Page 1 of Live Love Steal (Destroyers MC: Skilletsville PA #2)

Running late - Isobel

A dulting sucked. Well , being able to drink didn’t usually suck. Having a place of your own where no one tells you how to decorate or where the spoons go was awesome.

Paying bills? Definitely didn’t fall on the good side.

Neither did going to court for a traffic camera violation that I obviously did not do because on that very date, near that very time, I was at U - Haul picking up supplies to help my younger sister, Audrey , get out of a bullshit situation with a questionable thug.

I had the receipts for boxes to prove it.

Not that I couldn’t afford to pay forty bucks, it was the principle of the thing.

I didn’t do the crime, despite the car looking like mine, and even more bizarrely, the court sent a grainy photo displaying a plate that matched mine. But it wasn’t my car.

My car had a dented bumper, courtesy of the aforementioned little sister who backed it into her boyfriend’s truck.

The very same day and time that the false photo was taken.

Unfortunately , because we fled a crime of hit and run, we hadn’t reported the accident, which would prove I was somewhere else with my car.

Which meant I couldn’t mention that part of my alibi.

So , adulting sucked.

As I stood in line to get through the security gates, I checked the time on my cell phone.

The court website warned to arrive at least twenty minutes before the session, but wouldn’t tell me what time I’d be called.

Which was a horrible way to run a business.

I needed to get back to work to avoid getting dinged for taking another day off.

Not only that, but my boss, Jamie , wanted to go over the presentation notes for tomorrow’s pitch.

With me.

Like , I needed to hold his hand or something?

I sent the damn PowerPoint five days ago.

He waited until seven-thirty last night to email me a vague message that sounded oddly threatening, warning me that if we didn’t go through my proposal together today, on my scheduled day off for this fucking court date, I’d be written up.

I fired back an email at eight, which was three hours after my scheduled shift ended.

It took twenty minutes to rewrite it five times so my “tone” wouldn’t be “insubordinate” and five more minutes to re-read old emails and cite the specific date and time I requested today off. Which he approved exactly three hours later. I had that receipt, too.

But just like he ignored workplace scheduled hours, he ignored his own responsibility of approving my day off. He fired an email right back, claiming he didn’t approve it.

No sooner than I checked the work website, I saw the request status as “unapproved.” Which was bullshit. I had the email that approved it. I knew that my court date absence had been approved. My eyes did not lie.

But there it was, in the system as unapproved. I bet that asshole went in as he read my newest emails and unapproved it. Unfortunately , there was no way to confirm that.

Unless … did I have any friends in IT ? Maybe the back-end database kept a record of changes.

I made myself a note on my phone to follow up on that.

“ Ma’am ? You’re next.”

Shit ! I hadn’t realized the line moved. The guy behind me grumbled about cell phones in court. “ She shouldn’t have that thing in here. They made me leave mine in the car.”

I glared back at the asshole talking. “ I checked, it’s perfectly fine to bring a cell phone in, you just need to power it off before you enter the courtroom.” God , I swear, some people were stuck in the Stone Age .

The little gray bin didn’t hold my work backpack, purse, and coat, so I needed two. But that man behind me grabbed the only empty bin left and then made a show of taking his belt off to place it inside.

A fucking belt.

I stepped to the side to wait for another bin.

Meanwhile , a younger man, probably my age, walked right past us all. He carried nothing, set his cell phone on the conveyor belt beside his wallet, and walked right through the gate.

Damn . I should take notes. That was impressive. He breezed through like he owned the place.

More impressive, because when he turned around to get wand-checked, he had gauges in his ears, and obvious tattoos peeking out of his shirt sleeves and crawling down his hands.

He was a pro—in more ways than one. This obviously wasn’t his first courtroom rodeo, despite the sharply pressed suit that he wore.

It fit like it was custom-tailored, and his slicked-back hair was somewhere between dirty blond and surfer blond.

He caught me staring.

I quickly glanced down.

Yay ! A whole stack of empty bins slid in front of me. I dumped my coat and purse in and stepped back to wait to be motioned through.

Which didn’t happen. The man who jumped my place in line set off the gate.

Instead of motioning for him to stop and get wanded, they waved him past.

“ That’s not fair.” The people manning the security barely blinked at my protest. I raised my voice. “ Excuse me, but he set off the gate.”

“ Ma’am , please walk through.”

But they stopped someone who didn’t set off the alarm and sent someone on their way who did. How was that in any way, shape, or form secure? Or fair? Or not an utter display of the disparities of a system rigged toward…

Yes , the words “rich, white, patriarchy” flashed through my head. I looked at the female bailiff. “ He set off the gate.”

She shook her head and motioned me through.

I stomped through the flimsy metal stanchions and technology they’d erected. In defiance, I stopped directly in the arch and was about to flip the whole lot of them off when it beeped.

Fuck . My . Life .

Defeated by society, I walked over to the woman who’d not shown me any ounce of solidarity and got scanned. Then patted down. Then my bags were sorted through because the laptop set it off.

“ You can’t use your electronics in the courtroom.”

“ Duh .” I’d only just announced that earlier to the asshole who not only took my place in line, but set off the gate and now stood a good chance to be some sort of risk to all of us in this building. “ That’s what I told the asshole who took my place in line.”

“ Excuse me?” She looked up. Something in her tone set off the other guards.

Damn it. I tried to explain.

“ Ma’am , I’ll have to ask you to calm down.”

I hadn’t raised my voice. Yet .

“ Calm down?”

The guards magically multiplied from the three that had slowed the entire system down to seven… wait, eight, because a county sheriff stepped forward. But somehow, everything stopped. Because of me?

“ Is there a problem here?” The fat-ass cop was not asking. He had that tone that said, “ Is there a problem here I can shoot? Please let me shoot. I haven’t killed someone in ages, pretty please?”

“ Yes , there is a problem. The man before me triggered the alarms, and your team here waved him through. But you’re treating me like some sort of criminal. How do we know he doesn’t have a bomb?”

Wrong word to use.

Every single guard, cop, and person in a suit stiffened up.

Someone behind me whispered, “ Did she say bomb?”

Fuck .

“ I have court?—”

“ Step over here.”

No ! “ I have a court appointment.” I checked my watch. “ In five minutes.”

“ Are you a lawyer, ma’am?”

“ No .” Did I look like a lawyer? I mean, I wore my “interview” outfit, the one that pegged me as fairly normal, but the faded pink under color wasn’t.

I kept the top dyed almost black, and the underside was as white as my stylist could strip it.

When I went clubbing, I ramped up the fun with temporary colors.

Sometimes they didn’t completely wash out before the work week.

“ Then , please step over here.”

Another guard walked up, with the tattooed man in his grip. “ Is this the man who went through the gate?”

“ No .”

“ Watch your tone,” the sheriff loudly reprimanded me.

Whispered gossip and outright lies flew through the line of people breezing through the security gates. It was about me, about the spectacle they were witnessing, and more than once, someone said the word “bomb” in hushed worry.

“ The man who set it off was about sixty, five-eight, size XL , and he wore a gray Jos . A . Bank suit.” Thank you, my Men’s Wearhouse stint, for teaching me how to size up customers and spot common designers from a mile away.

“ You just described a third of the people here.”

Finally , some female solidarity . “ It’s a little late, sister.”

She shot me a look that said, “ Shut up.”

“ Are you sure he’s not the one?” The guy holding an innocent—relatively speaking—man asked again.

“ Positive . Now let him go.”

Tattoo -man shook his head. I could read his expression. It was sending me the same vibes as the female guard. Shut up, get your head down, fall in line.

I didn’t want to! I wanted to scream. The system was rigged, and this sucky-ass morning was proof of it.

I was here in this stupid, crowded lobby, detained for the simple crime of speaking up.

And my counterpart, still in the vice-like clutches of the government, was a victim of oppression. I wanted to burn the place down.

“ Where’s the bomb?” The police SWAT unit had shown up.

As if this day could get any worse?

“ Up your ass.”

I didn’t say it. I had enough self-control not to. But my GOD , I wanted to. I plastered on a smile I didn’t feel and tried to make my tone as smarmily sweet and non-condescending as I possibly could muster. “ I’m sorry, officer, I think this is just a simple misunderstanding. You see?—”

“ She claims this man has a bomb.” Cut off again. Mother fucker !

“ I did not say that!” Who did this jerk think he was?

The SWAT officer noticed the man in question. “ Hey , Sketch , ‘staying out of trouble?”

The tattooed man answered, “ Trying to.”

“ What you in for today?”

“ Child custody hearing.”

The SWAT officer grimaced. “ Oh , yeah, sorry to hear about that, man.”

Sketch — was that a real name? He acknowledged the cop’s sympathy with a resigned nod.

“ Hagerstown wasn’t visiting lately, were they?”

Sketch shook his head. “ Boots is laid up for a few weeks. Broke something landing a bad endo.”

“ It wasn’t his head, was it?”

Sketch snorted. “ He broke that a long time ago.”

I cleared my throat. “ I hate to interrupt this male bonding moment, but am I free to go?”

Three of the guards immediately piped up with varying degrees of “no.”

Most vocal was the sheriff, who reprimanded me about my tone. He’s the one who suggested, “ Bag her devices.”

“ What does that mean?” No one would answer me. One of the extras who’d arrived to clear the backlog at the gates took over while another one disappeared and returned with two garish neon green trimmed bags with suspiciously ominous fastenings.

Sketch stifled a laugh and turned it into a cough.

Meanwhile , the SWAT officers clustered around, and a dog sniffed all my clothing, bags, and the electronics now in the stupid cases, which had locks on them.

“ You may keep these with you, but you must return here to get the locks removed.”

Begrudgingly , I gritted out, “ Fine .” No one seemed in any kind of hurry, and I was constantly checking my watch, prompting them to ask me to remove it and put it in with my cell phone.

With that last vestige of technology stripped from me, I wouldn’t know if I was late or not.

I rushed to the elevator.

Surprisingly , people were bypassing it.

But I didn’t have time. The courtroom was on the top floor of the building.

I wanted to get there intact. But carrying all the various cases, and my bags and coat, up multiple flights of stairs, with no idea whether the doors would open at the top? No fucking way.

Sketch jumped in the car just as the doors were finally sliding shut. He glanced down at the neon green suitcase on the floor.

“ The bag of shame.”

“ Shut up.”

He pressed his lips together and pushed the same illuminated floor number that I’d selected.

The car lurched into motion.

Finally , something going my way.