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“Miss, this isn’t Bobby.” A deep cultured voice spoke with a suggestion of an accent.

“Oh sorry, this is the number for Bobby Richardson, isn’t it?”

“It is, but Bobby is indisposed at the moment,” he said with a hint of a laugh that made it all clear.

“Well you can pass the message along.” I took a deep breath and told him everything, including where Tate had been a couple nights ago and where he was now. “He needs someone with him now. I don’t know how much you know but –”

He cut my words off. “I know everything, Miss.”

“Teddy,” I added. “Call me, Teddy.”

“I’ll let Bobby know.”

“And she’ll show up, right? Because I need her or you, someone to get their asses down to the station now!”

“Yes, Teddy, someone will be there.”

“Great, thank you, whoever you are!” I disconnected the call, quickly dressed and scanned the area outside the house before I darted to the car, my heart racing so loud I couldn’t hear the phone ringing on my next call.

“Hello?” Max’s voice was groggy and thick with sleep.

“Max, wake up! The police just picked up Tate, something about an assault case. I’ve called his lawyer and I’m on my way to the precinct but I thought you’d want to know.”

“What?”

“You heard me. See you.” I ended the call, stepped on the gas and went as quickly as the laws of physics and the state of Nevada would allow. Tate was doing me a huge favor, taking my personal safety as his responsibility. It was something no one had ever done for me, not until I met Jana. That kind of unwavering loyalty and friendship deserved at least that much in return.

This fighting for him, I could do easily.

And I would.

Chapter 15

Tate

I should have fucking known this shit would happen, but I’d let myself get distracted. Get caught up in the day-to-day tasks of running a business, dealing with club business and Teddy. All of those distractions had made me forget who I was. Not just a man who’d spent six years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, but a man who, in the eyes of the two officers glaring at me, had won against the state. These assholes looked at me like I was already guilty, the same way they had right before they put handcuffs on me and pushed me through the system.

I was nothing more than a goddamn statistic to them. Well fuck them and fuck their statistics. I was the other number, the small number of men who’d been freed and deemed innocent. To these guys, that made me an enemy. A target. “Since your minds are already made up, I think I’ll wait for my attorney to show up.”

“That’s fine.” The youn

g detective I’d come across once before, at the scene of Teddy’s burned house, set out nearly a dozen photographs of a woman with a nasty black eye. Fucking Sheena. Troublemaking bitch. “We have the victim’s statement and these fine images so I’ll imagine you’ll end up where you belong soon enough.”

The other detective, the older one, Haynes, sighed heavily. “Look Mr. Ellison, this would all go a lot easier if you would just talk to us.”

I nodded because he was right, it would. Too bad the hardest fucking lesson I’d ever learned didn’t come at the hands of Uncle Sam, but the Las Vegas Police Department. “Still, I’ll wait for my attorney.”

Dodds, the young prick, laughed again. “The longer you take, the worse it’ll be for you. Just tell us what happened. You get a little too rough for her? Or maybe she likes it rough and is now crying foul?”

I opened my mouth to say something, the rookie’s eyes glued to my face, hopeful and arrogant. “Maybe you didn’t hear me. I said, I am invoking my right to counsel.”

He glared. “Just because you got out on a fucking technicality doesn’t make you a good guy.”

I sneered at him. “And just because the only way you can get your dick hard is to railroad innocent people, doesn’t make you competent. Or good. Officer.” These motherfuckers wanted me in a cage and they wouldn’t rest until that happened. That was too bad because I would die before I let that happen. I would beat one of them to a pulp to ensure it, but I would never spend another night in a cage again.

“Innocent,” he scoffed.

“Yeah, asshole, it’s called DNA. Maybe you need to go back to the academy and figure out how this business of solving crimes works. You know, sometimes people lie.”