I startled slightly even though I’d vaguely been aware of a commotion outside the room. Just as quickly, I settled back into my smug grin because I knew that voice and I knew what it stood for—justice, peace, faith—and what it stood behind—me.
Danner rounded the table, all grace and coiled power, a great cat stalking its prey and doing it boldly because stealth was nothing next to the other tools in his arsenal.
“Stand down, Jacklin. The Captain’s watchin’ and you don’t want to make any more of an ass of yourself than you already have,” he said as soon as he reached Bitch Cop’s side, leaning down heavy into the table so that his face was looming over hers.
A hissing noise of irritation built in the back of her throat. “You’re not even supposed to be in here, Danner. You’re not even supposed to be in the goddamn station, the position you’re in. The fact that you are says a hell of a lot, none of it fucking ethical about your relationship with Miz Garro.”
“You wanna talk ethics when you’re sitting there blatantly insulting a victim of fucking sexual assault after she had to take a life to save her own?” Danner roared, so mired in his rage that I worried he was going to go all The Hulk on everyone.
I reached over to hook my finger in one of his belt loops and tugged so his fury twisted face turned to me.
“I’m okay,” I told him, my voice pitched low, just for us.
Ever since I could remember, Danner and I occupied our own space together, a separate frequency of sound bubbled up around us so that it was us and only us who understood the other. It ballooned around us now, close and intimate, eradicating our three-year separation into dust.
“You’re not,” he protested gruffly.
His strong hands were flat and stiff on the table before me, lined with veins and muscles that extended up each thick finger and around each wide palm. They were such capable hands, calloused from shooting and guitar, strong from sports and yet tender as a feather touched against my cheek.
I placed one of my hands over his on the table and stared into his furious eyes. “I will be. Just get me out of here. You know cops give me the creeps.”
Humor cracked through the anger in his face like a broken pane of glass. “I’m still a cop, you know, H.R.?”
“Oh, I know, but at this point, it’s the devil you know versus the devil you don’t,” I said with a blasé shrug because I knew it would make him smile.
It did, just a slight twist of his lips but it was enough for me.
“Sorry to interrupt this intimate moment,’ Bitch Cop said scathingly. “But we weren’t finished with her and you shouldn’t risk your ass by being here, Danner.”
Danner practically snarled at her and I wondered if it had been the last three years that turned him feral or the fact that I’d almost been raped.
It didn’t matter. The Lionel Danner I’d known was now only a gilded frame around whatever kind of man he’d become, one I got the sense was much, much darker than the one before.
“You’re done, you need a follow up then you contact Miss Garro tomorrow. She’s still covered in her abuser’s blood, Jacklin, have some empathy.”
Bitch Cop opened her mouth to spew more poison, but the pretty cop beside her laid a restraining hand over her arm and shook his head. “Danner has a point. Let the girl get cleaned up and rested. We can make a house call tomorrow.”
Her eyes flashed but then she looked over her shoulder at the one-way mirror and I knew she was remembering that Danner had said the Captain was back there watching.
“Let’s go before I get hives,” I muttered to Danner, clutching his stiff hand in mine as I moved towards the door.
I was trying desperately to be light-hearted, to hide behind that titanium coating of barbed humor and faux confidence but I’d been born an outlaw and the walls of the police station were closing in on me.
And I couldn’t afford that claustrophobia, not when my family was no doubt gathered in the police station front room, braving their severe hatred for all things law to see me as soon as humanly possible. I needed to batten the fuckin’ hatches, cage the break down that thrashed like a wild thing inside my chest. I could feel it eating at my heart, gnashing into it with hard, sharp teeth and ripping away big, bloody chunks, but I didn’t flinch, promised myself I wouldn’t tremble.
At least, not until I was alone, sequestered in my daddy’s house like an MC Rapunzel safe in a chain link protected metal tower.
“Rosie,” Danner interrupted my thoughts just before I could descend the stairs.