But that was all the good news to be had.
“Mag,” Hawk called his attention.
He gave it to the man.
“Whatever this means, you should know, her father has been active,” Hawk shared. “He’s all over dropping it in any ear that will listen that his daughter has dick to do with this. He’s sharing wide it’s the brother’s fuckup, and Evan needs to be left alone.”
“Yeah, he’s all over that after his daughter was kidnapped and the drugs he was hoping he’d get his hands on are gone,” Mag returned.
Hawk did a shrug. “Yours to do with what you want. But you should know it so you can decide what to do with it.”
Mag nodded, knowing it fucked with him, but he had to tell her that her dad was trying to look out for her.
He was doing it too late.
But she should know.
“You’re on light duty,” Hawk continued.
“Yeah,” Mag muttered.
“And it’s now clear we’ve thrown down for Evan,” he went on. “Nightingale’s nosing around. Rush has got some of his Chaos boys doin’ rounds, asking a few questions. And none of that would be happening if Evan wasn’t part of the equation. That’s some firepower at her back that isn’t gonna be missed. But that doesn’t mean she shouldn’t be covered. That said, I wanna see you further down the road to recovery before your duty changes. It’s gonna sting, but you are not at one hundred percent, so you gotta take a backseat, look after Evan in ways only you can do, and I’m assigning Jorge and Mo as leads on this.”
That simmer in his gut roiled.
Dr. Baldwin had told him he wanted at least two weeks, better three, with his arm in that sling, and after that, only light use, no exercise, for another week before he got into the nitty-gritty of restrengthening muscle and working his way back to normal range of motion.
He hoped like fuck this would be all over by then.
But in the meantime, it was going to mess with his head that he was unable to take an active role in dealing with this for Evie.
But Hawk was right, Mag knew it, and he could think with his dick a lot of the time, but not when it put the team at a disadvantage.
And in this case, Evie at one.
What she needed was for him to be there when she wasn’t working so she knew she had someone who gave a shit.
What she didn’t need was for him to go macho gung-ho in protection of his woman and maybe get hurt (worse) or fuck up and make things worse for her.
But considering he was macho gung-ho regularly, not being that for Evie was going to suck.
“Gotcha,” Mag said just as Hawk’s eyes went to the door.
That meant all the men’s eyes went to the door in time to see Elvira opening it and swinging her torso in.
“Right, well, I got me a girl calling herself Sidney Gardiner in my office,” Elvira started, and Mag’s gaze instantly shifted to the glass wall, across the suite and through the glass to Elvira’s office to see a woman standing there who had a heavy hand with facial contouring and such an artfully messy knot on the top of her head, he knew it probably took her an hour to do it. “And she’s demanding some answers from her sister’s new man.”
“We’re done here,” Hawk declared.
Relieved, Mag got up, as did everyone, but only he moved quickly to the door.
Evie’s sister’s eyes were going everywhere, to him, beyond him to the other men, and back to him, but he had her full attention when he walked into Elvira’s office.
“Sidney?” he asked, offering her a hand to shake.
She stared up at him and breathed, “Holy crap, I’m totally going nerd.”
When she seemed unable to get over her shock her sister could bag a guy who looked like Mag, Mag’s patience took a serious dive, and he stopped offering his hand in order to put it on his hip.
“What can I do for you?” he asked coldly.
She did the looking around thing, now not only to him, and beyond him, but also to his shoulder before she again gave him her eyes.
And then, even though they had the same hair color and similar features, it was only then, for the first time, that she looked just like Evie.
This being when she squinted her eyes at him.
“You can explain to me why my sister is in mortal peril and no one thought to tell me about it,” she snapped.
Well.
Shit.
“I think your sister should—” he began.
She gave him The Hand, and when she did, he heard Elvira make a gulping noise behind him that sounded like she was both strangling and laughing, and Mag stopped talking.
“No. Nope.” Sidney shook her head. “She’s yours so you know Evie. You know she takes it all on and she doesn’t share dick. So, you’re the new guy, this once, I’ll educate you. It’s on you to clue me in when shit gets real for my sister. Even her waste-of-space ex tore himself away from his joystick in order to drop a text when Evan was up to her eyeballs in their bullshit. He did that even if he never got shot because Evan insists on enabling Mom’s crap, Dad’s crap and Mick’s garbage.”