It Wasn't Me - Lani Lynn Vale Page 0,5

on thick, too. She spilled her coffee on herself. A coffee that she most assuredly did not have in her hands when she was hit. One of her hands had been on the steering wheel, the other clutching her phone, and she’d been glancing in my direction.”

“As if she knew what she was about to do,” Piper said.

“Exactly,” I said. “But I’d had a malfunction in my dash cam earlier in my shift. And from the way it looked at the scene, she was completely on the road. And since I didn’t have a green ‘turn’ light, it looked like she had the right of way over me. And to top it off, she conveniently had a friend in the car behind her that ‘saw the whole thing’ and ‘I was a maniac’ and ‘I was driving way too fast and looking at my phone.’”

Piper’s mouth fell open just as the plane’s wheels left the runway.

“You’re shitting me,” she said. “What happened next?”

“Next, I was suspended pending an investigation,” I continued. “Without pay.”

“What?” she squawked. “Why?”

“Because it hadn’t been my first incident. And the chief really, really doesn’t like me. I was a punk ass kid and got myself into trouble. My brother happens to be really good friends with the chief, and we’ve never really gotten along all that much. I think everyone thought that me going into the Air Force, my attitude would change, that I would become all nice and shit. But I didn’t. And when I got a job at the police station after I got discharged, I knew that he really wasn’t sure when it came to my attitude.”

“You? An attitude?” she snickered. “What were the other incidents?”

“Roughed up a few too many assholes,” I said. “Everyone is all singing ‘police brutality’ and shit. Honestly, I just wanted some kind of justice. I’m fuckin’ sorry that I was a little rough on a piece of shit that felt up his eighteen-month-old daughter. My goddamn bad.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“Should’ve killed him.”

My lips turned up into a small smile.

“Yeah,” I said as the plane leveled out. “I wish I could’ve.”

Chapter 2

I wonder if you look both ways before you get on my nerves.

-Text from Piper to Pru

Piper

I woke stiff as a board, my neck was hurting, and we were already bouncing up and down as the wheels touched down on the tarmac.

The bouncing made my face press against something soft and hard, and I groaned as I opened my eyes, taking in my surroundings.

Somehow, I’d curled myself into a ball in my seat.

Well, mostly my seat.

Everything but my head, anyway.

My face was resting comfortably in the man’s lap at my side.

And my face was inches away from something bulging and quite large, even in its non-erect state.

I swallowed hard and sat up stiffly, trying hard not to blush.

Sweeping my mass of crazy, curly hair out of my face, I turned to look at the man that I’d fallen asleep on for God knew how many hours.

“We’re here?” I asked curiously, voice husky from disuse.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Ready?”

I looked at all of the men that were unbuckling their seatbelts in a damn hurry to get off the plane just like we were.

“Oh, yeah.” I sat up and lost his heat, hating it.

“Good,” he said. “We gotta get off first otherwise we’re going to be stuck behind all of them. And our plane leaves in twenty minutes whether we’re on it or not.”

I bit my lip, wondering how he knew that.

I was also thinking about all the coincidences that were at play at that particular moment in time.

I mean, what were the chances that someone coming all the way from Germany happened to be going to the exact same place that I was, on the exact same flights?

I stood up when the plane came to a halt, and Jonah turned to the woman on his other side and said, “Excuse me.”

She got up as well and backed into the aisle.

Jonah picked up the box of clothes that he’d stashed in the cargo bin on the side of the door, and I got my bag.

We were waiting as the doors swung open, and when the stairs were in place, we hurried off with about two hundred grouchy, hungry men behind us.

“Which plane?” I asked curiously.

We were at yet another military base, and the man at my side seemed to look like he knew what he was doing.

I decided to follow him because I had a feeling he knew more than