Total pages in book: 36
Estimated words: 32646 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 163(@200wpm)___ 131(@250wpm)___ 109(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 32646 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 163(@200wpm)___ 131(@250wpm)___ 109(@300wpm)
“I need you to step out of the vehicle, sir.”
Jesus Christ.
I pushed open the door and stepped out before shutting it back behind me. The rain immediately began to soak into my clothes and made the bun on the top of my head drag painfully on my scalp.
“We got a report of a suspicious vehicle matching your truck’s description,” the officer told me, but he had a twitch in his jaw that gave him away. It was barely noticeable, but I spotted it immediately. He’d been given orders to harass me, and that was exactly what he was doing.
“You want to check my truck?” I asked. “Go right the fuck on ahead. You’re not supposed to without a warrant, but I don’t have shit to hide.”
He patted me down first, bending me over the hood of the vehicle and searching my person, coming up empty. The other officer checked my truck, dumping everything out of my glove compartment and out of my middle console, not bothering to even attempt to put any of it back, before shrugging at the officer who’d patted me down. “Nothing.”
The officer faked a smile and nodded at me. “Thanks for being so cooperative, sir. You have a good day.”
“Go to hell,” I muttered under my breath, not moving until they were pulling away.
Ace frowned at me when I walked through the clubhouse doors. “You look like hell,” he said, for once not having some smart-ass comment. I guessed I looked as pissed off as I felt.
“Got pulled over for being ‘suspicious’,” I muttered, heading for the staircase. “Can you make me a cup of coffee?”
“Yeah,” he called after me as I ascended the stairs. Once I was in my room, I stripped out of my clothes and headed straight for the shower to get warm. I was rinsing my hair when Ace knocked on my bathroom door. “You want the coffee now or just want me to set it on the counter?” he asked.
I poked my hand around the shower curtain. “Now,” I rasped. Once it was in my hand, I swallowed the scalding coffee, letting it warm my insides in a way the shower couldn’t. I handed the mug back to him when I was done. “Thanks, kid.”
“Your phone is ringing,” I heard him say a moment later from my bedroom. “It’s… Abbie.”
I sighed, my shoulders tensing. I wasn’t in the mood to deal with her after this shit show I’d just dealt with. “I’ll deal with her when I get out,” I told him.
“Sure.” A moment later, my bedroom door shut, and I was alone again. I finished my shower in peace, then got dressed in jeans and a hoodie, pulling on a pair of old, worn sneakers since my boots would probably have to be thrown out.
Just what I wanted—a goddamn shopping trip to buy another pair of boots.
I snatched my phone off the bed and called Abbie back as I headed down the stairs. “Hey,” she greeted when she answered.
“Hey yourself,” I muttered, walking into the kitchen to find a snack—chips, cookies, something. “What’s up, little devil?”
“You sound… off,” she finally settled on. “You okay, Cameron?”
I sighed. “Just some fuck ass cops,” I told her. “Pulled me over in the pouring rain to pat me down and search my truck because it was suspicious.”
“They what?” she asked, sounding genuinely surprised.
“Mhm,” I hummed noncommittally. Wasn’t sure why she would be surprised. She was targeting us just as much as the rest of that fucking precinct was.
She sighed. “I’m sorry, Cameron,” she said softly. And if I didn’t know better, I would’ve thought she genuinely was sorry that I was being targeted more than likely due to my affiliation with the club and our meddling in the trafficking shit going on around here. But I did know better—knew that she was using me to try to climb the ranks as an officer, knew she wanted to take down my club and throw my brothers in prison, starting with Jax.
Playing her like a fiddle for the past month had been kind of fun. She still got irritated when I wouldn’t talk about my family, and she responded to that by not talking about her personal life.
Sometimes, she slipped up though. Like I knew she had no parents—they died in a car accident when she was eighteen. I found out she couldn’t afford to go to college without student loans, so she decided to become a police officer at twenty-one after working a bunch of dead-end waitressing jobs. She liked to spend her days off sleeping in, reading, watching movies, and eating junk food.
She knew next to nothing about me because I wouldn’t let her.
“It’s fine,” I told her.
“Do you want to grab lunch with me at the coffee shop?” she asked tentatively. “My partner is with me, but…”