Sadie's Game (Ashby Crime Family)

Beck shook her head and stood, started to pace the short length of the interrogation room. “You must be the luckiest woman on the face of the earth, Ms. Ashby.”

I nodded. “If you count losing my daughter-in-law in a violent crime and then being accused of it lucky, well, I guess we have different definitions of the word.” I could have gone with the outraged family routine but that wouldn’t have worked as well.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Maybe you’re too close to this, Agent Beck?”

She smiled and stopped her pacing as she turned to me. “Are you familiar with Father Ray O’Leary?”

I didn’t need to fix my mouth to answer because Andrew broke in. “That question is irrelevant, Agent Beck.”

“Is it?”

“You damn well know it is, and I might remind you that it is outside the scope of your arrest warrant.”

“So I could answer,” I said flippantly, smiling when Andrew laid a hand on my arm.

“We’re done here.” Andrew stood and helped me to my feet. “Let’s go, Sadie.”

“She still needs to be processed,” Beck growled at my attorney.

“It’s been taken care of,” he answered easily.

“Not. Possible.” The shock on her freckled face was worth the cost of bail.

“Possible and done.” Andrew held the door open for me, and I stepped out to spot Jameson Ellison lingering just outside.

“You good?” Ellison asked.

I gave a short nod. “She’s fishing without any bait.”

Agent Beck was sure she had something on me, but I was just as sure she didn’t.

Ellison nodded and walked away a moment before Andrew finished up with the agents.

“Don’t worry, that agent is a wildcard. She’ll ruin any case they think they have on you with her reckless ways.”

“She’s not reckless,” I assured him. “Just emotional.”

“Too emotional. It will be Beck’s downfall.”

I didn’t disagree, but I was done talking about Agent Beck. “Thank you for your help, Andrew.”

He nodded. “I’ll snoop around and see what I can find out. If you need anything, call me.”

“Will do,” I assured him and walked through the fluorescent-lit bullpen of the Las Vegas Police Department and into the bright, shiny Vegas day.

Thomas leaned against the driver-side door of the Maybach, one foot crossed at the ankle and a sexy smile curving his lips upward. “All good?”

I nodded slowly. “So far.”

“Good enough for now.”

Thomas spoke with confidence, and I appreciated that. Long ago, he’d stopped talking to me like I was some fragile fucking bird. That was when I started to treat him like he was more than just help.

He took my hand and helped me into the car, quiet and unassuming because he knew I needed a moment to myself.

Inevitably, my thoughts turned to that night.

I knew what would happen when I left the Manor. Maybe I knew about it three months ago, when I got one of the cops on the payroll to give me a receipt for the nine-millimeter gun nestled in my black snake-skin clutch. Maybe it was the night I let Mueller degrade me for my own purposes.

Bonnie had been up to no good for too fucking long. I tried to let it slide because I loved Calvin and wanted him to be happy. I wanted Ava Rose to grow up with her mother. With a whole, happy family. But Bonnie made it impossible with her scheming and conniving.

That little bitch thought she could take me down. Better men and women have tried—and failed. There was no fucking way I’d let some scared little church mouse be the instrument of my demise.

No. Fucking. Way.

The only good thing that came from letting Mueller fuck me and come all over my face was getting that fucking drive that outlined just what the church girl had been up to.

When the police arrested her for killing her pastor and her parents disowned her without any fucking evidence, who took her in? The Ashby family. When she got strung out on drugs, it was once again my family who helped her get clean. Who cleaned up the messes she made in search of her next fix? We kept her safe from The Crusaders when it would have been easier to turn her in.

And she didn’t appreciate it. None of it.

I followed her when she left the house, and I did it on my own. There would be no one for the police to lean on to get the details of my movements that night. Oliver had driven Bonnie to a small café about three blocks from the hotel, and she slipped inside for a cup of tea before casually walking to the hotel.

Mueller greeted her with a warm smile and a hug, probably for anyone who might recognize either of them. From the outside, they appeared to be old friends who’d run into each other unexpectedly, chatting easily while I slipped around a side entrance out of view of the cameras.