“Tucker. Stop.”
“But then Ayda got her in the room…”
“I said stop it,” he growled harder, more determined.
“And we cleaned her up.”
Sutton took a hard swing, smashing the bag all at once. “Stop!”
“We made sure she was okay. She was okay. But then she started talking, and even though I thought for a moment she was going to tell me that all my fears were nothing but fiction…”
“Don’t you fucking say it,” he snapped, smashing the bag again, forcing it into my stomach and forcing me to tense as I held on to it tight, eyes fixed on him.
“She said someone hurt her, Chief.”
His cry of “No,” came out like a desperate plea. His fist smashed into the bag one final time but didn’t swing away. Instead, it remained embedded into the leather before it slid down, down, down, down, following him as his knees buckled and his whole body crumpled to the floor…
While I looked on.
The bearer of bad news.
Useless. No longer a hero. Just a big, bad guy, telling a small, good guy that the one angelic thing in his life was now tainted with the harsh reality of life in Babylon.
“No,” he whispered, spit foaming between his lips as he fell to the floor like a sack of potatoes.
I swallowed hard, hating the way the shame tasted on the way down as I took a step closer.
“She…”Fuck.“She wasn’t raped, Howard.”
He stared at the floor for a while, not responding in any way. He was a man broken, wondering how to pick up his pieces and reform them to how they’d been just minutes ago. I was a man wondering how the fuck I could help him find some glue.
When he raised his eyes—when he looked up, and I saw the unshed tears there—the look he was wearing penetrated my fucking hard soul and reminded me that it had become soft.
“But she was violated,” I finished.
“Who?” he croaked, his voice angry and feral.
“We don’t know.” I shook my head.
“Who?” he demanded again, not believing me.
I crouched down, bouncing on bended knees as I let my hands hang between them and stared at him with all the honesty I possessed.
“We don’tknow,” I repeated quietly—so quietly I made damn sure no more of my words would become an echo in this place. “But I can guarantee you one thing: whoever he is, he’s already dead.”
“Tucker?” he gasped.
“Yeah?”
“Death is too easy. You find them. You bring them to me.”
“Done.” I nodded.
“Now take me to my daughter.”
Chapter Twenty
AYDA
