“What the hell was that? What are you doing here? Wait a minute. Did you have something to do with this?”
Harper immediately put her hands on her hips, and her look told him everything he needed to know about how she felt about that little accusation. “Sure. I’ve had so much free time that I decided to drive by your motel, convince somebody to give me a keycard, plant a whole bunch of heroin on you, and then head over to meet you to take a nature hike. For fuck’s sake, Lucas....”
“I’m not crazy for asking. It’s not like you’ve been rolling out the welcome mat for me. This would be one way to get me out of your hair.”
“It would be much easier for me to just break an arm.”
“What?”
“It’s true. It would take me a good thirty seconds to do it, maybe ten minutes of setting up so I can get you in a situation to break your arm and claim it was self-defense.”
“Please don’t tell me you thought about this.”
“Like you said, our relationship hasn’t been all peaches and cream.”
“Has anyone ever told you you’re a violent woman?”
“On the contrary. Usually people underestimate me, and then I have to inform them of my violent tendencies. And then they still don’t believe me, and I have to prove it. By then they’re just screaming in pain.”
“And you wonder why I suspect you of planting heroin on me.”
She shuddered a little bit. “Something about that seems so... dishonorable. If I’m going to hurt you, you’re going to know that I’m the one who did it. Besides, you have to have more enemies besides me.”
“What? Do you think I’m unlikable?”
“Discounting all of the information I know about you, let’s consider the fact that Wade hired you to investigate something very close to him. He wouldn’t hire a goody-two-shoes who was afraid to get his hands dirty. Also, I know you’ve been in the cell long enough to consider other people besides me who might have put you here. The fact that you accused me as soon as I walked in lets me know that you’re not a hundred percent certain on anybody. But I’m sure if we work together we can narrow down the list pretty quickly.”
He shook his head. “Hold up. What do you mean we?”
“I mean, I’m going to help you.”
“And why would you do that?”
“Why wouldn’t I? I saw you get arrested. It was the police force in my hometown that did it. I’m kind of involved in this now.”
“None of that is a good enough reason to insert yourself in the middle of some police investigation for some guy you barely know and definitely don’t like.”
“All right, you’re not my favorite person in the world. But I think these charges against you are totally bullshit, and I definitely don’t like bullshit. Besides, are you really in a position to turn down help?”
She had him there. He definitely wasn’t in any sort of position to turn down anything right now. Whoever had done this knew enough about his past to hit him where it hurt and obviously had a fair bit of resources. Harper, as frustrating as she could be, had friends in high places, mainly Wade, though Lucas had an idea that was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to her connections. She also probably had more money at her disposal than he did, though pretty much everybody had more money than he did at the moment. “All right, if you help me, what do you want in return?”
Her eyes widened. “I don’t want anything.”
“Now that’s bull. Even if you don’t want something now, you’re going to end up asking me for some sort of favor eventually. I’ve been around long enough to know how this works. So let’s set the terms of this very clearly so I know what I’m getting into.”
“You’re not getting into anything. If you help me, I’m going to get you out of jail. Isn’t that good enough?”
“I don’t like making deals with the devil without knowing all the terms.”
“I can’t believe I’m trying to help you and you’re accusing me of being the devil.”
“I can’t believe you’ve never been called that before.”
Harper pursed her lips and looked at him up and down. “All right, it’s not the first time. But this will be the last time you ever call me that. In exchange for helping me for letting me assist you, I want to take point in the Wade investigation.”
“That’s it?”
“Lucas, I don’t exactly know what you have to offer. I don’t have a lot of use for a private investigator in my life. And you might be pretty, but I’m not about to ask you to do....” Her cheeks turned pink.
He figured that considering the circumstances, he’d let that go. “I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t have people banging down my door with death threats.”
“Yeah, but this isn’t a death threat. And that’s much more telling.”
“How is it more telling?”
“Death is easy. Planting drugs in somebody’s room and hoping they get convicted for a crime? That’s a little bit more complicated. Not to mention risky. A lot of things have to go right for this little revenge plot to work.”
“All right, so I have a super villain after me instead of a run-of-the-mill murderer. What help does that give me?”
“Maybe none. I have a theory about what might happen from here, but I don’t know if I’m right.”
“Care to share with the rest of us?”
“Not really. First we need to get you through court and figure out what the bail is set at. Once we know if you’re going to be helping from behind bars or as a free man, we can make a more strategic plan.”
“What are we supposed to do until then?”
“Well, you sit here and think about who might want to do this to you. I’m going to do what we set out to do this morning and scour the woods for more of those boxes.”
“You’re kidding. You’re using this as an excuse to keep on going without me?”
“Hey, you said I could take point on the Wade investigation. Besides, I’m sure that once I’m helping you, I won’t have as much time to help Wade. I might as well get in a few more hours of searching before I switch gears. Can you handle a few more hours behind bars?”
“I’ll make it work,” he muttered.
“Good. I’m going to get going then.”
“Wait! Why don’t we do a little bit more brainstorming?”
“I can’t exactly stay down here long. My friend went out on a limb to even let me speak to you for a few minutes.”
“Yeah, but he hasn’t come back for you yet. Why don’t we just take advantage of the time we have?”
Harper tilted her head and considered him for a moment. “You don’t want to be alone, do you?”
Lucas clenched his fists. Dammit, he’d given himself away. “I’m fine.”
The officer pushed the door open and poked his head inside. “Sorry about that phone call. I’m all set to continue the tour if you are.”
Harper’s lips tightened, and she looked over at Lucas. A flash of pity shot through her features. “Can I—”
“Just go,” spat out Lucas. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”
She seemed to debate her next move but eventually nodded in agreement. “I’ll be back soon, Lucas. I promise.”
Harper tapped her foot impatiently as she leaned on the wall in the courtroom hallway. She couldn’t believe it had gone so badly. Scratch that—she could totally believe it. Nothing had been going her way today at all.
The judge apparently hadn’t been a big believer in the whole innocent until proven guilty idea. He seemed so outraged that some outsider was bringing drugs into his town that he’d made sure to send a message to all possible future drug dealers by setting bail at five hundred thousand dollars. The fact that Lucas, as a non-local, was very likely to leave and never come back for a court date probably had something to do with it too.
She waited by the door so she could make sure Lucas knew she would get the money. He’d seemed so defeated when she visited him earlier that day.
Now that he knew the situation was worse than they’d suspected, she needed to offer him some sort of reassurance.
It seemed like an eternity, but it had probably only been two minutes since she came out here. When the bailiff finally brought Lucas out, he looked positively haggard. His jaw was locked, and his eyes had a hard set to them. He was obviously as upset about this as she was, and with good reason. He woke up this morning just trying to do his job, and now he’d been knocked totally off track.
As soon as Lucas was close enough, Harper started to walk alongside him and the officer escorting him. “Hey, I know this seems like a lot, but I’ll take care of it. I promise.”
“Oh, because you just happen to have a half million dollars lying around?”
“Well, if I get a bond, I only need ten percent, and I can scrounge up fifty thousand. It might take a few hours, maybe a day. Don’t worry. You’re not going to be in here for long.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that before,” he muttered.
Harper frowned. What did he mean? It didn’t matter. This whole charge was bogus, and she was going to get him the best attorney in the state to make sure these charges never actually led to anything. It would take money and maybe some time, but she wasn’t going to let this turn into a thing. “Just trust me. I’m going to get you out of here sooner than you even know it.”
They reached the entrance to the jail where she wasn’t going to be able to follow. She was about to say something else when Officer Jenkins walked up to them. “Hold up there,” he said. “We’re prepping you for release, Stone. It looks like you got a secret admirer who paid your bail already.”
Harper’s jaw was still on the ground half an hour later when Lucas walked out of the police station a free man. Well, free-ish considering the charges were still pending. But still, it was an improvement over that morning.
Seeing him in that jail cell had been a shock to her system. Not just seeing him there, but seeing how he was reacting. He seemed... scared. Especially when she’d said she was going to leave. There was almost a desperation in his eyes, as though he were silently begging her to stay. And worst of all, she had a feeling this wasn’t his first stint in jail. Considering that Wade wanted somebody who was flexible with the rules, it wouldn’t be that out of the ordinary for him to hire a criminal.
Who was Lucas, really? She’d only met him yesterday, and she hadn’t really liked him in that short amount of time. She still couldn’t say she liked him now. If anything, she just felt bad for all the shit he had to go through. So why was she so certain that he wasn’t peddling drugs in town?
Whether she liked him or loathed him, the idea that he’d be working for Wade at the same time he was bringing thousands of dollars’ worth of drugs into her town to sell just didn’t make a lot of sense. Of course, she couldn’t tell the police that he was just trying to clear Wade of a murder Wade actually did commit. No, they were basically on their own with this one. But she’d faced down worse odds than this before. It wasn’t like she was scared, just... tentative. From the look on Lucas’s face, right now he felt the same way.
Harper plastered a fake smile on, hoping her enthusiasm would catch on. “Hey there, free man. Did you miss the sunshine on your face for your whole five hours behind bars?”
He gave her an unamused grunt in response. “I need to call Wade and thank him for bailing me out.”
“Yeah, about that....”
“What are you—”
“She means it wasn’t Wade who bailed you out,” said a man from behind them.
Harper looked around, her hand instinctively traveling to the holster at her side. The man approaching wore a well-tailored three-piece suit with thin white pinstripes that made him look all the more out of place in her small town. “Who the hell are you?” she demanded. She was sure there were nicer ways to start this meeting off, but right now she was past the point of pleasantries. There were so many damn unknowns and variables between looking into who was trying to frame Wade and who was trying to frame Lucas. She didn’t think she was capable of pleasantries anymore.
“Such hostility, Ms. Sloan. Don’t worry, I’m your friend. Who do you think got Lucas here out of jail?”
“Since I know Wade didn’t do it, I’m assuming it’s the same person who got him in jail in the first place,” she shot back.
Lucas tensed up even more than he already was. “So who are you? The one who got me in or got me out?”
“I had the same thought you did,” she said quickly. “But when I called Wade to thank him, he had no idea what I was talking about. The fact that someone paid so quick means that they’d been paying attention to your case, and the only people who know about your case are locals who probably don’t care, locals who hate your guts for bringing drugs, and the people who planted the drugs in the first place. Care to refute my logic?” she asked the strange man.
The man simply smiled at her. “I learned a long time ago that the woman is always right,” he said with thinly veiled disdain, letting her know just what he thought of her logic. “My name is Alex O’Loughlin. I am but a messenger, Lucas. Your presence is requested in Norwalk, Connecticut. I expect you to be there later tonight. I’ll message you the address you’re expected at. Once you are there—”
“And how the hell do you expect me to get all the way to Connecticut by tonight?”
“By air, of course.” The man reached into his jacket. Harper immediately drew her gun and pointed it at the man as he pulled up a slip of paper. “A little trigger-happy, aren’t we?” he accused.
“If I were really trigger-happy, you’d have lead in you already,” she said threateningly, lowering the gun but keeping her hand on the trigger at the same time.
He handed over the envelope to Lucas, and from where she was, it appeared to be a plane ticket.
“Why the hell would I go anywhere you want me to?”
“If you do, all these charges against you will magically go away. Wouldn’t that make your life so much easier?”
“Why do you think he’d help the people who got him in this mess in the first place?” asked Harper.
“Because if he doesn’t, we will see to it that the charges stick, and he’ll be in prison for a good long while. In fact, I think you’ll be lucky if he makes it out at all.”
Harper narrowed her eyes. “You don’t have a lot of friends, do you?”
“I’m sure I have more than you,” he shot back. It was childish, but she also figured he was right too. She wasn’t exactly winning a popularity contest. She opened her mouth to shoot another insult at him, but the man held up his hands. “I said my piece. I’ve extended our invitation to you, Mr. Stone. Whether you choose to accept or not is up to you, but I feel I’ve made the consequences very clear, and you should know that we don’t make idle threats.”
Harper had to struggle to contain her annoyance as the pinstripe-suited man hastily retreated. There wasn’t much she could do about him now, and considering how many times she’d had that thought in the past twenty-four hours, it was only adding to her current level of irritation.
“All right... I guess I’m going to Connecticut.” Lucas’s defeated tone only added to Harper’s increasingly bad mood.
“Are you crazy? You can’t give in to what they want.”
“It’s not like I want to. I’ll go, I’ll play the good little blackmailed investigator, and as soon as they get what I want, I’ll make sure they get what’s coming to them.”
“And what does that mean?”
“I don’t know!” he snapped. “Stop asking me questions, Harper. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m just taking this one goddamn step at a time. I don’t know who they are, I don’t know what they want, I don’t know what I’m going to do if they ask me to do it. Now I’m done talking about it. So you go back to work for your little rich friend and go back to your mysterious job and to your nice little bank account and leave me the fuck alone. Got it?”
Harper took a nervous gulp.
She’d known all of this had been hard on him, but so far he’d seemed sad and frustrated. This was the first time his anger bubbled over. Part of her was happy it finally happened, but why did it have to be at her? “Lucas, I—”
“Just stop it. We’re done here. I’m going to Connecticut. I don’t need your help. Consider any agreement we had terminated.” And with that, he stomped away from her. Okay, stomping was an overstatement. But he was walking forcefully away from her, and as much as Harper wanted to chase him down, she knew better than most that sometimes anger needed isolation to dissipate.
“I’m not going to let you be stupid about this,” she called out to his retreating back. He didn’t turn to glance at her over his shoulder or even flip her off. He just kept walking away. Harper shook her head and cursed. Like hell was she going to let him turn his back on her. Lucas Stone had another think coming....
Lucas had a bad feeling about this. Considering everything that had happened, he’d be a fool to have a good feeling about anything, but this flight in particular seemed off to him. For one, when he checked in, the flight attendant told him he’d been upgraded to first class. This was the first flight he’d ever been on that had included an upgrade. At one point in his life, he’d flown all the time, and never once had an upgrade magically happened. Maybe to other flyers, but not to him. Considering how bad his luck had been lately, he couldn’t help but be suspicious at his sudden good fortune.
He slid into the window seat and laid his head against the back of the seat, but it did nothing to ease the tension through his entire body. He could do this. Sure, he hadn’t been on a plane in forever, but it wasn’t as if it were a skill that needed to be honed and practiced. All he had to do was sit there, close his eyes, and eventually the flight would be over and everything would be okay.
Well, he’d still have to deal with his blackmailers and then find a way to tell Wade he couldn’t complete the job he was hired to do even though he needed that money. But besides that, this flying portion would be over.
He felt the seat move as whoever was sitting next to him plopped down. That was the thing about first class. You never really had an empty seat next to you since they would just upgrade frequent flyers whenever there was an opening. He should say hi. It was common decency to say hello. Fuck it. He didn’t need to be common or decent right now.
Lucky Girl (Lucky Alphas Book 2) Page 5
