Chapter Three
Chapter
Three
“I have to go,” Lucas said, not for the first
time. Sean was right beside him, as he’d been all night, but
apparently he couldn’t hear Lucas talking. Shit. He wasn’t going to
get busted on his first night out. And it wasn’t like he was
actually having any fun. His terms of release included a ban on
consuming alcohol, but even without that, there was no way Lucas
would have touched the stuff.
He looked down at the mug in his hand.
De-alcoholized beer was disgusting, but it gave him something to
toast with. He glanced at the woman nestled in under his left arm.
Mandi Carter, someone he’d barely known in high school, had
apparently decided she was his girlfriend. She was about as
appetizing as the fake beer, but served a similar purpose. Not that
he was toasting with her, but she helped make it seem like he was
having a good time. But he wasn’t, and he needed to get the hell
out of there.
So he stood and pulled his jacket off the
back of the chair. The party had ostensibly been in his honor but
after only a couple hours everyone was too sloshed to even notice
that he was leaving. He leaned over and told Sean, “I’m heading
out. If you want, I can take the car home so you don’t have to come
pick it up tomorrow.”
“No, I need it,” Sean said. He looked up at
Lucas through alcohol-blurred eyes. “I need it tonight.”
“You’re drunk tonight. And your mom was
right—the cops might be looking at me extra close. If they know I’m
living with you, they might be looking at you too. You can’t afford
a DUI, man. They’ll take your license away.”
“Fuck them,” Sean growled.
“Yeah, okay, but they’ve got guns, and
there’s a lot of them. Let me have the keys.”
“You turned into an old lady, you know that?”
Sean raised a challenging eyebrow, waiting for Lucas’s
response.
“Okay, sonny, give granny your keys.”
Sean grinned. “I guess you shouldn’t walk
with your bad hip.”
“Sciatica,” Lucas agreed, and he snagged the
keys out of Sean’s hand. “I’ll see you at home, if you make
it.”
It was good to get out in the cool night air
after the stuffy bar and Lucas let himself take a few deep breaths
before climbing behind the wheel of Sean’s pickup. It was the same
truck they’d been driving around in since high school and it hadn’t
been exactly new then, but it started reliably and it wasn’t like
Lucas was going far.
He wasn’t going far at all, he realized when
he saw the flashing lights in his rearview mirror. He’d gotten less
than a block from the bar—they must have been waiting for him.
He took a deep breath and tried to control
his instinctive, irrational fear. He was on Main Street, with lots
of witnesses. He was sober. He glanced at his watch. He’d been
cutting it close, but it wasn’t past curfew yet, and surely they
couldn’t hold him responsible for being late if they were the ones
who delayed him. He was fine. He just needed to keep his cool. He
rolled the window down and waited, watching the proceedings in the
car mirrors.
The cops approached with more caution than
they would have if this had been a routine traffic stop. They both
had their hands on their guns, and they were walking slowly, all of
their attention focused on the driver’s seat. Damn, they were
making Lucas nervous. He knew better than to move, but it felt
wrong to do nothing, to just wait for one of them to get
trigger-happy and blow the back of his head off. He could almost
feel the sensation now—the way the bullet would feel, the blessed
nothingness that would follow. He’d thought about suicide so many
times over the last three years, but he’d always chickened out. And
now, with paranoid cops bearing down on him, it would take so
little to end it all. But he stayed still. His conscious mind might
have its own ideas, but there was a lizard brain still active
somewhere in Lucas, and it wanted to live.
“Put your hands out the window,” the officer
on the driver’s side barked, and Lucas moved slowly to comply.
“Are you alone in the truck?”
“Yeah.”
The officer drew up beside him and shone his
flashlight into the back seat, the passenger seat, and then
directly into Lucas’s eyes. “I want you to reach very slowly for
your license, registration, and proof of insurance,” the officer
said firmly.
Lucas had gotten his license renewed a couple
weeks ago, a supervised day visit to the town nearest the prison
with a bunch of other convicts anticipating release. “My wallet’s
in my back pocket,” he said as he carefully shifted to the side and
reached behind him. He turned away from the flashlight and let his
eyes adjust a little before fumbling through the wallet and finding
the required card. “Registration and insurance are in the glove
box, I hope.”
“You hope? It’s every driver’s responsibility
to ensure that the car they are in control of is legally allowed on
the roads!” The officer sounded truly outraged.
“I need to lean over to get it,” Lucas said,
and he moved slowly. Thank God, the little plastic folder was right
on top of whatever other crap Sean kept in his truck and it wasn’t
hard to fish it out and hand it to the officer.
There was a moment while the cop checked the
paperwork, and then he said, “Keep your hands where I can see them.
Lean out and open the car door using the exterior handle, and then
step slowly out of the vehicle.”
After three years, Lucas was used to obeying
orders even when they seemed unreasonable. He did as he was told,
and stood there on the side of the road, cars whizzing by, drivers
staring at him, the whole town seeing that Lucas Cain was in
trouble with the cops before he’d even spent a single night on the
outside. He kept his eyes locked straight ahead, focusing on a tree
across the street.
“Have you had any alcohol tonight, Mr.
Cain?”
“No.”
“We have an anonymous tip that says
differently, and we saw you leaving a bar just a few minutes ago.
Do you want to revise your answer?”
“No.” Lucas fought back the anger. He knew
how Sean would react to all this. Any of his friends, really. This
asshole cop was leaping to conclusions, persecuting a random
citizen because he had nothing better to do with his time, power
tripping like he was a badass movie detective instead of a small
town meter maid. Yeah, old Lucas would have had plenty to say to
this loser. But new Lucas kept his damn mouth shut.
“You’ll be happy to take a breathalyzer test,
then? To prove your innocence?”
A regular citizen wouldn’t have to prove his
innocence. But Lucas was on parole. He was already guilty of one
thing, and that meant he was presumed guilty of everything else. He
had no choice about the breathalyzer. He had no choice about
anything, all because…
And that was where the anger stopped and
turned into a familiar, sick feeling. Because a man was dead. Lucas
had killed him. An unnecessary breathalyzer test was just one more
of the long string of punishments that Lucas absolutely had coming.
“Yes. Okay. I’ll take it.”
“And just for everyone’s safety, we’d like to
cuff you while we do it. Do you have a problem with that?”
A problem with being cuffed for no reason on
the first day he’d spent out of jail? A problem with having the
whole town see him like that? Lucas’s skin tightened and he fought
to keep his voice level as he said, “Okay. If you need to.”
The officer squinted as if trying to figure
him out, then shrugged in disgust. “Turn around, hands on the hood
of the truck.” Lucas did as he was told and ordered his body not to
resist as his first arm was wrenched behind him and he felt the
cold metal locking around his wrist. Fear battled with anger, but
on top of it all was the self-control he’d worked so hard to
develop. Deep breaths, calming thoughts, and then his other arm was
jerked around and he was trapped, cuffed as securely as the day
he’d first been arrested. He’d sworn he’d never have this sensation
again, and here it was, so soon.
“Step away from the car and walk over to the
curb,” the cop ordered, giving Lucas’s cuffed arms a little jerk to
reinforce the words. The other cop was already moving, grabbing the
breathalyzer kit from the front seat of the cop car.
“You having a good night, before this?” the
first cop asked. He seemed to take savage delight in thinking that
he’d ruined Lucas’s evening. There was no point in spoiling his fun
by saying that this little visit was no more or less pleasant than
the time in the bar.
Lucas followed the instructions for the
breathalyzer test and waited patiently while the cops frowned at
his results. “We need to do it again,” the first cop said. “The
results were inconclusive.”
“I haven’t been drinking,” Lucas tried, but
they both ignored him so he didn’t say anything more.
Another test, more scowls, and then the first
cop told his partner, “Keep an eye on him.” He stalked back to the
squad car and Lucas could see him on the radio, complaining to
somebody somewhere and obviously not liking what he was hearing in
return.
“I really wasn’t drinking,” Lucas said,
mostly to himself.
The second officer sneered at him. “You were
breathing, though. That’s enough, in my books.”
Lucas bit back his retort. He needed to keep
his mouth shut. He’d just wait for it all to go away.
That was when he looked down the street and
saw the crowd pouring out of the bar’s parking lot. “Oh shit,” he
said.
The cop followed his gaze. “Oh shit,” he
echoed, and he strode toward the squad car, leaving Lucas
unattended. “We’ve got company,” he called through the open window.
“Might get hostile.”
The crowd was closer now, and Lucas picked
out Sean in the lead. Someone had obviously seen Lucas get pulled
over, and word had gotten back to the bar somehow. Phone call,
text, Facebook—who knew? And it didn’t matter, really. One way or
the other, about thirty angry drunks were bearing down on the sole
cop car, and they were doing it because they wanted to defend
Lucas.
“Everything’s fine,” he yelled as soon as the
crowd was close enough to hear him. “It’s all good. Nothing to
worry about.”
But of course the cops couldn’t let him
handle it. They were in front of the crowd now, each of them with
one hand on his gun, the other on his baton. “This is a police
matter,” the first officer said in a loud, authoritative voice.
Exactly the kind of voice that activated Sean’s rebellious nature
like a flame touched to a pile of gunpowder.
“It’s police harassment,” Sean yelled, and
there were cries of agreement from the crowd. “You guys are filming
this, right?” He waved an arm at his followers, indicating how they
should spread out. “Get it from all different angles. If they pull
anything, we need to make sure we have a record.” The people
holding cell phones up moved as directed, and Sean turned back to
the police. “What are the charges? Why are you arresting him?”
“He isn’t under arrest.”
“Then why the fuck is he cuffed?” Sean was
working himself up, and Lucas needed to settle him down before this
whole thing exploded.
“It’s fine, Sean. I said it was okay. They’re
just being careful.”
Sean scowled at him, then turned back to the
police. “Parker,” he growled at one of them. “This is just your
fucking style. I mean, why’d you pull him over in the first place?
This is bullshit!”
“Citizen tip,” Lucas said, easing forward. If
he could get between Sean and the cops, he’d be able to get in the
way of anything before it went too far wrong. “Remember what your
mom said. They have to follow up on that shit. It’s not a big deal,
man.”
“They’re fucking mall cops, Lucas! Small town
faggots, power-hungry and walking around with their guns so people
don’t notice they have no dicks.”
“Watch it, Gage,” the second cop said, and he
stepped forward.
“Or what?” Sean glanced over to make sure the
cameras were rolling, then jutted his chin out. “You going to take
me down, Officer Dickless? You want to drop your little wooden
dildo and hand your gun to your life-partner there and actually
take me on man-to-man?” Sean grabbed his crotch through his jeans
and added, “Or do you want to take me into the back alley there and
suck my dick? I don’t usually go for guys, but it’d be interesting
to compare your technique to your mother’s, so I’d do it in the
name of science. Your mom, now, she’s pretty sloppy, but I kind of
like that—”
The cop swung hard and fast, his baton
catching Sean mid-thigh. It might have been his knee if Sean hadn’t
dodged a little and that would have been worse, but as it was Sean
dropped like a stone, grabbing his leg and yelling pain-laced
obscenities. The crowd drew back and it should have ended there,
but the cop stepped forward, standing over Sean as if he was going
to strike again. Mikey’s familiar voice yelled, “Protect him! Keep
the pigs away from him! Self-defense!”
The crowd surged forward, and the officer
stepped back. There was a moment where everything was poised on the
edge of chaos. It wasn’t pure altruism that had Lucas wanting to
avoid an escalation—something like this could seriously mess up his
parole. So he made his voice loud and calm and said, “They’re
calling for backup. I’m okay, guys. You need to get out of here.
Take Sean.”
“We came for you,” someone said, and there
was a murmur of agreement through the crowd. Funny how they hadn’t
even noticed him leaving the bar, but were ready to riot to protect
him now.
“I’m okay.” But they didn’t seem convinced.
“Maybe one person could stay, with a camera?”
“I’ll stay,” Mandi Carter said, and she gave
the cop a dirty look as she stepped around him on her way toward
Lucas. He hadn’t appreciated her in the bar, but out here, when she
hooked her arm through his elbow, he squeezed as tight as he could
while still handcuffed. She smiled at him in appreciation.
“Hopefully they won’t beat up a girl.”
“Wouldn’t count on it,” Sean said from his
spot on the ground. “They’re pussies, so they’d naturally be drawn
to their own kind.”
The officer stepped forward again, the crowd
surged, and then the sound of distant sirens caught everyone’s
attention.
“Get him out of here,” Lucas said urgently,
and finally, he seemed to have them all convinced. Mikey leaned
down and helped Sean to his feet, Casey and Tinker heaved his arms
up over their shoulders and they started off down the street at an
awkward jog. The rest of the crowd melted away into the night, and
Lucas looked tiredly at the police officer who’d hit Sean.
“Honestly,” he said. “I wasn’t drinking.”