isn’t after me,” he grunts down the line.
“No, he’s after me and he won’t think twice about using you guys to draw me out,” she reminds him, pinching the bridge of her nose.
“I can handle—”
She cuts him off, shutting down whatever he was going to say with her next words. “He was in my room, Dad. He took photos of me while I was asleep and vulnerable and while you slept down the hall,” she replies.
All three of us tense. When she said stalker, I assumed someone was following her, had maybe turned up repeatedly at her local coffee shop when she did and given her a bad vibe. I have no idea why I wrote it off as something so benign. Why the hell would this brave, feisty woman end up here, with her family a bunch of cops, unless she or they were truly in serious danger? I mean, breaking into her home and watching her sleep? That’s fucked-up. I’m finally starting to understand just how much Reign has been through, and we’ve barely scratched the surface.
“He could have killed us both, but I’m safe here. I’m with people who won’t let anything happen to me,” she reassures her father, even as she wraps her free hand around her middle. Yeah, her faith in us has taken a blow. I rub my hand over my head, feeling shitty.
“Fuck. Fine, but you check in regularly, Reign. I can’t lose you.”
Her head drops so I start to move, but Priest beats me to it, standing beside her, running his fingers through her hair.
“I’ll check in, I promise. I love you.”
“I love you too, Raindrop.”
She hangs up the phone and swipes at her face before standing and walking over to the window. Taking a few steadying breaths, she lifts the phone and dials the next number, fiddling with the hem of her T-shirt again, as she waits for whoever it is to answer.
“Who’s this?” another male voice answers.
“Hey, Owen,” Reign greets him softly.
Owen, who I’m guessing is one of her brothers, spends the next few minutes cursing up a storm before he gets himself under control
“I’m fine, Owen, I’m safe,” she assures him with a sigh when he finally calms down.
“I hate this. I get why you left, Reign, but I don’t like it one little bit,” he complains.
“I know, but I’ll do anything to keep you guys safe just like you would with me,” she says, looking over at us briefly before turning her back on us and staring out the window.
Fuck, that look guts me. It says, “I’m doing them, to keep you safe.” Is that what she thinks we want, a glorified whore?
I turn my attention to Bates and Priest to see if they noticed it too and find them watching her as avidly as I am. Yeah, they saw it too. We fucked up, we won’t change our minds and back out, but we should have handled her with a little more care.
I stand up and pace, stopping to listen to her.
“Tell me you’ve found something, Owen,” she pleads, her shoulders slumping with his next words.
“Not much,” he admits, sounding pissed. “But here’s the thing, what I’m not finding is what’s making me suspicious.”
“How so?” she asks curiously, chewing on her fucking lip again. I adjust my dick as her tongue pokes out a little.
“Well, this guy is supposed to be a hero, right? He holds more arrests to convict rates than anyone else, supposedly, but some of the cases I delved into were a farce. At least a third of the ones I’ve looked at should have never made it to court. A further glance shows that each of these cases was presided over by one judge. The odds of that in a state this size are astronomical.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying the record he achieved likely had more to do with favors and handshakes than actual crimes being committed. And don’t get me started on some of the sentences that were handed out for what should have been misdemeanors.”
I look over at Bates, who is watching her thoughtfully.
“So, he’s dirty?” she asks him as I resume my pacing, my blood boiling at the thought.
Bikers get a bad rep. A lot of it’s earned but dirty fucking cops are the scum of the earth. I know only too well how much a corrupt system can fail someone.
“Well, he ain’t clean, but I can’t find anything concrete that points to him. When people started asking questions,