Redemption (The Protectors 8)

I had no trouble understanding Nicole’s response.

“Promise?”

“Promise,” Ronan whispered as he signed. Then he was tugging the girl into his arms. Jamie was next, but Ronan stood up with him as the boy clung to him. He leaned in to kiss Seth. “Text me when you get there?”

I was envious of the intimacy between the two men. Every look and every touch they shared spoke volumes. Becoming fathers hadn’t changed any of that.

“I will,” Seth said softly.

To Jamie, Ronan said, “You have fun with Matty and Leo. Clothes stay on, right?” he said.

Jamie considered him for a moment before saying, “Leo says I can run faster without them.”

I stifled a chuckle. I’d seen Magnus’s young grandson, Matty, and his best friend Leo take Jamie under their wing at Matty’s fathers’ wedding at Christmas. Between the superhero shoes Jamie was wearing and his insistence that nudity was a precursor to enhanced abilities, Ronan and Seth were out of luck. They’d already lost their youngest to his hero worship of the two slightly older boys.

Ronan shook his head, but there was no mistaking the grin on his face. “Do what Uncle Dante says, okay?”

Jamie nodded eagerly and then his arms went around Ronan’s neck. “Bye, Daddy Ronan,” he said softly.

“Bye, Son. See you soon, okay?”

Jamie nodded. Ronan put him down so the little boy could put his free hand on the neck of Bullet, the large German Shepherd that was always wherever the kids were.

“Dante’s babysitting?” I asked.

Seth laughed. “He is. He’s called me three times in a panic about what snacks to give the kids and to ask if I thought he and Aleks were enough to handle the three boys or if he needed to bring in backup.”

I smiled. Leave it to Dante Thorne, Magnus’s soon-to-be-husband, to turn babysitting three boys under the age of six into a mission.

“Okay, we should go,” Seth said as he gave Ronan one last lingering kiss. “See you later.”

Ronan nodded and then he was helping Seth get the kids out the door. I wasn’t surprised that the dog was going with them.

The second the door closed, Ronan’s mask of contentment slipped away. It was startling to see the level of anger in his eyes. He didn’t say anything as he turned on his heel and began striding towards the study. I wisely kept my mouth shut because I knew his fury had nothing to do with me.

Though it was undoubtedly why I was here.

“I need you to look into something for me,” Ronan said as he went to his desk and sat down. He punched the keyboard of his computer while I sat down in one of the guest chairs on the opposite side of the desk. The printer began spitting out pages and as soon as it was done, Ronan snatched them up and slapped them down on the desk in front of me.

The first thing I saw was a mug shot of a young man with spiky blond hair and light green eyes. I guessed him to be no more than nineteen or so and a quick glance at the arrest record showed my guess was right.

Levi Deming, eighteen.

The arrest report was several years old, putting the guy’s current age at 24.

“Drug possession?” I asked as I read the charge. Ronan’s group rarely went after people for drugs unless their crimes hurt other people. There was nothing on the report to indicate the kid had committed any other crimes besides being caught with a minimal amount of heroin, not even enough to warrant an additional charge of intent to distribute.

Ronan didn’t say anything as he turned his screen so I could see it. The image looking back at me was a still shot of a suburban street. It was grainy and had been taken at night, but there was enough light coming from the street lamps to make out a couple of houses and a car parked in front of one of them. I glanced at the date stamp on the image. It had been taken a week ago.

Before I could ask Ronan why he was showing me the image, it changed to one that was nearly identical. The same car was parked in nearly the exact same spot, but the date was different. It was a day later.

Ronan continued moving forward through the images, four in all. Same car in the same spot four nights in a row.

“These are from a security camera from this house here,” Ronan said as he pointed to a spot on the screen across from the house outside which the car was parked.

“Okay,” I said, still confused as to why he was showing me the images. A car sitting in front of a house was nothing. More than nothing, actually.

But one look at Ronan and I knew it wasn’t nothing. He was practically seething. As a trauma surgeon, the man typically oozed calm and collected, but right now, he was anything but.