Once Upon A Half-Time: A Sports Romance - Sosie Frost Page 0,268

it. “Nolan will come after me too. We’re not safe. We need—”

The door opened.

Chelsea shouldered a book bag and bundled a jacket in her arms. She hid the track marks, but the bruise on her cheek said more than the scars on her arm.

“He wasn’t really going to leave his wife, was he?” Her whisper broke my heart.

I shook my head. “No.”

“He spent the money Maddox gave him on a necklace for her. I saw it.”

I pulled her into a hug. “It’ll be okay. Trust me.”

“How are we going to do it without…” Chelsea’s lip trembled. “John has a temper.”

Easy. We needed to expose the secret, and I worked for a newspaper. It wouldn’t be a Pulitzer Prize winning article, but it’d reveal the corruption.

“I’ll take you to my editor,” I said. “We’ll give him the story and bring down both Chief Craig and Nolan Rhys. It’ll be on the Saint Christie Reporter blog in the morning and printed in the paper by the evening.”

I led Chelsea to Delta’s car, squeezing her hand as she hesitated before the door.

“But what if John wants to get revenge?” she asked.

“We won’t let him,” I promised. “Because we’ll have justice.”

22

Maddox

The cell’s metal bars separated me from Chief Craig.

I didn’t know if they protected me or him.

The police denied me the hospital and elected for medical treatment at the station. That was probably a lawsuit waiting to happen, but I doubted I’d get a chance to talk to an attorney. We skipped the phone call. The finger prints. All due-process.

Whatever happened tonight wouldn’t be lawful.

The chief’s stare burned through me. I wasn’t intimidated. How the hell did a man as old and weak as him have power over me? He abused my sister. He took my money. We had nothing left to exchange except a resolution to a long-standing problem.

We both wanted the other dead.

If he stepped into my cell, one of us would die. My foot already was halfway in the grave. The other slipped in the puddle of blood that pulsed from my head.

I stood, even though the injury throbbed and my body ached. I didn’t need rest. If the chief had it his way, I’d get plenty from my long nap when I hanged from the bars.

The lieutenant stapled the last of my paperwork and turned off his desk lamp. “Chief, do you need any help?”

“No,” Chief Craig said. His hands lingered too close to his belt, to the Taser inches from his fingertips. “I got it from here, Ted. Thanks for the overtime tonight.”

“Gotcha.”

The lieutenant gathered his belongings. I studied the cell. I had nothing inside the cement walls. I’d have to defend myself from a man armed with pepper spray, a Taser, and a gun with only my trembling hands, scraped and burned from the fire.

But I had plenty to fight for.

Josie. Our baby. Justice.

Nothing was going to keep me from taking what was mine.

Nothing.

The lieutenant was leaving just as a call came in. He reached for it over the desk, answering with an exhausted grunt.

“You know Nolan Rhys abducted Josie Davis.” I kept my voice low. Not that it mattered. I figured the Chief already shut off the cameras facing the cell. “Rhys would have killed me and her.”

“That’s not what Mayor Rhys said.”

“Ask Josie.”

“I have her statement.” His eyebrow perked. “Looks like she sold you out again, Maddox.”

“Yeah. Right.”

“I’m afraid you’ll be spending the night in this jail cell.”

“Will I wake up?”

He smirked. “Doubtful.”

The lieutenant frowned. He set the phone on his chest, muffling the receiver. “Hey, Chief? It’s Sean from the Reporter. He says he has a couple questions for you.”

Chief Craig waved a disinterested hand. “Tell him I’ll issue a statement about the fire in the morning. I need to get my facts straight first.”

“Like the identity of the arsonist?” I asked.

He snorted. “Why weren’t you DoA when I got there?”

“Just lucky, I guess.”

“Uh, Chief?” The lieutenant interrupted us. “He says it isn’t about the fire.”

“Then take a message.”

“He wants to talk to you—says it’s urgent.”

Chief Craig hissed at his officer. “What could be that urgent?”

“It’s pertaining to Chelsea Maddox.”

The fuck?

Chief Craig spun for me, launching at my neck through the bars. I leapt away as his lieutenant shouted, tearing the chief off the door before he ripped it from the hinges.

“What the hell did that little whore say?” He yelled. “What did you do?”

Hell if I knew.

Chelsea didn’t have the sense to go to the media about their affair. She was content to keep