Chapter Ten
BETHANY
I haven't let myself cry since I closed the door behind me. I walk down the back access road with the leather jacket Striker gave me zipped up against the wind. I don't look back at the house; if I look behind me I'm not going to make it.
The road is empty, streetlights on. I walk for twenty minutes before I get to the highway. Sitting on a low stone wall outside a place that used to be a feed store, I dig the burner phone out of my pocket and make the call I've been rehearsing for an hour.
“High Vale Cabs. Mick speaking.”
“Mick, I need a ride. I'm at the old feed store on the highway. I need to get to the bus station.”
“Name?”
“Bethany.” I blurt it out before I remember that I should give a fake name.
“Wait. Striker’s new gal? Viv told me he got engaged. Wonders will never cease, let me tell you. Does he know about this? Striker’s not a man to cross, if you know what I’m sayin’.”
“He will when he gets home.”
“Gotcha. See ya soon.”
He hangs up.
Mick collects me in an ancient sedan. When he pulls into the lot at the bus station, he turns to me.
“Bethany. I'm going to ask one question. Are you safe? You’re trembling back there, hon.”
I think about it. “Yes.”
“Then it's none of my business. Six dollars.”
I give him a twenty and tell him not to give me change.
The bus terminal has a single room and a broken vending machine, with a paper timetable pinned to a bulletin board. The next bus is in twenty-eight minutes.
I sit on the bench and put my head in my hands.
I've been keeping my emotions down since I picked up the pen at the kitchen counter, but now it all comes flooding out. I let the tears come, quietly. I learned to be quiet when I cried about my parents’ death, but my brother was downstairs working late on his laptop because he had to keep us housed. Showing how I felt would be selfish.
I'm still crying when the cruiser pulls into the lot.
I see it before I hear it. A black-and-white SUV with the High Vale Sheriff's Department in cream letters across the door. It rolls into one of the painted spaces and the engine cuts. The man who gets out has an easy, confident walk.
“Evening, ma'am.”
I dry my eyes with the back of my wrist. “Evening.”
“Aren't you Striker's gal? Bethany.”
“That's me.” Viv certainly made good on her promise to tell the whole town.
“Just stopping for a coffee from the machine inside, then I saw you out here. You all right?”
“Yes, sir. The machine is broken.”
“Oh darn. You sure you’re okay?”
I keep my voice level. “Just going to visit some family.”
“Where?”
“Talbury.” I’d seen the stop on the timetable inside.
He crosses his arms. “Helluva way for a young woman to travel alone after dark.”
“My aunt's expecting me.”
The sheriff walks over and sits down on the bench beside me. He stretches his legs out in front of him, an arm along the back of the bench, the other resting on his knee. He smells like cologne and coffee.
“Congratulations on your engagement, by the way,” he says.
“Thank you.” I want him to leave me alone, but he doesn’t.
“Don't mind me asking. You're a long way from your fiancé tonight.”
“We had a fight.”
“Ah.” He nods to himself. “Lord knows I've had a few of those. Wife's run off to her sister's twice this year. I tell you what, every time she comes back I'm the happier man for it.”
“That's nice.”
“Does Striker know where you are?”
A small shard of ice settles in my stomach. The same cold I felt the first time I saw this man across the street outside the diner. Viv's voice in my head. He gives me the creeps.
I keep my voice steady. “He'll know soon enough.”
“Want me to call him for you? Save him the worry.”
“No, sir. I appreciate it, but no.”
“Easy enough.”
“Please don't. I need some time.”
He looks at me too long, the big smile unmoving. Then he nods.
"Whatever you say, Bethany. I'm going to see if I can get that machine inside to work.”
He gets up and walks inside, as I sit very still on the bench.
Getting up and walking away from this place seems suspicious. What happens if I'm not on the bench when the sheriff comes back outside? Will he look for me?
I stay put. The bus has to come soon.
The sheriff comes out of the terminal five minutes later with a paper cup. He nods at me, then gets in his cruiser. He sits in the lot sipping his coffee with the engine running for the next eleven minutes.
Once the bus arrives, he tips his hat to me through the windshield as I pass him on the way to the door. The driver punches my ticket and I take a seat near the back. I’m the only passenger, apart from a woman nursing a baby near the front.
The bus pulls out of the lot and the cruiser pulls out behind it. It hangs back. Then it falls away, somewhere about a mile out of town. I keep my forehead against the window, staring at the dark trees going past.
Then the bus slows.
Brake lights ahead through the trees, with a black SUV stopped sideways across the highway. Two men in suits stand at the centerline waving the bus down with flashlights.
The driver cusses softly under his breath and downshifts. The bus comes to a stop.
The doors open.
Two of them come on. The lead suit holds up a paper to the driver and says something I can't hear. The driver jerks his head back down the aisle at me and the lead suit walks down the aisle and stops at my row.
“Ms. Crawford. There's a vehicle outside. We're taking you home.”
I stare at him, raising my voice. “This isn't…”
“Don't make a scene, girly, or I’ll bring that woman and her baby along with us. Maybe shoot the driver, for good measure. Do you want that?” He moves his jacket to show me the gun he’s carrying.
I get up.
He takes my elbow on the way down the aisle, his grip tight. We come down the bus steps and the door hisses shut behind me, and I get one look back through the windshield at the driver, who doesn't meet my eye.
The bus pulls away, too quickly.
The drive back is quiet. The lead suit is in front. The other one is back with me. I stare at my hands in my lap, not letting myself cry. We pull through the gates of the High Vale Lodge fifteen minutes later.
I let them lead me up to the bridal suite without speaking. The flowers on the side table are the same arrangement of white roses. The lead suit pushes me through the door and shuts it behind me.
The lock clicks from the outside. Rico Taylor walks in a few hours later.
He's in a different suit than the one I last saw him in. But still immaculately pressed and groomed, no hair out of place. Slick. He looks at me in the disappointed way a man looks at an investment that hasn't performed well.
“Bethany. We’re glad you decided to come back.”
“That’s crap. I didn't decide.”
“Call it a figure of speech, then.” Rico pulls out the chair opposite the bed and sits, crossing his legs. He keeps his hands on his knees.
“Now. Let’s talk about this engagement…”
I suck my breath in. “What about it?”
“Your hasty engagement to a Mr. Striker.”
“His name's Striker. Not Mr. Striker.”
He shrugs. “Right. The big biker who runs the bar. The newspaper notice, buying the ring, the whole production.”
“It's not a production.”
“My investigators tell me you have known each other for less than a week.”
“Well, your investigators are wrong. We were keeping it secret. Let me go now and we don’t have to go through this whole rigmarole again.”
He smiles a small, unpleasant smile. “Where did you meet him?”
I open my mouth, and the lie comes out more smoothly than it has any right to.
"In a diner in Ember Heart last May. He was up there for a charity ride… I was visiting my cousin. We had apple pie.”
“Pie?”
“That’s right. And then he came to see me three weeks later. We’ve been long-distance for a year. I took the job in High Vale this trip because I wanted to surprise him and I didn’t have the money. The trip was free.”
“How romantic.” He raises an eyebrow.
“Yep.”
Rico laces his fingers around his knee. “There's no ring on your finger, Bethany.”
“We had a fight. I left it on the kitchen counter.”
“That’s convenient.”
“It's the truth. People fight. Have you never had a fight with somebody, Mr. Taylor?”
He stands, walking to the window. “You’re lying. The wedding tomorrow goes ahead either way, and when you are my wife it won't matter anymore.”
“You want to piss off the whole MC? Are you crazy? And I won't marry you.”
“Yes, you will. Your brother’s IT access is very important to my superiors.”
“You’re making a huge mistake. Striker is mine…
I'm his. I said yes when he asked me to marry him. I left because I was hurt and I was wrong to leave. When he comes through that door it is going to be because he’s my fiancé, and you’ve made an enemy of a man who used to break faces for money, Mr. Taylor.
Except he doesn't break faces for paychecks anymore… he breaks them for free.”
Rico stares at me and gets out his phone.
“You’re threatening me? Two can play at that game. I want you to think very carefully about what you’ve said while I make this call.”
I sit on the edge of the bed, staring at my reflection in the dark window.