by Cecy Robson
“Upset?” she demands. “I would have been upset if I lost one car, but to have that car set on fire and bust my place up, I’m beyond upset, ya prick. My business is wrecked to shit and your worthless device didn’t do anything but set off an alarm!”
I lead her away when her eyes brim with tears. These are furious tears, the ones that come from a woman seconds from assaulting the next person who pisses her off. With all the cops here, I don’t want her doing something that will get her in trouble.
Marianne sniffs when a tear falls down her cheek, followed closely by another. But that’s all she allows herself. Like me, she’s a city girl raised on the kind of streets where you never show your weakness, no matter that you’re seconds away from erupting like a busted hydrant.
For a long time, all she does is stare at the ground. I want to take her out of here and at least buy her a cup of coffee: black with a splash of cream. It’s how she told me she liked it that first day I walked through the dealership doors at eighteen, begging for a job.
But Mair won’t leave. She won’t even move, too busy feeling every emotion that comes when someone soils your life’s work.
“They destroyed my place,” she says.
She’s not telling me anything I don’t know. Whoever planned this was pissed. An angry “screw you” meant to hurt.
“You have any idea how much bullshit we’re going to have to go through with our insurance.”
She’s not really asking so I don’t answer, giving her a hug instead.
Marianne and Colin are good people. They didn’t deserve this and need all the help they can get. “I’ll help with the clean-up. The damage, my brothers can fix within a month tops. They’ll take care of you, I promise.”
She starts crying against my shoulder, unable to keep that eruption of emotion she usually buries deep. I let her cry and grieve for her business, and for all that blood and sweat she and Colin shed making this dealership what it became.
It’s only when she lifts her head and wipes her eyes that I let her go. “Thanks, Wren,” she says.
Curran steps forward. He changed out of his jeans and T-shirt and is now in uniform, a light blue shirt beneath his heavy black bomber jacket and dark pants.
He should be back at my place, watching the game. But when I told him what happened, he asked his captain for permission to come in.
“Can I talk to you a sec?” he asks.
I frown at the way he’s looking at me. He has his cop face on, that one that doesn’t give much away. I don’t know what’s going on, I just know something is.
“Yeah, sure.” I leave Mair and follow him toward the building.
“Did you talk to Angus and Seamus about helping them out?” he asks me.
“No, but I will.” I tilt my chin when I realize how pissed he seems. “What’s wrong?”
“I need to show you something.” He pauses by one of the smaller glass doors leading inside. There’s a chink near the corner, but otherwise undamaged compared to the main entrance.
One of the firefighters steps forward and opens the door, his face dirty from the leftover smoke and sweaty from the heavy protective gear he’s wearing. “Can I take her in?” Curran asks him.
He nods. “Keep to the left and watch out for the puddles.”
“Thanks, Keegan,” he tells him.
I shadow Curran, stepping where he steps, avoiding the dirty water and the waste strewn from the sprinkler system and hoses. There’s enough light coming in from the wall of windows to show me this side of the building isn’t too bad off, minus the water damage. Where it’s bad is near my office.
Exactly where the truck came crashing through.
“You all right?” Curran asks when I freeze.
I don’t answer. I can’t. My office wasn’t just some small enclosure—a place where I sealed my deals, answered questions, and worked my ass off all day. It’s where drivers found their dream cars, a job became a career, and clients became friends.
My office was my second home. To see it now, and remember how it was . . . it shouldn’t twist my insides the way it does, but like with Colin and Marianne, this was my blood, my sweat, my hard work. Glass made up the front. It had a nice desk and set of industrial chairs, and a picture of me and Colin posing in front of the first car I sold when I was twenty.
“Wait here,” he says, walking toward the warped pieces of metal and shattered glass that’s left.
A cop, waiting by where the door once stood, glances up when he sees Curran. He waits for Curran to don vinyl gloves before passing him something in a clear plastic bag. He says something to Curran I can’t hear. Curran nods, not that he seems any happier, and walks back to where I’m standing.
“Is that your office?” he asks.
“You know it is,” I say. Why is he asking me this? He’s visited me here before.
He lifts the clear bag. “This yours?”
My eyes widen when I look at what he’s holding. It’s a picture from my memory wall, the one I made to commemorate my sales. The picture is torn, but recognize enough to see it’s the one of Amy, the young woman I sold an Escort to last year. “What the hell?” I ask.
Curran seems to be waiting for me to explain. “It’s from a collage I made,” I tell him. “My customers send me pictures of themselves posing next to the cars I sold them.”
“I know what it is,” he says.
And he should. As a joke, he and Killian took one next to the trucks I sold them with their middle fingers extended. They were daring me to hang it, and I did, with me posing with mine since I negotiated us such a sweet deal.
“Wren, what aren’t you telling me?”
He’s trying to pull me back into the moment, but my mind is already telling me more than I want to know. No, not . . . no.
“What aren’t you telling me?” he asks again, this time louder.
“Someone was mad,” I say, my voice oddly vacant.
“No shit,” he says cutting me off. “Who was it?”
“I don’t know,” I say, even though I already know who it is.
“I don’t believe you. Out of all the cars in here, whoever did this chose an F-150. The same damn truck you drive to plow through your office.”
“It’s the biggest one we have in stock and can do the most damage.” I’m not trying to lie or come up with lame excuses. It’s more like I don’t want to believe what’s happening.
“Bullshit,” he says.
“Curran,” I say, although nothing follows.
He doesn’t give me time to respond, spouting everything he knows. “He poured gas over the same model truck you drive, crashed it into the building, and aimed it at your office. I could have chalked it up to an angry customer, someone unstable, maybe. But he didn’t just torch the truck and walk out, he took an extra few seconds to rip up something personal of yours and write ‘whore’ across your desk.”
Nausea burns my throat as I feel myself go white. He pauses, his voice quieting when he takes in my face. “Wren, who was it?”
I shake my head, not wanting to speak, but doing it anyway. “It must have been Bryant.”
“Are you fucking kidding me right now?”
“No,” I reply, an awful taste forming in my mouth. “He called me the other day.”
Curran’s face is unreadable. But I see enough in those hard features to know he’s latched onto more than I want him to know. “And?”
“And I think he sent me a text after that, but it was from an unmarked number.”
“And?” he presses.
“And nothing,” I respond. “Both times I told him to fuck off.”
“Why?” he asks. He leans back on his heels, watching me closely.
“What do you mean, ‘why’? Things didn’t end well,” I remind him. “I told you this when we broke up.”
Curran has this habit of scratching his buzzed blond hair when he’s relaxed or trying to stay out of trouble. But he’s not scratching, he’s observing me close
ly. “But you never told me why you broke up. Did he hit you?”
I don’t get a chance to answer. Just like I know them, my brothers know me. “Fuck, Wren,” he says, his face reddening with anger. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“He’s a cop, you’re cop, I didn’t want to stir up shit that might make someone think twice about watching your back.” I’m not grasping at straws. Bryant hinted as much, not that the idiot had the balls to actually say it.
“He’s not a cop,” Curran grinds out.
My insides are already a mess, but it’s like what’s left of my stomach bottoms out.
“What?”
It’s taking everything Curran has not to crumple the evidence in his hand. “He never made it past his probation period,” he tells me.
Bryant, being the manipulative bastard he is, always had a way of making himself look like the hero, and me like a psycho slut. I did worry the men and women in blue would side with him instead of Curran, and that it would cause problems for Curran on the force. But the other reason I never told Curran how bad things were between me and Bryant was because of what happened long before he hit me.
“Wren,” Curran says, his voice morphing to a growl. “What exactly did he say to you?”
“He told me—”
“What?” he presses, when I shut my mouth. “Look, you needed to tell me a lot more than you did long before this. So don’t think you’re keeping anything from me now.”
He’s right. But there are some things my family doesn’t need to know about me, and this is one of them. So I tell him what I can, and hope it’s enough. “He led me to believe you were going to be partners when yours retired.”
“He’s a Goddamn liar. His first training officer was a seasoned vet who picked up that something wasn’t right, told me Bryant said too many of the right things. The captain thought it was maybe a personality conflict and paired him up with someone younger, but with a few solid years under his belt. Guess what? Both recommended against hiring him. The Captain ordered a psych eval, Bryant refused and was sent packing.” He leans in close. “What else did he say?”
“Not much,” I admit. “Just enough to convince me to stay with him a little longer.” Too long, I should have jumped ship when I realized he was poison.
“And what else did he do?”
I half expect Curran to start yelling at me, but he keeps his voice quiet and gives me a moment. The thing is, I need more than a moment. “Remember when I came back from Atlantic City, when Kill and Finn were promoting that fighter who got busted for steroids?”
“Yeah . . .”
“I didn’t get into a brawl at a club. I got into it with Bryant on the street.”
Curran doesn’t say anything, but the anger spilling from his pores says enough. “What were you still doing with him if he was hitting you?”
“He didn’t hit me before that night. And I didn’t invite him,” I add quickly.
“He found you, all on his own?”
The way Curran asks makes it sound creepier than it was, and it’s already an experience I’ll never forget. The way he came at me was brutal, like he had to punish me for walking away. But after what he did, I wasn’t holding back either. I nailed him as hard as I could, trying to make him pay for what he did to me.
“I was going to a party being thrown by Finn’s sponsor,” I say, forcing myself to speak. “Bryant came out of nowhere and told me that I needed to take him as my date to make it up to him.”
“To make what up to him?” Curran asks.
“I don’t know, for dumping him—for being the one to walk away when it should have been him.”
Curran doesn’t respond, but I can tell he wants me to keep going. “I told him to fuck off,” I admit. “He grabbed my arm, but when I shoved him away we both went at it.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me, tell us? Kill and Finn were down there with you. They would have had your back. You had no right keeping this from us.”
My face heats from my rising anger and humiliation. I’ve spent my life trying to prove to my six behemoth brothers that I don’t need to be protected, that I’m strong and capable. For the most part, I’ve done all right, and looked after them like they’ve looked after me. But the one time I really needed them, was the one time I couldn’t call them. Bryant struck a blow so lethal, it all but guaranteed I wouldn’t run to my family. But I don’t reference that moment. I can’t, so I focus on what happened in Atlantic City.
“I had every right,” I fire back, my pent up anger and shame rising to the surface. “Finn was breaking down. Do I have to remind you how bad he was getting?”
I don’t mean to raise my voice, but I do. It’s only when the cops and firefighters loitering nearby turn to look at me that I shut my mouth. Curran senses at much, quieting, but doing little to hide the rage building behind it. “Don’t use what happened to Finnie as an excuse. Bottom line, you should’ve told us.”
“It’s not an excuse. Finn needed to come first. Under those circumstances, he needed us more.” My voice is absolute. All the crap revolving around Bryant aside, our little brother was more important. I suppose the reminder of how bad Finn was quiets us, giving us a moment.
“I was also embarrassed,” I add a few long seconds later, the weight of my stress pressing into my shoulders. “And I was the one who took the first swing.”
“You swung first?” I nod. “Why?” he asks.
“I told you, he grabbed my arm and demanded I take him to the party.”
“Uh, uh,” he says, leaning in. “If you took a swing it’s because you were afraid, angry, or both. So let me ask you this, why were you afraid?”
Yeah. There’s a reason Curran is considered one of the best cops to ever wear the uniform. “Things didn’t end well,” I repeat.
“Because he was hitting you?”
“No,” I reply.
“Wren,” he warns.
“I’m not lying, Curran. I told you that was the first night he hit me. But we both messed each other up. You know how the law works. If there’s evidence of domestic violence an arrest has to be made. So yeah, maybe he would have been arrested, but I would’ve been too.”
His lips press tight. He’s listening, not that he likes what he hears.
“We were in Jersey,” I remind him. “Not here where you’re a cop, and Declan and Tess are assistant D.A.s. It would have been messy, and loud—during a time when Declan was still being hailed for winning the trail of the century and in the process of starting the next.” I take a breath because as strong as my arguments are, I don’t think he’s convinced, and he needs to be. “Even with all that aside, think back to what happened to Finnie. Curran, he was spiraling down faster than any of could have stopped him.”
Everything I say is true, and valid, and shit that should stop him in place. But it doesn’t.
“What did he do to you, Wren?”
It’s the same question Sol asked me. But where she asked with a lot of heart, Curran’s asking with barely controlled fury, cutting me off at the knees and making my excuses seem pathetic.
“He made me feel like I was less than I am,” I reply, the quiver in my voice revealing the honesty behind each syllable. My gaze drops to the floor, but it’s only brief. “Like I was nothing, and didn’t matter.”
“So it was emotional?”
He’s trying to clarify what I mean, not that it lifts the tension straining his broad shoulders. Abuse is abuse. It doesn’t hurt less because there’s no physical evidence of what you’ve endured. Inner scars are a bitch to heal and can mar forever.
I don’t tell him as much. He knows all too well where I’m coming from. “Yeah. Harder to prove, right?” I ask, hoping he doesn’t keep probing and find out how “emotional” it really was.
“Maybe, but that doesn’t make it any less wrong. You should have told us.”
“I know,” I say, more because he wants to hear me say it. I rub my eyes, wishing this could go away, but
recognizing it’s far from over. “What are you going to do?”
“Knock on his door,” he tells me, not even blinking.
It’s probably what he’d planned to do long before I said anything.
“I figured as much.” I glance back toward my office, where pieces of the Mustang Bryant hit on the way in are strewn. “I just didn’t figure on all this.”
“You should have,” he tells me. He frowns when I look at him. “It’s what these fucking stalkers do, Wren.”
“He’s not stalking me, Curran. He called, and maybe texted—”
“And found you in Atlantic City, and destroyed a fucking dealership the same night you happened to be out with another guy.”
It’s the last thing he says that almost has me hurling. “You think he knows about Evan?”
“Seeing everything he did in here, that’s my guess.” He works his jaw. “And if I’m right, he could be watching you.”
“But why now? It’s been months. God, everything he’s done happened months apart.”
“But they still happened, Wren. Sociopaths are all about control. Look at the women you’ve taught self-defense to. It’s always the same story with these assholes. They latch onto their victims, get what they want from them, and don’t let them walk away.”
“I walked away,” I say, and I did, but my voice is softer than it should be. I know where he’s going with this.
“Yeah. Which put you more at risk.” He holds out the evidence bag to the cop who wanders over. “Let’s go back outside,” he says, his way of telling me and his buddy we’re not done talking.
The cold was tolerable when I was outside earlier, now, it’s like the temperature has dropped another twenty degrees. I should welcome the fresh air, but it doesn’t make me breathe easier as I choke down Curran’s words.
“You did the right thing leaving him,” he tells me, slipping out of his vinyl gloves and replacing them with his leather ones. “But in doing so, you took away control he never intended you to have and put yourself at risk. Perps like Bryant, those angry, volatile ones, can’t turn off the crazy. They don’t go away and they don’t give up,” he says, the severity in his tone giving away what he’s seen as a cop. “They may sub out their victims—”