WANTED (The Runaways Series Book #2)

Chapter 2 (Part 1)

Caleb

God knows, I had a whole lot of things to be sorry for, but beating Sawyer’s face in wasn’t one of them.

The cop who’d cuffed me said I’d torn up my hands pretty bad in the fight. I couldn’t even feel it. I didn’t feel too much of anything, ‘cause when you’re angry enough, you’re invincible and Hailey had me feeling like a goddamn superhero.

I spent the car ride staring out the back window, watching a thousand different scenarios between Hailey and Sawyer play out on the pane. Thirty-seconds into imagining things I thought about putting my fist through glass.

If he’d put his hands on her, how the hell didn’t I know?

She couldn’t lie if her life was on the line. She’d never had to, and I’d be damned before I swallowed the idea that Sawyer was a good enough reason for her to start.

Why wasn’t I a good enough reason for her to stop?

She’d come home late more than a few times these days. Was she with him more than a few times? Had she lied more than a few times?

All the blood in my body shot straight up the back of my neck ‘til I thought I’d pass out or puke. All that pretty numbness from earlier wore off into weakness. It would’ve been easy to stay angry at her, to hate her the way I was supposed to, but not a bone in my body knew how to do that.

Not since I met her, and not now.

         “Donoghue, out of the car.”.

The pigs worked fast.

We cleared highway twenty-nine in twenty-minutes and I’d hardly noticed.

Is that all it takes? Twenty-minutes?

Twenty minutes for three hundred and sixty-five days of loving somebody to fall apart? Guess so. She’d even managed to send me back to where I’d started—on the fast track to trouble.

The dumber of the two cops dragged me outta the back so fast I tripped over my feet and nearly ended up eating the pavement. Hailey’s ring flew out of my pocket and rolled past the tips of his shoes.

He picked up his foot and stomped on the box like it was nothing. Like the girl I was supposed to give it to was nothing and it took everything I had not to do to him what I did to Sawyer.

      “What’s this Donoghue? It’s real nice. You work at the wood shop in town, don’t you? How’d you afford this? You steal it?”

He cracked the ugliest grin I’d ever seen through tobacco black teeth. I’d seen his face from around town a couple times when he was out on patrol.

Officer Lange. 

Buzzed cut, pale, scrawny guy with an attitude of a cop twice his size, and a reputation for crossing the line.

Word got out more than once that he kicked the shit outta anybody he could drag into an interrogation room. Especially kids. Reputation or not, if he pushed me any harder we wouldn’t need an interrogation room as an excuse to fight.

         “I don’t steal,” I said.

        “Yeah, but you like trouble. Too bad you can’t pick your partners worth a damn. You beat up Hal Hugh’s kid.”

         “So?”

        “That’s the restaurant owner’s boy. That ain’t the only place Hal owns either. He’s got a whole chain of fancy places down in Charlottesville. You’ll be lucky if you get outta this with five bucks in your pocket, son. Hope you got a good lawyer.”