“No, thank you,” he said crisply. “I do not accept your apology at this time. Please try again later. Right now can we get back to the fact that at the party you sat down at the picnic table, exactly where Jules had been sitting?”
Rodney laughed in disgust. “Of course you don’t believe me.”
“His Dr. Pepper wasright there,on the table, inches away from you.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t touch it!” Rodney countered, back to hot and loud again. “Even if I was a fucking rapist, why the fuck would I drughim?”
“Who the fuck knows why a rapist does anything?” Jules used Rod’s language back to him because the more riled up Rod got, the more Jules believed him. The kid was just not that good of an actor. His outrage was painfully sincere—as was, holy shit, his gargantuanly screwed up yet deeply felt tenderness for Sadie—but Jules wanted to see more of it. So he intentionally prodded the wounded bear. “If I had to guess, it would be because you want to warn us off, or scare us, or, I don’t know, tell usfuck you, you can’t stop me.Ifyou were the rapist,” he added. “Also, if you were the rapist? FYI your message failed because—” he let his voice get icy cold “—we are fucking coming for you.”
Rodney bristled because oopsie, Jules may have taken it a tad too far. But Sadie had thankfully finally recovered from the deeply buriedI love yousubtext of Rod’s angry words, because she stepped up and stepped in and gave Rod her best no-nonsense face. “Just tell them who gave you the black eye. You look awful andIknow who did it, but I’m the only one here who’s met the asshole. And Jules’s dad, in particular, was... well, he had a really good one, so I knowheprobably can’t evenimagine?—”
Rod scoffed at Jules. “Aren’t you the lucky little...?” He didn’t finish his sentence no doubt because of thedon’t you darelook Sadie was now giving him. Instead, he gestured sweepingly toward his battered face, like a backwards Vanna White. “Meet my father. Or at least his handiwork. I stupidly convinced Meg to tell my mother what happened because she’s still bleeding. Down there.”
Shit. All these weeks later? Jules glanced at Belle who knew enough to stay silent instead of attempting to school Rodney on the proper vocabulary for female anatomy.
“So Mom wentrightdownstairs and told the asshole,” Rod continued, “because ofcourseshe did, so him and me, we got into it when he said Meg doesn’tgetto go to the doctor because she shouldn’t have gone to the party—thatthe consequenceof heractionis her own damn fault.”
“It’s not,” Belle said fiercely.
“No shit,” Rod shot back. “But Dad disagrees. So now I have to figure out a way to get her to, I don’t know, the hospital? I don’t even know where to go. And I have to do it without my parents finding out.”
“Planned Parenthood has a clinic in Hartford,” Jules said quietly. “We’ll help you. And hey, why don’t we all go over to my house to figure out the best way to get that to happen? Get you somewhere warm, get some ice for your mouth…”
Rod turned back to look sharply at him, and for several heartbeats, Jules wasn’t sure if the larger boy was going to hit him or start, again, to cry. “You believe me.”
“Yeah,” Jules said.
“Meg must be so scared,” Shelly spoke up. She’d been standing there, just listening, her arms wrapped around herself. Hobbit was the only one of them who’d noticed and his arm was tightly around her shoulders as he held her close. “Is it... okay with you if I talk to her?”
“She’s grounded,” Rod said as the emotion and relief that came with being believed made him again have to fight another influx of tears. “For, like, forever. She’s in her room and... My father’s not going to let you in.”
“Fuck your father,” Sadie said, grabbing Shelly’s hand and pulling her back toward the Burke’s house. “We’re going in Meg’s window.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Present Day
Sherman Oaks, California
Mission Day Two
So this had been one hell of a day.
Sam sat in the living room, Chinese fortune-cookie wrappers on the coffee table in front of him, reading through, for a second time, the report on the Devonshires that had finally showed up from the San Diego office.
There wasn’t much here that they hadn’t already learned. The biggest surprise was the fact that Wig-Milt had changed his name shortly after getting out of prison.
Sam couldn’t blame him much for that. Carrying around that Devonshire moniker with its manslaughter conviction had surely sucked. So Wig-Milt was Mick O’Rourke now—would’ve been nice for him to tell them that, but okay.
The TS report included all the deets necessary, and MickO’Rourke seemed to be an exemplary citizen. No appearances in the county drunk tank, despite his food-encrusted clothes and dog-shatted hairpiece. He paid his taxes on time. Got a degree. Owned a nice home out in Woodland Hills. Worked as a post-production sound editor, doing mostly indie films at a seriously affordable rate.
And although it also would’ve been nice to have had all this information before they’d walked into Harper’s conference room yesterday, it really didn’t give them much in terms of finding Emily Johnson.
Talking to Milt—Mick—would’ve helped, but Sam and Jules both had missed his call while dealing with the police after the accident. Milt/Mick had texted Sam, saying he’d call again tomorrow. Friday.
The day Sam had been hoping he could take the afternoon off in order to drive down to San Diego to see Alyssa and Ash.
Did Jules even take weekends? Probably not, especially when Robin was on set, which he suddenly was—the writers had surprised him with five more days of work, which included both Saturday and Sunday of this coming weekend. And back when Jules was in the FBI, his cases had nearly always had the kind of urgency that didn’t mesh well with a Saturday afternoon cookout.
