Transcending Nirvana (Dark Evoke #3) (20 page)

I didn’t want to move away, I wanted to cling to him for dear life, but, as Laurie wrapped her arms around his neck too, I eventually moved aside. “Don’t forget what I said,” I overheard him mutter over the officer reading him his rights. She was nodding when she pulled back. “You promised me,” he added.

“Knowing and understanding your rights as I have explained them to you, are you willing to answer my questions without an attorney present?”

“’Aye, I have nothing to hide,” he answered, winking at me before being turned around and escorted to the door.

“I’ll come and bail you out. I don’t care how much it is, I’ll get you out. I love you.”

“I love you, too, darlin’,” was the last thing he told me, before disappearing from the apartment with an officer on either side.

And just like that, in the emptiness of the apartment, I felt suffocated by Liam’s hold on us. Just as I anticipated, he was the life source with us as an extension…

He was hurt, and Walker was in jail.

Walker

My fingertips were turning numb with how many times I tapped them against that fuckin’ table in the interrogation room. The cops already heard the story of what happened three times over. Yet they continued to ask, just wording their questions a little differently, hoping that I’d change my story. I’m not fuckin’ stupid––my story remained the same.

“Once again, Mr. Walker, what happened after you left McGinty’s?” the beefy cop with a partially shinning head, dressed in a creased up suit asked from the opposite side of the table.

My eyes rolled, my head tipped back and I blew the smoke from my lips. “We left the pub, and when we got home the door was already open. My apartment had been smashed up, as was my cousin’s,” I spoke, deadpan.

“Laurie Scott?”

“’Aye.”

“Then what happened? You decided to take it into your own hands?”

I just about managed to stop myself from grinning. My fingers stirred on the tabletop, still feeling the impact of my knuckles breaking DeLaney’s nose and the blood bath which gushed from it, the blood seeping from his teeth as I wiped his smug smirk from his face for once and for all, while he begged me to stop, gave me chills.

“Mr. Walker, please answer the question. What happened next?”

“I left the apartment––”

“Leaving Miss Jenson alone?”

My knees bounced rapidly from under the table and for the first time in four hours of being in that fucking box of a room with a mirror to my left, I glared at the cop. I like to think I’d been forthcoming with their questions and demands. I didn’t need an attorney. I had nothing to hide behind. Fuck, I was still bathed in DeLaney’s blood. I wasn’t a bug trying to worm its way out of a situation like that bastard.

“Yes,” I muttered while the thought of what could have happened to her played like a movie in my head. I should’ve known better. Liam was a snake, what made it worse was that he was a smart fucking snake. I wouldn’t put it past him to have had a plan. What if he was lurking outside, watching and waiting for me to leave and rush to him, leaving her defenseless? What if that was his plan: to get at Kady while I was busy chasing him?

Well, I wouldn’t be making that same mistake again.

“Look,” I sighed, shifting myself to the edge of the hard, plastic blue seat, and outing the cigarette in the metal ashtray in the middle of the gray table. “Can I be honest?”

“We hope you can be.”

I nodded, “Fine. Liam DeLaney is a fucking psycho, but he’s smart. You met Kady, my girlfriend tonight. She and Liam were in a long-term relationship––an
abusive
relationship. He doesn’t like that he can’t control her anymore. I’m going to be blunt,”––I leaned into my arms––“That fucker had what was coming to him, he’s should think himself lucky that he’s still breathing.”

“Mr. Walker, these are serious allegations to make––”

Vibrations shot up my spine when my back slammed against the hard plastic backing of the chair, drawing a grunt from me. “’Aye, but they’re not allegations. It’s the truth. Go and ask him. Ask him how many times he beat her and made her question her sanity. Ask him what happened the night of the car crash because I sure as Hell want to know
exactly
what fucking happened, since she was leaving him for me. He won’t admit it. Like I said, he’s a smart fuckin’ snake.”

I slipped down to slouch in the seat, my cuffed hands reaching over the table to snatch the pack of Marlboro. When I peeked up, the officers were looking at one another.

“Okay. We’ll go and visit Mr. DeLaney, ask him about these allegations and take another statement.”

“Fine. You might want to take a lie detector with ya. One more thing,” I stopped them as they headed for the door. Both men turned to face me as I waved my empty packet. “Any chance of some more smokes and a decent coffee?”

“We’ll see what we can do,” they said and as they left, I found myself smiling.

DeLaney thinks he’s a smart fucker. Either way, the truth has come out; he has no more control over me or Kady. His game has just taken an unexpected turn, and unlike before, I’ll be ready.

This time, Kady will be safe when shit really hits the fan.

Kady

“I can’t take this. I’m done waiting around, I’m going to the station,” I told Laurie, stuffing a pile of bail money into my purse.

It had been over four hours and still not a word. I was going out of my damn mind. Not knowing what was happening to Walker was the worst torture I’d ever felt.

“Kady, questioning can take hours. They can’t hold him over twenty-four hours without pressing charges.”

“Pressing char––” My purse plummeted to the sofa, my fingers gripped at my hair. I hadn’t even thought about that. What if the damage done was so serious, that Walker doesn’t even make bail?
Fuck.

“Hey girlie, the last thing Walker would want is you in a state.”

“That’s a huge contradiction don’t you think? Why didn’t he think beforehand?” The tears forming in my eyes made themselves known with the warm, salted sting.

“He did. He knew that the police would come. That’s why he nodded for me to let them in, he was giving himself up because believe it or not, Kady, that man who is being held at the station, would kill anyone for his family, and you are his family, he loves you. And he was willing to do what’s needed to keep you safe.”

“How’s this keeping me safe, Laurie? If Walker is behind bars…”

I was cut off by her tight embrace, and the assuring words, “He always has a plan,” muttered into my neck. “Look,”––she pulled away and checked her wristwatch––“it’s almost 7:00 a.m. Why don’t you go get yourself changed, and fix us a coffee while I make a phone call. After that, I promise we’ll go straight down to the station and wait until we know anything else. Deal?”

My fingers softly caressed my lips, remembering the fraught kisses we shared before he was ripped from me. I couldn’t dare think of what he must have felt the night of the accident, hearing me being torn from him from the opposite end of the speaker. The thought was enough to make me feel nauseous.

After a slight acquiescing nod of my head, Laurie snatched her cellphone from the table while I made my way down the hallway to change.

The bedroom door was pressed closed by my back. I was standing against it, the wood sustaining my weight as my legs rejected to uphold my body. For the first time that I could remember, the room felt cold and empty. Life was given to the impression left in that very area, alongside the sounds of time as it echoed through the abyss and the hollowness of my heart. How I was undressed the night I came back, the kissing and intimacy we engaged in as we loved one another in that very bed. The sounds of leather cutting through the air and slapping on raw flesh as he gave me my strength, and the first declaration of love I made…

Before I could push them back, tears slipped from my eyes and trickled down my cheeks. I sobbed for those memories, I sobbed because for weeks I had been digging for Walker’s given name, and I finally got to hear it as he was placed in cuffs and taken from me. I sobbed for the mere fact that something good in my life was tainted because of the distorted sense of life I thought I deserved. And because I eluded that fact for so long, now was the time that I had to fight to keep the strength that Walker had me embrace.

Liam knew what he was doing; we were nothing more than pawns in the grand scale of his twisted game. He wanted Walker put behind bars, and now I had to pull myself together and intuit his next move.

I wasn’t eluding anything anymore; I was feeding that constricting mass of energy with hatred and astuteness. Liam DeLaney held me down and weakened me for far too long, and God help me, I was going to do something a smart, controlling man like him could never comprehend.

I wasn’t a puppet anymore, and he wasn’t my master. I would transcend every thought and every action that Liam would place in my path.

With resolve, I pushed my body away from the barrier and rushed with heavy strides toward the closet. Ripping down and tossing a pair of black skinny jeans, a plain white T-shirt and my black leather biker girl jacket onto the bed, I rummaged for my black, heeled knee high boots, and got myself dressed.

Laurie was stepping back inside the apartment, her cell in hand as I barged down the hall. “Wow! Look at you.”

“What about me?” I replied, nonchalant, grabbing my purse from the couch cushion and checking its contents.

“You look like you’re on a mission.”

“He took everything from me, Laur. My opinions, my rights, my voice. He nearly fucking killed me, an––”

“Wait, he
WHAT
?!”

It was a peculiar feeling. I was angry––no––I was livid and enraged, but I used those feelings to drive me, almost as though feeling that way made me invincible, and for once, I didn’t care about ramifications. I was done. From that moment, I was Kady Jenson, an independent fucking woman who was in charge of her life and had to stand up and fight for herself and the one she loved, just as he’d done for me less than ten hours ago.

“Most of the injuries I had from the accident, weren’t from the accident, Laurie, they were from Liam. Leviton told me that there were traces of valium in my blood when I was taken in. You think he told them that it was him that forced that pill down my fucking throat like some animal? No…covering his ass as always and now he’s had my boyfriend locked up. Well, he’s made a huge fucking mistake––”

“What’s that?”

Looking into her hazel eyes which were both hard and conflicted, I smirked, grabbed my purse from the couch then fondled the charm bracelet around my left wrist. “He thinks I’m going to cower away, but the ball is in my court now. He’s got me so angry, that being scared of him and his potential is the furthest thing from my mind. He thinks he has potential…” I headed for the door and pulled it open as Laurie tore her purse from against the wooden leg of the mismatched chair, “He should see mine…”

It was almost 8:10 a.m. when we arrived at the Downtown Station. Yet despite the early hour, three people were already sitting in the waiting area, tapping their fingertips together, bouncing their legs up and down or ousting sigh after sigh. I suppose crime doesn’t care what hour it is.

“Do you want a coffee?” Laurie’s soothing whisper came from the uncomfortable wooden bench beside me.

“No, I want to know what’s happening with my boyfriend,” I practically yelled, and kicking up a fuss, I headed straight back for the desk that had seen me no less than eight times during our ninety minute stay. “Hey, can you tell me what’s happening? You’ve kept him here for hours now––”

“Sorry, but questioning can last a lot longer than a few hours.”

“But do you know if he’ll make bail at least?”

The officer continued shuffling papers with a very bored expression on his face. “Sorry, I can’t tell you anything for certain until the officers dealing with him come back.”

“How can they be dealing with him if they’re not here? This is bullshit,” I hit my hand heavily onto the counter and turned around to see Laurie gaping at me.

“Ma’am, I suggest you calm down otherwise you’ll see yourself in the cell next to your boyfriend,” I was warned, the element of boredom that was displayed on his face, absent in his tone.

The officer’s warning was heeded, and I complacently lowered myself back onto the hideous bench that was causing me nothing but a backache and a numb ass.

“Jesus, Kady. I’ve never seen you like this. Keep it up and Walker won’t let you leave the bedroom.”

I smiled, hoping that Walker would get that chance instead of looking at the same four walls of his holding cell.

“I see the Walker’s traits are beginning to rub off on you,” she nudged my shoulder playfully, before slapping her hands on her thighs and adding, “I’m going to have a cup coffee that might as well be tar, want one?”

I shook my head with distaste while grabbing a random leaflet on the table at my side to pass the time.

Two hours, which seemed more like an eternity, passed in a blend of: sighing, tapping, pacing, hasty verbalizations and reading crappy leaflets about vandalism and drug use. The only pamphlet I felt at all useful was being stuffed into my purse when I heard footsteps. I found my feet immediately and rushed towards the man I’d been waiting in Hell for the last God only knows how many hours to see.

His strong arms wrapped around my waist and I practically jumped into his embrace. “I love you. I’ve missed you,” I murmured into his neck.

“I missed you, too, darlin’,” he replied and let his arms fall from around my body.

I took a moment to study him. His hair all disheveled but sexy-as-fuck, the blood trails down his face had been washed away, but evidence of the assault remained soaked into the fabric of his shirt. He looked almost perplexed with the V scored between his dark eyebrows and that small, tempting dimple appearing in his left cheek as he pursed his lips.

“You’re going to want to keep your nose clean from now on, Mr. Walker. Next time it won’t be so straightforward. And stay away from Mr. DeLaney.”

Straightforward? Who were they kidding?

“Wait, you can go––no bail?”

“I’ll fill you in, in the car. I just wanna get out of here.”

In the parking lot, Laurie jingled the keys for her Honda as we stood around the vehicle, waiting for Walker to finish his cigarette. He had told me that he was only a social smoker, but under recent events, I think that label has taken a nosedive.

“So what’s happened, they’ve just let you off?” Laurie probed.

“First offense so they’ve issued me a warning.”

“So what’s with the constipated look on you face?” she added.

Blowing the cloud from his mouth, Walker tore his attention from his boots to me. “They asked him if he wanted to press charges. He said no.”

We were all standing around the car thinking the same thing, but it was Laurie who spoke our silent question. “Well, that’s good news at least, but why? This is DeLaney we’re talking about…”

“That’s what I’m wondering,” he replied, stepping on the butt of his cigarette then slipping into the car.

Laurie

We were back at the apartment for less than fifteen minutes when Kady shouted and kicked the refrigerator door shut, sending Walker’s bottles of Bud vibrating and clanking against one another.

“What’s the matter?”

“We’re out of milk and I’m dying for a coffee. I couldn’t stomach that stuff they tried to call coffee in the station.”

Walker snorted and shook his head. He looked distant, as though he was taking each minute to absorb everything that was in the apartment, every sight, sound and smell.

“Do you mind if I take the truck to go to the store?” she asked, surfacing from the hallway and touching her hand to his slumping shoulder from beside the couch.

I watched on as he took hold of her hand delicately, like a father cradling their newborn child. The love and adoration she had from him was enough to drown in. That was a trait of the Walker men. They loved their women till the end of time; they’d kill for them, and protect them with their lives.

And now that Kady was his, Walker was in the position of power to do just that.

He guided her around the arm of the couch and she squealed lightly as he pulled her into his lap. His face caressed and stroked by her hand, his brow nudging an encouraging rhythm against hers before their lips crashed together. The first proper kiss they had shared since being separated and even I, from the opposite side of the table, could feel the earth shifting for them as the intensity grew to needy proportions.

“Of course you can,” he muttered when they came up for air. All I could do was smile. “Just be careful, darlin’,” he told her as she shimmied off his lap and tore the truck’s keys from the door side table.

“I love you,” Kady mouthed.

“I love you, darlin’. Always.”

The silence of the room was enough to drown in. Walker shunted himself from the couch and took four strides to the bay window, and even though she probably couldn’t see him, he was watching her get into the truck, with his white and crimson stained shirt tightening around his biceps as he folded his arms over his chest. “Did you do what I asked?” he asked, still staring down below.

Watching my fingers knotting in my lap, I muttered, “I did and I didn’t.”

“You did and you didn’t?” I knew he was facing me because his voice was more direct, like I could feel the tone of his voice aimed at me. I lifted my head and nodded. “What do you mean, cuz? I asked you to do one thing––”

Yes, one thing that was asked under pressure. I didn’t want to do it, I didn’t want to not only do something that Walker may come to regret––no, not may––will come to regret, but the selfish side of me didn’t want to risk it because I knew how much I was in the wrong for going along with the idea in the first place.

And I told him that.

He lowered himself in front of me, obstructing my front row viewing of the dipping floorboards, and set his hands on my thighs. “Laurie, you have to stop thinking of what you can lose, and think about what you can protect.”

“I knew I’d done the wrong thing with not going through with it when she told me exactly wha––” I fought to halt my words which were being spewed frantically. Walker’s eyes were dark by the time I lifted my gaze.

“Told you what exactly?”

I gasped slightly and shook my head. Attempting to drop my head to avoid his hardening stare proved impossible when my chin was caught between his fingers, my head lulled back. “Told you what, Laurie?”

“The accident…”

“What about the accident?”

“Her injuries…they weren’t all from the crash.” His jaw was set and I swore I could hear the grinding of teeth from under his cheek. The rise and fall of his chest altered to borderline erratic.

“He…” he panted.

“That’s not all,” I breathed. I didn’t want to disclose it with him, it wasn’t my place to, but knowing a partial story and having your imagination filling in the blanks was much worse than hearing the entire story, right? “Her doctor found traces of those tranquilizers in her blood when they took her in. She said he forced it down her throat. When she left, they kicked in…”

I saw the rapid shifting of his eyes as though trying to assimilate the information I had just reluctantly given. “That’s why she sounded sleepy on the phone,” he said to himself. Unfolding himself from his squatting position, he paced the length of the couch, crunching his knuckles before scouring his hand down the stubble coating his mouth. When he finally stopped, he twisted to face me and pointed a scornful finger. “I’m not risking losing her again. Get on that fuckin’ phone and make that damn call.”

Kady

A dark cloud had been chasing me the entire journey back to the apartment from the store. So, parking the truck in Walker’s usual space, I snatched the milk from the bench seat and made a quick escape to The Pavilion entrance, ducking out of any possible chance of being caught in a looming downpour.

It seemed that each door I passed as I headed up the stairway, the usual sounds that I had already heard coming from inside the property at one point or another, were doomed to keep repeating themselves as though in some form of unending time loop. The shouting over blaring music from 2a, headboard banging from 3b, a baby crying from 3a…same old sounds just a different day.

The people involved in last night’s forced entry had damaged the lock, so knowing that the chain on the opposite side would be slipped into place when I left, I knocked on the green door with 4b written on it in black marker.

When he answered the black jeans with white and bloodied shirt was gone, in their place, a pair of blue, faded jeans and a tight white Levis’ T-shirt was molded to each muscle and stretched over his bulging arms.

“At least we can have a decent cup of coffee now,” I muttered, lighthearted. When he stood aside to let me in, his face was unreadable which had me somewhat on edge. The reason for his inscrutable expression sucker punched me in the gut, as soon as I entered. Winded, my body froze. “What the fuck is she doing here?”

Rising from the chair that Laurie usually occupied, her throaty voice made my blood curdle, but not as much as the endearment she had the audacity to greet me with. “Chick, I can explain.”

“Explain? You want to
explain?
Are you serious?” My body somehow managed to find the strength amidst the boiling rage in my gut, and before I knew it, my legs were carrying me over the floorboards in slow, menacing strides. “Do you even know what you’d done to me? Do you even know what I’d been fucking going through?”

“Kady, please…” Walker placed his body between me and the whore who had near enough wrecked my life, and propped his hands on my shoulders. “Just spare a few moments and we can explain.”

“We? We?
WE
can explain…?
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME
?!” I tried to bypass the wall of muscle obstructing my target, but it was of no use. Instead, I craned my head around his muscular arm and pointed a disgruntled finger at her. “If you have laid one slutty finger on Walker, I swear to God you’re going to want to run for your fucking worthless life.
DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME
?!”

My once best friend at least had the courtesy to look contrite as she hung her head and jolted at my harsh, shouted words.

My regard was torn away from the slut on the chair to Walker who continued towering over me, his large, warming hands loitering on my shoulders. My anger at having Liv in the apartment was soon turning into resentment aimed at the man who was stopping me from getting at her to rip her Goddamn nails off with pliers after what she had put me through. I shook my head and gnawed on my inner cheek before muttering, “Five minutes, then nails are getting torn from fingers.” Then, dragging myself from his clutch, I dropped into the furthest couch cushion from her.

“Can I get you a drink, Liv?” Walker asked.

“A drink?” I snorted, derisive. “Why not offer a fucking sandwich as well.”

“No thank you, Walker. I’m fine.”

“Very well. Kady?”

His words flew right over my head. “I said five minutes, you’ve already lost a minute so I suggest the pleasantries stop and you explain everything which needs explaining.”

Her chest rose and her shoulders broadened when she drew in a deep breath. Scooting to the edge of the seat, she crossed her legs. “Kady…I know that you’re angry, and I know that I’ve hurt you and that you feel betrayed, but I can explain my actions and why we did what we did.”

“I know why Liam did what he did, Liv––”

“She meant me, Kady,” the soft, Irish lilt came from the man beside me, his back resting against the cracked plastered wall with his arms folded, his throbbing tribal tattoo framing his muscles as well as his T-shirt.

My world stopped and once again was I left to question my sanity as I tumbled down another Hellish moment of my life. “What…?”

“Do you remember the night we were in your apartment, Kady, when you were still in Dorchester? The night Liam went out and I dug about all the things that were changing?”