Any Day Now - Lani Lynn Vale Page 0,14

away.

Adam led me to a small desk to the side of the room and leveled the man behind it with a look. “Need to process her, Dornet.”

Dornet looked at me, then at Adam, then back to me.

Before he could say anything, the mic at Adam’s neck went off.

“All units be advised, we have a man from the jail that escaped. Five-foot-nine white male. One hundred and eighty pounds. Last seen on Booker Street.”

“Fuck,” Adam said.

That one word was said so deep and raspy-like that it made my clit do things that should’ve been impossible.

“Be good to her, Dornet,” Adam ordered. “Gotta go.”

I looked over my shoulder at Adam.

He leveled me with one look that said ‘behave’ and I couldn’t help the small smile that graced my lips.

Batting my eyes at him, I watched the grin cross his face as he walked backward out the door.

Only when the door closed between us did he turn and start jogging down the steps toward his cruiser again.

***

Sadly, the moment that I got put inside the jail cell, I was no longer anywhere near as happy to be there anymore. I just felt tired.

But that was mostly due to the fact that the man that’d done the arresting was no longer around.

He’d been paged out on a call the moment that we got into the building, leaving me to get processed by the sweet, but definitely no push-over Dornet. He then had me escorted by an officer I vaguely recognized, but couldn’t quite pinpoint why, to the shared jail cell where I would be spending my next however long.

The shared jail cell that was occupied by Twat Tiffany—apparently her real name seeing as she was a hooker. Rowdy Rhonda—the police gave her this name because apparently, she liked to get drunk and disorderly on days that end in Y.

Oh, and the entirety of the bachelorette party that had come in and kicked the bachelor party’s ass. The gaggle of ladies that had gotten me here in the first place.

I’d been sitting there for a good hour when I got my phone call.

“You’re up.”

I blinked and stood, my eyelids feeling like they were lined in sandpaper, and walked toward the open cell door that tattooed older-man hottie was holding open.

“Why do I know you?” I asked curiously.

The man’s eyes rose, but he studied me more carefully.

“I’m not normally working this area, but the man that usually does had to go home because his wife’s in labor,” he said. “Have I arrested you before?”

I snorted.

“Sorry to burst your bubble, but I don’t make it a habit of getting caught,” I told him.

His lips twitched. “Meaning, you do bad things, but you never do them in ways that will find you visiting the insides of a place like this?”

I shrugged.

He grinned and led me to the phone, and I grimaced.

It’d been touched by so many people.

There were likely germs all over it.

I licked my lips and shrugged. “I… changed my mind. I don’t want to make a phone call.”

Tattooed hottie frowned. “Why not?”

I gestured toward the phone. “I’ll just go sit back in the cell and wait until my hearing tomorrow. I don’t really want to talk to my brother anyway.”

My eyes went to the man’s chest and I saw that the little named etched onto his badge read ‘Perez.’

I narrowed my eyes.

Damn, that really did sound familiar.

“Who’s your brother?” He paused. “And what’s wrong with the phone?”

I shivered before saying, “Every single person that’s touched it tonight probably hasn’t washed their hands in hours. Not to mention y’all probably never even wipe it down. And, since there’s a freakin’ toilet in the jail cell and no fucking sink to wash our hands with, there’s probably even more than that. So no, I’ll just sit there all night, wait for the judge to see me in the morning, and leave it at that.” I took a deep breath. “And my brother’s name is Sam Mackenzie. Not to mention my brother-in-law is named James Allen, though he’s out of town so you might not want to bother him.”

Something in the man’s eyes changed at the mention of that name.

Without another word, he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, flicked a few buttons with his massive tattooed thumbs, and then placed the phone to his ear.

I watched, quite fascinated really, as the muscles on his throat worked, as well as the tattoos there.

“Sam.” The man’s voice sounded in my ear. “It’s Michael. Got a girl here refusing