Deploy, Part One (Rawlings #1)(72)
Like a viper she reached to grab his shirt and pulled it tight, quick and hard. “If I buy that girl one hour...one f*cking hour to heal—then the lie is worth it.” She answered the question she saw in his eyes. “Yeah, that bad.”
She jerked her hand free then stomped back into the ER. She was taking Justice home before this doc finally reported a crime.
Nineteen
Nine days. That was how long Dawson managed to buy Justice to heal. Declan knew before Justice ever made it all the way out of the ER that she had been mugged and banged up pretty bad. He went mad with rage, and rightly so. He knew there was more, he could feel it, and her not speaking to him, telling him what happened when no more than five days before she told him he was the only one that knew all of her, could understand her without her explaining, all but confirmed as much.
And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
Everyone he talked to told him something different. Atticus thought she was fine, strong—just needed a minute. Boon swore something horrible had to have happened. His dad told him both—it was bad, but she was strong.
And Justice even after days...she told him nothing.
She argued with him, cussed him every way to the sun telling him to stay put, that she was fine, for him to ‘cool it.’
When he demanded she tell him what happened, her words were clipped. “It was dark. Fast. I’m not talking about it.”
When he asked her if it was because it took her back to that shit with her dad—if when this ass that mugged her it gave her flashbacks of something. Her silence gave him the answer he didn’t want.
She kept telling him she’d fly out the next day. Then she wouldn’t.
He found a way to get to her, just to see her.
Tobias and Providence picked him up from the airport in Savannah, and the entire way home, they stalled. First, Providence took a route that was sure to be gridlocked. Then they said they’d promised Bell they’d pick up groceries, and they needed gas.
Declan cussed them both up and down. He could look at them and know everything he feared was just as bad, if not worse.
“You need to get your head right,” Tobias said to him as he got out of the back seat of the truck and slammed the door to go inside the station to get a drink.
Providence was fueling on the other side and Declan was staring across the way at the lots where everyone pulled their boats up to get supplies.
All at once, his gaze honed in on the devil himself, Murdock Souter. He was loading beer into coolers that where sitting on the back of his truck.
Observation, seeing, hearing, sensing more than there was was something Declan was good at long before his training, before the tours he had already completed. He was a f*cking mind reader, at least when it came to the enemy he was. Which was half the reason Providence was trying to recruit him now, and had all but done so.
From where Declan sat, he could see a bandage on Murdock’s arm.
Coincidence? Doubt it, Declan thought. A beat later, he was walking double time to Murdock. When he reached him he spun him around and ripped the bandage from his arm. And when he did, when he saw the bite mark—he knew.
Declan could tell you every single second he had spent with Justice, every thought his mind had settled on her, good and bad, and he clearly remembered the time she bit him when he was too carried away, when he wanted something she wasn’t ready to give just then.
The claw marks on Murdock’s arms, ones so deep they were sure to scar all but confirmed it. More than once Declan had felt the slice of her nails on his back, passionate grips—this was not passionate, this was a sign of her fighting for her life.
Declan lost it. He didn’t hear anything, he didn’t see anything but the enemy before him.
He threw Murdock against the truck then he wailed. With the first hit, he was sure he broke his nose, with the second maybe a rib. If he had the chance to swing more he would have killed him and still—the punishment would not be just.
He didn’t get the chance. Not only did Murdock not fight back, not only did the ass almost smile in a distant, haunted gaze, but Tobias had appeared out of nowhere, pulling Declan away.
In the end, it took Providence, Tobias, Jacks, and some other poor fool in the way to get Declan off of Murdock who was lost and confused as ever.
Tobias had to use his entire body, all his force, but he managed to get Declan across the way. “You flew here only to end up in the brig? You wanna at least see her before they lock you away?” Tobias raged as he manhandled his brother, something he had done a million times over, and lately every time it had become harder. Emotion fuels a fight and Declan had an overload.
“Won’t you pick a fight and stick with it!” Tobias raged.
Declan pushed him back. “It’s the same fight! That f*cker is marked up—his arm is bitten! Scratches are all over him. Are you telling me you and your buddies here didn’t f*cking piece that together? Are you telling me that this is why you didn’t tell me? Why everyone wanted me to stay! Because of your f*cking precious case!”
Tobias was only managing to hold Declan in place with his gun, something he would never fire, but at the same time, he was telling Declan he was serious, he needed to f*cking cool it.
Tobias glanced over his shoulder to where Providence was. It looked like he was having his own serious conversation with Jacks not Murdock. No, Murdock was drinking a beer like he didn’t have a clue that something had just gone down.