Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
RORY
“Are you okay?” I dropped my phone and rushed to Cord, pulling at his clothes, feeling everywhere I could just to make sure my eyes hadn’t deceived me.
“I’m good, dollface.”
He’s safe.
I blew out a heavy sigh of relief.
It was good he was safe.
Because I was going to freaking kill him.
A switch inside of me flipped just then, and my relief went up in a great big ball of fury as I pulled my hands back and slapped them against his chest. “Have you lost your goddamn mind?” I shrieked, standing on my toes to get in his face.
“Rory—”
“You could’ve been hurt!” I said, still shouting the roof down. “What if he’d had a gun, huh? Or a knife!”
“Dollface—”
“Oh, don’t you dollface me! You ran out there, in the fucking dark, chasing down a bad guy, unarmed!”
“Christ, baby. If you’d let me—”
“I’ve already sat vigil by your hospital bed once, Cord Paulson! Don’t you dare make me do it again!”
“Jeez, this bitch is crazy.”
I snapped my mouth closed at the unexpected voice, then looked to the left of Cord and down. I stared at the angry kid currently struggling against Cord’s unrelenting grip on his shoulder before whipping my attention back to Cord. “What the hell is this?”
The corner of his mouth trembled as he fought back laughter and answered, “This is what I was tryin’ to tell you while you were losing your mind just now. Spotted the kid through the windows as he was tearin’ outta here and knew he was the one who threw the rock.”
“A kid?” I asked in bewilderment, my eyes ping-ponging back and forth between the tall man and the short, skinny boy.
“Yeah, Rory,” Cord answered, his voice shaking with amusement.
My face scrunched into a vicious glare as I snapped, “There’s not one damn thing about this that’s funny, Cord. You scared the hell out of me.”
The humor immediately fled his expression, and tender understanding took its place. “I’m sorry, dollface,” he said softly. “It won’t happen again.”
I let those words and that look wash over me and settle in, and my shoulders finally started to lose some of their stiffness as I scolded, “See that it doesn’t.”
Cord finally let out a chuckle just as the sound of sirens filled the air and flashing blue and red lights lit the bar.
“Ah, hell!” the kid barked, struggling uselessly. “Let me go, dickhead!”
My gaze shot down as Cord gave the kid a shake, not hard enough to hurt him but enough to let the kid know he was definitely outmatched. “Watch your mouth,” he said in a low, scary voice that would’ve scared most anyone, child and adult alike, but not this kid.
“Screw you, asshole,” the kid fired back, his face twisted with hatred as he glared up at Cord. That was when I noticed the bruises that riddled his face.
“Did you hit him?” I asked Cord on a shocked whisper.
His jaw ticked, though I knew it wasn’t with offense at my question but rather with rage at seeing this kid had clearly been beaten up. “Looked like that when I got my hands on him.”
Before another word could be said, the door to the bar swung open, and two uniformed officers came through.
Cord
To say the night had taken a downward turn would have been a severe understatement.
The kid I caught after he’d thrown that rock through the window had an attitude that rivaled any the police and Rory had seen before, but the longer I watched him, the longer he postured and remained belligerent, the more I got a sick, twisted feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Because Rory and the officers might have been unfamiliar with behavior like this, but I wasn’t. I’d seen this kind of thing more times than I could count. Hell, I’d been just like this kid at his age and for years to come.
The bruises on his face, the dirty, tattered clothes hanging off his too-skinny frame, the insolence he used to mask the fear in his eyes. Oh yeah, I’d seen it all.
“Why’d you throw the rock through that window, son?”
“’Cause I wanted to.”
We’d been at this for what felt like forever. Sitting at one of the tables Rory had set up, the officers, one I knew to be Fred Duncan and another I didn’t know but had seen around before, tried to question the boy while Rory and I stood at the side of the bar watching.
Every question Duncan or the other cop asked was responded to with a smartass, disrespectful reply. He hadn’t given his name or the name of his parents, hadn’t divulged anything other than he’d vandalized Rory’s bar because he “wanted to.”
“You realize you’re in a lot of trouble here, right?” Duncan tried. “If Miss Hightower wants to, she can press charges. As it is, your folks are lookin’ to cough up a lotta money to repair the damage you caused tonight.”
The kid flopped back in his seat and rolled his eyes on a snort. “Yeah. Good luck with that.”
Leaning over to whisper in my ear, Rory said in a hushed voice, “Something’s not right about this.”
“What do you mean, honey?”
Her eyes stayed trained on the kid. “I mean look at him. He’s acting like a punk, but he’s scared. You can see it. He’s terrified.”
I was surprised she’d been able to see that. Most other people wouldn’t have. This kid was good at hiding his emotions. I only saw it because I knew the signs. Rory was more intuitive than I’d realized.
“Who’re your folks, son? What’re you doin’ out so late on a school night?” the officer continued.
“None of your business, pig.”
“You realize,” Duncan tried, “you don’t tell us your name or where you’re from, we’ll have to call in social services to take you in. We can’t just let you roam the streets.”
His brown eyes flashed before going cold once again. I watched as his entire frame locked up, and that was when I knew. I knew.
“Ah, fuck,” I said on a quiet grunt.
“What?” Rory asked, tearing her eyes from the boy and turning to look at me for the first time since this all started. “What’s wrong?”
I didn’t answer. Instead, I moved from the bar over to the table where the boy sat between the two officers and pulled out the chair right across from him, sitting down and giving him my eyes.
“You in a group home or a foster?” I asked, bracing my forearms on the table and leaning in so my full attention was on him.
His entire body went stiff and the air around him went wired, but he didn’t say a word.
“I did both,” I continued. “Six foster homes. Total shit. Just adults lookin’ to earn some cash without ever havin’ to do anything.
” He dropped his eyes to the table, and his little chest began to rise and fall as his breathing became labored.
“The group home wasn’t any better.” Still nothing.
“Used to get my ass handed to me on a regular basis,” I said quietly, and the kid’s eyes shot to me.
“Other kids in the homes who wanted to show they were top dog. Kids at school who thought they were better than the poor, unwanted foster boy.”
His body started to shake, and I heard Rory pull in a pained breath, but I pushed on, looking nowhere but at him.
“But the worst was when my foster parents would get drunk outta their minds, or got pissed because I didn’t clean the kitchen the way they wanted or I wasn’t quick enough taking out the trash or they just felt like bein’ assholes and usin’ their fists on a boy who had no means of escaping. ”
“Or you forgot to take the clothes outta the dryer and they got wrinkled,” the boy said on a whisper so low I had to strain to hear, but I did, and it made that sour feeling in my gut turn to acid.
“Those were the worst because there was absolutely nothing I could do about it,” I continued in a low voice.
I wanted to ask questions. I wanted to know who it was who’d hurt this kid, but I needed to gain some trust before I could go there, and the only way I knew how to do that was to let him know I’d been in his shoes.
“Not havin’ anyone to protect you, to take care of you, you learn fast to take care of yourself.
” At that, his head came up, his brown eyes hard but swimming with tears he was battling to keep back.
“You learn to hit back. Or you learn to hit first.”
“They put a lock on the fridge,” he admitted.
“And the cabinets. That’s part of the punishment.
They beat the shit outta us, and then they lock up the food.
” He turned his eyes to Rory, and I looked in her direction just in time to see her own tears spilling from her eyes.
“She locked the dumpster,” the boy said, pulling my attention back to him.
“And I heard her talkin’ to the old lady at the diner. Got her a lock for hers too.”
Fucking shit. This kid had been starved to the point that he’d gone dumpster diving for his meals. Then Rory locked up the dumpsters, thinking it was animals getting in.
“Shit,” Duncan hissed, rubbing at the back of his neck. “We’re gonna have to take him in.”
“What?” Rory shot away from the bar and closed the distance to the table. “Why? He’s just a kid, and it’s just a stupid broken window. I’m not pressing charges.”
The other officer looked at her with sympathy as he said, “We now have a report of abuse, as well as physical evidence written all over the boy’s face. This has to be reported.”
I looked from the boy whose head was lowered once again, all his earlier bravado gone, to Rory, a fierce determination filling her eyes.
“Fine. You have to take him in, then me and Cord are coming with you. But we’re not leaving until I get this boy fed.”
I saw the kid’s head shoot up, surprised eyes swinging toward Rory.
“Miss Hightower—”
“No arguments,” she clipped with her chin held high.
“He hasn’t been fed in I don’t know how long, and I’m making him something to eat.
” She looked at the boy. “Real food.” Then she turned on her boots, her ass swaying delectably as she stormed off into the kitchen in a huff.
And no one dared to say a word against her.
Fifteen minutes later, she brought out the biggest burger I’d ever seen with a side of seasoned fries piled so high they spilled out onto the table when she placed the plate in front of the kid.
He ate every single bite.