Chapter Two
Declan
I stood there boiling as my brother and Tank laughed. This fucking woman. I turned to look at her. She stood about five foot eight, and I towered over her as we glared at each other.
“You wanna calm down?” I asked, knowing she wouldn’t.
Threatening my life in Gaelige didn’t really mean shit. Was I scared? Fuck no. I knew she did it, thinking I wouldn’t understand what she said. It was a way of making her feel strong, powerful even.
Well, the joke was on her. My mother had taught me her native language, and I spoke it fluently. King had been ten, but hadn’t learned much by the time our parents passed away. In my grief, I hadn’t continued teaching him. I was twenty-two, and once we had adjusted to living together again, with me taking on the role of father more than older brother, he hadn’t wanted to learn more.
“Fuck you,” she said, and spat at my boots.
“Woman,” I growled, stepping into her space.
She shrunk back, and I felt like shit. My threat was empty. I knew it. King and Tank knew it. But she didn’t, and clearly it frightened her. I grabbed her biceps and ushered her toward my car.
“Dec, fucking stop,” King called.
As we walked, I began to read her the Miranda rights, until she cut me off.
“I know my fucking rights. As soon as we get to the station, I want my fucking phone call,” she spat.
“You’ve got a mouth on you,” I remarked.
“Declan, what the fuck, man? You’re really going to arrest her? What the fuck did she say?”
I stopped abruptly and turned her to face my brother. “Go ahead, tell him,” I demanded.
She stood there, quiet. Her wrists bound behind her back; her lips pressed tightly closed. I knew she wouldn’t say it. She threatened him, too. She didn’t know she was threatening him. She had no way of knowing he was my family. But I also knew by her stance, she wouldn’t tell him what she said.
She had been talking shit. Her threats were baseless. I knew that. But there was something about her words that pissed me off. The way she spoke about cops led me to believe she might have been a victim in some way.
It should have made me feel sorry for her, but all it did was make me angry. Anytime someone lumped the good cops with the bad cops, I saw red.
The truth was, there were a lot more good cops than there were bad, but no one ever assumed they were all good. Most people assumed we were all on the take in some way.
So much for being innocent until proven guilty.
Sure, I looked out for my baby brother and his guys. They did shit they knew was illegal, but they weren’t out to fuck with the innocent. They might not be one percenters anymore, but they still wore the fucking patch.
When we moved here from Arkansas, King told me they were going to give up the patch and try to go legit. He said he wasn’t promising anything, and they were leaving the patch on their cuts until they knew they could make it.
That was five fucking years ago.
They were legit now, had been since they started the chapter. They didn’t run drugs or guns. They had a strip club on the outside of town, but they didn’t sell sex, just the vision of it.
Were they fucking Boy Scouts?
Hell no.
I knew they were responsible for the disappearance of Grant Nicholson. I knew no one would ever find him as well. I didn’t care. He hurt my daughter. He would have done worse if they’d let him go. But that didn’t make me a bad cop. It made me a damn good father.
The law wasn’t capable of getting women the justice they deserved for the type of attacks they faced the most.
They deserved justice.
Maybe I straddled the law on occasion. I took my oath seriously, but sometimes I was bound by that oath. My brother wasn’t. I knew how the law worked. There were occasions when shit people went free.
Whether they had a good lawyer, a shit prosecutor, or a technicality that got them off, the truth was, the law didn’t always work for the good of the people.
So sometimes, I let the Silver Shadows take over. It was only when I had solid proof someone was guilty and no way to make the law do what it was supposed to do.
Keep people safe.
King pulled me out of my head when he asked, “How bad could it be? Look at her. You really that concerned about a woman?”
I felt her arm tense in my hand. She didn’t like being dismissed because she was a woman. I looked down at my captive. She was gorgeous. When she rounded the car to hand me my ass for calling her ma’am, the first thing I noticed was the way her green eyes sparkled like emeralds in the headlights.
Her hair was silver, naturally or from a salon, I couldn’t be sure, but she wasn’t in her twenties. Hell, I’d be surprised if she were in her thirties.
No, she was older. She had the slightest wrinkles by her eyes that told me she lived her life with laughter. She wasn’t thin, but she wasn’t overweight. Thick was the word to describe her. With the type of thighs a guy could get lost between, if he was lucky enough to take the journey.
King obviously hadn’t touched her, because with my hand wrapped around her arm, I could feel the muscle. She was strong. She wouldn’t break easily.
I didn’t want her broken, but compliant would be nice.
She stood with her chin up and her shoulders back, daring me to tell them what she said.
“Declan. Let her go. She’s had a shit night. She’s just moving to town and her car broke down on a dark road in the middle of nowhere. She’s a little stressed. I’m sure whatever she said was just spouting off because she was afraid.” King looked at her and winked. “Ain’t that right, darlin’? If you give her the chance, I’m sure she’ll apologize.”
Seeing the look of fire in her eyes, I knew that wasn’t true.
“You want her first night in town to go down like this? What would Beck say if I told her you arrested a helpless woman stranded on the side of the road because she said something you didn’t like?”
“Fuck you, King,” I hissed.
He was right, though. My daughter would kill me for taking a woman’s stressful night and making it worse. I took a deep breath and unlocked the cuffs.
“She rides to town with Tank in the truck. Not on your bike,” I told him.
“Why? You worried about her being on my bike?”
That was a good question. I shouldn’t care who he had on the back of his bike, except I knew it meant something to him. To this day, the only woman that had been there was my daughter, his niece.
“I ain’t got an old lady, yet,” he argued.
“You sure about that?” I asked, mocking him.
Tank snorted behind him, and King turned a glare on him, pointing a finger in his direction.
“Watch it, asshole, or you’ll be scrubbing toilets at the clubhouse.”
My brother sure as shit had an old lady, only he wouldn’t do anything about it. Why he kept her at arm’s length was still a mystery.
I slipped my cuffs into my back pocket and walked back to my car, leaving her standing on the side of the road, confused.
“What the hell just happened?” the woman whispered, and I realized then, I never got her name.
“Don’t worry, darlin’. The big bad sheriff ain’t as bad as he tries to be,” King answered, slinging his arm around her shoulders and walking her back to her car. “Come on, let’s get you settled.”
Shaking my head at my brother, I climbed into my patrol car.
Looking at the license plate, I wrote it down so I could look her up when I got to my office in the morning. We didn’t have computers in our cars here like we had in Arkansas. No budget for them. King offered to buy me one, but I told him no.
I actually enjoyed the slower way of doing things up here. And the crime rate didn’t warrant having all the bells and whistles like Little Rock did. The biggest thing that happened around here was Widow Kramer’s cows getting out.
Well, until the Silver Shadows started taking on old ladies. It all began with the daughter I never knew I had.
Earlier this year, I discovered I had a twenty-five-year-old daughter. When her mother found out she was pregnant, she told me she was having an abortion.
She lied.
When I found my daughter, I had never been happier to have a woman lie to me. I became a father the day I learned her mother was pregnant. Six months ago, I became a dad.
And in another six months, I would become a grandfather.
My life was good.
I had my daughter. Blade was an ok son-in-law, though they weren’t married yet. He loved Beck, and that was all that mattered to me. He was good to her. Let her get away with a little too much lip, but hey, we were Irish. It came with the territory.
That woman tonight was Irish, no doubt about it.
It not only accounted for the Gaelige she spoke, but also for the temper.
I shook my head as I pulled into my driveway. She wasn’t my problem until she caused a problem. If King wanted to get mixed up with a woman new in town, that had nothing to do with me.
Keep telling yourself that.
I was fooling myself. I knew that.
King had always been my problem. He always would be. I didn’t mind. He was my baby brother, and I would do what I had to do in order to protect him.
Even if it was to protect him from himself.