Getting Lucky (Jail Bait #4)

by Mia Storm

  What happens is: Eight o’clock the following morning, there’s a knock on my door. And this time, the cop on the other side says, “Trotte Michael Tanner, we have a warrant for your arrest.”

  I wasn’t asleep, but Lucky was. I watch her wake to the sound and her eyes pull wide. She grabs onto me, her fingers digging into my arm.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I whisper, then kiss her with every fiber of my being. I gently pull myself out of her grasp and go to the door.

  When I open it, it’s the same two uniforms who were here before. The larger one reaches for my arm and slaps a cuff on my wrist and the other one rattles off my rights. They shove me into the back of a cruiser and haul me back to the station, where they take my mug shots, my prints, and all my stuff, giving me an orange jumpsuit to put on instead.

  My lawyer is there by noon, taking me through everything he knows they have, the most compelling being my busted guitar in my old man’s truck, the large quantity of his blood on my floor, and the bit they didn’t tell us before: his body was wrapped in the decayed remnants of a blanket from my apartment. A blanket with my hair all over it.

  “There’s no useable blood evidence in the truck because it’s been under water for almost three years,” he tells me. “But the cause of death is exsanguination from a knife wound to the back, which they believe supports their theory that he died on your living room floor. They haven’t recovered a murder weapon as of yet.”

  “That’s why all my knives are missing,” I say with a nod, the pieces fitting together in my head. “So…what happens now?”

  “They have forty-eight hours to arraign you, and with this case they’ll put it off as long as they can while they scramble to get as much of the evidence from your apartment processed as possible.” He looks through his notes, rubbing at the soul patch under his lip as he reads. “They made the arrest faster than they might have wanted to because you have means and they were afraid you’d flee if they waited too long.”

  “Why would I run?” I ask. “I didn’t do it.” And Lucky’s right here. No way I’m going anywhere.

  “Apparently, they’re not convinced of that,” he says, looking up at me with a skeptic’s eye.

  I’ve been arrested more than once on drunk and disorderly and I get how the arraignment thing works. “They’ll set bail at the arraignment, right?”

  “Maybe. More likely, they’ll set a separate hearing for that. Again, if they really think you’re a flight risk, they’ll try to keep you without bail as long as they can. And it’s possible they will try to convince the judge to deny bail altogether.”

  I feel my head shaking as he says it. “They can’t do that.”

  “It’s very unusual for the judge to grant that request. We’ll fight it with everything we have.”

  As he packs up his things and leaves, I’m left with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Looks like my old man is going to figure out a way to ruin my life even from the grave.

  Chapter 36

  Shiloh

  Tro’s arraignment is closed. Kate and I go down to the courthouse anyway, and when we get there, I see why. It’s a madhouse, news vans lining both sides of the street for the entire block. Reporters mill on the lawn outside, chatting in small groups.

  We slip inside and go through the metal detector…and find a sea of reporters in the corridor outside the courtroom as well.

  My chest is so tight my heart can barely beat. I keep my hood up and my sunglasses on, because the last thing Tro needs is for someone to spot me here. I shouldn’t have come.

  But I had to.

  I’ve never felt so helpless in my life. I know there’s nothing I can do but make this worse for him, but I need to be here for him even if he doesn’t know I am.

  There’s a commotion in the hallway, and over the heads of the reporters I see them usher Tro through the crowd. The decibel level rises from murmur to cacophony as everyone shoves mics at Tro and asks questions all at once, but Tro keeps his head down and moves with his lawyer and the bailiff, who has a tight grasp on his arm, to the door of the courtroom. It closes behind them and the hall buzzes as the crews all film their snippet for the evening news.

  I take Kate’s hand and pull her toward the other end of the hall, to where the crowd is thinner and there’s an empty bench.

  We sit. And then we wait.

  “He didn’t do it,” she says. It’s about the hundredth time I’ve heard it in the last two days. It seems to be her mantra. She seems a little shell-shocked and hasn’t talked much, but when she has opened her mouth, nine times out of ten, it’s been to utter those words.

  It’s nearly an hour later when the ripple starts though the hallway and spreads like wildfire.

  “No bail!” someone shouts, and suddenly all the crews are filming again.

  Kate has been sitting next to me with her head in her hands, rocking herself, the whole time, so it takes me a second to realize she’s gone.

  She’s well into the sea of reporters before I spot her, and I don’t dare follow her into the mêlée. When she grabs for the handle of the door to the courtroom, a big bailiff steps in her way. He says something, but she lunges for the door anyway. He grabs her before she gets it open and manhandles her face first against the wall.

  And that’s when I hear her scream. “He didn’t do it!”

  The scuffle catches the attention of the reporters nearest the courtroom and they turn their cameras on her. Some of them shrug her off as a rabid groupie and go back to their monologues, but the ones who catch her say, “I killed him! It was me!” on camera run it on the news that evening.

  #

  Tro’s cigarette shakes where he’s got it pinched between his finger and thumb. “She kept the fucking knife,” he says with a disbelieving shake of his head. “Why would she do that?”

  I lay my hand over his on the kitchen table to stop the shaking. “Because she knew this might happen. She didn’t want you going to jail for something you didn’t do, and she knew that knife was the only proof.”

  “She shouldn’t have done that.” He takes a long drag and stares blankly at the table with dead eyes. “I would have killed him,” he says through a stream of smoke. “I should have. She’s only sitting in that jail cell because I didn’t do what needed to be done. She was saving my sorry ass.”

  He’s right about Kate saving him. She confessed everything—how she heard the fight and came upstairs. According to her story, when she found them, Tro was unconscious and his father was pulling the amp cord from his guitar so tight around Tro’s neck that he was blue. The knife Tro had kicked out of his father’s hand was on the floor near the couch. On instinct, she picked it up and brought it down on his back, just to get him off Tro. He fell away and she went to Tro, pulled the cord off his neck and made sure he was breathing. When she turned back to his dad a little while later and realized he was dead, she panicked. She wrapped the body in a blanket and dragged it down to the garage. She went back to Tro’s apartment and cleaned it and him. When he came to and she knew he was okay, she loaded his father in the Chevy he’d shown up in and drove him out to Lake Travis.

  She did it for Tro, and for that, he will never forgive himself.

  I get up and pour him a cup of coffee, hoping he’ll lay off the Jack bottle that’s open on the table in front of him. I’ve watched his slow self-destruction for the last three days, since they took Kate in and released him, and it’s killing me that I can’t seem to reach him, no matter what I do. I set the steaming mug down in front of him. “Drink that.”

  He doesn’t look up at me as he says, “I booked you a flight back to California for tomorrow morning. There’s a cab coming at seven.”

  The blood in my veins turns to ice. “I’m not leaving.”

  There’s nothing of the Tro I spent two months touring with in the hollow gaze that meets mine when he lifts his head. All the playful recklessness that ultimately made me love him is gone. “The only thing that could m
ake this worse is someone coming after you here. It’s only a matter of time.”

  He’s right. I’ve been thinking the same thing. But I need to be here for him. “I’ll head back next week.”

  The shake of his head is so subtle I barely see it, but despair coils tighter around my heart, like a python going in for the kill. “I want you to go now.”

  “No.”

  I nearly jump out of my skin when he slams his palms into the table and stands, knocking over the bottle. The only sound for the next several seconds is the contents of the bottle trickling onto the floor, but the venom in his gaze as he stares me down has the intended effect. That python tightens itself one last notch and snuffs out my heart.

  “Don’t do this, Tro,” I whisper.

  He turns and grabs his helmet and keys on the way out the door.

  And that’s the last I see of Tro Gunnison before a taxi pulls up for me at seven o’clock the next morning.

  Chapter 37

  Tro

  Kate and I never talked about what happened the night my old man crashed my apartment, but I’ve always known in my gut what must have gone down. I could see it in her eyes. When you’re someone like Kate—someone good—you can’t kill a man and stay unaffected. She was never quite herself after that.

  Kate got three years for obstruction of justice. Three years of her life gone because I fucked up and didn’t finish my old man when I had the chance.

  But it could have been worse.

  I testified to what my old man was. I told them everything I remembered from when he found me in Austin. In the end, the jury found her not guilty for the actual murder because she was acting in the “defense of others.”

  It’s been all over every fucking place. Internet, news, papers. The media’s made into this big romantic thing, where Kate did what she had to do to defend her lover. I haven’t corrected them, mostly because it doesn’t matter.

  I sent Lucky back home right after Kate confessed and they let me out. I haven’t talked to her since. She texted me every day for the first few weeks, so I let my phone battery die. I only plug it in when I need to call for food. And I never check messages anymore.

  Last I heard, she’s back in California, living with some foster family. Freddie called me and told me that not long after I sent her back. He said she’d signed with A&M and the girls were recording their shit.

  Her eighteenth birthday is coming up in a few months, but that doesn’t matter either.

  I am poison. Everyone who gets close to me gets hurt. So I’ve spent most of the last eight months living in one bottle or another and ignoring the world.

  Every once in a while, I pull out my guitar and play the last song I wrote. I realize how stupid I was to think I’d ever be able to banish the beast inside. Because the beast inside is me. Everything else is the lie.

  I’m on the couch, three quarters passed out, Ironman 2 playing on the TV for the thousandth time, when there’s a knock. The reporters have been gone for months. No one comes up here anymore looking for a story since I threatened to kill the next person who did. The only people who’ve knocked on my door in months are the delivery guys I call whenever I’m on the brink of starvation.

  I didn’t call anyone today. I’m thinking of just letting it happen this time.

  “Open up, Tro,” a woman’s voice says. I know it, but I can’t place it.

  I drag myself up and open the door. On the landing is Lucky’s friend Lilah. As I stare, trying to figure out what the fuck is going on, Lucky materializes from behind her.

  She’s all in white, tank top and skirt, and her copper kinks are full and loose, like a halo around her head.

  My heart thuds to a stop in my chest. Sending her away was just about the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I couldn’t even stay to see her go. “What are you doing here?”

  She steps forward. “You don’t answer my texts. You don’t answer your phone. No one’s seen or heard from you in months. I had to know you were alive.”

  “I’m alive.”

  Her eyes run over my body, clad only in boxer briefs. “Barely.”

  I’ve stopped eating. I’ve stopped working out. It’s been at least three days since my last shower and I can’t remember the last time I shaved. I can only imagine what she sees when she looks at me.

  “You should go,” I say, swinging the door closed. I can’t keep looking at her, because seeing her here, this perfect fucking angel in my own personal hell, that’s going to be the thing that actually kills me.

  She slams a shoulder into the door before it closes and it flies open again, banging sharply off the wall, where the knob leaves a hole. She’s through it before I can stop her.

  “You need to pull your fucking shit together. I get that things went sideways with Kate and you think you ruined her life, but I’m not going to let you curl up and die in here.”

  “Too late,” I say, going back to the couch for my bottle. I take a long drink, then hand it to her. “Want some?”

  She takes it and hands it to Lilah, who goes to the sink and dumps the contents. “You have things to do, Tro. Remember when you told me and Kate you’d wasted the last six years of your life on shit that didn’t mean anything?”

  I drop onto the couch. “That was a different guy.”

  “Uh-uh,” she says, pushing the overflowing ashtray on the coffee table aside and sitting across from me, forcing me to see her. “That was you figuring out what you wanted to be when you grew up. So grow the fuck up, Tro. Be that person.”

  I stare at her. Don’t know why I expected her to go all hearts and flowers on me, because that’s not her style. But this is—right to the point, no dicking around.

  “The last time bad shit happened,” she continues, picking up her rant where she left off when I don’t say anything, “you changed your name and ran away. This time, you’re just imploding in on yourself. It’s all just different forms of hiding, Tro. I thought you’d finally figured out that that isn’t what you want.”

  “What I want doesn’t matter.”

  She gets all up in my face. “What about what I want?”

  I blow out a humorless laugh. “I can tell you what you don’t want.” I flick a hand at my face. “Anything to do with this.”

  “You clearly don’t have the first fucking clue what I want,” she snarls, “even though you should, you selfish bastard.”

  I used to get that a lot, but here I am doing probably the most unselfish thing I ever have and she’s calling me selfish? For the first time in a while, anger at someone other than myself flares in my gut. “Go away, Shiloh.”

  When I lift my head and look at her, I expect fury or frustration. What I see instead is pain.

  “Don’t call me that,” she says, her voice breaking.

  My heart squeezes up my throat and there’s a second I can’t breathe. She used to hate that I called her Lucky, but now…

  “Come on, Lilah,” she says, standing.

  For a moment I think I’m getting my wish and they’re leaving, but the next second I’m being dragged off the couch by both arms. It’s questionable whether, even sober, I could fight them off at this point, but as drunk as I am, it doesn’t take much for them to drag me into the bathroom. They dump me in the tub and Lucky cranks the cold water.

  It pelts me from the shower head and stings when it hits my skin, but I just lay here, unable to move.

  Lucky grabs the bar of soap and leans over me. Water trickles down her loose hair and off her nose as she begins to wash my arms. Her hands feel like silk as she lathers me up, and my heart dies a little in my chest, but still, I don’t move. Her fingers work over my neck, my chest, and when she reaches my underwear, she doesn’t even hesitate. She tugs them down my ass and yanks them off my legs.

  “Um…I’ll just be…” Lilah says, backing out the door.

  I close my eyes as her soapy hands move over my hips and will my cock not to respond. But it’s hopeless. This is Lucky. I’ve never had
any control over what my body does when she’s near. Her hand glides between my legs as she cleans me, and by the time she moves from my balls to my cock, it’s already stiffening for her.

  She strokes me.

  I hold my breath with the rush.

  Her hand tightens, stroking harder, and when I open my eyes, Lucky’s whiskey eyes are blazing into mine.

  I sit up and yank her over the edge of the tub so she’s straddling me. As the cold spray hits her back, she hisses out a gasp. Through her tank and bra, both stuck to her body now, her nipples tighten. I pull her to me and take one into my mouth, sucking through the fabric and tugging with my teeth like the beast I am.

  She cries out and the door flies open.

  “Shiloh!” Lilah says. But then she sees us and her eyes widen. “Oh…” There’s an unspoken exchange between the friends, and the door closes.

  Lucky sits back and peels her wet shirt off her body. The bra comes next. Her caramel skin is pebbled with gooseflesh from the cold water, and it runs in beads down her chest, falling in drops from her hard nipples onto my abs.

  Suddenly, I’m not cold. Despite the frigid water, I’m burning alive.

  Lucky leans in, and I think she’s going to kiss me, but instead, she picks up a razor from the edge of the tub. I watch, barely breathing, as she soaps up my neck and starts shaving me.

  Every scrape of the razor, up my neck, across my jaw, my cheek, around my mouth, removes a little more of the rancor that I’ve gilded myself in. My shield slowly falls away, and when she’s done, the armor’s off and I’m exposed and vulnerable.

  She combs back my hair with her fingers and examines my entire face, and I don’t let myself retreat back inside. I hold her gaze when her eyes find mine.

  “There you are,” she says, the shadow of a smile in her eyes. And this time, when she leans in, her mouth finds mine.

  We kiss and her hands familiarize themselves with the new landscape of my body. And when she lifts her hips and pulls her underwear aside, I don’t stop her from sinking down my hard length. She fucks me agonizingly slowly and I move to her rhythm, feeling her pump a little more life into me with each downward stroke. When she arches and moans her pleasure, I take the bead of one nipple into my mouth, then the other.