I was nodding.
I’d actually put those pieces together myself. As a lawyer, I knew all the laws. I knew what would happen to her if he’d pursued it.
And she wouldn’t have liked it. Not even a little bit.
Her entire life would’ve been ruined at eighteen. She wouldn’t be able to have her teaching degree like she did today, and she sure as fuck wouldn’t be so hoity-toity if she had to register herself in her fancy-schmancy neighborhood.
“Does her new husband know that she’s practically a sex offender?” I asked.
Dax gave me a vastly amused glance.
“He’d lose his shit,” Dax commented. “It might almost be fun to watch him realize it. I don’t know what she’s told him, but everyone knows our history in town. When they hooked up after he moved here, my mom told me that she had to do some fancy talking to get him to go out with her. He’s not a half bad guy, but he’s blind where his new wife is concerned.”
Ugh.
Rachelle was such a freakin’ bitch.
No joke.
I’d hated her since I was old enough to know that she was a bitch. Not only had she been an asshole to Dax, but she’d treated a few of my friends like they were less than trash.
One could only take so much before the opinion was formed and could never be changed.
Rachelle had never done anything to me directly. But what I’d heard, as well as seen with my own two eyes, was enough for me to form an opinion. And that opinion wasn’t a good one.
I honestly felt sorry for her husband, who had no clue of the woman he married.
I bit my lip and furiously thought about changing the subject. An idea occurred to me.
“Let me text Avery to see if she can send me the shot,” I said, pulling out my phone.
“You’re that close with her?” he asked.
I nodded. “I am.”
“That’s kind of… weird,” he admitted.
I rolled my eyes.
“Avery’s always kind of been around,” I admitted. “Dad is friendly with all his officers. When shit went down with her mom a few years ago, I spent a lot of time at their house helping. She was younger than me, but damn, you wouldn’t know it. She’s so mature. Every time I’m around her, I feel like I’m the younger one and not her. She has her life together. She knows what she wants to do. She’s got a house now—something that she’s been taking care of since she was fourteen. Both of her parents were busy, did a lot of overtime. Then, her dad wasn’t around much at all after her mom died. She pretty much raised herself since she became a teenager.”
He was nodding his head right along with me.
“I’ve noticed that,” he admitted. “I’m normally pretty guarded when it comes to my picture, but I’ve spent enough time around her that I really know that my trust isn’t misplaced.”
I grinned at him.
And ten minutes later, when the photo came in, I realized that I was in trouble.
The man staring back at me on my phone screen was heartbreakingly gorgeous.
And if I thought I had a crush on Theo… that was only because I hadn’t met the adult Dax Tremaine yet.Chapter 9It’s called Karma. It sounds a lot like ‘hahahaha, fuck you.’
-Dax to Derek
Dax
“SWAT team en route,” I heard over the radio.
I looked across the armored vehicle I was riding in at the man directly across from me—Ford.
He gave me a chin lift that said, “This is fucked.”
I silently agreed with him.
We’d just gotten a call about a woman holding a van full of kids hostage.
Apparently, she was high or drunk on something. The caller couldn’t tell.
But she was sitting in the middle of an intersection, on a set of railroad tracks, waiting for a train to hit their vehicle.
Every time someone approached the vehicle, she would shoot at them.
Hence the reason we were in an armored vehicle.
We needed to get that van off the train tracks. There was no telling when a train might come.
And though we’d done our best to contact the railroad, there hadn’t been any contact made yet.
Which led us to figuring out how the hell to get the van off the railroad tracks while keeping the children safe and making sure that none of our team got shot while doing that.
Though that second part was definitely on the lower end of things for us to do seeing as those kids looked absolutely terrified in the photos that’d been taken.
“All right,” SWAT team two’s leader, Bennett, rumbled. “SWAT team one is already in place behind the fence line of the house closest to the tracks.” He pointed at a map of the neighborhood. “We’ll be coming in here.”
He pointed to the main entrance of that road, which was right next to a daycare, a small animal hospital, and a florist.