Renegade Hearts (Rebels of Sandland 1)

I threw the controller to Finn, who caught it mid-air, and I got out of the chair opposite the T.V. to let Finn take my coveted place. Finn wasted no time wading into the game and earning a pat on the back from Brandon. I’d lost interest in it ten minutes ago, so I wandered over to the dining table where Zak had set up his I.T. empire, complete with computers, monitors and God knows what else.

“You found anything?” I asked, flipping through the reams of papers he had spread out on his desk. He rolled his eyes at me and moved the papers out of my way. He didn’t like that I was fucking up his well-thought-out filing system.

“Yeah, no. Not yet. I will though. These screenshots and the names, they’re a massive help. Em really came up trumps.” He tapped his finger on the monitor as if to back up what he was saying, then turned to look at me. “Do you think she’ll find anything else?”

“Course she will. She lives with him, doesn’t she? If it’s there, she’ll find it.” I had faith in my girl.

“You sure she’s not in on this too?” Zak whispered, so Brandon and Finn couldn’t hear.

“Not a chance

. Whatever all this is…” I gestured around his desk with my hand to make my point, “She has no idea. I trust her.”

“I hope for all our sakes she’s worth that trust.” Zak went back to clicking away, but I didn’t like what he said, and I wasn’t gonna let him dismiss me that easily.

“She is.”

I noticed Brandon look our way and then shake his head. “You still need to keep your wits about you, mate. She might be easy on the eye, but don’t let that pretty face fool you. You’re not gonna go soft on us are you, Ry?”

Here we go again. Mathers was hooked into our conversation and ready to get in a few digs. He always did where Emily was concerned. She was an Achilles heel for both of us. The thorn in our friendship.

“I know her better than any of you,” I argued. “I also know she wants to find out what’s going on as much as we do. Why wouldn’t she?”

“Because she might lose her allowance and get booted out of that mansion on her ass. You’d be surprised what desperate people are willing to do.” Brandon was right. Desperate people did do stupid dumb-ass shit, but not Emily. Her father might be desperate, but not her.

“She’s not like that.” I folded my arms, squaring my chest to show I wasn’t fucking about.

“Damn, you’ve got it bad, bro.” Brandon smirked, then turned back to concentrate on his game and without missing a beat he said, “I think you need to cut her loose. We’ll get the answers we need without her.”

Zak raised his eyebrow and looked up at me, waiting to see my reaction. I think he expected the fake war from the T.V. to become real at any moment.

“Not gonna happen,” I stated. I couldn’t make my stance any clearer. I wasn’t gonna be told what to do.

“And if she fucks this all up for us? You might need to pick a side, Ryan. When the time comes, make sure you pick the right one.” Brandon was deadly serious, but so was I.

“Oh, I will.”

I glanced back down to the screen Zak was studying, not having the first clue what I was looking at, but I wanted to move the attention away from Emily. I didn’t react well just lately when it came to her. Certainly not as far as these guys were concerned, anyway. They had a habit of riling me up and making me more determined to prove them wrong.

“Do we know what Morgan Rotherham is yet?” I asked Zak, hooking onto a topic I knew would steer us away from my feelings for Emily. “Is it a company? A guy? What?”

The account information Emily had photographed listed the main account holder as a Morgan Rotherham. There was no address. Nothing else that led us any further down that rabbit hole, but the names and numbers we had so far had put us further ahead than we’d ever been.

“No idea. But like I said, I’ll find out.” Zak carried on tapping away at his keyboard and dismissing me in his roundabout way.

We always knew Winters was a corrupt motherfucker. That’s why he’d always tried to take us down and dragged our names through the mud in the press. He hated us. Tried to villainise us in the tabloids. He was the master at deflecting, using us to steer the attention away from his own shit. He painted us as the thieves, but if we were right in our assumptions, he was the bloody king. Scamming the public on a fucking massive scale in comparison to anything we did. I knew his corruption ran further than the financial bullshit we were looking into now, though.

As if he was reading my mind, Finn piped up. “Have you found anything out about Danny’s accident?”

“No. And I’m not asking her about it. Not yet.” That one was non-negotiable.

“Why the fuck not?” Brandon tossed the controller on the sofa next to him and gave me a stare. One that said he couldn’t believe what a weak-ass pussy I was being for not pushing her to talk about it.

Brandon had the empathy of a wet mop, but I could read her like a book. She was still as raw as fuck, and she wasn’t ready to hear my little conspiracy theory. I knew what I’d seen though. I also knew what had been reported in the press was complete and utter bullshit. They said Danny had been driving. He hadn’t. When I saw him get into the car that crashed just minutes later, he’d been in the passenger seat. They said he was three times over the legal limit of alcohol and had drugs in his system. The guy spent the day with me and didn’t drink anything stronger than coffee and Diet Coke. He didn’t smoke, never had. And I know for a fact he didn’t do drugs. But no one was interested in hearing what I had to say. The last person to see him alive, apart from whoever was driving, and my story had fallen on deaf ears. They didn’t want to know. They’d basically pushed me aside during the inquest. My story wasn’t worthy, not to Alec Winters’ political career, anyway. He liked that he could campaign so honourably for something which had affected his family. His God complex was unstoppable after the accident. He certainly didn’t want my alternative narrative fucking things up for him at Westminster.

I wouldn’t stay silent though.

I needed answers and Danny deserved them. He’d been one of my best friends and I didn’t let my friends down. Ever.