Page 22 of Iron Hearts
Two cops were standing in the doorway.
“Rarity Jane Mitchell?” the one asked.
“Yeah, that’s me,” I said.
“You work at the Iron Horse?” the other one asked.
“Just got home not twenty minutes ago,” I said. I gave them a look, rolled my eyes in the direction of my mom, and said, “Left right before the shooting started. I don’t get paid enough for that shit.”
“Ma’am,” one of the officers said. “Do you mind stepping out here and talking to us about what happened?”
“Not at all,” I said. I turned to my mom, my heart thundering in my chest so hard I could feel my pulse in my temples. “Mom, it’s all good. Go finish up with the boys. I’ll come help as soon as I’m done.”
“Okay,” she agreed, but I could tell she didn’t want to.
I stepped out onto the front porch and closed the door behind me.
“Some of our officers said that you were running and that you had one of the Royal Bastards with you.”
“Never saw him before tonight,” I said. “But yeah, he helped me get out.”
“He said that you both took off after you were ordered to stop.”
“Okay, yeah, that part was stupid, but I was scared out of my mind, and there were shots going off. I wasn’t stopping forno one. Just please,please,don’t tell my mom I was there when there was shooting going on. She worries enough as it is, and I don’t want her anymore freaked out than she is right now.”
“What about the man with you?” the first officer, a light-skinned, shaved-head Black man with a dimple in his chin, asked me.
“I got around the corner, and he bailed out,” I lied. “I don’t know what happened to him after that.”
The cops exchanged a look, and the second one nodded, writing something down in his notebook.
“Like I said, I’d never seen him before tonight. I didn’t even get his name.”
I swallowed, and the second cop asked, “Do you know how the fight started?”
“No,” I said. “I was behind bar number two. I heard shouting over on the other end of bar number three, and then there was something happening on the deck. Someone yelled at me and Gemma to ‘hit the deck,’ and so that’s what we did.”
I was telling the truth, except for the part where it’d been Striker telling us to get down and that he hadn’t shouted it but had gestured for us to do so.
The rest, from there on out, was all true. How dudes kept flying over the bar. How the second one had tried to hurt Gemma and how Striker had come to the rescue and enlisted two of the other Bastards to get us out.
“They got us down to the first floor, and we were—” the front door opened. I turned to look back at my mom and said, “All good, Mom. Just a few more minutes.”
She looked from me to the cops and back to me and said, “I don’t know if I like this…”
“She’s right. It’s all good, ma’am. Your daughter’s not in trouble. She’s just a witness. We’re just getting her statement.”
“Five more minutes,” I said. “It’s okay.”
She went back into the house and closed the door.
“Where were we?” I asked.
“You got down to the first floor and…”
“Right, and one of the guys in black and orange with the Scorpion on his back slashed at the Royal Bastard trying to help me and Gemma with a knife. I don’t know if he cut him or not. Then, one of the other ones in black and orange had a gun, and I hit the deck and took the guy trying to save us with me.”
“So, you saw one of the shooters?” the police officer asked.
