Forsaken (The Protectors 4)

I shook my head as I struggled to find the right words. But there just weren’t any so I leaned forward and kissed his temple. “I’m so sorry.”

Mav nodded against me. “I left that night. I wasn’t sure I could do it without him – I was so fucking scared – but I was more scared for what would happen if I didn’t go.”

“Where’d you end up?”

“I hitched a ride with this trucker going East for a while, but had to bail when he insisted I blow him as payment for the ride. I decided it would be safer to take the bus after that. I ended up in Minneapolis and stayed there for a couple years working odd jobs. I lived on the streets when I had to, but sometimes I had enough money to get an apartment or a motel room for an extended period of time. Then I want to Chicago, Indianapolis…I basically just kept heading East whenever I got the urge to keep moving. But things changed for me in Philadelphia.”

“How so?”

“I got a job working for this guy who fixed up Harleys,” Mav said. “That’s where I met my girl,” he added with a light chuckle that made my insides light up with warmth.

“Your girl?” I asked with a smile.

“A custom Harley Davidson Night Train,” he said. “My boss let me work nights and weekends to pay for it and after that I used every extra penny I made to fix her up.”

“How long did you work there?”

“Until I was about 24 or so. I liked working on bikes, but it wasn’t what I’d been dreaming of doing my whole life.”

I smiled. “I just realized I don’t even know how old you are.”

“I’m 32.”

I gasped in mock horror. “You’re an old man.”

Mav laughed and slapped me on the ass. I was glad to see some of the anguish had left his face. “So what was it that you wanted to do?”

Mav became serious as he said, “I wanted to be a cop.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “Joined the force when I was 26. A year later it was over.”

“What happened?” I asked in surprise.

“Found out the cop I was assigned to work with was taking bribes. Did my duty and reported him. I actually thought my fellow cops would back me up,” he added with a harsh laugh.

“They didn’t?”

“No, not since most of them were on the take too,” Mav murmured. “My little report ended up taking down almost a dozen veteran cops. And let’s just say it didn’t make me any new friends, but I did manage to get a lot of enemies out of the deal.”

I froze at that. “Did they come after you?”

“Since most of them were looking at life in prison with some of the same guys a lot of them had put there, yeah, they came after me. In a big way. Because without my testimony…”

Even though Mav was right in front of me, I was still unreasonably terrified for him. “What happened?” I managed to ask.

“Mace.”

“What?”

“Mace happened.”

“Mace was a cop?”

Mav nodded. “He used to be on the same force a couple years before I signed up. He’d quit when he lost his son. But he still had connections with the force so he knew what some of the guys were planning. He literally saved my life because some guys jumped me one night outside the garage I used to work at – I still went there to do work on my bike every once in a while. The guys were kicking the shit out of me and planned to make it look like I’d been killed during a robbery. Would have worked too if Mace hadn’t shown up.”

“What happened to the men?” I stammered as I tried to fathom how close to losing his life Mav had truly come.

“Three of them had to show up for their trials in wheelchairs,” Mav murmured. “I testified and every single one of them went to prison. Mace knew there was no way of me going back to my job or even joining any police force after all that so he introduced me to Ronan.”

I felt some of the tension ease from my system, but I finally began to understand why Mav was so unwilling to accept the idea that he was a part of anything bigger than himself. Because he’d tried that before. Despite the horror of his childhood and the cruelty of his family, he’d given himself over to another family. The Brothers in Blue. Only he’d once again been the outcast, simply because he’d chosen to do the right thing.

“Those guys…they can’t still get to you, right?” I asked.

Mav shook his head. “Ronan and Mace helped me disappear, so to speak. Maverick is my real first name but James is actually my middle name. And since I never talked about my mom or my past with any of the guys on the force, they had no way of linking me to anything so I just quietly disappeared.”