by Aubrey Watts
Justify
Kimball Brothers #2
Trent
By Aubrey Watts
Copyright
1st Original Edition, August 2014
Copyright © 2014 Aubrey Watts
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, are entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written consent from the author.
Warning
Justify #2 is the second book in a four book series (with each book ranging anywhere between 15,000-20,000 words). The first book is available for only 99 cents here. It is highly advised that you read it first to fully understand the characters and the plot. This series contains adult themes, explicit language, and sexual situations that may offend some readers. Reader Discretion is advised.
Coming Soon by Aubrey Watts
Justify (Kimball Brothers #3 - Macon)
Justify (Kimball Brothers #4 - Trent)
Trouble (Orsen Legacy #1)
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Thank You
Subscribe to Aubrey’s Mailing List
About the Author
Chapter 1
Detective Stevens sips his morning coffee and wipes his mouth with his sleeve. His dark eyes move slowly across the piece of winkled paper in his hands and then back to me. He squints to read, pushing his wire-rimmed glasses up on the bridge of his nose. “So,” he says with an elongated sigh, exhaling all of the air kept on reserve in his lungs, “this is it, then? This is your statement? Because I’ve got to be honest with you here, Trent—if this is it…well…”
He rubs his hand over the back of his neck, through his gray roots, glancing at the piece of paper once more. “It’s not enough; there isn’t any real alibi, here.” He clears his throat and waves a hand over the page. “At least not one that doesn’t put you somewhere else between the hours of 12 a.m. and 3 a.m, when the incident took place.”
My blood thickens to a boil with every word that leaves his chapped lips. I swallow the lump in my throat, wiping the sweat on the palms of my hands on my jeans. “You’ve got to be fuckin’ kidding me…”
“Kidding?” Detective Stevens sits up straighter in his chair, crossing his fat arms over his chest. He gives me a tight smile, slow and practiced, reserved strictly for exchanges like this. “Nope. ’fraid not son.”
My temples throb. “Look,” I say, cracking my knuckles beneath the table, “I ain’t going to let you implement me in a crime I didn’t commit. You’ve got to know that what you’re accusing me of…well it’s…”
“Sexual assault,” Detective Stevens interrupts, sifting through the pile of paperwork in front of him and holding up a statement. “Of a minor…”
“I didn’t do it!” I slam my fist on the table, biting the inside of my cheek until I taste iron. “How many times do I have to say it before you pigs get it? She’s my fuckin’ sister!”
There’s another man pressed against the wall behind Detective Stevens, about half his weight and age. He wears a sickeningly sarcastic grin on his face and keeps his beady eyes trained on me. He seems to garner some sense of amusement out of watching men break.
Detective Stevens shuffles the paperwork around and nods, meeting eyes with me. “Well, this can all be put to rest pretty easily,” he says, sliding me a clean statement sheet and a pen. “All we need is your statement—a full statement, not that dribble you just gave us, and the names of two people who can verify where you were that night. All night.”
I ain’t writing shit; not again, not when I already said my piece. I clench my jaw and snatch the paper from him, crumpling it into a ball and tossing it at the burly fuck across the room.
He laughs.
Detective Stevens sighs and stacks the paperwork, standing up. “Fine, that’s your choice, then.” He turns toward the door and his partner follows.
“Wait,” I speak up, pulling at my roots, “look I told you—I was at Melissa Carthers until about Midnight. She can verify this.”
Detective Stevens nods, adjusting the badge lanyard around his neck. “That’s great, Trent, but it still doesn’t account to your whereabouts between 1 a.m. and—”
“Let me finish,” I interrupt, forcing myself to speak even though my tongue feels weighted, “after I left her place…I drove around for a few hours. I didn’t go right home. I never do, alright? I’m what you call a night owl.”
That—for whatever reason—gets a chuckle out of Detective Stevens partner.
I furrow my brows, trying to make out the name on his badge, but it’s faded and damn near impossible to read beneath the harsh fluorescent lights in the interrogation room.
Detective Stevens shakes his head and pulls at the tip of his nose, digesting my words. “Well, that just won’t fly,” he says, “again, we need someone who can verify where you were between the hours of midnight and 3 a.m. If you can’t give us that, well then—”
“Wait, just hold on a second,” I say, holding up a hand to quiet him, “I stopped and grabbed a six pack of beer. From, uh, Spec’s Wine and Spirits, around 1 a.m. Just before they closed.”
Detective Stevens nods and pats his pocket for his pen, uncapping it. He presses a sheet of blank paper against the wall and jots something down on it. “So after 1 a.m.,” he says, waving a hand at me, “what did you do then?”
Sweat starts to bead near my hairline. I shrug, wiping a hand over it. “I drove around for a couple hours,” I say, meeting eyes with him, “nothing too exciting.”
“So, to clarify, then,” Detective Stevens starts, “You’re telling me that from 1 a.m. onwards, you just drove around drinking—which is a crime but we won’t talk about that now—and no one else saw you that night?”
His voice is laced heavily with judgment. He doesn’t even try to mask it. It’s clear that he’s already come to his conclusions. It oozes from his tone. “Look, son, the way I see it is—”
I can’t help but feel like this is what it always comes to; some bitter ass Detective vocalizing a timeline of events that didn’t happen as a means of closing a case he doesn’t want to work.
“You left your girlfriends house—maybe you two had a fight, maybe she wouldn’t give you any—so you head to Spec’s, fill yourself up with booze, liquid reinforcement, and you go looking for some tail. Funny thing is—well I s’pose it ain’t as funny as it is ironic, but the route you would have to take from Spec’s to get back to your place in town, happens to be right on the stretch your sister was walking home that night. Now tell me—”
Unbelievable.
“Look,” I say, clenching my jaw. I practice the breathing techniques they taught me in anger management, taking a slow, deep breath and exhaling even slower. “It’s a small town. Every fuckin’ route leads to the same place. What it really comes down to is this—you have the wrong guy. Plain and simple. I don’t care what your statement says, or what you think you know, but I wouldn’t fuckin’ do that—to any woman! Much less my baby sister.”
“Your sisters statement,” Detective Stevens interrupts.
“What?”
He holds up the paper and waves it. “Your sister was the one who gave the statement. Or was that not made clear to you?”
They say ice breaks slowly; then all at once. That’s what it fee
ls like now. I stand up and snatch the piece of paper from his hands, reading it myself. It’s Alma’s handwriting. All the I’s aren’t dotted, and every word is slanted to the left. Still—I can’t bring myself to believe it.
“Nah,” I say, shaking my head and handing the paper back to him. “I don’t know what technique you think you’re using with me, but it ain’t gonna work, alright? Alma wouldn’t do this—she wouldn’t. And I sure as shit ain’t about to confess to a crime I didn’t commit. You can keep me here all day if you want.”
Detective Stevens shakes his head and takes the statement from my hands, stuffing it back in its folder. “That won’t be necessary,” he says, nodding at his partner and giving him the ok to leave. “You’re free to go, Trent, but my advice? Don’t leave town, don’t go to your parents farm, stay away from your sister, and while you’re at it—think about getting a lawyer.”
Chapter 2
The parking lot of the Logan County Police Station is barren; a wasteland smack-dab in the middle of nowhere. I sit in my truck for what feels like an eternity, frozen with my hands on the wheel and the key dangling from the ignition.
I’m no stranger to betrayal. I have enemies—more of them than most. I’ve been set up more times than I can count on both hands; I’ve went down for many crimes I didn’t commit. But this is different; this is personal.
My cell phone vibrates against my leg and I answer it, welcoming the distraction. It’s Melissa.
“Lis,” I say, finding my voice, “what’s up?”
I haven’t talked to her since the other night—when it all kind of went to shit. Detective Stevens was wrong about a lot of things—most things—but we did fight; which is why all I wanted to do when I left her place was drown myself in cheap beer and kill a couple hours doing nothing.
Melissa exhales a soft breath. “I just wanted to see how you were,” she says, “and you know…apologize for the other night. It was really stupid, Trent. I said a lot of things I didn’t mean. You’re nothing like Cain’s father…”
I loosen my grip on the steering wheel and rub a kink out of my neck. “It’s alright,” I tell her, nodding even though she can’t see me, “lets just…forget about it. I’m sorry too. I just—”
I start to tell her where I am but I think better of it; everyone in this town who matters is against me; I can feel it in my bones—and why wouldn’t they be? What I’m being accused of ain’t pretty. But Melissa is all I’ve got, and I can’t help but hold tight to the hope that the rumor mill hasn’t quite spun in her direction yet. “Do you mind if I come over?”
“Sure,” Melissa says, changing her tone, “wait, it’s early though. Don’t you have to work?”
My eyes dart to the clock. It’s just after 9 a.m. If this were any other day, I would be running cattle right about now; but it isn’t.
“Nah,” I lie, “I got the day off.”
“Well alright,” Melissa says, “Cain just left for work so it’ll just be you and I. Come on by—I was just cooking breakfast. Blueberry waffles, your favorite.”
I smile to myself, brushing my hair out of my face; it’s getting too damn long. “Sounds good,” I say, shifting gears and turning onto the empty road, “I’ll see you soon babe.”
* * *
“Trent…that was…”
Melissa exhales a deep breath and collapses on her back beside me. She runs a hand through her unruly red hair, pulling it into a loose bun away from her face.
“Pretty damn amazing,” I finish for her, pressing a wet kiss against her parted lips. She tastes like syrup and orange juice; remnants of the breakfast she made for us. I swing my legs over the side of the bed and reach for my briefs and jeans, pulling them on. “You got any smokes? I forgot to pick some up on the way…”
Melissa nods and reaches for a pack of cloves from her bedside table, tossing them to me.
They ain’t exactly my brand of choice but they’ll do. I light one with a peeling lighter, lying back down on the unmade bed beside her. “Thanks baby,” I say, exhaling a stream of smoke from my nostrils.
Melissa turns on her side and tucks a hand under her ear, perching on her elbow to look at me. “So,” she says, trailing a bare fingernail over the tattoos on my chest, “I heard something from Cain…”
Shit.
Here is comes.
I swallow down the lump in my throat and brace for impact.
“Alma was raped?”
Her words linger in the air long after they are spoken.
I wait for her to accuse me, but she doesn’t.
“Uh, yeah,” I manage, breaking eye contact with her. “The other night; the night we fought, actually.”
Melissa frowns and sits up, pulling the sheet around her bare chest.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asks after a few minutes.
I shrug. “It’s not exactly something I want to think about. It’s fucked up. Honestly, I can barely wrap my mind around it.”
She remains quiet, reaching for the pack of cloves between my legs and snaking one out. She lights it with the end of mine and takes a slow drag. She looks like some kind of model; not a small town nurse.
I sigh, allowing myself to make eye contact with her. She’s always had a way of sifting information out of me. But I can’t do it; I can’t explain the situation with Alma without also explaining my supposed role in it.
“Well?” Melissa questions, allowing the clove to dangle effortlessly between her fingers. “Is she alright?”
I shake my head, sitting up to stretch. “No,” I say, “but she will be when I find the guy who did it.”
Melissa bites her lip and furrows her brows. She presses a hand against my back.
The heat of her palm sends an unexpected jolt down my spine.
“Trent,” she says, tracing a finger down my flesh, “I’m sorry.”
I exhale a wave of smoke from my lungs, ashing the end of the clove into an empty beer can. “It’s alright,” I say, glancing back at her, “how did Cain find out, anyway?”
Melissa shrugs and tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I don’t know, at work, I’m guessing. You know how people talk…”
That’s exactly what I’m worried about. “Well…you can’t believe everything people say,” I start, clearing my throat, “a lot of it is bullshit.”
Melissa frowns. “So it isn’t true? I’m not following…”
I shake my head. “No, it is. I just…I mean in general.”
She nods against me and kisses my shoulder before standing up and reaching for her cotton undergarments. “I have to go to work soon,” she says, working her slender limbs through a pair of scrubs. She threads a tiny gold hoop through her nose and looks back at me in the reflection of her wardrobe mirror.
“I have a long shift. I won’t be off until tomorrow morning. You can stay here, if you want. Just let Cain know I said it was alright.”
This is Melissa; trying to feign some semblance of normalcy in a too small house with a hormonal teenage son attached to her hip. The nose ring gives her character, reminds her of the days she spent with her back pressed against brick walls, chain smoking cloves and flirting with danger—or at least the idea of it.
I frown. “Stay here?”
Melissa pulls her hair into a neater ponytail at the top of her head. “Well, you’re kind of a wanted man, aren’t you?” she teases, raising a perfectly plucked eyebrow at me, “I figured you might need a place to stay.
Shit
“Let me guess,” I say, “Cain told you that part too?”
Melissa turns to face me with her hands on her hips. “Yeah,” she says, reaching down for her purse beside the bed and pulling it over her shoulder. “But, like you said, you can’t believe everything people say, right?”
Her brown eyes dance against mine.
I swallow hard; she’s always been the one to give me the benefit of the doubt when no one else would, and now isn’t any different. “Right,” I say, clenching m
y jaw, “you can’t.”
Chapter 3
Cain paces in front of me. The kid is skeleton like—at least six foot four and all skin and bone. If it weren’t for the red hair and freckles, I’d question whether he was really Melissa’s son.
“Bullshit she said you could stay here,” he spits, pointing a finger at me from the kitchen, “I’m calling her right now.”
I roll my eyes, reaching for the remote and turning on the TV. “Go ahead,” I say, “but your ma’s a smart woman, kid. Think for a second—I know you still got a few usable brain cells up there.” I point to my temple. “You really think she’d let me stay here if she thought I was guilty?”
Cain gives me the finger and presses his cell phone to his ear, continuing to pace. “Yeah—Ma, look I’m sorry to call you at work but…”
He tries to lower his tone but I can still hear him from my spot on the couch.
“Yeah,” he sighs, glancing at me, “he’s here, would you mind explaining that?”
I smile to myself and continue flipping through the channels.
“So what?” Cain says, switching ears, “how can you know whether or not it’s tru—”
He sighs, leaning against the kitchen counter as Melissa speaks. “Fine!” he yells after a few minutes, “but don’t expect me to make nice with him.”
“So?” I question when he re-enters the room, keeping my eyes trained on the TV. Some daytime talk show is playing on mute. “Feel better?”
“Shut the fuck up,” Cain sneers, snatching the remote from my hands and collapsing in the loveseat across from me. For a kid who couldn’t hurt a fly—he sure as shit has a lot of confidence.
“Lucky you,” he says drily, settling on some cartoon, “looks like my mom really is as naïve as everyone says she is.”
“Hey,” I say, pointing a finger at him, “don’t talk about your ma like that.”
Cain laughs, chewing at the pad of his thumb. “Yeah, okay, dad. Newsflash—fucking my mom a couple times on the sly doesn’t exactly give you any jurisdiction to tell me what to do.”