Judge (Shady Valley Henchmen 1)

“The cameras didn’t catch anything?” I asked, looking at Cillian whose fear was clean on his face.

“There are none that far down on the street,” he said, shaking his head.

“Fuck,” I hissed, stomach clenching. “Her phone? Can you track her phone?”

“It was in the alley, broken,” Cillian explained.

That sounded just weirdly familiar.

Too familiar, maybe?

“Yeah,” Cillian said, nodding. “My thoughts exactly,” he said, reading my face. “Too coincidental.”

“What enemies do you have right now?” I asked.

“Why the fuck would we tell you—“ Conor started.

“Enough,” Cillian said, tone somewhat defeated. “He clearly gives a shit about Dell. And Slash says he was here all night. He’s on our side here. We are wasting fucking time talking about it.”

“Did you go to the cops?” Detroit asked.

“When have the cops ever been willing to help us?” Conor asked, shaking his head.

“This is different,” Detroit insisted.

“We will take that route if we need to. But it is too soon for a report anyway,” Cillian said, shaking his head.

“What happened? Blow-by-blow?” I asked, looking over toward Dell’s so-called bodyguard.

Objectively, I had to admit that it could have happened no matter who she had with her. If the assailant was determined enough.

But my worry about her well-being, and my anger at not having been there to protect her was making it hard to take it easy on the man who had the chance to make sure she was safe, and failed.

“We were leaving the bar to go to my car. And were attacked from behind. I got slammed into the wall,” he said, motioning to his face which, admittedly, had sustained some damage.

“And?”

“And I was disoriented for a minute, but I came too and I tried to fight them off,” he said, showing his knuckles.

“Them?” I asked. “Multiple?”

“Two. One had Dell and one was trying to fight me off.”

And succeeding.

“But then I took a blow and I was out.”

“And then?” I prompted, annoyed that I had to keep asking for more details.

“And then I woke up over by Death Valley.”

“Why the fuck would they drop you if you saw their faces?” I asked.

“It was dark. I really didn’t get a good look. Tall, solid, that’s all I got.”

“It’s fucking nothing to go on,” Conor hissed, rolling his neck, clearly wanting to pound on someone, but having no outlet for that rage.

“Did they say anything?” I asked. “Accents? Familiar voices? Anything?”

“Not a word,” Patrick said, shaking his head.

And that was what did it.

See, he’d been angled slightly to my side, giving me mostly his profile as he recalled the story he was telling all of us.

But when he shook his head, the sun happened to hit him just right, making it bounce off of something on his ear.

An earring.

A very fucking familiar earring.

That likely came in a set of two.

One of which was in an evidence bag at the police station in Vegas.

And it was unique enough—a gold circle with distinct etchings—that I felt comfortable feeling it was too coincidental to overlook.

Besides, it made sense, didn’t it?

Who would want to attack Delaney but not steal her shit in Vegas?

Someone who had maybe been watching her and wanting her for a long time. Someone close to the family. Someone who worked for the family. Someone who had nearly unlimited access to her for years. Since she was a kid.

I could see someone with that kind of obsession following her just a couple hours to Vegas.

Why attack her, though?

The answer came to me before the question even finished forming.

Me.

I was the thing that had changed in her life.

I took her virginity.

And maybe he figured the beat-down and threat I got from the Murphy brothers was punishment enough for that.

But then he maybe somehow saw me with her in Vegas and flipped his shit.

Then the night before, maybe that noise Dell heard that I’d been too lost in the moment to register, hadn’t been rats.

It had been him.

And that had been the final straw.

He flipped.

And he took her.

Even as those thoughts landed, some things started not lining up.

Like if he’d been shoved into a wall like he said he had, why was the broken nose his only injury? Shouldn’t there have been some scratches, something else?

And it took a fuck of a lot of punching to bust open your knuckles. In all that time, he couldn’t see a face? A face he was supposedly striking over and over?

No.

In fact, fuck no.

Not a chance in hell that was the case.

It seemed more likely that his fists had come into contact with something a lot harder than a face.

A wall, perhaps?

Self-inflicted?

So he could show back up and act like the hero.

After fuck-knew what he did to Delaney.

“You motherfucker,” I yelled, flying forward, my hand grabbing the bastard by the throat, yanking him up and off his fucking feet by it.

His legs peddled in the air, and in my mind, I pictured Dell’s legs doing the same as he grabbed her, as she realized that a man she’d put her trust in had betrayed her.