I asked, chewing my nails in distracted worry.
I’d been doing that a lot more often in these last few days as we got closer to the end of our search.
“I do,” he said. “He was scared to death, thinking I was gonna torch the bikes. And I would have, don’t doubt it. He didn’t have time to make up a lie like that. And to bring Sabina into it? I mean, he’d really have to dig deep to come up with her name if it wasn’t the truth.”
I nodded, processing his words. Sabina. Who would have thought she and Angela crossed paths at such a critical moment?
“It all makes sense, too,” Tyler added. “I mean if he was bad enough to…put Angela up for money…” he said, careful to avoid making eye contact with Dad.
I saw tension through every muscle of my father’s body. I knew how hard it was to hear something like that,
since I’d felt much the same when Drake first told me about the deal.
“If he were that hard-up, I wouldn’t put murder past him.”
Tyler shook his head, laughing bitterly. “I would never have imagined him capable of it. You gotta believe me, he was my best friend. I guess I didn’t wanna see it in him. I don’t know.”
“I think we should talk to Sabina,” I said.
“Who’s this Sabina person?” Dad looked from one of us to the other.
“She’s my next door neighbor. I didn’t know she and Angela had ever crossed paths, honestly. It’s news to me. But Marco swears he saw her meet up with Sabina and take off.”
I nodded. “All right. Clearly, Sabina knows more than she’s telling. I’m hoping she doesn’t still hate me.”
Tyler grimaced. “I don’t think that’s very likely, to be honest.”
***
He was right. It wasn’t easy to get Sabina to start talking. She was adamant at first that she had nothing to say to me.
“Sabina, please. This has nothing to do with me. It has to do with my sister. Please. You helped her that night. Help her again.”
I got the feeling that it made her sad to think about that night. It looked as though her eyes filled with tears when I mentioned her helping Angela.
Maybe she was a nicer person than I had given her credit for. Tears filled her eyes.
“That was such a crazy night,” she said, frowning.
We were sitting in Tyler’s apartment, and Gigi was taking a nap. We kept our voices down, just in case she woke up.
“Tell me what happened,” I gently implored. “Any bit of information could be helpful, you know? I have to find out what happened to her. We loved her so much.”
Sabina nodded, running a hand through her hair. “I know. She was such a good person.”
“So what happened?”
“She was upset, for one thing. Crying and everything, ya know? She was ashamed.”
“Ashamed?”
Tyler took my hand in his. I noticed the way Sabina kept her eyes averted from the sight.
“Yeah, you know. Because he tried what he tried.”
“But that was all he did? He only tried? He didn’t get any further?”
Sabina shook her head. I let out a huge sigh of relief. I hadn’t noticed the way I was holding my breath while waiting for her response.
“She fought him off,” she said. “She wasn’t gonna let him do anything to her. She was stronger than she looked, you know?”
I smiled through my tears. “I know. We used to get into fights when we were little.”
“So she was all upset and ashamed, and she made me promise to keep everything a secret.”
She looked at Tyler. “That was why I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want to go back on my promise. It’s not easy for a girl when something like that happens. She felt dirty and ashamed. And…she was a nice girl, you know? If she were some skank, it would have been different. But she was always so nice. I knew she wasn’t used to things like that. You know what I mean? Like the sort of people we know. Like Drake and Marco. She wasn’t used to guys like them, for sure.”
Tyler nodded. “I get it.”
I patted Sabina’s leg. “Thank you.”
“For what?” she asked, looking skeptical.
I could tell she still didn’t like me very much. There was nothing I could do about that but try to be as friendly as I could.
“For helping her. I’m glad she had a friend with her. So she didn’t have to be alone. And thank you for keeping your word to her. You didn’t have to. You’re a nice girl, too.”
She blushed. “I don’t know about that,” she said, quickly glancing at Tyler. She sounded embarrassed and I decided to leave it at that.
***
A few days passed, and our momentum died a painful death. We’d been on such a roll, too, but everything abruptly stopped.
“What do we do now?” I asked Tyler after three days left us no closer to the truth than before.
“I don’t know. Damn it. All they’re gonna do is keep going back and forth, Drake and Marco. Drake will blame Marco, Marco will blame Drake. It could go on forever like that. We won’t ever find out who did it.”
I was so mad, I didn’t know what to do. I wished I had a way to get one or the other to talk, but Tyler was right.
There was nothing stopping them from accusing each other for the rest of their lives. As far as I knew from the police investigation, there was no solid evidence pointing to any one person.
Otherwise, an arrest would have been made a long time ago. So I doubted there was anything to pin it on either of the two pigs who had used my sister so horribly.
I’ll get one of them, I told Angela, silently.
I had fallen into the habit of talking to her in my head a lot, ever since I started investigating her death. I asked her questions, asked her to point me in the right direction.
I asked her for forgiveness whenever it felt like I was falling short and not living up to the promise I made, to find the person who killed her.
It was important to me that she know I was trying, and that I wouldn’t let the world forget her.
It wasn’t easy, though. My nerves were shot, my patience thinner than it had ever been. I hated feeling so helpless and hopeless.
It all seemed so easy in my head. Get the guy to confess, get him convicted, and then watch him rot in jail.
At least then, I would know somebody was paying for my sister’s death. She would get justice, and we’d all go home and try to live the rest of our lives as best we could.
Life wasn’t that easy, as I was finding out the hard way. Nobody wanted to cooperate. Nobody knew anything, from the way they made it sound.
Like Angela had strangled herself and shoved her own body under a bench in a park.
My phone rang and Tyler looked at me, waiting for me to answer. It was my dad.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Trinity? Where are you?”
“I’m just hanging out with Tyler.” I glanced at him, shrugging. “I’m licking my wounds right now, feeling hopeless. You know. The usual. What’s going on?”
His voice was tight. “We got the results from the lab. On that dead bird, I mean. We found out who did it.”
I sat up straight, my heart racing. “Who was it?”
He sighed. “It was that girl Tyler’s friends with. That Sabina girl.”
Continued in Rough Rider 5:
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Bad Boy/MMA/Mafia Romance:
Forbidden Loyalty: My Secret Bodyguard
Badass: Behind Closed Doors
Wrong Behavior: Living on the Edge
Fighter: Crush my Heart
Kissed by the Don: In Bed with the Mafia
Billionaire Romance:
Untapped Pleasures: Married to the Billionaire
Sinful Encounter: Rescued by the Billionaire
The Billionaire’s Temptation: The Billionaire’s Touch
Captivated by Him: Now and Forever
Owned by the Billionaire: Forever Yours
Dirty Secrets: The Billionaire’s Secret
Seduce Me if You Dare: The Secret Matchmaker
Falling for the Billionaire: His Protection
The Setup: The Dark Billionaire
The Last Kiss
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