Free GATOR: Wolves MC (Riding With Wolves Book 2) by Faith Winslow Page A

cases before, and I’d learned through experience that it’s sometimes best to secure your accommodations sooner rather than later—and this was one of those times.
    For all I knew, we’d be tied up at the station until well after midnight, and checking into motels that late can sometimes be a hassle, especially in a big metropolis like L.A. Reservations tend to get lost, and many places are staffed with late-night staff for whom English is a second, possibly third, language.
    At the end of the night, I was going to need a place to lay my head down, and by golly, I was going to make sure I had one. So as soon as we got to L.A., I headed straight for the motel. Barnes was still asleep when I pulled into the lot, and I decided not to wake him. I figured it’d be much easier and faster for me to take care of check-in for both of us than for me to wake him and wait for him to come to his senses.
    “Here you go,” I said, handing him the credit-card-like key to his room and shoving mine into my bag. He took it from me, and I started the car.
    As soon as we pulled out onto the street, Barnes started shifting around in his seat.
    “Don’t tell me you have to pee again,” I sighed.
    “No,” he said. “But I am really hungry.”
    I rolled my eyes.
    “Think we can hit a fast food drive-thru real quick?” he asked, again reminding me of a child. “I haven’t had anything real to eat all day, and like you said, who knows how late we’ll be at the station tonight.”
    Barnes had behaved for most of the ride—so even though it set us back a few more minutes, I decided he deserved a treat and pulled over at the first burger joint we saw.
    Barnes told me his order, and I conveyed it to the young woman running the drive-thru.
    “That’ll be four dollars and twenty-six cents,” she said, tallying his order.
    As I moved past the speaker, towards the first window, Barnes asked, “Aren’t you gonna get anything?”
    “Nah, I’m not hungry,” I told him. And indeed, I was speaking the truth. I had terrible knots in my stomach—as well as a few butterflies—and there wasn’t any room left for food.
    Barnes pulled out his wallet and started sorting through it. It was filled with all different kinds of cards, receipts, and whatnot, and he was emptying some of it out onto his lap, which, of course, made me sigh and roll my eyes.
    After digging and searching, Barnes finally reached out and handed me the money to pay for his food. He gave me four one-dollar bills, two dimes, one nickel, and one penny—exactly four dollars and twenty-six cents.
    I took it from him carefully. I wanted to grab it from his hands in a hurried gesture, but I was afraid I’d drop the change and he’d need to look for more.
    I paid the woman at the first window while Barnes shoved his shit back into his wallet, and a moment later, I retrieved his greasy snack from the second window. No sooner had I handed the bag to Barnes than he stopped what he was doing, tore into it, pulled back the wrapper on his burger, and went to town on it. It seemed the child had the eating habits of a teenager now. We couldn’t have been more than a minute down the road before he was finished.
    Barnes and I didn’t talk much after his meal—or rather, we didn’t talk about much. We just reviewed the details of the crime, and I filled him in on what I’d seen at the crime scene.
    It wasn’t until we were right outside of the station that I decided to bring up something new and important with Barnes, though naturally, it was still related to the case.
    “When we get in there,” I said. “ I’m going to run the entire ballgame. I’m going to call all of the shots. This guy’s a guy, and he’s a biker. So I’m going to play the ‘woman detective’ angle to get him to talk, and I’ll be conducting the interrogation alone . I don’t even want you in the room, unless I ask for you specifically.”
    Barnes’ eyes widened, and he nodded.
    “And while I’m