Out of Darkness (19 page)

As they approached the clubhouse on the way back, Tyler pulled off to the side of the road and shut the bike down.

“I’m going to take you over to Liam and Denise’s. She just got home from the hospital, and I want you to visit with her for a while.”

Meredith didn’t like what Tyler wasn’t saying. “What are you going to do while I’m there?”

He shrugged his shoulder. “Just look around. See what we’ve got goin’ on in the clubhouse. Somebody took those pictures, and I’m going to find out who it was.”

She sighed. His mind was made up, and this is what he was going to do. It would do no good to tell him that she didn’t think it was a good idea.

“I just want you out of there while I do it.”

“Can you at least tell me what you’re going to search?” she asked.

He tried his best not to roll his eyes, but sometimes her need to know everything wore on him. “I’m going to try and see if Layne has anything right now. Like I said, I don’t suspect Jagger. I’ll still take a look at all his stuff, but today I want to rule the two of them out.”

“You’re scared it’s William, aren’t you?” she asked, her eyes searching his.

He leaned down, kissing her softly on the lips. “So are you.”

She couldn’t deny it. He had the power to destroy her, and he’d wanted to before. When she laid out the pros and cons of all the people they suspected, he was at the top of the list. If anyone had a hell of a motive for setting her up and wanting her gone, it was him. He had always thought and assumed she had the power to bring the club down, and maybe she did, but whatever she had – she didn’t know it. It was something that he only knew the truth about. Unless he spelled it out for her, she wasn’t sure she’d ever know just what she held in her hands.

“You know if it’s true, it’s going to kill Liam,” she fretted.

“Hey,” he grasped her around the neck. “If there’s one thing I know about Liam, it’s that he doesn’t stand for lying or women being hurt. If his dad did this, he would want to know.”

She did her best to give him a smile, to show him that she believed what he said, but it fell short.

“Let’s get you to Denise’s. That way if something does go down, you at least have an alibi.”

She did not like the sound of that at all.

Chapter Twenty-Six

“N
ot that I’m not happy to have you here, but what the hell is goin’ on with you?”

Meredith looked up from her phone, not sure how long she had been staring at it. Obviously a long time since Denise looked seriously pissed. What Tyler had thought would be an amazing idea had really started to backfire on her.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re tense, edgy, distracted. And you keep looking at that damn phone. What the hell is goin’ on?” Denise demanded.

Pasting on a happy smile, Meredith shook her head. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t use your reporter face on me. Seriously, is something wrong with you?”

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell Denise everything. She wanted to badly. The two of them had confided in one another over so many things since their rough beginnings of friendship. But she just couldn’t do it. Not with this. It would put this woman right dead center in the middle of whatever was happening.

“I had a nightmare last night. My first one in a long time.” That part was at least true.

Immediately the look on Denise’s face softened. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I thought you were moving past that. I really hate to hear it.”

“I thought I was to, but maybe some things are just gonna take a little while longer to get over.”

Especially the fact that the man who would be your father-in-law may have had me raped.
She thought to herself.

“Enough about me, tell me about you. What are your plans now that you’re preggers? I know that you had talked about wanting to find a job.”

The heat effectively off her, Meredith did her best to concentrate on what her friend said.

“You’re right. Now Liam doesn’t want me to work. He wants me to stay home in case I have any more complications. He doesn’t want me doing anything more strenuous than housework, and that’s even debatable.”

Meredith cocked a brow. “Lemme guess. You’re debating it, and he says it isn’t even up for discussion?”

“You know us so well,” Denise laughed.

There was a lull in the conversation. It wasn’t uncomfortable really, just a lull.

“So does Tyler look as good naked as I imagine he does?”

Meredith spit out the drink of water she had just taken. “What?”

“Oh come on. It’s written all your face that you got laid last night. I have pregnancy hormones racing through my body already. Let me live a little.”

Touching her chin to mop up the water that had dribbled there, Meredith wondered. Could people really tell she and Tyler had done the dirty? Was it written all over her face? That made her a little uncomfortable and a little proud all at the same time.

“Better,” she giggled. “He looks so much better than you think without his clothes on.”

Denise joined in the giggling as the two of them settled in for an afternoon full of girl talk.

Tyler almost growled. He was beginning to get very frustrated. He had searched the rooms of Jagger and Layne and come up empty handed. He didn’t want to jump to conclusions. In this club, in this life, jumping to conclusions could get a person killed. But he was really beginning to think that his president had something to do with what had happened to his woman.

“Travis,” he yelled as he went into the main area where they kept their computers.

“Yeah?” the computer guru asked, coming out from under a group of them, a lollipop hanging from his mouth.

“What were you doing?” Tyler asked as he saw him roll out with the apparatus they normally used to check under cars.

“Really techy shit. Trust me, you don’t wanna know. What can I help you with?”

He was so going to hell for this. “William asked me to come get his phone. He’s stuck at the shop, and he told me that you were putting a new blocking device on it.”

In all actuality, Tyler had heard this news in passing a few days ago when he’d been at the shop. It was William’s personal cell phone, and as such he didn’t want anyone to be able to track him unless he wanted them to.

“Yeah, here ya go,” Travis reached over to a box that held a ton of cell phones and pulled one in particular out. “Tell him that he’ll need to reset his passcode. I had to change it in order to make the necessary changes to the phone.”

Tyler grinned. “Will do.”

He walked out of the clubhouse normal as could be, hopped on his bike, and drove it a few miles down the road before pulling over to the side. A stand of trees provided him a little bit of privacy as he began scrolling through calls made and texts. There were a few numbers that he called more often than others. He quickly transferred those numbers to his phone, along with a few names and a few email addresses. He realized very quickly that everything older than a few days was gone from the phone. It was obvious William kept his phone clean.

Changing the passcode to something he could remember, he started up his bike and drove towards the shop. The ride to get there seemed to take forever. He hated suspecting someone that he respected so much of something so heinous as rape. Even if he had ordered it, that wasn’t how Heaven Hill worked. As he pulled into the parking lot, he saw William’s bike there. Parking his and shutting it off, he made his way into one of the bays that housed the cars they worked on.

“Hey, pres, got somethin’ for ya.”

William looked up from where he was changing spark plugs on a late model car. “What’s that?”

Tyler held up the cell phone and flashed him a smile. “I saw Travis at the clubhouse. He asked me to bring your finished phone to you. He had to put a new passcode on it to download the information. I wrote it down for you and stuck it in your case,” he explained.

Grabbing it, William nodded a thank you and went back to his work, never questioning why Tyler had it.

Walking back over to his bike, Tyler had a seat on it and stared straight ahead. His mind worked a million miles an hour. Since he had the passcode, he could look in that phone at any time. In days, the answer to what had happened to Meredith could be theirs. Now, however, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the truth anymore.

Chapter Twenty-Seven