Free Tearing Down Walls (Love Under Construction Series Book 2) by Deanndra Hall Page B

mean?”
    “She got a phone call this evening and came back to the bar looking like she’d just found out that a serial killer had taken out her whole family. She was shaking and pale, looked like she was about to pass out. And, of course,” Vic added, “she wasn’t about to tell me anything.”
    “She’s an odd one, very tight-lipped. I’ll hint around, but I’ll get nothing. She’s as locked up as the state pen at Eddyville.” Steve tossed the wrapper from the energy bar into the trash can. “She was asking about you the other day when you hadn’t been around.”
    Vic was shocked – and looked it. “Are you serious? What did she ask, if she’d finally run me off?”
    “Nope. Just wondered where you’d been.”
    Huh, Vic thought. Why did she even bother to ask?

    At ten o’clock on the dot the next morning, Laura’s phone started ringing. She rolled over, hung over from the bender she’d dropped into after she’d gotten home the night before. Drinking until dawn wasn’t something she usually did, but it was appropriate at the time. Between watching Cabrizzi work the women and that phone call she’d gotten, she was wishing she had some way to sort out all the stuff fizzing in her brain. When she hit decline, she instantly regretted it, but it didn’t matter; it started ringing again immediately. She looked at the screen: Brewster. “What?” she answered.
    “Billings?”
    “Yeah. What do you want, Brewster? I can’t imagine what you could possibly want with me now,” she snarled through her hung-over stupor. “You’ve already had enough of me to destroy what’s not left of my life.”
    “Laura, listen to me: I’m sorry. What we did to you was wrong on so many levels that I can’t even begin to tell you. Well, hell, you already know.”
    The dead space inside her expanded to finish emptying her out, and she couldn’t help but stab at him with the only weapon she had left – her words. “That the best you can do, fucking lowlife?”
    “No. You need to know that it was all Wagner’s idea. That doesn’t excuse the rest of us, but I wanted you to know that. But when I got out I got married, had a little girl of my own. What we did to you, the guilt, it’s almost cost me my marriage. A few times I thought about outright killing myself. If anyone did that to my wife or daughter, well . . . Anyway, I called the other guys. Laura, we’re going to the MPs, turn ourselves in, and take the punishment we deserve. We’ve all talked to our families, and they’re going to stand by us; hell, they’ve encouraged us to do it. So we’re going to. Well,” he stopped for a second, then added, “all of us but Wagner.”
    “Why does that not surprise me?” Laura couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Was Brewster for real? Were they really planning to do this? What would that mean for her?
    “The main reason I wanted to contact you, other than to tell you what we were going to do, was to let you know that they’ll want to contact you, get your side of the story. We’re going to ask them to sentence us outright, not make you go through a trial. You shouldn’t have to do that. It wasn’t your fault, and you’ve moved on with your life.” Hah, little you know, she thought.
    “So you’re really planning to do this?” she whispered.
    “Yes, Laura. We really are.”
    “When?”
    “A couple of weeks. We’ve all got things we’ve got to wrap up for our families, but we’re going to do it together.”
    Laura’s hands started to shake. “Do you have any idea what this will mean to me?”
    Brewster’s voice was gentle. “No. I can’t even imagine the hell you’ve lived with. But you don’t know what this will mean for me either. It will mean that, even if it is in a military jail cell, at least I’ll be able to sleep for the first time in a long time.”
    He was for real. Everything in Laura’s brain shifted, and she couldn’t think straight. Then it all righted suddenly, and she