Deploy, Part One (Rawlings #1)(55)

She leered. “You’re an ass!” He lifted his brow in question. “What was this? Your punishment? Mad you didn’t get attention for a few weeks? Mad I had shit to deal with?” She stepped up to him. “Let me assure you, Rawlings, you were in every thought. Every time I wanted to stop the BS from getting more out of control, from pulling me deeper, I thought of you. When I thought of why I was in the right, I thought of you.” She glared. “When I thought of how I ever found the courage to do something like this, how I managed to live past that night, I thought of you—your words.”

All the new information in his mind was settling, knowing her side, his side, what his family had done—and the result of it all so far, he got it. And he was pissed. “You were threatened,” he said, pointing at her. “A Stouter threatened you and used me as a grudge.”

Her eyes flashed over him questioning but not questioning how he understood the possibility so easily.

“Murdock,” Declan said, reading her perfectly. He stepped closer, now she was against the back of the door. “What did he do to you?”

She never heard his tone so venomous, so it took her a second to process his words. “He said it would be bad. That my dad was asking around about you and me already. He said I had motive and they’d make it look like more than it was.”

“What did he do?” he asked harshly, searching her for the answers he wanted. All he could see was red and his overactive imagination was running wildly toward the horrid dark side of his thoughts.

“A spark...Dad was gone already. Flames came, the story a second later.”

He rushed his hand across his short military cut as he turned. “You should have told somebody.”

“Why? Feel like being a martyr? My choice. My consequence. I don’t need your permission to give a damn about you or your family.”

He met her stare once more. “I’d be a martyr for you any day of the week! Getting twisted with a Souter is only going to pull you right back into the trap your dad had you in.”

“Right.”

“What does that mean? Murdock holding this over you?”

She stared helplessly at him. “Paranoid. So am I.”

“Of losing you, yes. I’m sure he is.”

“What?” she breathed. “There is no us! Never was. Did you even bother to read a single letter I wrote back?”

“No.”

“You ass.”

He was back in her face in a beat. “The day your letters arrived was the day I was pulled in to discuss a ‘concern’ that had been brought to the attention of my drill sergeant. Obsessive behavior, flooding a barely seventeen-year-old girl with correspondence to an unhealthy level—a troubled girl who was picking fights with authority figures and damn near starting a public confrontation. Oh, and she had just lost her dad and was now running wild with little to no real guardians. Trouble waiting to happen one way or another.”

“What?” her voice echoed in the empty room.

Declan sneered, not at her, but at what had happened. She had dug herself in right next to a Souter for no reason—they were always going to lash out, no matter what deal you made. “Sheriff Souter thought to pass along his concerns.”

She gasped. “Murdock, he said that was a threat that night!” She went down to a squat so she wouldn’t faint, then up again. She had almost convinced herself, after weeks of working at the garage, that the Souters, their influence, wasn’t nearly as profound as she thought—the threat was nothing like Murdock led her to believe.

“It’s nothing,” Declan said, meaning it. He may have gotten some shit about it, but all it did was make him sharper, a better warrior. It put things in perspective, too. She was here, young and blameless; he was gone and not. Common sense would tell any fool what kind of chance either of them had. None.

“How can their reach be that far? Seriously? How did they even know you wrote me? Why lash out months down the road?”

Declan breathed out. He was over being mad about this lash, at least in that moment he was. He didn’t have long before he had to go and he needed to know she was okay, he needed to tell her Nolan would be okay.

“Dad’s pretty sure someone saw you at the post office, maybe the same person at the diner when granddad stood up for you. They could’ve gossiped a bit, poked fun at Murdock or even the Sheriff.” He pressed his lips together to calm his anger before he went on. “Apparently, this town thought you and Murdock were ‘sweet’ and then they had the fat to chew on that I had an interest in you. The Sheriff didn’t like the slight. Thought to nip it in the bud as quietly as he could. His concerned phone call was his move.”

A phone call? Whatever. Justice shook her head. “We have enough issues without letting these people stand between us. It’s not right. I’m not a kid and my one and only guardian is very aware how—of how I feel about you.”

Declan’s anger and tension in his body deflated a bit. “What issues are those? You defended yourself and your dad dies? Murdock, a sorry sack of shit has now hooked you to him forever because of a secret that had no weight in the first place? Or, is it the fact that it is what it is. I’m not here, and you are.”

She shook her head, telling him she had accepted the time they had to be apart, that wasn’t a problem. It was a price that has to be paid. “No. The issue is that you make no sense. You’re hot and cold and I can’t keep up.”