Rolling Thunder

Chapter 23

To her shock and surprise, following behind Evan’s bike was Trent’s El Camino, driven by Jake. They came through the still-open gate, drove right past her and Bill on the porch, all the way down to the trailer loop, and backed the El Camino into the barn until it was hidden from view.

Bill got up without a word and walked purposefully in their direction. Bill was totally in his element dealing with the violence that had suddenly taken over her life.

Kayla remained on the porch, bewildered.

The men joined each other in front of the barn in a brief conversation she obviously wasn’t invited to. Had they killed Trent? Why else would they come back with just his car?

Then the three men spun and walked pointedly up the driveway toward the house, Evan making for the porch, Jake and Bill veering off toward her truck.

Apparently, it was decided that Canyon Bill and Jake were going to take her truck to go pick up Jake’s bike, wherever that was. They silently climbed in and drove away—without asking permission, without a glance, and without explanation.

At last, she and Evan were alone.

Moving inside to the kitchen, she watched him peel off his riding gloves. His knuckles were bloody and bruised.

“What did you do?” she demanded.

There was a hardness to him that she wasn’t accustomed to.

“I told you not to do that,” she said. “I won’t let you go to jail for me! You can’t throw your life away when it’s finally going right!” He turned to her with fiery determination.

“You know what I never regretted, Kayla?”

She stared, waiting.

“I never regretted going after my little brother and trying to stop him patching in with the Pirates. I was nineteen and he was seventeen and stupid. Even after everything went so wrong, I still don’t regret it. I hate what it did to my family, I hated prison, but I know who I am. I’m not a man who’ll just stand by while my little brother makes a life-changing mistake. And I’m not a man who just stands around while a man like Trent comes here and hurts the woman I love.”

He choked on his emotion. “He threw you down in the dirt!”

He took a step closer to her, his eyes burning into hers. She could feel the indignant outrage radiating off him, and it terrified her. Though not directed at her, it felt like a punch to her heart.

“Some things are worth fighting for. Some things are worth taking the fall for.”

She took a tiny step toward him. “Not me. I’m not worth you going back to prison and I won’t let you take the fall for this,” she whispered.

“You’re worth that and so much more,” he said without hesitation.

“And…I can’t lose you too,” she sighed.

“You’re not gonna lose me.”

She put her hands on his face, feeling his clenched jaw, feeling the passion radiating from him. Her hands drifted lower, and she hit him lightly on the chest. “You told me to trust you, and you just went and risked it all.”

“I’m still telling you to trust me,” he said in a low tone to soothe the high-pitched fear in her voice. “Come with me…”

He took her hand and led her out the door and down the driveway back to the barn. Intrigued, she walked with him in silence. She did trust him.

When they entered the barn, he walked her to Trent’s vehicle, then turned to her.

“I didn’t do what I wanted to do, which was to fucking kill him.”

Relief flooded through her.

“I didn’t do that because I knew you wouldn’t want me to.”

He paused. “But I had to do something.”

He walked to the back of the vehicle, placed his hand on the locking Tonneau bed cover handle, and looked at her meaningfully. “So, I brought him back here to let you decide.”

With that, he twisted the handle, and lifted the hard cover.

Trent lunged upward, but Evan swiftly and easily swatted him back down. Trent crumpled like a pathetic noodle. Kayla gasped and jumped back reflexively.

“We can do whatever you want with him. We can call the cops and have him arrested for violating the restraining order.”

Trent righted himself miserably, looking suitably pitiful.

“Or,” he said calmly, but raising his volume to make sure Trent could hear him, “I’m still perfectly willing to go cut him up and feed him to the gators.”

Kayla approached slowly, thoughts of the last time she and Trent had been in this very hallway swirling in her head.

He sneered up at her from the bed. He’d been knocked around, but she knew what a beating from a man Evan’s size looked like. She knew he’d held back. And she knew he’d done it for her. Renewed appreciation and regard for Evan flooded her.

“What do you want to do with him, Kayla?”

Trent shifted tentatively, eyeing them both. “What the whore wants is to come home where she belongs and quit all this Suzy Homemaker bullshit,” he spat.

Evan tensed and lunged forward at the word whore, but this time, Kayla reached out her hand and stopped him. Her wild swirl of emotion had just settled into a frightening calm. Like how the leaves stop blowing in the wind right before a tornado.

“I am home,” Kayla retorted, and a flare of anger suddenly burst to life like a match dropped into gasoline.

Boldly, Trent began to climb out of the trunk.

“Come back to Fort Myers with me baby,” he said, his voice gentler, “and we’ll forget all this ever happened.”

This was his pattern with every fight they ever had—first he would call her a whore or some other awful name, cut her down until she believed she was unlovable. Then he would offer his twisted affection, and she would be desperate enough to take it. Not this time.

Evan steadied himself, watching Kayla’s response, ready to intervene if need be.

Rage boiled up inside Kayla like an erupting volcano. The love and acceptance that now lived inside her had been put there by Evan, Bill, and Annie. It was as if it were having a toxic chemical reaction, sending all the hurt, all the pain, all the demeaning, insulting abuse Trent had heaped on her over the years rushing up inside her. Her body rejected it entirely. She was about to explode. Her hand automatically reached for the nearest object. It hung conveniently on a nail. The Daniels Family Ass-Whacker.

Baby. The word seared into her soul.

Stabbing the air with it in his direction, she spat, “I’m not your whore. I’m not your baby!”

Outraged at her brazen defiance, Trent’s battered face turned red with rage and he lunged at her. There was no mistaking that he intended to beat her down and drag her back to the car in a heap like he had done a hundred times before.

Not this time.

Her focused anger made everything brighter, clearer. Time slowed down.

A deadly silence filled Kayla’s head. Her arm drew back fluidly. The crop whooshed through the air, cracking into the side of Trent’s skeevy face with astonishing force. His head spun sideways from the sheer might of it.

He cried out in shock and pain, stumbling backward. She pursued without reprieve, savagely slashing at his face over and over, crying out one word after another for emphasis as she did: “I’m. Not. Your. Baby!”

She was lost in a timeless space where every slight, every abuse, and every manipulation would be atoned for by the blows against his cowering body. For the first time in their lives, he was the one running from her. He was afraid of her. In a frenzied attempt to retreat, he stumbled awkwardly, falling into the open El Camino bed. She had him, and she wasn’t letting him go. The beating continued.

Sound slowly returned to her in a cottony muffled haze. Time resumed its normal pace. Her head cleared the same way the world comes back into balance after you stand up too fast. She slowly became aware of the primal screams of fury erupting from her own throat.

Hefting fifty-pound feed bags and wrangling horses meant she was no weakling, and the blows she rained down on Trent had real weight. It made her think of what Canyon Bill said about her… “You may be little, but you got a bite to ya.”

She paused, shaking so hard, the crop almost fell from her hand. Trent stared up at her, his hands partly raised in a reflexive defense. It almost looked like surrender.

Heaving furious breaths, she said, “You can crawl back to Fort Myers now, and we’ll forget this ever happened.”

She leaned in closer—his face was distorted with outrage and indignation. He’d never thought she’d fight back. Until now, she never had. She’d been completely under his control since she was fourteen.

“Or I’ll cut you up and feed you to the gators myself.”

There Trent cowered, arms up to protect his already battered face from the whip. Huge, blanched welts were rising on all the exposed skin of his face and arms.

The fact that the welts were shaped like tiny handprints brought up a bubble of maniacal laughter from her.

Trent still sat there, stunned, immobilized.

On a roll, she turned and marched over to the horse rack where more supplies hung. She hung up the Ass-Whacker and grabbed a much more formidable weapon. A twitch. It was a chain loop attached to a wooden pole used to twist a horse’s upper lip and compel it to stand still for a veterinary procedure. She turned back to Trent, menacingly brandishing this new implement of pain, which would undoubtedly do much more damage.

She slapped the wooden handle into her opposite palm, then stalked back toward him.

He threw up his hands and cowered. “All right!”

“You’ll go and never come back here?” she demanded.

“No! I… I mean… Yes.”

“Then go,” she whispered, shaking the twitch chain in his face, which elicited a satisfying involuntary flinch.

She meant business, and he knew it.

He nodded, embarrassingly frantic.

She jerked her head, indicating that he should make a run for it.

Defeated, Trent scrambled out of the bed and back toward the driver’s seat of the car.

He made only a few shaky steps toward the car door when, to everyone’s shock, another voice interrupted.

“Freeze! Police!”

Officer Nicole Desmond stepped into the hallway of the barn, gun drawn.

Trent drew himself up to a halt and automatically began to raise his quivering hands.

“You’re not going anywhere! Trent Becker, you’re under arrest for violating the restraining order that I myself submitted to keep you away from Kayla Daniels.”

Nicole advanced slowly, watching him. “Now, turn and place your hands on the hood of the car.”

He immediately did as he was told.

Kayla watched with shocked satisfaction. She’d never seen Trent obediently respond to a woman. That he was going to be put in handcuffs by one was a delightful bonus.

Officer Nicole shoved him forward by the collar, kicking his feet apart and roughly cuffing one hand at a time behind Trent’s back. Holding them securely, Nicole looked over at Kayla. “He do that to your face?”

Kayla reached up and gingerly touched the side of her face, which stung. It was swollen and raw from hitting the ground. She nodded slightly.

“You’ll also be charged with assault and battery, Trent,” Nicole added.

“Charge her with assault! Look at my face!” Trent shrieked, turning half toward them, welts atop fresh bruises clearly visible on his face.

“Face forward, asshole,” Nicole barked, shoving him again. By the sound of her voice, Nicole had a personal vendetta against guys like Trent. Trent snapped to attention.

Inspecting Trent, Nicole could see the fresh little handprint welts forming on top of his already swollen and blackening bruises.

“Looks to me like you got bitch-slapped by some rabid little monkey. Maybe I’ll report it to Animal Control, but I don’t think it’s a police matter. Let’s go. My patrol vehicle’s out front.”

Kayla had acted in self-defense. Nicole had been near enough to witness that. Evan had stood aside and waited it out. When Trent was vulnerable and Evan could have delivered a terrible beatdown, he hadn’t done it.

Officer Nicole yanked Trent by the cuffs, spinning him off-balance from the front of his car with a satisfying jerk, and gruffly shoved him forward to get him moving.

Kayla stood in the hallway for a few moments, trembling with adrenaline, watching Trent being taken away. Finally, she could turn and look at Evan.

“That was the coolest fucking thing I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Remind me to never piss you off.”

The misplaced laughter was back, hurting her scream-sore throat a little. It was a good pain.

Officer Nicole Desmondhad looked forward to arresting Trent. She was confident in the case. He was going to go down hard for it, and Kayla deserved to be safe.

Nicole wasn’t stupid. She knew Kayla had only come to the cops to protect her man, because he would be duty-bound to end this guy, and would probably go back to prison for it.

She hadn’t counted on arresting Trent in the shape he’d been in. Somebody had obviously taught him a lesson before Kayla had so satisfyingly whipped him with a horse crop, and she didn’t have to be a genius to know who had done it.

She stopped her patrol car at the front gate to let herself out, but she was blocked by an incoming motorcycle. A stranger swung off and met her at the gate. He had a swagger that identified him as a man who knew women fell at his feet and knew he was a force to be reckoned with.

Well, this was a curveball.

He leaned well-muscled forearms on the gate between them and trapped her in a mesmerizing gaze of blue. His eyes slanted down slightly at the outer edges, giving him a wise, knowing look. His skin was weathered and tan, making the shock of those blue eyes and the wild reddish-brown hair all the more surprising.

“I figured the cops would be by. I just didn’t think you’d be so pretty.”

It wasn’t Nicole’s first rodeo. Being an attractive woman in uniform constantly attracted all the wrong attention. Ordinarily, she had a sarcastic comeback for every come-on. Today, she had nothing except for an eye roll behind her shades that he probably missed.

“I’m Evan’s brother, Jake.”

He wasn’t trying to hide the fact that his knuckles were bruised and cut. He followed her gaze to and from his hands, unapologetic.

“Officer Desmond,” she replied curtly.

Yeah, she deliberately did not share her first name with Jake. She felt like she needed to keep the barrier of her badge between them.

“Are you here to arrest someone?” he asked.

“Maybe you shouldn’t say anything else.”

“Is your dash cam on?”

“No.”

“Then I am going to say something.”

“I arrested Trent,” she said, cutting him off. “He isn’t saying who knocked him around.”

Jake nodded, cocking his head slightly sideways, appearing to read her.

“A guy like that has a lot of enemies,” she added.

Jake’s eyebrows rose a little.

No, her stomach didn’t flip. No, she did not want this man’s approval. Except, for some damn reason, she did. She was stupidly glad that he was obviously impressed with her willingness to look the other way even knowing Jake and Evan had beaten Trent.

“As far as I’m concerned, it could have been a drug deal gone bad.”

The way he was looking at her made her feel 0% cop, and 100% woman. Her uniform and accompanying Kevlar vest completely hid her femininity, but when he looked at her, it was like penetrating radar. As if he saw the curves she had carefully hidden, and because he saw them, she felt that hidden softness.

“I get the feeling you want to be sure you’re not making a huge mistake here,” he said.

She nodded. “Yeah, you could say that.”

“You can arrest me if you need to arrest someone.”

“Are you saying you did it?”

“We didn’t go hunting him. He came after her.” Jake met her gaze, and a little jolt went through her. “I can promise you this: we’re here to protect her. That’s all. Lock that guy up and throw away the key. Then I’ll go back to Key West, and everybody gets on with their lives. But if you need a fall guy, it’s me. My brother’s not a criminal.”

Glaringly, he didn’t say that he wasn’t a criminal. Yes, she did mentally make note of where he was from. Why? She couldn’t admit that to herself. Nor would she fully acknowledge the effect the proximity of this guy was having on her.

His eyes hadn’t left hers. He didn’t fidget. He wasn’t nervous at the prospect of being arrested or having this theoretical conversation about Trent. He was simultaneously calm and confident.

“If we’re lucky, he’ll plead out,” she said. She tamped down the knowledge that she didn’t want this conversation to end. She didn’t want to walk away.

“Nice to meet you,” she said.

His eyes twinkled, and the corner of his mouth quirked. “Same.”

She nodded a little and headed back to her patrol car, too aware that he stood and watched her walk away.