Deploy, Part One (Rawlings #1)(96)
Justice’s trembles, her drenched face, true reactions fit her account of what happened. She gladly turned her gun over, gave them her clothes.
She didn’t give her phone to the deputies. She didn’t trust them.
Once Dawson had checked what was recorded, she told Justice to hand it to the agents who were all watching the scene unfold at a distance.
The camera had shattered the first time Murdock struck her, but the audio said enough. It was on point with everything Justice had said.
Broken and drenched with pain, Justice walked her evidence to the deputy Dawson told her she could trust.
“Will you please make the call, drop whatever charges. Declan Rawlings was protecting me.” She handed the phone to the officer. “Murdock Souter killed his brother and...and he’s done worse, too.” Her eyes welled. “Let my family go so we can grieve together.
~
Justice wanted to go get her baby and crawl in a dark hole and come out when she could breathe again but was all but forced to go to the emergency room to be checked out.
At the emergency room, a female officer questioned her more. She told them the truth, somewhat.
“Murdock must have come to my house not long after what happened with Nolan years ago...the fire started right after he got there but he always told me I had to say he was there the whole time, that if I didn’t it would look bad. I didn’t really care or understand. I’d just lost my father, I wasn’t right. Over the years he became abusive, jealous, paranoid...last year—” She looked away from the officer. “I knew saying he did something would not go anywhere with who his father was. That is why I never turned the kit in, filed charges...it would hurt my family and he would have walked away scot free.” She pressed her lips together. “I guess when the truck was found he snapped...I don’t know.”
The story wasn’t questioned or debated. There was too much damning evidence.
Declan charged into the room ending any other questions. He pulled Justice to him, cocooning her in his arms, then took her away.
They stayed in the spare room at his grandparents’ house that night, little Nolan lying right between them.
His careful hand traced her jaw. “Justice, you got yours, you gave me justice. We’re not letting any of those f*ckers hurt us any more, even if I have to run the whole lot of the Souters out of town.”
A weak smile touched her eyes then she drifted to sleep, the first deep sleep she could remember having in a very long time.
The next weeks moved fast, and slow.
The days the town grieved, when they laid an empty casket in the ground, when people from all over the country came to say their goodbyes to James Nolan Rawlings, the days crawled.
In the dawn hours when Justice would get up to check on little Nolan, wondering why he hadn’t cried out for his feeding and find Declan with wet cheeks rocking him, whispering to him about how awesome his uncle was...the days were long.
The waning investigations, the ‘clarifications’ the Sheriff’s office needed, when she was packing up her and little Nolan to return to base with Declan for the last few months on his contract, when she finished her finals and realized she had a degree, the days flashed by—glimmers of hope that allowed her, him, their family to fight their way out of the storm of grief and change.
~
“I don’t know that I think this is very safe,” she said, reaching for her blindfold as Declan walked behind her. Little Nolan was sound asleep in his car seat in the truck. The three of them had left the base a week before and had made it a point to travel home as slowly as possible, to just...be.
The months they spent away had helped, more than Justice thought they would. The edginess Declan always had after his tour was more balanced. It could have been because he took the time to talk to someone there, they helped him decompress and work through the changes that had hit them all at once.
It could have been because now, for the first time—there was no goodbye looming over them. They knew each morning they opened their eyes, the other would be there. Then again, it could have just been because the demons of the past had found their resting place.
When she felt his hands slide down her sides, she shivered and he laughed. “God, I love that flame...” he said as his lips brushed across her neck.
His hands slid down in a V across her stomach then up again as he moved to her front.
“You said to ask again when I was having an easier day.” He grinned even though she couldn’t see it.
She felt him going down to one knee and the blush he loved so much was large and in charge.
“I’m having a pretty damn good day.”
“Oh yeah?” she said slyly. “Not sad—no regrets?”
He was officially out of the Corps now—his contract had been fulfilled; his tomorrows were his to plan at his own will. Being sad, feeling lost, she expected him to feel both. These years may have tested him but he would always be loyal to his Corps, to the men and women he served with and for.
“Me? Sad? The guy with the sexiest woman in the world in his arms, a perfect son...a good job lined up. Best family a man could want. What do I have to be sad about?”
She bit her lip before she spoke. “Can I see my ring now?”
“Ohhh... is that the way of it, not gonna let me ask again?”
“Do I have to be blindfolded to answer?”