22. Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Two
Tucker
“ Y ou good to ride?” Levi asked Mason as the three of us left Evie in my room.
My gut told me she was more pissed off than she was letting on, but we couldn’t take the time to try to get her to talk to us. Besides, action was always better than just talking.
“I’m good,” Mason said. “I’ll add an extra bandage when I grab my leathers.”
“I’m gonna let Judge and Sweeper know what’s going on,” Levi said. “With everything going on with the Cobras, we need to be on alert.”
“You sure you want to come with us?” I asked. “If you need to deal with Quinn and the Cobras, Mason and I can handle Becca James, even if she does have someone with her.”
“You didn’t seem like you handled her all that well before,” he said.
“I was trying to be polite then.” My face heated. “That’s not going to be a problem now.”
“So Evie was okay once you explained things?”
His question had a careful kinda tone to it, which was weird for my oldest brother, but I got it. This thing with Evie was different for all of us, and he’d always been the worst of us when it came to feelings.
“I made it pretty clear that I’ve wanted her for a while,” I said. “But I think that Randall asshole did a number on her self-esteem.”
“We should’ve kicked his ass when we had the chance,” Levi said before veering off to talk to the guys.
I headed out to our bikes to make sure we were gassed up and good to go. I doubted Becca had left the hotel where I found her, but if she had, we wouldn’t want to waste time getting gas. By the time I’d used our spare gas cans to top us all off, Levi and Mason were ready too and we got on the road.
Mayfair wasn’t far, but the three of us were pissed off enough that the ride ended up being shorter than before. I didn’t bother going into the lobby to ask if Becca was still checked in, instead leading my brothers around to the room she’d been in before.
“How do you wanna play this?” I asked Levi as we got off our bikes.
“You knock,” he said. “Tell her you have more questions or something like that. Once she opens the door, we push our way in and don’t let her leave until we get answers.”
“And if she decides to scream and get someone in a neighboring room to call the cops?” Mason asked. “What’s the plan then?”
“Then whoever’s closest to her grabs her and we get the hell outta here,” Levi growled. “We can question her at the clubhouse if we have to, but I’d rather do it here.”
“Let’s do this,” I said, walking up to the door. I knocked, waiting to see if she’d answer without me saying anything.
Sure enough, I heard the door being unlocked and the chain removed, but the person who opened the door wasn’t Becca James.
“It’s just twenty-four even, right? I only have twenty-five, but you can keep the…” Randall Downs’ voice trailed off as he looked up from his wallet, his eyes growing wide and his jaw dropping.
“What the hell?” I said.
“Randy, honey, can you ask…” Becca froze in place behind Downs. “Tucker, what are you doing here?” Her attempt at casual sucked.
“We need to talk,” I said, putting my hand on Randall’s chest and pushing him back into the room.
He walked backwards and Becca did the same, if only to keep from being run over. The color drained from their faces as they looked behind me and saw my brothers coming in too. When the door was closed and locked, Randall’s legs gave out and he sat heavily on the edge of the bed.
A bed, I noticed, that was a hell of lot messier than it had been when I left. The entire room was messier, actually. Clothes everywhere. And based on the fact that Randall was only in a pair of wrinkled boxers and Becca had a robe on, her hair wet, it wasn’t too hard to guess what the two of them had been doing.
“Were you here before?” I asked Randall. “When I was here talking to Becca, were you hiding in the bathroom or something?”
“No.” He straightened, like he was trying to look dignified, but it was hard to do that when his underwear had pickles all over it. Pickles with what looked like faces.
“You got here right after, then,” I said, crossing my arms as I loomed over him. “But she knew you were coming. This was a planned meeting, not an accident, right?”
Randall glanced at Becca, like he needed help figuring out what to say.
“Just answer the damn question,” Levi snapped. “You two are fucking, right?”
“We’re together,” Becca said, glowering at all three of us. “And before you ask—yeah, Randall and I were together while he was still ‘officially’ with Evelyn.”
“I thought you said there was no truth to the rumors that he cheated on Evie,” Mason said.
“You read my article.” Becca shifted her weight from one foot to the other, clearly nervous now.
“We did,” I said. “What I want to know—one of the things, anyway—is who your source is. Who told you that Evie was staying at the Thunder Riders clubhouse?”
“Oh, I didn’t know that,” Becca said, her eyes glowing like I’d just given her the best present ever. “I just knew that one of you kissed her and said she was fucking you. Since I didn’t know which one, I figured I’d let the readers decide.”
“You told her about that,” Levi said, glaring at Randall.
“Of course I did,” Randall said. “You were kissing my girlfriend.”
“Ex-girlfriend,” Becca chimed in. “She’s your ex, Randy.”
“Of course,” he said, giving Becca the sort of condescending smile that made me want to hit him.
Well, everything about him made me want to hit him, but that was another strike against him.
“Evie didn’t say that you were the person she caught Randall with,” Mason said suddenly. “Does that mean Randall was cheating on you too, or were you on a break or something?”
“She didn’t catch Randy with anyone,” Becca said. “She just said that for shock value. She found one of the love letters he wrote to me and decided she’d make this huge announcement about him being a cheater.”
Becca was talking to Mason, so he and Levi were watching her, but I was watching Randall and I saw the guilt flash across his face. Yeah, he’d been fucking someone else. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was using Becca the way he’d used Evie to make himself look good. Hell, he could’ve even been using that other woman too.
“He’s the reason you’ve been printing all those rumors about Evie,” Levi said. “You were jealous that she got to be with him.”
“He was always going to leave her for me,” Becca said. “He just had to wait for the right time, when it wouldn’t mess up his career.”
“Oh, so it’s a Romeo and Juliet kind of thing,” I said. “In case you forgot, that didn’t end well for either one of them.”
“Look, we wanted to be together, and now we are,” Randall said. “Evelyn’s with…whoever. It’s all water under the bridge, right? We can all go our separate ways now?”
“Hell no,” Levi said. “First, Becca’s going to take down that story, and she’s going to leave Evie alone from here on out. You got your man. Leave her alone.”
Judging by the stubborn set to Becca’s jaw, I doubted she’d agree to it.
“You stop with the threatening letters and harassment, and we won’t tell the cops that you’re the ones who broke into her mom’s house,” Mason said. “That’s how all of this is going to go away.”
“What letters?” Becca asked.
Randall gave her a sheepish look. “I may have written some threatening letters, but nothing was ever going to happen to her. I just wanted her to need more security at events.” His eyes darted to us. “With the letters, I could charge a venue more, claiming to need extra security, but pocket the extra since I knew she wasn’t actually in danger.”
“And breaking into her mom’s house? Was that just some other trick?” Levi asked.
Randall shook his head, his eyes wide. “I didn’t break into anything.”
“Me either,” Becca said. “My idiot boyfriend might have been toeing the line legally speaking, but I never crossed it. I wrote about her, and yeah, some of it was…embellished, but I wasn’t about to do something illegal.”
“All right,” Levi said. “Prove to us where you were when the break-in happened and we’ll believe you.”
“When was it?” Becca asked, crossing the room to get her phone from her purse. Once I told her the date, she pulled up something on her phone and then handed the phone to me.
It was a video with a time stamp right at the time the break-in had happened. A video that clearly showed both Randall and Becca, together in this hotel room. Together and very occupied with each other.
I handed the phone to Mason but spoke to the couple. “Okay, so the two of you were fucking then. Have you been spying on her at other times? Doing anything else to scare her or get revenge or something?”
They both shook their heads, but it was mostly Becca I was watching. I didn’t really trust her, but I would definitely take her word over Randall’s any day.
“One more question,” I said, keeping my eyes on Becca. “I read some of your other articles. You seemed to have a lot of personal information about Evie’s past. How’d you get that when no other reporter has?”
“No one else wanted to look deeper,” Becca said. “They just wanted to pretend she was some perfect little princess, above us all.”
“She has a source,” Randall blurted out. “I might’ve told her about the kiss, but that’s all. Evelyn never told me anything about where she was from. Becca’s the one who knew she came to Bedford in the first place, because someone told her.”
“Who?” Levi asked.
“I don’t know.” Becca raised her hands in surrender. “I swear. Right after I wrote my first negative piece about Evelyn, I got an anonymous email saying that I should start looking into her past. Every couple weeks, I’d get another one with some other bit of information. They never said who they were, and I never tried to find them.”
“You didn’t want to risk them not giving you anything else,” Mason said.
“Exactly,” Becca admitted. “But I promise I’m done with that now. Randy and I will go back to Nashville, and you’ll never have to hear from us again.”
“You have two hours to get out of Kentucky,” Levi said. “And I don’t ever want to see you anywhere near Evie again. I don’t care if you’re in the same store. You stay away from her.”
Becca and Randall both nodded, and Levi turned to Mason and me.
“Let’s get back to our girl and tell her what we know.”