Page 24 of Kingston (Savage Dragons #2)

“I’m not going back to prison. You can tell me that I’m going, and I’ll do everything within my power to make it not happen.

Even if I have to go after you, too.” The judge asked him what he thought was going to happen when he’d confessed to killing thirty-five women and ten men.

“I don’t care what happens about them. I’m not going back.

You might as well kill me now as to send me back there because I’m going to do my damndest to get in a body bag if that’s what your plan is. ”

“Well, son. I appreciate your candor, but I don’t sentence people at pre-trial.

This here is a hearing to see if they have enough evidence to have yourself a real trial.

I have to say, with you confessing, it sure is going to put a damper on your day in court.

” He said that he was made to say that about his confession.

“Don’t matter a hill of beans to me either.

I’m sure now that you’ve given the courts enough to hang you with, they’ll be able to put you behind bars for a while now. ”

“They coerced me into confessing. I didn’t do any of those things.

” The other attorney stood up and said that the police were looking into the deaths that Mr. Wagoner was talking about, and since he’d been able to give them the places that he’d buried the people at, they were digging them up as we speak.

“They’re just lucky, that’s all. I didn’t do it. ”

“That’s what I’m here to figure out. If they got themselves enough to have a trial over.” The man wasn’t listening to him, and that was starting to piss him off. “Now you have a seat right there, and we’ll get this started and maybe have you back to your cell before too much longer.”

“I’m not going to prison.” He said that they’d see about that and laughed a little. “Do you think that I’m funny in some way? I’m telling you that I’m going to do whatever it takes to keep myself from going to prison. I’m not going back.”

He looked around the room then and noticed that about half the people had left.

He didn’t know where they were going, but it seemed to him, too, that he had a wide circle of freedom around him.

Looking when the doors opened in the back, the room began to fill with the officers who had just brought him in.

It looked like the judge was taking him more seriously than he’d thought he was.

“Nobody in here wants to get hurt today. Why don’t you have a seat, and these nice officers will take you back to your cell.

That way, you can be told later today how things are going for you.

But as I’ve said to you already, I’m not going to sentence you today, as this is just a pre-trial.

You know, to see if they have enough evidence to try you at a later date.

Now, what I can do is to make sure you’re not taken to prison right away if you cooperate.

You let them come to you and they’ll hustle you out of here right quick and back to the jail where you’d been spending your time.

” He said that he’d been coerced into saying what he did.

“Then they’ll not find any evidence to take you to prison on.

We just have to take care of the issue of you trying to kidnap Mrs. Savage right here and that boy, Trevor. ”

They were going to find the bodies as he had confessed like a fool to killing those fifty or less people.

He’d been bragging and thinking that they’d be as lazy as any other jail he’d been in, that they’d not check on it.

For him, thinking that these people never got their dander up, he was certainly wrong about these people.

They weren’t lazy, they were slick, and he didn’t like being wrong about people.

When he felt someone behind him, he nearly lunged, but he was stopped by the sheer size of the man. He looked like he weight lifted houses, he was so fucking big. He wasn’t armed either, but standing there in his shirt sleeves and dress pants like he’d just come from some kind of business meeting.

“You’re not going to give me any trouble.” He nodded before he could get his head to understand that this man would and could kill him if he just snapped his fingers. “No, you’re not. I’m going to put you in a lock hold and you’re going to cooperate with the officers.”

Before he could figure out what a lock hold was, the big man had his arms around his neck and his hands shoved up behind him.

He couldn’t breathe, much less move, when he was held like this.

As soon as the officers got close enough to touch him, Jason kicked out, using up all the air he had in his body and passing out.

When he woke up, he was not just in his cell, but he was chained to the bed as well.

All his things were boxed up outside the cell.

Not that he could get to them, not how he was chained up, but he knew that as soon as he could, he was going to sue the department for abuse.

That was the only thing that he could think of to say why he’d ended up in his cell again.

As he moved around, there was enough chain for him to stand up, but not much more.

He felt the only thing that hurt was his head.

And it was pounding like someone had used him for a punching bag at some point.

It wasn’t a sickening one, but it hurt badly enough that he thought he might be if he had to move around too quickly. Christ, who had that man been?

~*~

“What if you had gotten hurt?” Tucker told Skye that he was an immortal, that he might have broken a nail, but nothing more would have happened to him. “I don’t care about your stupid nail. I’m talking about being hurt really badly. Immortality doesn’t keep you from getting hurt, you know.”

“I didn’t want the officers to get hurt, so I was a distraction for him.

I never thought that I’d have to wrangle him, too.

But he went down pretty easily, and no one was hurt.

Not even me.” She said she was still upset with him.

“If it helps you at all, I talked to Kaida about it, and she was fine with me helping them out. She did care, however, if I broke a nail while helping them.”

“Because she’s in love with you.” He asked her if she loved him, too. “I do, but like I said, it doesn’t negate the fact that you could have been hurt.”

“I promise you the next time the police need my help, I’ll ask you first.” She smacked him on the arm.

“That hurt. See? You hurt me more than I was hurt helping the police. He really wasn’t any trouble.

I was surprised that he went down so easily.

After hearing him talk about how badass he is, I expected more of a fight from him.

But all he did was kick out, and that was it. ”

“Ms. Savage, he might well have gotten one of our guns in that mess. It’s happened before, I’ve heard.

You think that someone is going to be a pussycat, and you find out that they’re meaner than a rattlesnake.

And slick too. He would have done us some serious damage had he gotten a hold of one of our guns.

Or even if he was to have gotten one of us in a choke hold like Mr. Tucker was talking about, then we’d have had to pull our guns out and shoot him.

That would have been messy, and a dead man would have been on the courthouse floor.

Can you imagine the mess all that blood and bullets would have done to the floor in there?

” She could only stare at him as that was the most anyone of them had said in all the time she’d been around them.

“All I’m saying is that without his help, it would have been a mess of a mess.

We’d be mopping up blood from now until the building needed to be replaced. ”

Tucker was all right, and that was what she should have been focusing on, but she could still see the evil in Jason’s eyes when he was being held by Tucker.

Shivering, she knew that she’d have to keep an eye on Kings to make sure he didn’t try to one-up his cousin.

He’d do something equally terrifying for her, and she’d have to smack him around a bit, too.

They had stayed for the rest of the hearing. Or pre-trial, whatever they wanted to call it. Jason was going to prison. Of the forty or so places that he’d given them where people were buried, the police had already dug up half of them. And they were precisely where he said they’d be, too.

Some of the bodies had been shot, and some had had their throat slit, according to the medical examiner who had started on the bodies.

There were a few that had been strangled, too.

She didn’t know how they could tell that on a body that had been in the ground for as long as some of them had been, but she wasn’t going to quibble.

He had confessed to killing them, and that’s all she cared about.

“Did you ever think about what he might have done to you had you been killed by him?” She asked the officer why he’d say something like that to her.

“Just wondering. He’s a nasty man and a killer.

I, for one, am glad that he’s been caught before he could do any more harm to anyone.

I wonder what drove a man like that to kill.

From all accounts, he’s been doing it since he was in his twenties.

What is he now? Forty-five? Fifty?” He looked at her.

“Makes you wonder what’s going through his head all the time. Don’t it?”

She walked away from the officer. He was too much for her. As soon as she got outside in the cooler weather, she put her face up to the sun and let it warm her suddenly cold skin. He might well have killed her, and that right now was all she could think about.

“Skye?” She turned and smiled at Kings. “We were going to grab some dinner and head home if you want. I know that movie you wanted to watch on television has finally dropped to be streamed.”