“Mmm, yeah, you know what?” he says, leaning forward onto his knees. “I think it does.”
I suck a breath in through my teeth while cringing at that cop. “That doesn’t sound good for you guys. I wonder how that would look in the press. ‘Aston Creek officer assaults minor.’
A voice is called from way down the hallway. “Hell yeah, babe. Show them why you’re the fucking boss bitch around here.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I yell back at Slade. “I’m not your babe.”
“Has someone looked at your hand yet?” Slade demands.
Ignoring his questioning, I watch as the cop scowls at my language before continuing. “Look, you’re going to need a little something more than the word of your friend, a friend who happens to have seen the inside of my jail cell more times than I can count. Find a reliable source and then we’ll talk. For now, Slade Cruz is being charged with assault of an officer.”
Damian speaks up from his chair. “We got the whole thing recorded.”
I turn to gape at him. “Bullshit. We do?”
“Damn straight, we do,” he mutters, pulling out his phone. “You didn’t recognize the voice of the guy that yelled ‘fight?’”
“No, was I meant to?”
“Tyler Samuels.”
“Movie-maker guy?” I ask, wide-eyed.
“The one and only. You didn’t think he’d miss out on that action.”
A grin lifts the corner of my mouth as I look back to the cop. “Your guy is fucked.”
He scowls at me and clenches his jaw but this time I’m not sure if it’s aimed at me or because he knows we’re right and he’s got a dirty cop on his hands.
Damian pulls out his phone and calls Tyler, putting it on loudspeaker for us all to hear. The phone rings three times before Tyler’s panicked tones comes through the line. “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t mean to. It’s just, you guys were fighting and the word just sort of slipped out. I swear, I’ll delete the footage just please don’t hurt me.”
Damian laughs. “You got the whole fight?”
“Umm…yeah,” he says hesitantly.
“Even that dirty cop?”
Tyler seems to liven up. “Yeah, can you believe that? Is Skylah alright? He fucked her up pretty good.”
The cop before me cringes, realizing they really are fucked. Damian’s gaze flicks to mine. “She’ll be fine. Bring the footage down to the police station and be sure to make a copy,” he says, his eyes zoning in on the cop suspiciously. “We don’t want our only copy to mysteriously go missing.”
“Yeah, alright. I’ll be there in twenty.”
Damian ends the call and grins proudly, looking at the cop with the cheesiest ‘I told you so’ smirk. “I think it’s about time you release Slade.”
“Footage first and then we’ll talk.”
“Fair call.”
I go and plonk down beside Damian and I’m not surprised when a chick cop comes out with a first aid kit a few minutes later. After all, they wouldn’t want it to sound so much worse by not offering the assaulted minor any medical assistance. She cleans up my hand and even cringes with how bad it is, but luckily, I’m able to narrowly escape stitches.
Tyler shows up exactly when he said he would and comes tearing through the door with a USB stick already in his outstretched hand. He practically throws the footage at Damian in his desperation to please him. The second the footage is out of his hand; he scrams back out the doors as though someone lit a match under his ass.
Damian strides toward the cop and hesitantly hands it over before demanding he check the footage in front of us. The cop rolls his eyes and reluctantly turns the computer screen on an angle so we can all see.
Footage of the fight instantly shows up on the screen. It’s shaky at first from where Tyler was running towards us. We hear the moment he calls out for a fight and then hear his running commentary about Slade and Damian being fucking legends the whole way through.
Damian grins proudly at Tyler’s ego-boosting comments and I hear Slade’s amused chuckles coming from the back of the station.
The fight goes on and I once again find myself getting lost in Slade, watching the way he moves and being awed by his strength and sheer dominance. The cops shortly arrive and start pulling me off Roman’s back. It’s only seconds until they go after Slade and I’m seen pushing in front of him. We have our confrontation and every word is heard perfectly clear and then the moment we’ve been waiting for.
The cop pushes me and I go down hard. I cringe as I watch it over. Tyler got a great angle that made it look so much worse than it felt and even managed to capture the grunt that came out of the cop’s mouth as he pushed me with everything he had.