He Cheated With My Cousin, So I Totaled a Biker President's Harley novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Badge

Clint tries to take Betsy home in front of thirteen bikers and his own partner, and she plays the video on the road. He takes the Camaro key out of her hand and warns her the bank account is his too.

The cruiser stopped crooked across the lane with its lights still going.

Clint got out first.

He had put on his uniform shirt and buttoned it wrong, and he came toward me with both hands out, soft-faced and worried.

"Bets. Thank God. Are you hurt?"

His partner got out of the passenger side, a young deputy with a sunburned neck, and stayed by the door.

"Don't," I said.

"Baby, you're bleeding."

"I'm bleeding because I hit a motorcycle. You're the reason I wasn't watching the road."

Clint stopped a few feet away. He looked at the wrecked Harley, at the thirteen men, and at Dread, who stood with his arms folded and his torn sleeve soaked dark.

"McFadden," Clint said. "You were running a club convoy through a county intersection with no permit. My wife could have been killed."

"Your wife hit my bike," Dread said. "At a stop sign. She was reading her phone."

"She's in shock." Clint turned to me, gentle again, and spoke in the voice he used on the street for people who were drunk. "Betsy, honey, you're not thinking straight. Come with me and we'll get you looked at."

"Looked at where?"

"County General. They'll want to evaluate you."

I knew that word. He'd used it on a woman last spring, the one who screamed at the courthouse. They held her for three days.

"I'm not going anywhere with you," I said.

His smile stayed where it was.

"I'm taking my wife home," he said, louder, so the whole road could hear. "She's had a breakdown. This man's gang has her cornered, and she doesn't know what she's saying."

The sunburned deputy shifted his feet.

I held up my phone.

"Officer," I said to the deputy, not to Clint. "I don't know your name, and I don't need it. Will you watch something for me?"

"Betsy," Clint said.

"It's short."

I pressed play and turned the volume all the way up.

The speaker made my bedroom sound very small. The bed creaked. Candace said, Betsy, don't make this bigger than it is.

On the road, thirteen men stood perfectly still.

The young deputy watched it with his mouth a little open. When it reached Clint's face and the sheet and my voice saying Happy birthday, he looked at the ground.

"That's my husband," I said. "He's supposed to be on a traffic stop. That's my cousin. That's my bed."

"It's edited," Clint said at once.

"It's one take. You can hear the stairs."

"Bets, you're humiliating yourself."

"No," I said. "You did that. I'm just not hiding it."

Clint's jaw worked.

He stepped closer and held out his hand.

"The car key," he said. "That vehicle is part of a crash scene, and it's insured under my name too. I'm impounding it."

"It's in my name."

"Give me the key, Betsy."

His voice was low, the one he used when he knew no one would say no.

I looked at the young deputy. He kept his eyes on the road.

Clint took the fob out of my fingers, and I let him, because three feet away from him I saw something I had never noticed.

He never raised his voice when someone with a badge could hear. He raised it when he wanted a crowd.

"Holzer," Dread said.

It was the first thing he'd said in minutes.

"My bike is evidence too. The car sits where it is until my flatbed hauls it to my shop, or you write a report with your partner's name on it."

Clint turned his head slowly. "Are you telling me how to run my scene?"

"I'm telling you your partner's watching."

The young deputy cleared his throat. "Clint, she's not under arrest. I think we should call the sergeant."

"We're not calling anyone."

"I'm just saying, with the video."

Clint looked at him, and then at me, and then he smiled again, wider, and put the Camaro key in his pocket.

"Fine," he said pleasantly. "Leave it. It's a nice car. I'll pick it up Monday."

He leaned in toward my ear.

Dread moved before I did. He took one step and put his bloody hand flat on the cruiser's hood beside Clint's arm, and Clint stopped.

"Come near her," Dread said, very quietly, "and I'll start with the badge."

"Is that a threat, McFadden?"

"It's a warning. Your partner heard both."

Clint straightened and ran his hand down his shirt. He turned back to me.

"Check your bank app, Bets," he said, almost kindly. "Before you decide what you're leaving."

Then he got back into the cruiser, and the deputy got in beside him, and they drove away with the lights still going.

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