Mason: Fallen Angels MC (19 page)

CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

When she woke up, Mason wasn’t in bed with her. She slid her hand out over the depression in the mattress where he had been, and found it still warm. He hadn’t been up all that long, then. She stretched, feeling her spine pop in a few places. Caroline had slept hard, and had woken up once to Mason feverishly kissing her neck, murmuring something into her skin that she hadn’t quite understood.

She’d urged him into her then, felt the nightmare in his flesh, even if he didn’t tell her about it in words, and if he found relief in her, then she was glad of it. And that time, when he begged, she did scream for him, over and over, as he kept her riding the edge of an orgasm for so long that she thought her world would end in a sea of sparkles amidst darkened vision.

Afterwards, he’d cried, his head pillowed on her breasts, and she’d stroked his hair in its braid, smoothing it away from his face and murmuring comforting words.

She slipped out of the bed; he’d left a folded T-shirt out for her, and she pulled it over her head. It was gigantic, the lower hem hanging down well past the bottom of her butt. But it was comfortable, well worn, the kind of T-shirt that she would shamelessly steal. She went to the bathroom and peed, then stepped out into the main room.

She would have sworn that she was silent, her bare feet padding quietly across the wood floor, but Mason, crouched as he was by the front window, threw up an impatient hand in her direction, and she stopped moving. He was low down in the window, the curtain twitched barely out of the way by his fingers, staring outside. He was hidden behind the curtain, and she assumed that he didn’t want whoever he was staring at to know he was there.

She stayed silent for a while, waiting. Finally, he let the curtain fall closed, and stepped back slowly, though he kept his back to her and his eyes on the window.

He pulled her back into the bedroom, which was farther from the street than the main room. “That cop is outside, watching the garage,” he said, his voice so quiet that a whisper would have felt like a shout. “I need you to think for a second—did you say anything to him before I got there, anything at all?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Nothing. I was careful.”

Mason nodded. “He’s the dirty cop that Declan was working with. Has to be. Otherwise, why would he come talking to you? No one else would know about the connection.”

She shook her head. “Jack still says he doesn’t believe a word of it. He’s been friends with his guy for years, and swears that the guy would lie down in traffic for him. He says someone else in the department must have gotten wind of what was happening, what we were looking into, but he said that there’s no way it was this guy who sent Declan after us.”

“After you,” he said, quietly, but the emphasis didn’t escape Caroline’s notice. “I can’t lose you, Caro. You’re— too much. I can’t lose you.”

She wrapped her arms around him and kissed the side of his neck. He was trembling with tension, his muscles rock hard and ready to fly into action, and she found herself wanting him pliant and smiling like he was the night before. “You’re not going to lose me. But if this guy is following you— call the department and file a harassment claim or something. The cops aren’t allowed to do stuff like that.”

The look he turned on her— it was the first time she’d ever seen him direct so much coldness her way. “You’re adorable, you know that? Sure, the cops don’t do ‘stuff like that’ to pretty little white girls. But I’m not pretty, and I’m covered in ink, and my jacket’s leather. You know better, Caro. I know you do.”

She took a deep breath, trying to find balance somewhere inside of herself. “I get why things went down with Declan the way they did—” He made an angry gesture, cutting his fingers across his throat, telling her to stop talking. “But that doesn’t mean that’s always the right thing to do. Sometimes, working within the system
is
the right thing to do.”

“Caroline, I love you.” Her heart swelled at the words. “But the system doesn’t work for guys like me. When we’re incredibly lucky, it just doesn’t work against us, but most of the time— dammit, it’s not simple. I want to make it simple, but it’s not.”

She rubbed at her eyes before the tears could fall. “Yeah, I get it,” she said. Even though she didn’t, not really, and she knew that. She reached for him again, trying to pull him in tight, to recapture some of the comfort and magic of the night before, but he stepped away from her.

“I had a key made for you a couple weeks ago,” he said. “It’s on the kitchen counter. I know you’re going to want some coffee. Lock up before you head out? I need to head over to the garage and see how much he’s freaking everyone out.”

She wanted to say something else, anything else, but he was gone. Even though it took him a few minutes to find clothes, to get dressed, to go, he was already gone. She tried not to feel too — disappointed, too hurt, too angry, too anything — for fear that it would all swell up like a great white wave and overwhelm her entirely.

Her car was still at the credit union, and she didn’t want to turn up at Jack and Missy’s looking for clean clothes in the wee hours of the morning. They’d understand, she knew that much, but it was still… a thing you did in college, not in your late twenties. Which meant going back to the house.

It turned her stomach every time she had to do it. She needed to get over this idea that selling the house was weak and just do it; she wasn’t going to live there again. Emily had been quietly pushing her for a while now to join this support group she knew about for women who’d survived all kinds of assaults, but it seemed… unnecessary, somehow? What was she going to do, sit in a circle and bitch about how this crazy asshole had held her hostage and threatened to kill her? How would that help anything? It wouldn’t even make her feel better.

Things just kept reminding her of that day; that was the problem. If she didn’t have to go back to the house, and this asshole of a cop would just go away, then everything would be fine.

Mason had never really told her what happened with Declan. He’d said he didn’t want her to know anything that would make her feel torn. That they were safe, and that she didn’t have to worry about anything anymore. It was totally possible that he’d just convinced Declan to leave town and never come back, along with his VP. Totally possible, and yet completely unlikely.

She’d pointed out that, legally, even suspecting that someone had been murdered obligated her to go to the police. She already knew enough that she’d be in trouble if he was, and so would Jack and Missy. She’d asked him for the full story.

He’d given her that smile, the tight one, and asked her to trust him.

It was easier said than done, about some things.

She could go over to the garage and ask Mason to come to the house with her. But that was just another version of admitting that it was too much for her to handle. That wouldn’t conjure his tight smile; that would bring out the worried one. She hated the worried one. A lot.

So the logical solution was to be turn her underwear inside out and stop off at the mall on the way in to work and buy a new shirt. Clearly. She knew it wasn’t, knew it was the farthest from rational thing she’d done lately, but faced with either spending $30 on a shirt she actually didn’t need at all or going back to that house, it was no choice at all.

CHAPTER FORTY FIVE

She took the bus back to downtown, stopped at the mall, found a polo shirt she didn’t hate in the first store she went to, and then walked the few blocks back to the credit union. She was a couple of minutes late, but nothing that would cause anyone to bat an eye.

Jack’s desk was empty, and when she glanced at her phone, she saw a text from him that he’d sent in the wee hours of the morning.
Still sick. Hope your night was fantastic.
She sent back hope that he would get some sleep and feel better, then settled in to check her email and her schedule for the day.

Through one thing and another, it was close to noon before she opened the center drawer on her desk, the only one that wasn’t kept locked. Normally, all it held were pens, paper clips, staples, and a pad of paper. Today, a bright red folder was placed in the drawer, neatly centered.

Her heart skipped for a moment. None of her co-workers would leave client information in an unlocked drawer—it would be tantamount to writing your own pink slip. But anything non-client related— the usual protocol was to leave it on someone’s desk, and then follow up with an email to make sure it was received.

Before she even opened the folder, she was quite sure that it wasn’t from anyone at work. And she was very, very sure that Detective Mike Randall had somehow gotten into the office and left the folder there for her to find. So she wasn’t surprised at all to open the folder and find more of the club’s records. Pages she’d never seen, pages that looked like they were from the beginning of Declan’s suspicious activities. Again and again, Mason’s half-sister’s name was highlighted, and notes were made, here and there, in someone else’s handwriting.
What’s the connection?
And
why Anna Bressette— relationship ?
And
club officers
. It couldn’t be any clearer.

Mason had never known a thing about what happened with the dirty side of the club. The transactions to the “Anna Bressette” accounts had stopped once Mason took over as the treasurer of the club. But that wouldn’t necessarily lead someone to think that he hadn’t been the dirty one, or that Declan had been in a position to manipulate the last treasurer in a way that he hadn’t been able to manipulate Mason. Or even that Mason was being framed from the start.

He’d said to her once that guys like him only got a fair shot on cop dramas, that once the police found someone to blame, they rarely looked further— they rarely had the funding or the time, realistically. This was a threat. It was a threat from someone who knew what Mason had done, and someone who believed that they could tie everything together.

She found herself backing away from the desk like it contained a scorpion. The red of the folder flashed at her, and her breathing was out of control, high and rapid, her eyes too wide. Some part of her recognized the panic attack as it happened, but the vast majority of her was too busy screaming to do anything but— well, scream.

She pulled herself together enough to send a quick chat to her boss, saying that she was coming down with something, and was going to head home early, and then she left. She went out to her car, slid into the driver’s seat, and stared at the folder she’d tossed onto the passenger’s seat as she got in.

Where the hell was she going to go? Her house was a ridiculous suggestion, just the thought of it made her guts clench and her eyes water. Jack and Missy— she couldn’t bring any more of this crap to their doorstep than she already had. Mason’s apartment— sure, he’d given her a key, but there was a difference between “Lock up when you leave” and “Come over whenever you want.” And besides, if the cop was watching her, wouldn’t he be looking for her to flee to Mason’s, or something like that? Was that the action of a guilty party? Would that be the proof he was looking for, somehow? Would it be the thing that tipped them over the line from “suspect” to “guilty?”

She put her face in her hands and tried to find a way to breathe. It was too much, all too much. She’d led an exceedingly boring life before Mason had walked through her office door, and yes, the past two months had been the best months of her life. But at the same time, the stress of it all, the constant fear that something was going to go horribly wrong, was wearing on her.

She didn’t know what to do, and turning to Mason somehow seemed like a failure. Like giving in, like admitting that she couldn’t be strong on her own. And that was a horrifying thought, one she didn’t want to even entertain. She didn’t ever want to be one of those women who needed someone else to be strong.

But at the same time, she was totally out of her league. She needed to talk to someone who didn’t have a vested interest in protecting their own ass, but would have some fucking clue what she should do.

There was only one person on her speed dial who would fit that description at all.

CHAPTER FORTY SIX

“Thanks for seeing me, Teddy,” Caroline said as her cousin walked into the park in front of the City Hall building.

He laughed and sat down on the bench beside her, putting his feet up on the stone wall surrounding the fountain. “Yeah, my busy social calendar. Having fun with my bro, Caro?”

She made herself smile and nod. Teddy was older than her, and he’d been the cool cousin when they were growing up, but they had lived in such different worlds by the time they were adults; she still made a point to talk to him, and keep the connection active, but they hadn’t seen each other in years.

He’d gone a little soft around the middle, and his hair was starting to thin on the sides, but his eyes still had that same sparkle and he was still wearing the same god-awful pornstar ‘stache he’d grown back in the early 80s. “I guess Mason has told you about— well, everything?”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Yeah. He was pretty stressed this morning. It took some doing, but he admitted you had a visitor yesterday, and that he was concerned that someone was even bothering to dig in this particular garden.” He waited for a while. “I assume something more happened?”

She passed him the red folder. Just getting it out of her hands made her body feel a little bit lighter, a little less— agonized.

He opened it up and paged through, whistling through his teeth. She listened to the patter of the water falling back into the fountain and waited. “Where did this come from?” he asked after a bit.

“Turned up in my office this morning. Inside my desk. Which, of course, no one should have had access to either last night or this morning.”

Teddy nodded. “You want me to tell you what you already know, or what I think?”

“Both,” she said. Anything to keep from putting that folder back in her hands one second earlier than it was absolutely necessary.

He nodded. “If there was something solid to connect Mason to everything, he’d be in for questioning. They’re harassing you because they know that he won’t crack for himself, and they’re hoping he’ll crack for you. You need to not crack. This will die off quick enough.”

She forced a smile. “That’s how it works on TV shows anyway. But if they have all of this—” She gestured at the folder. “—Why aren’t they looking into it already? It can’t be hard to tie him to that name, and then the frame kicks in.”

Teddy was quiet for a bit as he paged through the folder again. “I think this comes from someone’s personal records,” he said. “I think this comes from the dirty cop’s stash. I think this guy may even be the cop that our mutual friend was working with. And I think that he’s maybe under some scrutiny himself? And so he’s got this info, but if he brings it forward, he’s going to have to answer some questions about how he got it in the first place, and that’s not a thing he wants to do. So he’s trying to scare you into rabbiting, or scare you enough that Mason comes in just to take the heat off you— which would also take the heat off him, somehow, I bet.”

“That makes a crazy kind of sense,” she said, impressed.

He grinned, sideways and gentle, the way she remembered. “I always kicked your ass at Clue, kid,” he said. “What’s the cop’s name?”

“I don’t— If we go digging at him back, isn’t that just going to get us into more trouble? Make us look more guilty?”

He waved her concerns away. “Let me worry about that, all right? Name.”

“Teddy— I don’t want Mason to know about all this, okay? He’s got enough that he’s dealing with right now.”

Teddy scoffed this time. “Mason’s a big boy, and if you’re getting harassed, especially about something that has to do with him, he’ll want to know. You can trust him.”

“And if I’d asked you if I could trust Declan, six months ago, would you have said he was trustworthy too? Since he’s one of your brothers?”

The question came out a thousand times harsher than she meant it to, and she flinched away from her own words. All the sparkle was gone from Teddy’s eyes, and he glared at her with more anger than she’d ever seen on his face before. “Declan was a snake. I never trusted him, and when Mason took over as treasurer, I told him so. I warned him, and I sent him to you to figure out what was going on, because I didn’t want my family corrupted from the inside out by a snake. So chill out, would you?”

She forced herself to breathe. “Sorry, Teddy. It’s been a long twenty-four hours.”

His smile returned as quickly as it had faded. “I hear you. But can you do me a favor? Well, two.”

“What?”

“Talk to Mason. He’ll help. He wants to help. He wants to help keep his own safe. I mean— shit, that’s part of his genetic makeup.”

“I—” It really came down to something simple: did she love him, or did she not? If she could look him in the eyes and say she loved him, then on some level, she was saying she trusted him. And if she didn’t trust him, he deserved to know that. He deserved honesty. “I want to. But I need to at least try and sort this out for myself first. Does that make any sense at all?”

He sighed, rubbing his hand over his thinning hair. “I think you’re making the wrong choice, Caro. It’s gonna hurt him, that you’re shutting him out.”

“And if it does, so be it. I need you to not tell him what’s going on.”

Teddy held her eyes for a long time, his fingers tapping on the folder. Finally he sighed and nodded. “I’m not going to directly tell him. But I’m not gonna lie to him, Caro, not even for you. He asks me if I know anything, I’m gonna spill. Are we clear?”

She nodded.

“Let me take this. I want to look into this guy. Tell me his name.”

There was a long moment of considering pros and cons, trustworthiness versus just taking care of everything herself until she’d dug a hole in the ground, and she could climb in and pull it in after herself. And then she nodded. “Mike Randall,” she said. “Be careful.”

He gave her a sideways grin as he stood. “Always am.”

“Hey, Teddy?”

He looked back at her, his eyebrows raised.

“What was the second favor?”

He laughed. “Cut it out with the Teddy thing. No one calls me that anymore.”

Her turn to raise an eyebrow. “I refuse to call you Munch. Not after that disgusting story you told me about your high school girlfriend.”

He did an eyebrow waggle that had her in stitches when she was a kid. “She was not complaining.” He blew her a kiss. “You stay safe, too, cuz. You haven’t had forever to get used to this life like me and Mase. You’re not used to staring around corners, wondering what’s about to jump out at you.”

“I’m getting better every day.” She squeezed his hand, and he left her there in the park.