Quit Bein' Ugly

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  “She could handle her own if she had the right class,” I confessed as we pushed through the double doors out of the theater building.

  I came to a sudden halt when I saw Carmichael engaged in conversation with a tall, lanky man that was wearing glasses.

  He was laughing and holding on to the computer that the kid had almost taken her head out with.

  “Who’s that?” I found myself asking.

  Honestly, I was quite proud of how level-headed I sounded.

  “That,” Flint said, “is her new friend. The computer geek.”

  I felt something in my stomach tighten at his words.

  “Her friend or her friend?” I wondered, trying to tell myself to calm down and doing a really shitty job at it.

  When I turned my glare on Flint, it was to see him smiling.

  “That’s not something that I’m privy to,” he admitted. “But I could always ask my wife.”

  “Ask your wife what?” I heard from behind me.

  I turned just as Flint did to see Camryn walking toward us.

  Well, waddling was more like it.

  She was very pregnant, and I had to admit, she was even more beautiful than the last time I’d seen her.

  I didn’t know what it was about pregnant women that always flipped my switch, but seriously. I’d never been attracted to Camryn in that way, but seeing her like that? I felt my dick twitch.

  Which was really quite weird seeing as I’d always seen her as my little sister.

  “If my sister is dating that weirdo over there.” Flint pointed in the direction of the man and Carmichael.

  “Alfie?” Camryn asked, trying to see around Flint and me.

  I moved slightly so that she could see between the gap of our bodies, and she shrugged. “That’s her friend, yes. They’re not dating each other. Though, if I had to guess, he really wants in there. She’s clueless, however.”

  We all turned to survey the two people in front of us, and yes, I had to agree with Camryn’s words. The guy, Alfie, did want in there.

  He wasn’t going to get in there, though. Not if I had any say in the matter.

  Stiffening my spine, I walked up to the two in front of us, leaving the two behind me to hopefully go away.

  I knew they wouldn’t, though. I had no such luck.

  As I walked up to Carmichael’s side, I watched her body.

  Though she was trying valiantly not to appear as if she was paying attention, the way her body stiffened the closer I got said otherwise.

  Just as I was almost upon them, the loser Alfie finally turned his head to see me approaching.

  What a moron.

  I tilted my chin up at him as I held my hand out for the computer. “I’ll take that.”

  He blinked, but inevitably handed it over, as if he wasn’t quite sure what to think of me asking for it.

  “Since I’m the one who gave it to you,” I told her. “I’ll go ahead and utilize the monthly payment I make to my computer guys and get them to fix it for you. If they can’t fix it, they’ll pull all of your information off of it, transfer it over to a new computer, and give it back. It’s part of the services I pay them for.”

  I tacked on that last part when I saw her outrage starting to ramp up.

  I had given her my computer.

  It’d been my old one, actually.

  A couple months ago her computer had gone out and she’d been bitching and complaining about it at the gym.

  When I’d heard, I’d gone out to the car and gotten my old laptop.

  She’d taken it, but had looked honestly quite pissed to be taking something from me.

  At the time, I’d chalked it up to her being too proud to take it. But now I knew that she just didn’t want anything that belonged to me.

  I really needed to figure out how in the hell I’d screwed up so badly with her.

  Now that I wasn’t working a case twenty-four seven, I would have the time to figure it out. At least, I hoped that I would. I hoped that she gave me the time of day.

  “Uh,” Carmichael said. “I guess thanks anyway, Alfie. I really appreciate you saying you’d look at it.”

  Alfie looked over at me, then back to Carmichael.

  “Uh, no problem.” He licked his lips nervously. But I didn’t miss the flash of anger that rocketed through his eyes at one point. “I guess I’ll see you around.”

  Not if I could help it.

  When I didn’t leave, Computer Geek Alfie took that as his cue to skedaddle, leaving me with a very irritated Carmichael.

  “I can’t believe you,” she grumbled under her breath. “He’s a nice guy, Croft. What the hell was that?”

  What the hell was that? That was me finally breaking the last thread that was causing me to hold on to my sanity when it came to a particular woman.

  Instead of answering, I gestured at the car where Flint was now standing talking to her almost-assaulter.

  She closed her mouth and her eyes formed into a squint as she hurried forward, her destination very clear.

  We walked back over to the parked police cruiser where Flint was questioning the little punk that’d almost hurt Carmichael.

  I walked up just in time to hear the last half of Flint’s question.

  “…why’d you do it?”

  The kid watched me approach, and he looked down.

  Though, I wasn’t sure if it was because of Carmichael behind me, or because of the way I held myself. It could really be either option at this point.

  “Someone, uhh, paid me to do it.” Bryan looked at me, then at Flint, then back.

  He wasn’t sure which dangerous individual to focus on.

  I didn’t blame him.

  With how pissed I was, I knew for a fact that the anger showed on my face.

  Flint’s did, too.

  “Who?” Carmichael gasped. “And why would you accept?”

  Bryan looked pained as he said, “I’m in trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?” Flint asked. “And does that negate the fact that you almost seriously hurt a teacher, who just so happens to be my sister?”

  Bryan swallowed hard, his throat bobbing as he tried to think of something to say.

  In the end, he decided to tell the truth. Which was good for him because I was working myself up to being quite pissed.

  “Um, I don’t know.” He paused. “I…” He blew out a breath and scrubbed his cuffed hands against his face. “I got into trouble a couple of weeks ago. Some gambling debt. My father, uh, got himself upside down, and the guys that he owes the debt to said that he could pay it off if he rented me out. I run some errands for them. Do a couple of things here and there. And that was one of those things. I was told to, uh, hit her. Make it look bad. Make it bad. Break the computer and take it with me when I ran.”

  I stiffened even further.

  Flint, however, proved to have more self-control than I did.

  He kept his voice slow and smooth as he asked, “Where did you meet these guys? How did they tell you what they wanted you to do?”

  He patted his pocket. “I have a burner phone. They text me when they need me.”

  “Did it ever occur to you to just tell me?” Carmichael asked. “Or Flint? Or someone?”

  Bryan’s face took on a befuddled look.

  “What would you have been able to do?” he scoffed. “The law is shit. Where was the law when my dad started to beat the shit out of me when I was four and my mom died? Where were y’all when I was hungry and hadn’t eaten in four days? When I got so hungry that I used to steal food out of people’s trash cans?”

  Carmichael’s face went stricken.

  “We didn’t know,” she tried.

  “You might not have, no,” he agreed. “But the law did know. You know how many times I called the police on my old man? They’d take him away, put me in a home for a week, and then he’d be right back. Then he’d beat the shit out of me for allowing myself to be taken. As if I had any control over what thos
e assholes did with me while he was in the slammer.”

  I felt my middle tighten at his words.

  “You still live with your dad, kid?” I asked, feeling sorry for the kid now that I’d heard a little about his situation.

  “I live with him as far as the school knows,” Bryan hedged. “Why?”

  “Because you’re what, seventeen?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “You can emancipate yourself,” I suggested. “Get yourself away from here. Away from your father’s toxicity.”

  “I’m going to jail, dude,” Bryan countered. “What’s it matter if I emancipate myself? You a lawyer or something?”

  I nodded. “I am.”

  He rolled his eyes and turned back to Flint.

  “I wasn’t really going to hit her,” he grunted. “I changed my mind at the last second. That’s why you were able to stop me.”

  Now that he explained it like he had, I had to agree.

  Had Bryan wanted to hurt her, he would have. We’d been across the room at the time.

  Flint made a disagreeing sound then crossed his arms over his chest.

  Flint’s K-9 partner, Dooley, sat down blankly staring right back at the kid, as if he was only waiting for an excuse to attack.

  I almost wished he would.

  “There, you see?” Carmichael said, unaware of the volatile stare down between Flint, Dooley, and Bryan. “No harm, no foul.”

  “Carmichael,” Flint replied stiffly. “Don’t you have a class to teach at the gym in a couple of minutes?”

  Carmichael cursed. “Shit, yeah. I do. Camryn, can I hitch a ride with you? My car is low on gas, and I don’t think I’ll have time to stop for any.”

  “Of course,” Camryn agreed, realizing what Carmichael didn’t. “Let’s go.”

  Carmichael, for some reason, gave me a narrow-eyed look. “Don’t hurt him.”

  I wouldn’t hurt him. But I wouldn’t stop him from getting hurt, either.

  “Leave your keys and we’ll bring your car to you,” I suggested, holding out my hand.

  She reluctantly pulled her keys out of her pocket and handed them to me.

  “Don’t do anything stupid with it like you did last time,” she ordered.

  Her idea of ‘stupid’ was actually me getting the car detailed. But Jesus, there was only so much of her car I could take. Honestly, I wasn’t quite sure how she lived like she lived.

  Where her house and yard were immaculate? Her car was a completely different story. It was like she lived out of it.

  Gatorade and water bottles littered the floor. Protein bar wrappers. Clothes. Shoes. Groceries that she hadn’t gotten around to bringing inside.

  If you could dream it, you could likely find it on the floorboard of Carmichael’s car.

  “He probably wouldn’t have enough time to get it cleaned anyway,” Camryn laughed as she latched on to Carmichael’s hand. “Let’s go. Bye, baby.”

  Flint gave a chin lift but kept his eyes focused on the stupid kid in front of us.

  “What were you not saying?” I asked, fully aware when someone was lying or holding back from me.

  I was a criminal defense lawyer. I knew things that most people could only dream of.

  I knew without a doubt when someone was lying, which was why I did the type of job that I did.

  I would not be the man that got criminals off the hook. I got innocent people off the hook.

  There was a major difference.

  Take the case that I just finished working, for instance.

  There was a young man that happened to be in the wrong place at the very correct time. He saw something he shouldn’t have seen—i.e., someone getting killed—and he’d gone to the police with it.

  Only, the cop that he went to happened to be dirty. Or, at least, the lead detective on the case was dirty. Fast forward a year, and that young man was serving a life sentence for cold-blooded murder thanks to a cop and a justice system that failed him.

  When his family had come to me, I’d done my level best to figure out everything for them.

  And what I had found had led me to a very small potatoes crime syndicate that did business in our area. Business that consisted of some white-collar crimes, no small amount of murder when people got in their way, and a couple of very high-profile businessmen that didn’t like when the spotlight was put on their business.

  “Umm, nothing?” Bryan hedged, kicking the dirt with his foot.

  “Listen, kid,” Flint ordered. “This is going to go a lot better for you if you just tell us what’s going on. Right now, you have sympathy for how you were raised on your side. You weren’t given a good hand in life. I know that. You know that. The system failed you. But, just sayin’, if you force my hand because you don’t tell me everything that’s going on, you’re not going to like where you end up. Most likely, you’ll be charged as an adult. Most likely, you’ll be spending some hard time in jail for the assault of a teacher. Most likely, you’ll ruin any and all chances that you ever had at making a life for yourself. I don’t want that for you. Carmichael doesn’t want that for you. And it just so happens that I have a really good lawyer right here that’ll be willing to help you if you need it.”

  Bryan’s shoulders slumped.

  “Dammit,” he grumbled, throwing his head back on a groan. Then he looked around to see whether there was anyone close. “They follow me.”

  Flint stiffened. “Let’s go back into the school.”

  I walked back into the school with them and walked with them to Flint’s office that was just a bit farther past the theater building. When we got there, it was to find barely anyone left in the school. The only person that we passed on the way was a janitor that was too busy wiping ‘fuck you Coach Duff’ that’d been spray painted on a set of lockers.

  “Who’d Ezra piss off?” I wondered idly.

  “Coach Duff banned a couple of seniors off the baseball team this week because he found them trying to assault a girl,” Bryan murmured. “Fuckers.”

  My eyes met Flint’s over the top of Bryan’s head.

  This kid was actually a pretty good kid. You couldn’t fake sincerity like that. I could tell that Flint understood that just by the look on his face.

  “What were they doing?” I asked.

  “They were trying to fu—uh, have sex with her, in the locker room. She wanted it, but she didn’t want to do it there. You know? When they told her she was doing it there, she freaked out. That’s about the time that Coach Duff came into the room and caught them,” he answered. “He suspended them on the spot from the team. And they’re seniors, you know? They’re pissed as hell because this was their year to be seen by scouts. So, they’re doing damage to show how pissed they are.”

  I looked at Flint. “You know that happened?”

  Flint nodded. “Dealt with that this morning, actually.”

  “Good,” I grumbled. “They shouldn’t get to play after that anyway. They suspended from school, too?”

  “Indefinitely,” Flint confirmed. “They’ll now be getting GEDs or going to an alternative school. They won’t be coming back to Gun Barrel High.”

  “Good,” I said as we turned the corner to head into Flint’s office.

  Before we got there, though, it was to see Carmichael’s computer geek friend standing at the end of the hall locking what looked to be his classroom door.

  Flint and Bryan headed into the office.

  I closed the door behind them and stood outside the door so I could block his view in case he actually had enough brains to see who we were talking to.

  He looked up once he closed the door and immediately spotted me.

  I gave him a chin lift and leaned against the door, knowing my height blocked the small window that was bisecting the door.

  “How’s it going?” he asked, flicking his eyes to me nervously.

  “Good, you?” I asked.

  “Great,” he said, sounding slightly hesitant.

  I
nodded my head, my arms going across my chest, as I stared at him.

  “You going somewhere?” he asked, looking around the empty hallway.

  As if he was going to kick me out of the school because I didn’t belong there.

  “Um, no,” I said, pointing my finger at the door behind me. “Waiting on Flint. He’s on an important call.”

  It was at this point that I had the feeling that Alfie really didn’t want to leave me in here by myself. He didn’t think that I should be in here, so he was trying to work up the courage to tell me to wait outside.

  I raised a brow at him. “Anything else?”

  He started shaking his head, but luckily another person came hurrying down the hallway.

  The vice principal. Janeth.

  His shoulders seemed to deflate in relief as he turned to face her fully.

  “Oh, hello,” Janeth said as she saw the two of us standing there. “I didn’t realize there was anyone left in the building.”

  “Yeah, me neither.” Alfie looked at me, then back at Janeth, as if he was hoping that she would take the hint and kick me out. Or ask me what I was doing there.

  “You’re waiting on Flint?” Janeth asked, missing the look from Alfie.

  “I am,” I confirmed. “He’s taking a call right now.”

  I could lie.

  I was a lawyer. I could lie like the devil himself.

  “Oh, yeah.” She smiled. “Well, you have a good day.”

  With that, Janeth hurried outside, leaving Alfie and me alone once again.

  “Need anything else?” I asked curiously.

  Alfie’s eyes narrowed for a second, a hint of temper filling his features before he smoothed it away. “Nope. Have a good one.”

  Then he walked away, his feet clomping angrily on the tiled floor.

  I waited until I watched Alfie exit not just the school, but the parking lot too in his bright yellow Volkswagen bug, before heading into Flint’s office.

  What I found was Flint leaning against his desk and Bryan sitting in the chair now no longer handcuffed.

  “Y’all figure it out?” I asked.

  “Waiting for you.” Flint shook his head. “Everyone gone?”

  I nodded as I took up a position in the doorway, just in case anyone else decided to join the show.

  “Talk,” I suggested.