Blaze (Steel Brothers Saga 21)

“I almost did. He almost did. He gave me the choice to walk away—to walk away from everything he’s dealing with right now. That’s why I felt I had to tell him.”

“Yeah, at least no one in our family has been shot. Man, this is screwed up.”

“He’s going to help us, Rory.”

“So he knows everything? About the photos…”

“Yeah…and we have some leverage. For me at least. I was underage when those photos were taken. If Lamone tries to make them public, we can bring him up on child pornography charges.”

“There’s no statute of limitations on that?”

“No, it’s illegal for him to be in possession of nude pictures of any underage person. Since I was underage at that time, it counts.”

Silence for another moment. “But it won’t help me.”

“It may. You were barely eighteen. We could tell him that you were underage. Scare the shit out of him.”

“Why didn’t we think of this back then?”

“Because we were kids, Rory. We were faced with our lives being ruined in this small town. We didn’t stop to think about any other laws he might be breaking. He had already broken a big one by drugging people.”

“Man, we had him on everything. A minor in possession. Possession of illegal substance. Drugging the punch, resulting in Diana’s hospitalization, and then drugging us with whatever the hell was in that tranquilizer gun. Then assault and battery for removing our clothes and taking those damned photos.”

“I know. Perhaps we made the wrong decision back then, but we can’t play that game, Rory. We did what we thought we had to do at the time.”

“I know. Honest to God, Callie? I’m glad Raine isn’t here. I wouldn’t want her to see me go through this.”

“She’s not the person you thought she was,” I say. “You’re better off without her. You’ll find the one, Rory. If I can, anyone can.”

“I’m not sure I will. We can keep Pat Lamone from distributing your pictures online, but what can we do about mine?”

“First, we don’t even know he still has them. Our agreement was to destroy the evidence.”

“Callie, you know as well as I do that he has them. He didn’t trust us any more than we trusted him. We kept a copy of our evidence.”

I say nothing. What can I say? My sister is undoubtedly right. Pat Lamone may not be the brightest bulb in the basket, but he’s not the stupidest either.

He’s back for one reason. To take us down because he knows we can’t take him down with us. He destroyed our evidence.

“Let me talk to Donny,” I say. “He’ll know what to do. If we have to, we can break into Pat’s place, find the photos, and—”

“Callie, the solution to our problems isn’t more breaking of the law.”

“Let me remind you that we never broke the law. He did.”

“I’m sure he could find a way to spin the Benadryl thing.”

“Rory, he doesn’t even know about the Benadryl. All he knows is that you gave him a Coke. He doesn’t know there was anything in it. He just knows he got kind of tired and passed out.”

“He’ll say I spiked the Coke or something, and since I was under twenty-one at the time, it was a crime for me to have alcohol.”

“Yeah, but there’s no evidence. It’s just his word. He can try to say the thumb drive shows you were together, but who in his right mind is going to believe that you wanted to hook up with Pat Lamone? Plus, we can’t test his blood from ten years ago. And even if he did have evidence, the statute of limitations applies to you as well as to him.”

“I know…” Rory sighs heavily. Again. “This is all so fucked up. I can’t believe we got so complacent. I totally thought this was over. I haven’t given it a thought in… I don’t know how long.”

“I know. I haven’t either. But we will get through this. And I swear, I will not allow Pat freaking Lamone to destroy your life.”

“Here’s another thing, Callie. What if he says the pictures are recent? I mean, you don’t look that much different than you did then.”