Please don’t say the tenth. I had a full schedule that day.
“Tomorrow afternoon.”
My shoulders sagged with relief. “That’s it?”
Serena laughed. “Yes. It’s the street dance this weekend.” She did a little dance. “It’s Creek Days, and I get to go and help my friend set up for the parade on Saturday.”
I groaned. Another joy of living in a small town. The annual parade and street dance. I didn’t mind the parade, but the street dance was the worst. It was loud and went on until sunrise the next morning. Officially, it shut down when the state said it could no longer serve alcohol, but that didn’t stop everyone from going home and drinking till the sun came up.
That also meant that I was usually called down to the sheriff’s station at least once in the middle of the night to bail someone out of the drunk tank. It was the downside of being the only lawyer in town.
Last year, I’d had to help get out the Richardson brothers before their mom found out and beat their asses. All because they’d decided to go cow tipping. And they’d had to pick Old Man Flanders. The meanest and grumpiest person in town.
“So, what do you say?” Serena asked.
I’d almost forgotten she’d asked for the afternoon off. “What’s on the schedule?”
“Nothing. I think everyone else is too busy to come in.”
“Go ahead. I think I’ll take the afternoon off, too. Maybe get in some rest before all the chaos starts.”
Because, even though the street dance wasn’t until Saturday, residents, old and current, would go out to party on Friday, too.
Since my office was downtown and my apartment was above my office, I wouldn’t be getting much sleep on Friday or Saturday night. It was still worth it, not to live with my father though.
He was close enough, living up on the hill in the house I’d grown up in. I hadn’t quite managed to move away permanently after I lost Maddox, but at least I didn’t have to live with my father anymore.
Too bad he still held the reins to my trust fund—aka the money I used to help run my business. After Maddox’s arrest, I never wanted someone who needed help to be unable to defend themselves in court. Since there were only about three families in town who had a lot of money, it meant a lot of handouts and cheap billing. But I didn’t mind. I’d found my calling, and I loved helping those I could.
If only I could’ve helped Maddox.
Unfortunately, there was no record of him in the system, and his case was sealed. It was like he’d fallen off the face of the earth. Not even good old Google could give me anything.
Serena and I went back to work, and at five o’clock, Foster Wolfe walked in to pick up his niece.
Foster nodded hello to me, and I nodded back. He and I were civil toward one another, but I still blamed him for Maddox’s incarceration. The two of us didn’t talk more than we had to.
The only good thing that had come out of it was that Foster cleaned up his act. He’d gone to school to be a mechanic since he always liked working with cars, and he owned the garage in town. The Wolfe name wasn’t such a terrible thing anymore around here—as long as Maddox didn’t come before it. People still hated him for what had happened twelve years ago, and no one felt sorry for him in the least. But that was because everyone thought he’d been the one to commit the crime. Only Foster and I knew the truth. Foster because he’d done it and me because Maddox had been with me at the time. I didn’t understand why he’d never told anyone that he had been with me that night. I would have vouched for him in a heartbeat.
Part of me hated Maddox for taking the fall for his brother, but I also couldn’t fault him completely for looking after his younger sibling. It still didn’t mean he’d had to go to prison for the guy though.
I said good-bye to Serena and finished up on the account I had been working on—at least for the day.
It was going to be another night alone for me, so I wasn’t in any rush. I didn’t know if it was all the thoughts about Maddox or what, but the thought of going upstairs alone seemed worse than usual. I might as well make up for taking tomorrow afternoon off instead.
Two
Maddox
A big, meaty hand slammed down on my shoulder. “We’re going to miss you, Mad Dog,” my friend and teammate said.
“Yeah, but you’ll enjoy breaking in the new kid,” I told Flash.
Flash thought he’d earned his nickname because of how quick he was for someone of his size—he was six-three and two hundred thirty pounds of muscle—but it was really because of how fast women scattered when he was around. He was kind of like a big teddy bear, and most females didn’t know what to do with him. He might not have been a ladies’ man, but Senior Chief Thomas “Flash” Morelli was one of the best damn SEALs I had ever had the pleasure to work with.
He rubbed his hands together. “Fuck yeah, I will. He won’t know what hit him.”
I laughed, feeling pity for whoever replaced me.
But everybody had to be the newbie at some point.
I still remembered my first day in the Navy like it was yesterday.
I’d been a scared kid, forced far away from the only home I’d ever known, moving to a completely different world from the one I had grown up in. Until then, I’d never even left the state of Iowa. There had been no family trips for me, growing up.
When I’d been arrested, I’d thought for sure I’d be in that jail cell a few hours at most. I knew the security tape pointed to me because Foster had stolen my letterman jacket and put on my baseball cap and a bandana. We looked very different, and I was broader and taller than my brother, but since my brother had kept his face hidden, the sheriff thought it was me. Or maybe he had just wanted it to be me.
Brantley Graham had the sheriff and the district attorney in his pocket and was always looking for ways to get me arrested. I’d kept my nose clean my entire life, only to go down for something I didn’t do. But I took the fall because I didn’t want Foster to go to prison. Not only had he robbed a gas station, but also a well-known member of the community had died during the commission of the crime, adding on another charge. But I wasn’t worried because I was innocent, and I had an alibi.
An alibi who never showed up. An alibi who never vouched for me. An alibi who thought she’d let me rot in prison the last twelve years.
My only saving grace was the judge on my case. I had a bench trial instead of a jury trial, and he pulled me aside and talked to me. Something virtually unheard of. He pulled up the surveillance video, looked at me point blank, and dared me to tell him that it was me in the video.
After being railroaded by the sheriff and the DA, I almost cried that someone finally saw the truth and was on my side.
The judge was no dummy. When he asked me if I knew who had done it, I lied, saying I didn’t know, and I thought he knew I’d been untruthful. I didn’t know if it was because of that or because of some other reason, but the judge gave me two options: go to prison for twenty years or get the hell out of Brook Creek.
I chose to get the hell out of Brook Creek.
The other stipulation was, I had to leave everyone behind. I thought the judge had been afraid that my old life would drag me back in. It was true that he really couldn’t force me to move away in exchange for my freedom, but the only person I cared about had chosen her father’s money over me anyway.