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O pal glanced up as the interrogation room door opened.

A gorgeous looking man dressed in a beige suit and navy shirt walked in. He had dark hair and tanned skin.

Jake got up from where he’d been sitting and quietly left.

Hmm. There was only one person this could be.

“Hi, Opal. I’m Jardin Malone.”

“I don’t think I’ve got the funds to pay your fees,” she told him bluntly.

He grinned. “Well, I’ve been told you’re family. So you get the family rates. And since Alec is the one who called me, he’s the one footing the bill.”

She still couldn’t believe that Alec would do that. And that this man would fly here to help her.

“You don’t even know me.”

“Know that you’re family. When you’re a Malone, we take that seriously. Also, if I didn’t come, I risked one or more of my cousins turning up on my doorstep with a loaded rifle. I do not need that in my life.”

“They wouldn’t do that.”

“Sweetheart, they so would. Now, I heard you’ve been refusing to talk until I got here?”

“Yeah. That’s what I was advised to do. Was that the wrong thing?”

“Nope. That was the smart thing.” He sat and turned toward her. “You doing okay?”

“I’m tough and I’ve been in worse scrapes.” She tried to smile, but didn’t quite manage it. “Is Renard okay?”

When they’d reached the station, Renard had refused to leave her. Eli had threatened to arrest him, and she’d had to beg him to wait out of the room. But he still hadn’t gone until Jake gave his assurance that he wouldn’t leave her until Jardin arrived.

“Hmm. Not sure I should answer that.”

“Shit. That means he’s fucking losing it. He’s going to be so mad.”

“With Eli and Kellan?” Jardin asked.

“With me,” she whispered. “When he learns I was keeping stuff from him.”

“Let’s not worry about Renard since we need to worry about you. Here’s the thing, Opal. What you tell me is confidential and I need you to tell me the truth. Can you do that?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know why you’re here?” he asked.

“Eli told me, but I don’t . . . I still don’t get it.”

“They’ve brought you in to question you about the murder of Mark Lindon in Club Kitty on the night of August tenth, three years ago.”

She nodded. “I worked there. But I didn’t know a Mark Lindon.”

“It’s possible he used a fake name to hide his identity.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me. I think I knew him as Marcus Scott. But I still don’t understand why the FBI would care about his death.”

Or how he’d died.

When she’d left him, he’d been breathing.

“Here’s what I know. Three years ago on August tenth, the police received a call from a hysterical woman. She’d come in to clean at Club Kitty and found a man dead in one of the back rooms. He’d been bludgeoned to death with a solid object, maybe a bat.”

“Baton,” she corrected. She was going to throw up.

Jardin’s sharp eyes narrowed. “Police report that his pants were down, and there was dried semen on his cock. He’d just had sex.”

“Sex? Or rape,” she said bitterly.

Jardin sucked in a breath.

“It wasn’t me,” she reassured him.

“Good,” he whispered. “Well, they collected DNA from the scene but couldn’t find a match to anyone on their system. They questioned every employee at the club, however there was one person missing. They couldn’t get in touch with her, but she’d left some of her stuff at the club, including a hairbrush with her DNA on it.”

Fuck. Him.

Fuck him. He’d promised her.

“That woman was called Patricia Smith.”

“Right,” she said hoarsely.

“She became a person of interest in the case when they also found her hair on the body. The problem was that Patricia had disappeared, and no one could find her. That is until the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System was pinged after a woman was kidnapped, beaten, and taken to a hospital where her DNA was collected.”

“Stupid me. I should have realized that. But he promised me.” God. She was so stupid!

“Who promised you?” Jardin asked.

“Stefan.” She let out a dark bark of laughter. “I knew when Marcus, I mean, Mark slumped to the floor unconscious that things were bad. He was still breathing, though. I swear he was breathing when I left him.”

“You hit him with a baton?” Jardin asked without a hint of disapproval or blame.

“Yes,” she said.

“Then you ran?”

“Right into the hands of the devil. After I hit Marcus and he went down, I panicked. I didn’t know what to do so I called Stefan. We’d been, well, dating. I was hysterical. He promised me that he would take care of it. That it would all go away. And in return, all I had to do was move in with him. If I agreed to be his, he’d take care of everything so I would never be in trouble.”

“Stefan got you a new identity?”

“Yeah, I chose the name, but he sorted it all. Why didn’t he get his guys to remove the hairbrush? I thought they would get rid of any sign that I was even there. That’s what he paid them to do. They cleaned up scenes like that all the time! He took me for a fool.”

“My guess is he was keeping it as leverage,” Jardin said. “He planned to bring it out if he needed it in order to control you.”

“That complete bastard!” God, she wished she could make him pay for the damage he’d done to her.

“He probably kept you from seeing the news for those first few weeks, I’m guessing? Did he keep you away the outside world?” Jardin asked.

“Yeah, you could say that. I was so grateful for his help that I let him do whatever he wanted . . . for a while.” Until she fought back.

Which had made life even harder.

And she didn’t want to think about that. What a fool she’d been. How she’d fallen for his lies.

“So Mark died from his head injuries?” she asked, rubbing her stomach. “I killed him? He must have died after I left.”

Jardin frowned. “I’m going to get my hands on the autopsy report and see.”

“He was breathing. He was breathing.” She rocked back and forth. “This is so bad, isn’t it? I killed him.”

“Why did you do it?” he asked.

“Because he was raping my mother,” she said dully. “I was nearly at the end of my shift when one of the girls came running to grab me. They all knew about my mother. The user. She would come in sometimes, trying to get more money from me even though I’d taken a job at the club to help pay off her debt. She’d obviously decided to take on some . . . clients to help fund her addiction.” She swallowed back bile. “The owner of the strip club, he didn’t give a fuck what happened in the back rooms so long as he got his cut. And Marcus, Mark, was a good client, but he preferred to have the girls come to him for private dances. My mom wasn’t supposed to be there. She didn’t work there. But one of the girls said that they’d seen her enter through the backdoor of the club with him, and that after they entered the room there were screams. I kept a baton in my locker at the club. I’d had a few near misses with overzealous customers. So I grabbed it and I ran to help my mom.”

“No one mentioned this in the reports. None of the girls said they’d seen you run out with a baton.”

“Well, none of them liked or trusted cops.”

Jardin nodded. “That’s good unless the FBI have questioned them again and gotten them to change their testimony.”

“Right,” she whispered.

“What happened when you reached the room?”

“Everything had gone quiet and I wasn’t sure if that was a good sign. The door was locked, but we all knew the code. I punched it in. When I went in, he was over her, he was . . . in her and she was crying and pushing at him to get off. And I just lost it, I rushed up and I hit him in the back of the head with the baton. He fell unconscious and I pushed him off her.”

“What did your mom do?”

“She ran.”

He blinked. “She just left you?”

“Why would she stay around? Oh, wait. No. She took his wallet and then she ran. My bet is she took all the cash and dumped it.”

“Yes, the wallet was found in the back alley. The cops believed that someone lured Mark into the club, had sex with him, then hit him over the head and stole his wallet.”

“And they think that person is me,” she said. “They got it half right.”

Jardin tapped his fingers on the desk, thinking. “You were defending your mother. Would your mom back up your story?”

“Hard to do when you’re dead,” she said. “Stefan told me that he got her into rehab, but that she snuck out and died of an overdose about six months later. I don’t know if that’s true. However, he did have photos of her body.” Photos he’d almost delighted in showing her.

“What happened to the baton?” he asked.

“Stefan took it. I don’t know.” Her head was starting to thump. God, she hoped this wasn’t the start of a migraine.

“Were there cameras in the club?” he asked.

“Yes, but they didn’t record and most of the time, the person who was meant to be monitoring them was getting a blow job instead.”

“So what did you touch? The keypad on the door? Which is something you’d touched before.”

“Yeah, when I was delivering drinks to that room,” she said.

“Which would also explain why your hair was in the room. Hair is tricky to clean up and some of it got on the bastard’s clothes when he fell to the floor. They’ll try to say you had sex with him, but your DNA won’t be a true match to what was found on his body.”

“It will be Mom’s,” she said.

“Right.”

“What does this mean?” she asked.

“That their case against you is pretty weak without a witness, a weapon, and a good motive. Your DNA wasn’t found on the wallet.”

“But don’t I look guilty? I left that night and never went back.”

“A criminal forced you to become his girlfriend. Changed your identity because he kidnapped you. Makes you a victim.”

“I hate being the victim.”

“Don’t worry, Opal. You don’t have to be the victim for much longer,” he promised.

“I still killed him.” Shouldn’t she pay for that?

But he was a rapist.

“Or Stefan did,” he suggested. “Or whoever came in to clean up killed him.”

“You . . . you think Stefan did that?”

“It took care of the problem, so yeah, my guess is if he didn’t die of his head injuries, Stefan had him killed. There’s also another reason he might have killed him and it’s the reason why the FBI are so interested in this case. Do you know who he was?”

“He was a prick that none of the girls wanted to be in a room with. I mean, he’d only been around a couple of months, but he’d left a lot of the girls bruised and bleeding after his visits.”

“Well, the reason the FBI got involved with his death is because of who his father is.”

“Who is his father?” she asked.

“Grey Lindon. He’s a justice for the Supreme Court of Texas. He’s also married to the cousin of the President of the United States.”

“Oh hell. I’m in huge trouble, aren’t I?” She was going to be ill.

“Not if we give them someone else to go after. Did Stefan come and get you himself?” he asked.

“Y-yes. I stayed in that room with . . . with Marcus or Mark until Stefan arrived with a couple of his goons. But how are we going to lead them to Stefan? He’s dead. His guys are gone. There won’t be any footage.”

“We need a witness who saw him. Be good if we had the weapon with his prints on it but that’s not going to happen. I need to check the autopsy report. See if it was the blow to his head that killed him. Let me do that first. Just, hang tight, all right? I know this is scary, but I have your back.”

Jardin lightly squeezed her shoulder and then stepped out of the room. She waited and she waited.

Then Jardin returned and he was smiling.

“How did he die?” she asked.

“Asphyxiation. Someone smothered him to death.”

Relief filled her. But then she realized it wasn’t over yet. “I have no way to prove that it wasn’t me that smothered him. And I did hit him over the head. It’s assault at least. What jury will find me not guilty? Look at me!”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Jardin told her sharply. “Not a thing. But you’re not gonna have to worry about a trial.”

“I’m not? But how?” she whispered.

“You’re a Malone, Opal. You helped my cousin escape a monster. You helped Lilac. And you’re one of us. We protect our own.”

She still didn’t see how that helped. The Malones weren’t above the law.

“But what do I do? What do I tell Eli and Kellan?” she asked.

“You tell them the truth.”

The door opened and Eli and Kellan walked in. She winced as she heard Renard yelling in the background.

God, she wished she could go to him. Help him. But she couldn’t even help herself. There were dark spots in front of her eyes and she felt like she was going to vomit.

“Right. Are you ready to talk to us, Opal?” Eli asked, looking tired and defeated.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I’m ready.”

* * *

“I’m going in there,” Renard stated. “They can’t keep me from her.” He jumped to his feet and started to storm out of Jake’s office.

Jake got between him and the door while Saxon grabbed him, hauling him back.

“You can’t!” Saxon told him.

“Let me go!” he yelled. “She’s mine! My responsibility. I am her guardian and they can’t question her without me.”

“Do you think she can’t hear you?” Saxon said quietly. “No doubt when that door opens, she can hear you yell, and you are fucking well making things harder for her.”

“I should be in there protecting her, though.”

“Sometimes, protecting her means letting other people help,” Saxon told him. “It means, stepping back and taking a breath and just trusting that others have her back. And yours.”

“And after she’s released, the last thing she’ll want to do is bail you out of jail,” Alec told him from where he was leaning against the wall, tapping on his phone.

“And what if she’s not released?” he asked.

“She will be,” Alec said firmly.

“How can you be so sure?” Renard asked.

“Because she’s one of mine. And Malones don’t go to jail.”

Jake started to swear and walked out of the room.

“Poor Jake. Hard to be the sheriff of Haven,” Alec said.

“What did you do?” Saxon asked, moving back to his seat.

Renard was too wired up to sit, so he paced back and forth.

“I called Jardin. Jardin called Regent.”

“Regent’s helping?” Saxon asked.

“Of course,” Alec said. “Also, he doesn’t like Grey Lindon much and he really didn’t like his son. He met him a few times, said he was evil. And he’s not letting one of us go down for taking out someone like that.”

“If she did it,” Saxon said.

“Right,” Alec added. “But it doesn’t matter if she did or not. She’s not going to jail.”

“Regent is going to make it so she’s safe?” Renard reiterated, unsure if he was hearing right.

“Yep,” Alec replied. “So just hold tight and let him do what he needs to do.”

“I fucking hate feeling useless,” Renard said.

“We all do, man. But sometimes you have to let other people help you,” Saxon said.

He hated that too.

But the last time he’d let someone help him; he’d ended up here in Haven. And it had saved his life. So he was going to trust again and hope like fuck that Regent Malone came through.

* * *

“Fuck,” Eli Jones said, closing his eyes and pinching the top of his nose.

“Messy,” Kellan said.

Worry filled her.

“Breathe, sweetheart,” Jardin told her.

She glanced at Jardin. But he didn’t look worried and she forced herself to breathe.

“So now you know the truth. Opal was defending her mother from a rapist. And it wasn’t the blow to the head that killed him. He was suffocated after she left. Likely by one of Stefan Masters’ goons.”

Eli and Kellan shared a look.

“It’s not that we don’t believe you, but you know who the victim’s father is. He’s not going to let this go without someone going to jail for the death of his son.”

“That person isn’t going to be Opal,” Jardin said firmly. “His son was killed by one of Stefan Masters’ goons.”

“And you have no proof of that,” Eli spat out. “How are we supposed to keep her safe from this with conjecture?”

Keep her safe?

“You want to keep me safe?” she asked quietly.

“Of course we do,” Kellan told her. “We’re not the bad guys. Fuck, we don’t even want to be looking into this asshole’s murder. By all accounts, the world is a better place without him. But our boss is under pressure from his boss. And then his boss, who is the fucking President. We cannot shield her from this.”

“You can’t,” Jardin said with a small smile. “But I can.”

Eli shook his head. “There’s no way. Not unless we find the person who killed him and he fucking confesses. Not likely to happen. And she’s still liable for assault. Even if she was defending her mother.”

“Just wait,” Jardin said.

She gave him another worried look, but he winked at her. “It’s all good, sweetheart.”

“Do you call all your clients sweetheart?” she asked.

“Nope.”

Then Eli’s phone rang. They all looked at it. He picked it up and left the room. He was back in a few minutes, looking pale. He gaped at Jardin. “How did you do it?”

Jardin stood and held out a hand to her. She slid her hand into his and let him help her stand. “I take it that we’re free to go.”

“How did you do it?” Eli asked.

“Sometimes, the good guys get to win. Also, Grey Lindon is a complete asshole and a stupid one. He needs to make sure that people can’t get hold of his dirty secrets and use them against him. Like the fact that he had to bribe a college to ensure that his son was accepted, then pay off a number of girls on campus not to talk about the assaults they suffered at that fuckwad’s hands. Some of those girls are very willing to go to the press with stories of their treatment if their safety is guaranteed and their pockets lined.”

Holy heck.

“Let’s just say that Grey Lindon has decided to let the soul of his son rest. In hell. Oh, and you can expect an eyewitness account from someone who saw Stefan Masters smother Mark Lindon. Just so this can all be wrapped up in a bow.”

Wow. Regent Malone was a freaking miracle worker.

“Regent found one of Masters men?” Eli asked, looking shocked.

“I didn’t say that.” Jardin moved toward the door, tugging her gently behind him. “Come on, Opal. Let’s go get your man before he storms in here and gets himself arrested.”

Shit.

Yeah. She had to get to Renard.