Deploy, Part One (Rawlings #1)(21)
Declan shook his head, telling Atticus to let it be. Truth be told, Declan was a bit relieved to hear his dad talk like that, it sounded like their Chasen was now crystal clear that only one of his sons was leaving for the Corps in less than a week. But he’d never come out and say it. Nope, that was not how Chasen Rawlings worked. He’d push until you crumbled and confessed. He’d let you sweat it out until you couldn’t stand it any longer.
Declan needed all the help he could get worrying about Nolan and his adventure, because his mind was far from his family, it was with his Justice.
The right girl at the wrong time...
***
“You all right? You’re shaking,” Murdock asked Justice in a low tone as they sat side by side in the back of his daddy’s cruiser. The Sheriff was on the phone in the front seat.
Justice nodded. “It didn’t sound this bad to me...I’m just figuring out how lucky I was.”
“You scared the shit out of me,” he said through a clenched jaw.
She looked up hastily, not sure how to take his tone. Then again, she never really knew what to expect when he opened his mouth.
Murdock had sported the all-American southern boy image as long as she had known him.
His fair hair was usually cut short on the sides and longer on the top; he had a dark stare and a smile that he liked to use as a weapon, right alongside his charm. Either he could turn off or on at the drop of a hat—which Justice never really understood, or trusted. She liked direct. Direct made sense to her.
Murdock played every sport he could fit into a year. Baseball was his favorite, and football was a close second. Being a hometown hero in the game had robbed him, though. He pushed too hard and now had too many injuries to really go anywhere with his talent.
“No, no, smart girl,” the Sheriff said from the front seat. “Found her underneath the school in the closet with all the mats from the wrestling team.” A pause. “Right, she was safer there than the rest of the town. Speaking of, did you check on Bell?” A pause. “All right then, when I drop off Justice I will.”
Justice felt herself relax a little bit. Her father wasn’t home. More than likely he was out and about trying to look like the town hero to all his buddies.
The Sheriff didn’t say anything for a few minutes once he hung up the phone. After a moment, he answered his radio, then glanced in his rearview mirror at Justice. “Good thing you’re in one piece. I told Murdock if there was one scratch on you I’d skin him alive.”
Justice gave a weak smile. She didn’t get Monty Souter any more than she got Murdock. Monty seemed protective of her. Her grandmother had told her that he and her mother had a thing in high school, but still...Monty had to know what her mother lived through and didn’t do anything about it, and Justice knew for sure he had seen her father lift his hand to her. Nothing beyond Murdock hanging out more happened because of it.
All she could assume was the Sheriff thought if Murdock was close it wouldn’t be as bad. But what Sheriff Souter didn’t get was her father knew how to charm people, how to get them to like him. If anything, Murdock liked her father more than his own.
Her father played Murdock’s ego and swapped old sports stories. Murdock didn’t do that with his dad. At best, his father watched his games from a distance, in uniform. Justice never really got the disconnection between them and didn’t care enough to ask about it.
“Chasen was awful quick to explain why he was there. They didn’t rattle you, now did they?” Sheriff Monty asked.
“No, he wouldn’t. And he didn’t have the chance. He was there all of two seconds before you.”
Murdock glanced down at her, clearly picking her words apart. She’d said ‘he’ not ‘they.’ He had all kinds of sick scenarios running through his head of her locked in a closet with a Rawlings or two. Rumor had it they liked to share their girls, and always left them rode hard and put up wet.
Murdock had never liked Declan Rawlings. His stand off attitude and the way he always caught him looking at Justice had been acid in Murdock’s veins for years. Nolan? He didn’t really care one way or another about him, not until he slammed him with a cheap shot in the hall for no reason. And since then his * younger brothers always had something to say when Murdock saw them.
Yeah, it was on. Something happened tonight. He’d figure it out sooner or later.
No one bothered to say another word until they’d made it to Justice’s house. Her home had been in her grandfather’s family for three generations and had seen better days. It sat in the middle of fifteen acres. A two-story white frame house. Tall Georgia pines lined the gravel drive and were thick behind the home, everywhere else they were still present but not as dense, their shade never really let the grass grow too high, which was good since her and her grandmother handled all the upkeep on the home now.
Justice could see branches everywhere and her heart kicked up a beat.
“Storm didn’t really come this way, not the brunt of it,” the Sheriff said to calm her.
When the house did come into view, it was clear all the windows were intact. There were a few long branches on the roof and laying across the porches, but nothing compared to downtown which took the heat.
Through the window, Justice saw her grandmother in the kitchen, on the phone, as she made a pot of coffee.
“Thanks for the ride,” she said, quickly getting out and not inviting in company. She knew she’d fall apart the second she saw her grandmother, and didn’t need to give Murdock or his father any more reason to suspect what happened during her night.