“What about you?”
“I'll figure it out,” he said. “Don't worry about me. Just get yourself out of here. I'm not going to have you going to prison for us.” Damon zipped up the bag and tossed it under the bed. He pushed it as deep as it would go. Standing up, he ran to the door, turned, and looked back at Cassie. “Go,” he said. “Get out of here.”
She nodded at him and he ran into the hallway, slamming the door behind him. The one thing Cassie had going for her was that Carl had checked her in under a pseudonym – one McReed didn't know. Not knowing the name she'd been checked in under – and the hotel staff being unaware of her real name – would delay him enough to give Cassie a chance to get out. But Damon needed to buy her a little more time.
Taking the elevator down to the lobby, his heart thundered in his chest. He took a few deep, steadying breaths and tried to calm himself down. He wasn't going to let McReed see him sweating. The doors opened with a sharp ding and he exited the car, stepping into the lobby. McReed and a few of his cop buddies were standing at the front desk arguing with the clerk. Hoping beyond hope Cassie had gotten out of the hotel, Damon stepped over and cleared his throat.
“Well, Detective McReed,” he said, “it's been – hours. I was just thinking about how much I missed seeing your smiling face.”
“Where is she?” McReed snapped. “What room is your little girlfriend in? We all have a lot to talk about.”
“We do? Like what?”
“Like the fact that I'm getting real tired of your mouth, for one,” McReed snapped. “Now, where is she?”
“Golly, Detective,” Damon said, cocking his head and pretending to be thinking about it, “it seems to have slipped my mind.”
“You are interfering with an investigation,” he said. “Now tell me which room she's in or you're going to jail for obstruction of justice.”
“Hmmmm...” Damon said. “Was it room 302? Or was that 602?”
“Keep it up, smartass,” McReed snapped. “You're only making it harder on yourself.”
“I honestly can't remember, Detective,” Damon laughed. “Give me a couple of beers and my mind goes right out the window.”
“Detective,” said the man behind the desk.
“What?” he snapped.
“I remember her now,” he said. “She's in – ”
“Shut your mouth,” Damon roared, the man falling silent beneath his glare.
“Officer,” McReed snapped. “If this piece of trash opens his mouth again, you hook him up and haul his ass down to the station.”
“Yes, sir.”
McReed turned to the desk worker. “You were saying?”
The man purposefully averted his eyes from Damon who continued to glower at him. “She's on the fifth floor. Room 514.”
“Thank you,” McReed said and then turned to the uniforms with him. “Bring the scumbag along.”
One of the cops made the mistake of taking Damon by the arm. He yanked his arm out of the cop's grip and stared daggers through him. The cop unholstered his weapon and held it as his side – the threat more than obvious.
“Touch me again,” Damon hissed, “and you won't be eating solid food for weeks.”
McReed laughed as he led the party onto the elevator. “He's a feisty one, you have to give him that.”
“If he's not careful,” the cop said, “I'll give him a bullet to the head.”
Getting everybody inside, he punched the button for the fifth floor. Damon rode in silence, continuing to hope Cassie had gotten out and was safely away. The doors opened and McReed led the small group down the hallway, stopping in front of Cassie's room. He produced the key card the desk clerk had given him and gave Damon a wink as he slipped it into the electronic lock on the door. When the lock beeped, McReed – who had his gun out and at the ready – turned the handle and pushed the door open.
The cop behind Damon nudged him forward. With a sense of trepidation for what he was about to find, Damon stepped into the room – and found nothing. He breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing Cassie wasn't in the room. Damon leaned against the wall, trying to keep himself from laughing as McReed and his goons searched the room. He was going to prison, but at least Cassie was off the hook and free.
That relief and amusement he'd felt though quickly evaporated when McReed checked under the bed and came up with nothing. That black bag he'd stuffed under the bed was either suddenly invisible – or it was gone. A yawning chasm opened in Damon's stomach as he put two and two together and realized that Cassie had taken the bag and split. If McReed caught her now, with the bag in her sole possession, she was taking the rap for the whole damn thing.
“Looks like your girlfriend bugged out,” McReed observed.
“Looks that way,” Damon replied. “I seem to recall her saying something about having a girl's night out.”
“Uh huh,” McReed said. “So now you scumbags have dragged that perfectly sweet, innocent girl into your degeneracy.”
“Degeneracy? That's a pretty big word for a guy with the IQ of a pile of dogshit.”
McReed stepped up and stood nose to nose with Damon again. The cop stared into his eyes, the anger burning bright. “Get this piece of shit out of here.”
“You're arresting me?” Damon asked, dumbfounded. “On what charge?”
“On anything I can make up between here and the station.”
“Bullshit,” Damon snapped. “I'm not going anywhere with you.”
“Fine, you want to play that game?” McReed hissed. “I'm hauling you in for obstruction. Is that better?”
“Desperate times, huh?” Damon said. “Can't go back to your bosses with nothing but your dick in your hand for a second time today, huh?”
“Take his ass out of here,” McReed hissed.
The cop who'd grabbed him earlier put a pair of handcuffs on Damon. He stared McReed down the whole time, anger burning brightly in his own eyes. Damon vowed that one day McReed was going to pay for everything he'd done to the Dragons. He was sick of this asshole thinking he was some big shot tough guy. One of these days, Damon was going to show him exactly how weak and insignificant he really was.
The cop pushed Damon from behind, moving him toward the door. Damon smirked at McReed and walked out of the room glad that at least Cassie had gotten away. And also worried that she was carrying a bag that was radioactive and one that would land her in prison.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
“You know it's only a matter of time before we find her, right? We're going to have some K9 units out there looking for her.”
Damon yawned and leaned back in his seat in the interrogation room. McReed sat across from him, his eyes as intense as he'd ever seen them. Clearly, the cop was growing desperate. After the search at the Dragon's clubhouse yesterday had turned up absolutely nothing, to follow it up with a search of Cassie's hotel room – and have it also turn up nothing – couldn't have been a good look for him within the department.
“Your bosses coming down on you for being such a fuck up, McReed?” Damon asked, a smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth. “You're zero for two at the moment, aren't you?”
“And when we do find her,” he continued as if Damon hadn't spoken, “we are going to prosecute her to the fullest extent of the law. If I had my way, she'd be doing life without parole. Unless we stuck a needle in her arm, which would be fine by me, as well.”
“Yeah, good luck with that,” Damon said.
He leaned forward – apparently to make sure Damon understood just how serious he was. “Where is she, Damon?”
“Couldn't tell you.”
And that was the truth. Damon had no idea where Cassie had run off to. He didn't think she would have gone back to the clubhouse – not carrying the fucking bag she was carrying thanks to Carl. But where would she have gone? She had nobody to turn to and nowhere to run to. He really was as clueless as McReed about Cassie's current whereabouts.
McReed leaned back in his chair and sighed
. “You really going to let her take the fall for all of this?”
“I have no idea what you're talking about.”
“I'm pretty sure I have an idea of what she's carrying,” McReed said. “I started to think about it yesterday. See, I noticed that she wasn't staying at the clubhouse when we dropped by yesterday.”
“Wow. Your powers of observation are stunning. No wonder they gave you a detective's shield. Color me impressed.”
“And I got to thinking about that empty safe,” McReed continued. “I have a feeling that, somehow, you scumbags got tipped off about the raid. That gave you time to clean out the safe, tidy up your clubhouse, and stick little Mary Sunshine with all of the shit you guys were hiding.”
“Well, it seems like you have it all figured out. What do you need me for?”
“What I can't figure, though,” he said, “is if she knew what she was agreeing to carry. Or if she was caught off guard and had no idea that she'd be carrying so much illegal shit. Maybe seeing that much dope in her bag is what spooked her and made her rabbit on out of that hotel.”
“That's a very interesting theory, Detective,” Damon said. “You do have evidence to back that fairytale up, don't you? Because the last I checked, you still needed something called evidence. Or – does that not apply to you? Should we all just be taking you at your word?”
“When I find her, I'm going to have all the evidence I need to send you and your buddies away for a long, long time,” McReed said.
“Yeah, good luck with that,” Damon said. “I'm rootin' for you, Detective. I really am.”
“What I can't understand is how a nice girl like that wound up with a dirtbag like you in the first place,” he said. “And not only that, but how you've managed to make her so loyal to you.”
Damon shrugged. “No real trick to it. You just have to be a decent human being.”
“Oh, it's that simple, huh?”
“Yup. Sure is. Obviously, that's not something you can relate to. Your wife left you, right?”
“You're a funny guy.”
“So I've been told.”
“What was in the safe?”
Damon smirked. “Well, nothing. You saw that for yourself.”
“Don't fuck with me,” McReed hissed. “What was in the safe?”
Damon ran a hand through his hair. “You think I can get a Coke or something?”
“Oh sure, did you want anything else? A sandwich or something maybe?”
“Nah, I'm good. Just a little thirsty.”
Damon could see the man's face flush, could see that he was doing his best to control his anger. But it seemed to be a Herculean effort for him. He was growing more and more frustrated by the minute and it amused Damon to no end.
“What was in the safe?”
“Haven't we been through this already?” Damon asked.
“And we are going to keep going through it until you tell me what I want to know.”
“Oh, this sounds fun. You're a real one man party. Anybody ever tell you that?”
McReed banged his fist on the table. “Where is the girl?”
“I told you, I haven't the foggiest, man.”
“That's bullshit and you know it.”
Damon laughed. “You seem a little stressed out, brother. I think you need to get laid or go on vacation or something. Get away for a little while and recharge those batteries.”
McReed sighed loudly. “You're a real prick, you know that?”
“But you just said I was a funny guy. Which is it, Detective?”
“You and your buddies are going down,” he said. “You can either help yourself by helping me or you can burn with 'em.”
“Going down? For what exactly?” Damon asked, his head cocked. “Last I checked, you've come up empty on both of your big raids. What is it you think you're going to burn us all down with? Our bad attitudes? Maybe because some of the guys lack proper hygiene?”
McReed's hands were balled into fists and he looked like he wanted to scream. Or punch Damon. Or possibly both. At the same time. The more worked up the cop got, the more amused Damon became. He had nothing but time on his hands at the moment and didn't mind wasting McReed's. The longer he kept the detective tied up here, the more time Cassie had to get to ground and figure out a way to contact him. Also, the more time Damon had to see if he could figure out where she might go.
“Let's try this again,” McReed gritted his teeth and tried to control his voice. “What was in the safe? And where is the girl?”
Damon chuckled and shook his head. “Are we really going to do this dance again? Don't you have any other moves?”
McReed stared at him, his eyes conveying just how much hatred and contempt he had for him. Damon shrugged. He couldn't care less whether or not the cop liked him. He wasn't going to lose a wink of sleep over it.
“You know,” Damon said, “when I was in the Marines, we had some really great interrogators. They could get people talking and spilling their guts long before they even realized they were doing it. They were good. Really good. Smooth. You're like, the exact opposite of that. You really have to be the worst interrogator in the history of interrogation. You just ask the same questions over and over and over again. And the funny thing is, you expect a different answer every time.”
“It sickens me to think you were ever a Marine,” McReed hissed. “My father was a Marine and he served this country honorably. You're a fucking disgrace to the uniform.”
McReed could have insulted a million different things about him and they would have rolled off like water off a duck's back. But insulting his service was way over the line as far as Damon was concerned. He took his duty and his service very seriously. It was the one thing in his life he thought that he'd done right and he was proud of his service. His jaw tightened and he felt the anger flowing through his veins. “You wouldn't know the first thing about honor, you piece of shit,” Damon hissed. “While I was over in that shithole bleeding for this country, watching some of my friends die defending pieces of shit like you, what were you doing? I know just by looking at you that you never served. So don't think for one fucking minute you have any idea what you're talking about.”
“Oh, I'm sorry,” McReed said, a smirk tugging at his lips. “Did I offend you? Did I touch a sensitive nerve?”
Damon took a deep breath and tried to dial back his anger, but was having a hard time doing it. His hands had balled themselves into fists and he tried to relax them. Now it was McReed's turn to smirk knowing he'd hit on a sore spot.
“We're done here,” Damon said as he stood up.
“I'm not done. Sit your ass back down.”
“You either charge me with something or I'm walking out of here.”
“I can hold you for seventy-two hours if I want.”
“Sure. If a crime has been committed and you're holding me for questioning. But no crime has been committed. Your raids turned up nothing. Not my fault you can't find Andy or that Cassie left before you got there,” Damon said. “Your guesses and hunches don't quite rise to the level of a commission of a crime. So you can't hold me. And I'm leaving now.”
McReed's jaw clenched and he looked angry again. “Stick around town, asshole. We're not done yet. Not by a long shot.”
Damon smirked and walked out of the interrogation room, leaving McReed alone to figure out what his next move was going to be. He knew he needed to get to her first. If McReed was seriously sending out K9 units to look for her, it really would only be a matter of time before they found her. He needed to get to her, get that bag, and get them both somewhere safe.
But where were they going to find safety? They couldn't risk going back to the clubhouse. The hotel was obviously shot. Damon's mind was spinning as he walked out of the police station and into the cool night air. He was worried about Cassie. Worried that she was going to run into trouble somewhere along the line. Worried that McReed and his cronies would get to her first.
“I'm not going to let that
happen.”
Damon turned and walked back to the hotel where his bike was still parked.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
Moments after Damon had left the room, Cassie dropped down to her knees and pulled the bag out from under the bed. It was heavy and she grunted with the effort. Time was ticking away and she knew McReed and the cops would be at her door any minute. Damon was only going to be able to hold them off for so long. She needed to get out of there, but there was no way in hell she was going to leave Damon there holding the bag – literally. She wasn't going to let him take the fall for it.
Merrick: Harlequins MC Page 40