Vindication: A Motorcycle Club Romance (34 page)

“Come with me,” he whispered against
my mouth. “Laurel, come with me.”

His hot wet tongue danced on my lips
and I moaned loudly, feeling my orgasm build. “I’m almost there,” I told him
breathlessly.

“I want to feel you…”

“Oh, fuck, Noah!”

Waves of ecstasy shot suddenly
through my body and I screamed out. The orgasm hit me like a lightning bolt, my
inner muscles clenching Noah’s hard cock as he pumped it inside of me. As I
writhed underneath him, he tangled one hand in my blonde hair and held me still
as he came, his final thrusts deep and hard enough to send aftershocks through
my muscles.

Spent, he collapsed on top of me,
still buried within my hot core. He laid his face next to my head and entwined
his fingers in mine, panting onto the sweaty skin of my neck.

I looked over at Noah, face lit
softly in the candlelight. His eyes were closed, and his gorgeous face looked
completely at peace. Gone was the tension around his eyes.

I made myself remember every detail
of that moment, deeply afraid I would never get the chance to see it again.

~
SIXTEEN ~

Laurel

L.A., this cesspool of heat and dust and weird fake
smiles that made everything disorienting—I hated it. The Pacific Northwest was
one thing, but I couldn’t stand California. Give me the upfront brashness of
East Coasters over this granola crunch, passive-aggressiveness any day.

My hatred only made me more
determined to get my job done as quickly and boldly as possible. The plane ride
from SeaTac was short, but it gave me plenty of time to double-check the data I
had already found. And in doing that double-check, I found myself more certain
than ever that Noah was telling the truth about what happened at the festival.

I kept trying to tell myself my
feelings for him were incidental. Part of me was scared it was just another lie
to soothe the ache of the truth. Maybe I had turned into a shit journalist who
didn’t know what the fuck she was doing. Maybe I had fallen so deeply for Noah
that I couldn’t see past the web of lies he was trying to spin me. But deep
down I could feel that wasn’t right. I had fallen deeply for Noah—and Noah was
not a cold-blooded killer. Both of those things existed independent of each
other, and I was going to prove it.

Even if proving it meant I lost Noah
forever.

I had no time to consider that future
horrorscape. Instead I turned my focus to the present, and let myself get judgy
and grumpy about every little thing I hated about this city to keep my mind
from wandering. The cab driver from the airport must have sensed my mood,
because he didn’t even try to make conversation as he drove me straight for
Sentinel Security’s head offices. My plan was to get there, conduct my research,
and get back to Seattle without having to stay overnight. But all of that
depended on what I found—or didn’t find.

My flight got me in a little earlier
than I expected, and the front door to the modest, two-story office building
out in the City of Industry was still locked. Assuring my taxi driver I’d be
fine on my own, I waved him off and wandered down to a sketchy convenience
store to grab myself a coffee and a donut while I waited. The vibe around here
was so different from Seattle, and especially Thornwood, that I found myself
somehow feeling homesick for a place I wasn’t even from. Everything was bright
and bland here. I missed the shadows.

I missed Noah.

By the time I got back to the
building, someone had arrived and opened up the place. A pretty young woman sat
at the front desk, jacket still on her shoulders, rifling through some
paperwork. She looked up only a moment when she heard the bell on the door.

“Hi there, give me just one second,”
she said to me.

I nodded and wandered around the
waiting room with my coffee. It was small and surprisingly basic for a firm
that dealt with clients as big as the Sun Fest. A few outdated chairs, a water
cooler, a table stuffed with random entertainment magazines. On the walls hung
various professional photos of security teams at work during concerts. It
seemed like the owner of this place probably took home more than his share of
the big paydays, and left the branches with as little money to operate their
overhead as he could get away with. That could be useful. I was suddenly glad
for the wad of cash in my wallet, courtesy of
Slipstream’s
expense
account.

After a few moments, the receptionist
let out a big breath and stood upright. “Hi, sorry! I didn’t mean to keep you
waiting. What can I do for you?”

I turned to her with a patient smile
and walked up to the chest-high counter. “My name is Laurel Barnes. I have an
appointment to meet with Maria Haro.”

She nodded and bent down to look at
her computer screen. She scrolled a few moments, frowning. “I… I’m sorry, I
don’t have an appointment for you here. What did you say your name was?”

“Laurel Barnes. My assistant called
yesterday and set this appointment. She assured me it was taken care of,” I
said, putting my coffee on the counter.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Barnes, it’s just
not…”

“Miss, I’m with Bear River Insurance,
and I’m supposed to be meeting with Maria Haro to discuss some important
matters—I’m sure you can guess which ones. I was assured by your staff this
meeting was set up for today. Does Ms. Haro understand that her job, and this
very business remaining open, depend on the findings I present to my company?”

It was all bullshit, obviously. Just
a bit of social engineering one tended to pick up as an investigative
journalist. I found Maria’s name, as well as the public paperwork showing the
name of the firm’s insurance company, during my research. A few phone calls
later, and I had confirmation she was one of the people in charge of the
festival security detail.

But this poor girl didn’t know that.
She just went pale and started stuttering.

“Oh, oh God,” she said. “I must not
have saved the appointment right in the program…”

I checked my phone impatiently,
dramatically. “I came here straight from the airport, and I have to be back
there before nightfall. This kind of evasion does not bode well for my report.
I suggest you get a hold of her right now.”

“Y-Yes, ma’am, right away,” said the
receptionist. She reached for the phone, but then thought better of it and
excused herself, disappearing through a door with a keycard lock.

She wasn’t gone three minutes. The
door flew open and the girl held it open for who I could only assume was Maria
Haro. Her dark hair was pulled back in a tight, smooth bun, and her face wore
an expression of surprise, and just a bit of fear.

Maria came around the desk with her
hand outstretched. “Hi, I’m Maria Haro. I’m told there was some problem with
scheduling?”

I shook her hand and kept my eyes on
hers. “Laurel Barnes, Bear River Insurance. I set an appointment to meet with
you that was, apparently, not taken correctly. It is imperative I speak with
you today, Ms. Haro. This is regarding Sun Fest.” I gave a suspicious look to
the receptionist, as if I was afraid she would overhear.

Maria took the hint and waved a hand
for me to follow her. “Let’s speak in my office.” She led me behind the desk
and through the keycard door into a tight, bland cubicle farm. Most of the
spaces were empty this early, but a few people were on headsets taking
appointments and giving service quotes. Maria had a small, windowless office
near the back, and she closed the door behind us before she took a seat at her
messy desk.

“I didn’t expect that you’d need to
speak to me,” said Maria. “Rory said he was going to handle all the statements
himself.”

This was the part where my job got a
little tricky and dangerous. Truth be told, I loved it just a little. I thought
of Noah calling me a shark, and had to fight the smile it nearly brought to my
lips. “He did. But there were some additional questions we had about the
reports.”

Maria went a little pale. She leaned
on her desk and crossed her fingers. “Oh?”

“You were under orders to confiscate
all audience recording devices after the incident, is that correct?”

Maria blinked, surprised. I wanted her
off-kilter. “I… yes, that was the order.”

“Tell me, in your own words, what
kept your people from successfully completing that task. There are videos all
over the Internet.”

Her breathing started to get a little
ragged. “We didn’t have the manpower to cover a crowd that large individual by
individual. I sent in the call for backup on the radios and we did our best to
line the exits, but it all happened too fast, and we weren’t ready for it. I
put priority on the front rows and we seemed to have gotten most of those.”

Again, I fought to maintain my poker
face at the news that my hunches just kept on being right. Security had taken
everyone’s phones in the front rows to hide something.

“Do you still have the phones?”

“Yes, they’re in evidence lockup. Their
files have been stored.”

I put my coffee down on the desk
because I was so thrilled at the news, I couldn’t hold still. “I’m going to
need to look at the videos on those phones.”

Maria frowned now, and for the first
time put up some resistance. “Rory said those phones are to be shown to no
one…”

“But I work for—”

“…by order of the insurance company,
which has already sent a rep to view them.”

Fuck. The wheels in my head spun for
a fix. Maria watched me carefully, waiting. Before I could get a lie off my
tongue, she was reaching for her phone with a panicked look in her eyes.

“Wait,” I said, leaning forward but
not so far that she would feel threatened.

She paused with her hand on the
receiver. I put up my left index finger and, slowly, with my right, reached
underneath and pulled my wallet out of my back pocket. I threw five crisp
hundred dollar bills on the desk in front of her. Maria looked up at me with
surprise.

“I’m not here to get you in trouble,”
I said. “I don’t care about the company or the insurance, or any of that shit.
But an innocent man is about to go down for what happened at that festival, and
you and I both know he shouldn’t be.”

Maria’s hand slid slowly off the
phone and into her lap. The color drained from her face.

“I’m asking for your help to save
him. I’ll make sure it’s worth your while.” I nodded toward the money on her
desk. “And I won’t tell a soul about your involvement.”

Maria said in a tight whisper, “Who
are you?”

“I’m a journalist. That means even
the government can’t make me talk about you. Just take the money, give me what
I need, and no one will ever know. Win-win.”

“I could lose everything,” said
Maria.

“You have my word that if you somehow
lose your job over this, I’ll personally find you a new one.” I put my hands on
her desk and waited until she looked me in the eyes. “I really need your help,
Maria. Noah Hardy is going to go to prison over this if the truth doesn’t come
out.”

Maria stared at the money on her desk
and took a few deep breaths. Downwardly she said, “We all were just trying to
do what we thought was right… Protect the company, protect our jobs.”

“You get no judgment from me,” I
said. “I’ve seen the clients this company handles. Their legal teams would
crush you all like bugs. Just tell me what really happened that day and why you
had orders to hide it. I can get the truth out and keep you safe at the same
time. Like I said… everybody wins.”

Maria frittered at her desk,
thinking. She looked up at me and said, “Can you just step outside for a few
minutes, and give me a chance to think about this?”

I gave her a tired look. “If you’re
just going to call security, we can get this over with now and save some time.”

“I’m not,” she said immediately. “I
just need some space to think. Please.”

Either I trusted her, or I didn’t,
and at this stage, there wasn’t much of a choice. So I got up out of the chair
with my coffee and stepped just outside the door, carefully hanging near her
office so no one would think I was trying to snoop and make this more
complicated than it already was. She could have been calling whoever Rory was,
or some bigger boss, or even the cops. But this was what standing on the edge
felt like. All I could do was wait, and see what happened, and hoped I had
enough brains to talk myself out of it if it didn’t go my way.

It wasn’t long before the door
creaked open and Maria nodded me back inside her office. The money still lay on
her desk where I left it, unmoved. I closed the door and sat across from her.

“So, how do we do this?” she asked,
uncomfortable.

I pulled my phone from my pocket and
showed it to her as I brought up the voice recorder app. “I have to record this
to do my job. But I’ll die before anyone gets this phone.”