Callibet: Book 2 of The Bet Series

by Sienna Grant

  “Just about. We’re waiting on the hospital for an update.” Trying to breathe through my nose to stop my stomach from furling and bringing up the only thing I’d put down my throat that morning, I pushed out a sigh and stood on shaky legs.

  “Was it Brown?”

  “There’s no evidence it was.”

  “Then who? Who the fuck would do this, Ant? I want in there,” I tell him as he gets me a cup of water from the water fountain.

  “Is that wise?”

  “Yes, it’s fucking wise. I want to look whoever this fucker is in the eye.”

  “Okay then.” He walked away, sighing, and disappeared behind the door of the first interview room. Amy Reynolds walked back out.

  “Let’s do this then.”

  I stepped forward first. I was intent on seeing who this bastard was. Because when I got my hands on his scrawny fucking neck, it’d take a fucking army to get me off him.

  As I stood in front of the door with my hand on the door handle, I moved my head to the side just an inch and looked through the viewing window. I wanted a sneak peek to see who I was dealing with and who could be so fucking vicious to assault my cousin, but what I saw next had me darting for the bin and hurling up the coffee from earlier.

  What the fuck?

  Callie?

  How the fuck was this possible? They were friends.

  Watching Chris come in and sit down set my teeth on edge. His hands clenched into fists when he saw the blood on my fingers, so I moved my hands from the table as they recommenced with my interview.

  “Detective Christopher Farmer and Senior Detective Anthony Summers interviewing Miss Calindra Beckett on suspicion of attempted murder.”

  My hands shook and my body broke out in a cold sweat. The questions were the same, but I didn’t know what else to say. Exhaustion, confusion and hurt battled in me as I answered the questions and waited on a chance to tell them about the hidden camera.

  “So, you and Louisa were the only ones with a key?” Summers asked again, and I nodded.

  “Yes, but I have a hidden camera beside my door. I just installed it a few days ago and the software is on my mobile. It’s active all the time so it should show who came into our flat.”

  “A hidden camera?” Summers probed as Chris looked into my eyes for the first time since he’d come in.

  His eyes were bloodshot, his lips a thin line, but it was the coldness in his expression that made my stomach ache.

  “Can you show us?” Summers asked, and I nodded.

  “The software is on my mobile, which I left on Lou’s bedside table.”

  Chris stood, muttering something to Summers, who stood up and followed him outside. They didn’t come back into the room for over an hour, and I sat there, putting my head on the table as I listened to the ticking of the clock.

  When the door opened, Detective Summers and Chris came back inside. Chris had an evidence bag with him. He shoved my mobile roughly across the table to me.

  I opened it and quickly loaded the app before scanning the footage. The video showed Finley approaching my door at two forty a.m. and opened it with a key. He pulled a ski mask on and stepped inside, closing the door with a snap.

  My fingers shook at how violated I felt, but more so because he was in my flat when we both woke up.

  I showed the footage to the detective and Chris, but before they could say anything, Amy knocked and stepped inside then beckoned them from the room.

  I closed my eyes as they left, vindicated a little that this might show them I wasn’t lying about him being there, but unsure what was going to happen next. I couldn’t believe I’d been arrested. I couldn’t believe Lou was stabbed and possibly dead or dying. Worse than that was the agony that Chris somehow believed I was capable of something so awful.

  A tear rolled from my eyes, followed by another and then another, and I buried my face in my hands as I sobbed. I was hurt beyond measure, scared, alone, and vulnerable.

  When the door opened back up a while later, I saw Chris standing outside. He wasn’t even looking at me as Detective Summers came back inside.

  “We’re sorry, but even with the evidence, we need to take you to the cells until it’s been processed.”

  He cuffed me and led me by Chris, who refused to meet my eyes. My shoulders slumped.

  Never, in all the years I’d known him, would I ever have thought he believed me capable of something that heinous. It actually destroyed me inside and I couldn’t believe it. He knew me. He had been in love with me. How could he possibly think I’d do something like that? I just wouldn’t. My eyes filled with tears as he led me towards the staircase and I had to bite down on my lip to stop my sobs from breaking free, but it didn’t stop my tears falling.

  My whole body was shaking, and my heart was broken, ash at his feet as he clicked open the door and walked me through it without a word. He didn’t speak to me the whole way down the stairs. When he looked at me, he was cold, distant, and aloof which hurt me even more. I had to stop looking at him because every time I did my tears would start again.

  He took me down to the booking room and led me in. I had to get my mugshot taken, but that wasn’t the worst part. They made me take off my bra and pull the string from my jogging bottoms before they let me into a cell. My eyes darted to the hard bed with the toilet in the corner as the door behind me closed with a snap and I crumpled to the floor.

  Not only had Lou been stabbed beside me, but I was in a cell, arrested for her attempted murder. My life was in tatters and the one person I thought would believe in me one hundred percent couldn’t even look at me.

  My body shuddered with sobs and I sat with my fist in my mouth as I let it all out. Slowly, my tears subsided, and I dragged my exhausted ass to the bed and curled up on it, tugging the scratchy blanket up and lying down.

  I wanted to go to sleep. Sleep would have been preferable to lying there for hours with my stomach growling and my head thumping with a tension headache, but I was still awake a few hours later when they shoved a plate of toast and a cup of tea (if you could even call it that) through the flap in the door.

  Hours passed, and I whittled the time away singing soft melodies to myself. I tried to fall asleep over and over, but it was when I’d just closed my eyes and drifted off that the cell door opened. I woke up with a start when someone cleared their throat by the door.

  My eyes sprang open, and I flipped around, falling to the ground as Chris and Summers stood there. My arm landed awkwardly under me and instantly started throbbing, but neither of them moved to help me as I winced in pain.

  My head swam with exhaustion, and it took me a minute to process that they were taking me back to the interrogation room.

  Neither of them spoke as I stood and shoved my shoes back onto my feet, but when Chris cuffed me, his hands tightened on my wrists and I almost cried out in agony.

  The burning intensified as he snapped the cuffs in place, leading me back. My hair must have looked like a bird’s nest, and my brain was foggy as they began questioning me again.

  I couldn’t think of my answers quickly enough, and I saw them exchanging looks when I struggled to process their questions, but I was becoming more and more distracted because my wrist was aching. It was swollen and bruised, and my eyes were stinging, tiredness and rejection coursing through me because the whole time, Chris looked anywhere but at me.

  It wasn’t until hours later that a file was brought in by Amy. She handed it to Summers and left without a word, but I saw an instant change on Summers’ face as he read the contents. I watched in disinterest as he slid the files across to Chris.

  His gaze darkened and his shoulders slumped, but I leaned back, rubbing my good hand over my head as it started buzzing. The pain in my wrist was making me nauseous, and although I wanted to ask for a break, I couldn’t because Chris motioned to the door and they went outside, leaving me alone again.

  I dropped my head to the table and closed my eyes, trying to think of s
omething, anything else, apart from my swollen and sore wrist.

  “So, Miss Beckett…”

  Summers shuffled his paperwork on the desk before him. I swear it was to make him look like he knew what he was doing. Prick.

  “Yes…” Her small voice barely made an echo in the room.

  Still, I kept my head down and my eyes on the information we’d gotten earlier. I couldn’t look at her, as much as I’d have liked too. I wasn’t sure what I’d see staring back at me.

  “We’ve checked the camera footage like you said, and the evidence is conclusive. It does show Brown entering through the front door, but that doesn’t explain how Miss Farmer came to be at the centre of such a vicious attack. Did you argue before you went to sleep?”

  “Oh, yeah. We had a blazing row then I thought, just to make her feel better, I’d sleep in the same bed as her. Are you kidding me?” I raised my eyebrows at her feisty attitude as she slumped in her chair, folding her arms across her chest, making sure to cradle her injured one. I knew Callie. I should have known she would be submissive. “Is this even right? Are you allowed to keep me here like this? I’ve given you everything I have and I’m willing to carry on helping with your investigations, but I’ve been here practically all night, so unless you actually have something on me, I suggest you get on with it. In fact, I want to make a phone call.”

  Nudging Summers, I scraped my chair along the concrete floor and pushed up, headed for the steel door. “Have you got a minute?” I motion with my head that I want to see him outside and leave the room, still not looking at Callie.

  Summers pulls the door closed and turns to me. “What’s up?”

  “Something isn’t sitting right with me. If Brown walked into their flat and attacked Louisa, why didn’t Callie wake up, and why didn’t he try to attack her? What the fuck are we missing? I just don’t get it.”

  “She’s lying, that’s what we’re missing.”

  My head hit the wall behind me with a gentle thud, and I closed my eyes. I was stressed, angry, tired, and confused. It wasn’t a good combination.

  “What are you thinking, Chris?”

  My eyes popped open when I heard my name. “She’s right. We can’t hold her for much longer unless we charge her, and right now, we’ve got fuck all to charge her with. She’s proved with the camera footage that someone else was in that flat. It’s the rest we can’t fathom.”

  “Well, I think it’s all bullshit. Just ‘cause she has a pretty face doesn’t mean she couldn’t have done this. Maybe it was a setup from the word go. Maybe she and Brown are in on it together. She’s probably in there right now laughing at us.”

  Pushing from the wall, I frowned at his stupid conspiracy theory. “Callie and my cousin are friends. Why would she possibly do that? Callie hates him. She hated what he did to Lou, so why? What the fuck went on?” I shook my head. “We have to let her go.” Slapping the back of my hand against Summers’ chest, I started back toward the door.

  “Wait. We can’t let her go. Do you not want to find out who hurt your cousin?”

  Slowly, I turned back to Summers, my teeth grinding together. “Fuck you. No one wants to solve this case more than me, but I refuse to break the rules any more than I already have by keeping a suspect longer than we should when we have no fucking evidence. I know I shouldn’t even be on this case, but we’re wasting time. Let’s let her go home and we can call her back when we have more to go on.”

  “Fine. But you can tell her.”

  Fuck! How could I do this?

  Unlocking the door, I walked in first and Summers followed closely as we took our chairs again.

  Placing my elbows on the table, I finally looked at her. She looked exhausted, but I pushed down the urge to feel sorry for her. Until I found something that didn’t link Callie to this then she was still a suspect.

  “Ms. Beckett. Due to the lack of evidence at this time, we will be letting you go.” She sat up a little straighter, her lips pursed as she glared at me. “But you’re not to leave the country and make sure to be available at all times.”

  “Can I go now?”

  Her voice was free of emotion. It was empty, stripped of everything that was her signature tone, her wit, her sarcasm, and her warmth.

  I closed my eyes as I muttered, “Yes, you can go.”

  “Just a question?”

  “Go on.”

  “Is there any way I can get a blood test?”

  “Why would you want a blood test?”

  “Because I know for a fact that I did nothing to my roommate. I think I was drugged with something.”

  As a scowl tugged at my features, Summers barked out a false laugh.

  “Okay, we can do that. You’ll need to wait here while I make arrangements with the hospital.”

  “Woo. I’ve been here for hours now. What’s a little bit longer?”

  Putting all the paperwork back into Finley Brown’s file, I walked back out, saying nothing else to her. Summers followed me out and I filled Reynolds in on what was going on. With a quick call to the hospital, I made arrangements to get her wrist looked at and a blood test, telling him the situation so he knew what to look for.

  I peered through the viewing window in the door and watched her swiping angrily at her cheeks with her good hand. There was still a part of me that knew she couldn’t have done this to Lou, but the cop in me was telling me I had to investigate. I’d been duped before, I wouldn’t allow it to happen again, whether I thought I loved her before or not.

  We locked Callie back up while we made the arrangements for her blood test. The tips of my fingers drummed along the surface of my desk as I thought about everything. Reynolds interrupted my thoughts, telling me it was time to take her to the hospital and that we’d also need to book her out. I offered to fetch her from her cell while Reynolds started the booking out process and gathering what belongings she had when she came in.

  Unlocking her cell door, I stood in the gap as she looked up from the bed. I saw the streaks on her cheeks, but I remained emotionless - I had to.

  “It’s time to go.”

  “Finally.”

  She dragged herself up to stand and walked to the door. She eyed me as she passed, but I pretended she was just another prisoner. Another convict that had committed a crime, a savage one at that. She huffed and shook her head as she walked into the passage and waited for me. I took her by the elbow and escorted her to the main desk. I leaned against the wall as Reynolds went through the inventory of her belongings and handed her the bag. “Come on then.” She started to walk Callie out, but I called out and stopped her.

  “No. Change of plan. I’ll take her myself.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  She nodded her agreement, and taking her by the arm again, I led her from the station and around to my car.

  Chris’s grip on my arm was the only thing that was making me put one foot in front of the other. His strong hold was burning into me, but it was his cool detachment that hurt.

  He didn’t look at me as he opened the back door of his car. He didn’t offer to help me when it was clear I couldn’t buckle my belt, and he didn’t meet my eyes when he drove me to the hospital.

  Three times I opened my mouth and then closed it again. What could I possibly have said to him anyway?

  My eyes closed, and I hissed as he broke suddenly, holding my wrist tightly to me. The pain was unbelievable, and my crap tea and cold toast threatened to make a reappearance.

  I focused on my breathing, in through my nose and out through my mouth, for the rest of the journey.

  We finally arrived at the hospital, and I was taken to a room in the emergency department, where Chris and the doctor spoke. I was too sore and tired to confer with them.

  I barely listened as they discussed the blood tests and the other tests that they wanted to run on me, but when the nurse came in and asked me to sit, I complied.

  “Hey, my name’s Cathy. I’
m going to be examining you more fully than they did at the station, and I’m just waiting on a female officer to come in. I also need to see your hands so I can take a little blood from you, if that’s okay?”

  My head bobbed in a nod, but when she touched my right arm, I almost hit the roof.

  “Okay, before we go any further, we’ll get that X-rayed. Can you tell me how it happened?”

  I met her eyes and wanted to cry at the compassion there.

  “I fell off the bunk in the cell and it’s been hurting ever since.”

  My voice was small and cracked, and her eyes narrowed. She put her hand on my knee and patted it, saying she’d be right back, then she walked outside and closed the door with a snap.

  I could see her and Chris speaking, and he was shaking his head. My eyes met his for a moment and pain burned through me again at the distant look he gave me.

  Never in the five years I’d known him did I expect him to look at me like that. I’d loved him so much, and I really thought we were it for each other.

  My eyes dropped from his as a tear broke free, and I sat up, sucked in a deep breath, and leaned back in the chair.

  My eyes started to close when the door opened again, and the kindly nurse was back with a doctor.

  “Hi. Calindra, right?”

  He was exceptionally good-looking, and I sat up a little straighter as he came closer.

  “I’m Doctor Boyd. I’m just going to take a look at your arm if that’s okay. Then we’ve arranged an X-ray and some pain relief.”

  He touched my fingers gently and shifted my arm this way and that way, but his eyes never left my face, and he seemed to see every reaction.

  “Does it hurt when I do this? How about that?”

  His voice was soft, and his touch warmed me, but it was more the compassion that made me want to cry.

  My friend had been stabbed right beside me and I’d not only been treated like a criminal, I’d been treated like one by the guy I loved, and that fucking killed me.

  “I think you’ve done some damage. It’s possibly a fracture, but until we have an X-ray, I can’t be sure. Cathy here is going to take you to X-ray with Officer Farmer escorting you, and then when you get back, we’ll get the blood tests and things taken.”