Vindication: A Motorcycle Club Romance (35 page)

She didn’t look terribly happy about
it, but she nodded anyway. I started to record and put it on the desk.

“Normally, the oversights we cover up
aren’t this ugly,” started Maria. “Sometimes a guard will have a rough time
with a drunk fan, rip their clothes, accidentally break their phone… and we’re
all fine with throwing those under the rug. People have no idea the abuse
security guards can take at a show, especially a big one.”

“Sure,” I said. “Uniforms tend to
bring that out in people.”

Maria nodded. “People don’t get hurt
often, not really. Definitely not like this…”

“So where were you working the day of
the show?”

“I was in charge of the crew at the
main stage. At the time of the incident I was in the backstage area where the
bands set up their tour buses. I heard the calls on the radio and rushed over.
It wasn’t long after I got there that my phone rang and Rory—he’s the branch
supervisor—was issuing the order to grab all the recording devices. Without
question, I spread the order to my people.”

Maria took a long pause before she
continued. “I got to the stage and my crew was huddled around the man’s body…
he’d hit his head on one of the steel stage beams on his way down. I’ve never
seen so much blood in my life. EMTs had been called, but he was long gone
before they got through the crowd.”

I wondered if Noah had been forced to
see what happened to the man he attacked. I hoped not.

“It was chaos for the first hour
after it happened; I can barely remember doing my job. But the body was removed
and we got most of the close cell phones locked up in the security trailer on
site. Rory took the crew from the main stage and tore them a new one for
letting something this explosive happen on their watch. He put me on the duty
of uploading all the cell phone footage for archiving and destroying the phones
after. I was up all night while he ran around trying to do damage control.”

“I know you’ve got beat cops on your
payroll,” I said, recalling the names Steve had texted to me on the plane ride
over. “Perkins, Dylan, Martinez… is that why it was so easy for you to keep the
news about confiscating the phones quiet?”

Maria nodded firmly. “This place is
in tight with the cops. We have to be, really. I suppose we’re in the same
business, when it comes right down to it. But there’s a lot of personnel
crossover, too. Officers use these gigs as an easy way to make money on the
weekends because their skills transfer so easily.”

“Was one of those men on the front
lines of the Cut Up Angels set that day?”

“Yes,” said Maria. “A couple of
them.”

I said nothing, but felt disgust
riling up in my gut. Even though the men were just protecting each other,
exactly how I was trying to protect Noah, it still felt like an abuse of power
I couldn’t excuse. Having a brother-in-blue directly threatened by this failure
of duty would make it pretty damn easy for local cops to want to play along
with the security firm’s cover-up. After all, they both had something to lose
from exposure.

And Noah was just their spoiled, rock
star patsy.

“What was on the videos you took?” I
asked on the edge of my chair. “How did that guy get past security?”

Maria’s eyes grew wet. “One of the
guards at the end of the line got distracted by the show, and that was all he
needed to crawl over the barricade. They didn’t even see him until he was on
the stage, and by then, it was too late.”

“Maria,” I said with a firm gaze.
“Did he have a knife?”

Something like horror and relief
mixed together washed over Maria’s face. “How did you know that?”

Adrenaline pumped through my veins
like a shockwave of sunshine. I rushed to my feet and leaned over the desk.
“You mean there
was
a knife? That man was trying to attack the band?”

“I didn’t tell anybody but Rory
that!” said Maria, shocked. “I showed him the videos and he told me we couldn’t
tell anyone, because… because how would we ever get hired for a job again? We
would all look like complete fools and lose everything. He even went out and
found the knife where it fell under the stage mechanisms before the police
could collect their evidence.” She put her head in her hands. “Oh, sweet Jesus,
I didn’t mean for this to frame somebody. I thought we were doing the right
thing for my workers!”

When Maria looked up at the smile on
my face, she gave me eyes like she thought I was crazy. I just leaned over the
desk and took her by the shoulders. “Maria, you beautiful angel. Tell me you
saved one of those videos that shows the knife.”

“We saved all of them,” said Maria.
“We saved them on a secure hard-drive only Rory and I can access.”

I scrambled in my pockets for my keys,
and the spare USB drive I always kept attached to them on a ring. “Give me a
copy, please—just one video, one with a distinctly clear shot of the knife.”

“Oh, no, please… this is already too
much!” she said, worried.

I fumbled for my wallet and threw the
rest of the cash on the desk. Maria gasped.

“No one will ever know it came from
here,” I said. “You said yourself you didn’t get all the phones from the crowd.
For all anyone will know, a fan sat on this video and waited to sell it to the
press. Delete the firm’s copy of it—they have plenty of other incriminating
evidence, anyway, and they’ll probably be deleting it themselves once this
drops.”

At first she just whimpered, unsure,
debating.

“Maria,” I said quietly. “This will
save his life.”

She looked up at me with tears in her
eyes.

“Please,” I said. “I can’t let that
happen to him.”

Maria’s expression changed slowly,
like something came over her. Somehow the fear fell from her eyes. But she
still bit her lip when she nodded at me and blinked a few times. “Okay. Okay,
I’ll help you, as long as you keep your promise to protect me.”

“With my life,” I said and dropped
the keyring in her hands.

Ten minutes later, Maria was a
thousand dollars richer, and I had the key to Noah Hardy’s salvation literally
in the palm of my hand. I made Maria double and triple check the integrity of
the file on the drive before I gave her my unlisted number and told her to call
me if anything at all spooked her. She actually gave me a shaky, awkward
embrace after she called me a taxi, and waited out front with me until it
arrived.

“Take me to LAX,” I told the driver.
No way was I staying in this shithole any longer than I had to; I’d use the
expense account to buy a quicker flight back to Seattle.

I sent a text to Steve that just said
“You better get your hands on the finest whiskey your bitch ass can afford.”
After a few anxious minutes with no reply, I huffed and put my phone away. He
must have been busy.

A screaming part of me wanted to call
up Noah right then and give him the incredible news, instantly putting his
troubles behind him. But as I sat in the back of that taxi and held the USB
drive in my hand, I realized the labyrinth of a mess I’d gotten myself into
didn’t have an exit so simple.

Old stories about wishes and being
careful about making them, they all felt a little too real in that moment. I
had everything I wanted in my hands. I had my bombshell story; I had the mea
culpa to my journalistic missteps; and I had the key to making sure Noah could at
least escape this nightmare without having to endure prison. He could start
healing, moving on, find a new band that didn’t treat him like shit the way
Angels did. Noah could be free. I really had found the magic bullet.

But there was no way in hell Noah
would ever forgive me for what I was, and how I got here. And the only way I
could get us both what we wanted was to blow the cover on my true self.
Salvation required a sacrifice, just like in the old stories.

I had to lose Noah to save him.

Suddenly, I was wracked with sobs so
intense, the taxi driver asked if he needed to pull over and get help.

Ashamed, I kept my face down and told
him no. Keep driving.

He threw a box of tissues from across
the passenger seat. “Everything will be okay, miss. We will make your flight.”

“It won’t be okay,” I said, gasping
in breaths. The words came out before I could stop them, so desperate for
escape that even a stranger hearing them was better than no one at all. “I love
him, and I have to ruin everything.

~
SEVENTEEN ~

Noah

I got off the phone with Kevin and contemplated
rolling over and going back to sleep. There really didn’t seem to be much
fucking point to getting out of bed, not today. The weight of the impending
criminal charges against me had become too much for me to fight against, at
least on my own. I needed a boost and nothing was working.

Deep down, I needed Laurel.

But I could only whisper that to
myself, and the fabric of my pillowcase, as I lay in bed and let the day swing
by without me. Kevin had called because of the shows I had missed the past
couple nights. He pretended he wasn’t worried, just gave me some shit about
shacking up with Laurel, but then again that was his way. He knew more than he
said, and he cared too damn much.

My numbness frightened me, but I
tried to tell myself it was just temporary. It was normal to feel outweighed by
something as huge as what was going on right now. I wouldn’t be here forever; I
would get up.

Just not today. Not right now.

The silence of my empty house seemed
to tell tales of its own, taunting my anxious brain as I lay in bed, too tired
to escape them. Whispering that it was always supposed to be this way, somehow.
Like deep down, I knew one day, all the rough edges I had tried so hard to sand
off would end up cutting my jugular. The demons I had hog-tied would get free
and catch up to me. Maybe that’s why I was here alone, now, in a small empty
house. Maybe that was why I was the only member left in my band who hadn’t
settled down and found at least a steady, long-time girlfriend to weather the
storms with. Jeff even had a couple of kids, now. As rough as it was, somehow
they had made it work, and found a partner even within the chaos of the rock
star life.

But not me. It was like I was off the
rhythm of things in my personal life, always late or early to the party.
Whatever success I found in my career, I found the same failure in the simple
human connections I tried to establish. The wrong women got close; the right
ones slipped through my fingers, or couldn’t see me to begin with.

Some pragmatic, probably nihilistic
part of me was glad I was alone to go through this. The thought of having a
wife… maybe a wife like Laurel… having to sit back and watch me endure the
misery that was sure to be my trial and conviction, and then wait for me while
I serve out a prison sentence, it made me sick to my stomach. The thought that
I could so thoroughly destroy the life of someone I loved just by proximity… it
horrified me.

Suddenly all my isolation had this
paranoid look of being self-imposed. Had I really created some self-fulfilling
prophecy, ending up alone in this empty house because I expected to be? Was I
afraid to get close because I couldn’t take the weight, the power, of
influencing their life? Maybe that’s why I liked performing; it was a place I
felt comfortable taking that power. It was power I enjoyed wielding, power I
was good at wielding. On stage, looking out at a wave of people, some of whom
were bigger and stronger than I would ever be, and yet they’re listening to me,
obeying me even—I loved it. I belonged there. I knew how to translate that
power into something positive for people’s lives through my music.

But when it came to power over just
one person… when it came to knowing I held someone’s delicate heart in my
hands… I didn’t feel powerful at all. I felt terrified. Now, with a prison
sentence looming over my head, that terror was justified. If I had ever let any
of my past girlfriends close—as terrible as some of them were—now, they’d be
going through a world of hurt with me. I was right to push them away.

The terrifying thing was, I wasn’t
sure I could do the same to Laurel. The idea of not having her around was
indescribable.

Wet tears hit the pillowcase under my
face. The whole world felt as small as my room.

Time melted away for a while, until
the quiet was broken by the ringing of my phone. I almost ignored it, but after
a few indecisive seconds, I finally rolled over to grab it from my bedside
table.

Laurel’s beautiful face was staring
back at me from my phone screen. Fuck… Laurel. I missed her warmth so much. I
hadn’t even thought about how I was going to break this news to her. Part of me
worried she wouldn’t even care… but the deeper part of me knew she would. And
that was the part that was afraid I was about to break her heart.

Really, it would almost be better if
she didn’t give a shit about me. Then I wouldn’t have to feel guilty for that
too, at least, and she could go on about her life. Of all the times to find
myself hopelessly attached to a woman, why did it have to be now, when
everything was falling apart? I didn’t want to take Laurel down with me.

The doubt in my mind almost kept me
from answering her call. But I felt helpless. I wanted to hear her voice.
“Hey,” I said.

“Hey, Noah,” she replied. “I’m sorry
I haven’t called in a…”

“No, no, don’t apologize. It’s fine.
You have a life.”

There was a heavy pause. “You sound
really down. What’s wrong?”

My face scrunched up as tears
threatened again. Of course she could hear it, this flawless woman. But I never
wanted her to see me weak. “It’s nothing. I didn’t sleep well. Where are you? I
want to see you.”

“I-I want to see you too,” she said.
Wherever she was calling from, it was noisy and scattered in the background.
“Are you busy right now?”

“Never too busy for you, sugar.”

Her voice sounded much sadder when it
came back on the line. A flash of worry lit up in my brain. “Can you meet me at
that beach you took me to in, like, half an hour?”

I glanced at the clock at my bedside
table. It was already well into evening; I hadn’t even had a meal yet today.
“Yeah, sure. Is everything okay with you?”

“Yeah, just… I’ll tell you when I see
you. Half an hour?”

“I’ll see you there.”

Emotions battled in my brain, both relief
and concern, unable to decide which was more accurate. Really, my brain was
just too tired to give too much of a fuck. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be
worse than the news I’d already gotten, and at least I could finally hold
Laurel in my arms again. Our brief time apart felt like it had been much
longer.

It only took me a few minutes to get
dressed and brush my teeth. The guy looking back at me from the mirror was a
little worse for wear, and it was the first time I remember actually seeing
signs of stress on myself. I ran a comb through my hair and splashed cold water
on my face, hoping it would tighten things up and help the dark circles under
my eyes.

A light rain began to fall on the
drive over, and a bunch of idiot tourists held up part of the road when they
wheeled off to the side to get a glimpse of some deer tromping through the
neighborhood. By the time I pulled my truck up to the gravel lot near the small
little beach I had taken her to before, Laurel was already there, her car
parked haphazardly. I left my truck next to it and tromped down the small slope
toward the river.

Laurel sat on the giant piece of
driftwood, throwing tiny rocks into the water. When she heard my footsteps
approaching, she leapt to her feet and turned to face me. Her face looked
puffy, like she had been crying not too long ago, but she still looked
beautiful as ever, wearing the sweatshirt I had given her before. Between her
swollen eyes and my sleepless circles, we must have looked like quite the pair,
if anyone was watching.

My heart froze when she hesitated.
But it was only a second or two, and then she was racing up to me, throwing
herself into my arms. Her hair and sweatshirt were wet from the rain, and cold
pressed up against my skin, but it didn’t stop me from lifting her off her feet
and holding her as tightly as I could as she buried her face against the crook
of my neck. Warmth and sweet relief rolled down my body and suddenly my aches
and fears became a distant memory.

“I can’t believe how much I missed
you,” she said into my skin.

I inhaled deeply, my nerves instantly
soothed by her words. “Fuck, I missed you too, sugar. I missed your smell.”

She pulled back from my neck and took
my face in her hands. Her kiss was sweet and powerful, a message without words.
I bent my forehead against hers when it was over.

We stood there holding each other and
listening to the river until I finally lowered her feet to the ground. She kept
her body against mine as I stroked her hair from her face.

“Noah, I have to talk to you about
something, and I have to do it before I lose my nerve.” Laurel looked up in my
face with a determined brightness in her eyes, shifting from foot to foot like
she was standing on hot coals. She grasped at my jacket almost unconsciously.

“You can talk to me about anything,”
I said, cupping her cheek in my hand. “What is it?”

Laurel lowered her gaze for just a
moment and took a few deep breaths. Then she met my eyes again. “I have
something for you.” From out of her pocket came her hand, and in it was a
small, black, plastic rectangle. The lid of the USB drive had been secured with
bright red tape. When I didn’t react, she lifted one of my big hands in her
tiny ones and placed it in my palm, then closed my fingers over it tightly.

“What is this?” I asked.

“It’s your proof,” said Laurel,
blinking up at me through the light rain.

“It’s…
what?
” My words came
out in one great exhale.

“I found your proof, Noah. Proof
about the knife, it’s on that drive. It’s a video. It proves you acted in defense
of Quinn. You… you don’t have to go to prison,” she said. Her words came in
short spurts, like she was holding back tears.

The closed fist holding the drive
trembled. Was this possible? Laurel—could she have saved me?

My knees felt weak. I gripped onto
her shoulder. Suddenly everything felt far-away and dreamlike, and for half a
second I expected to wake up. “Laurel, what… I don’t understand….is this real?”

“It’s real,” she said, but something
fearful was in her teary smile. “It’s real, Noah, all you have to do is show
the DA and this will be over. This is where I had to go, and what I’ve been
working on. I’ve been hunting this down.”

Confusion coursed through my mind. So
many questions tried to force their way out of my mouth. “I can’t even… this
can’t be real. What do you mean, you’ve been hunting this down? Why?”

“Noah,” said Laurel. Tears had begun
to run down her cheeks. She put both hands on my shoulders to make sure I was
looking at her. “Noah, I have to tell you something else, please. Just hear me
out, okay?”

I was already too stunned to respond.

“I found the proof because I was
looking for it, Noah. I’m not…” She looked down at her feet and cursed under
her breath. “Noah, I’m a journalist. I’m a writer for
Slipstream
.”

The sound of the river got louder in
my ears. I could feel the closed fist over the hard drive getting clammy.

“When I said I was here for my job,
it was true. I came here to find you—to find out what happened at the festival.
I came here for a story. But… but something happened…” Her eyes darted around.
“I came here to find out why that man died. I expected you were just going to
be some asshole guy who finally lost touch with reality, but… that’s not…
that’s not what you are. That’s never been who you are.”

Now the sound of the river was
competing with the pounding of my own heart. Embarrassment and rage started to
bubble up under the skin at my neck, flushing my face with heat. I had to close
my eyes; I had to look away from Laurel. “So you… This was all a trick?”

“No,” she said firmly. “This was not
a fucking trick, Noah. None of this was a trick.”

“But you didn’t come here to find me
because you gave a shit about me. You came here to find me to use me for your
story,” I said, pieces coming together in my mind. “Everything you did was
just… was just to get close to me?” Tears stung my eyes and blurred the river
rocks at my feet into a mess of gray-black splotches.