“Who do you think—“ Cramer started.
But this was Danny we were talking about. No idiot in a uniform intimidated a chick who grew up inside an MC, then got to run her own for a while.
“A supervisor, a detective, the goddamn janitor…” Danny cut him off. “Really, I would take anyone else at this point. Where’s that chick who makes the precinct coffee?”
“Be careful, or I—“
“Watch how you speak to my wife, Cramer,” Fallon snapped, moving forward.
“Are you threatening a police officer?”
“No, I’m threatening the shiveling little shit who wanted so badly to be a part of our friend group in school, and is salty as fuck now that we rejected him, so he tries to bully us with his fucking delusions of power.”
“Get your hands behind your back,” Cramer snapped, his face so red that I might have found it comical if I wasn’t so worried about Theo who was slowly getting helped onto a stretcher.
“What am I walking in on right now?” a voice said, making us all turn to find a detective walking up.
You typically didn’t see detectives at a scene like this, at least not so early, but when shit involved organized crime in the area, they tended to get involved right away.
There were only a handful of detectives on the force that any of us could tolerate.
Lloyd, Hart, and Carver were the only ones who came to mind.
Lloyd was a hop, skip, and jump from retirement, as was Hart. But Carver, the man walking up, was still in his prime.
Tall, good-looking, with dark hair and dark eyes, he was a bit more laid back than even Lloyd and Hart had always been about us and our business in town.
“Detective, this bas—“
“Tax-paying citizen,” Carver cut him off. “What about him?”
“He’s…”
“Giving you shit? Yeah, they tend to do that when you’re getting your chest all puffed out when their friends were attacked. Why don’t you go… secure the perimeter,” Carver suggested, dismissing the red-faced cop. “Off the record, he’s a fucking idiot,” Carver said, pulling out his notebook. “Alright. Who wants to tell me what happened here?”
“I guess that is my place,” Danny said. “This is my bar. But Dezi got here first,” she said, waving at me.
“Theo called me,” I said, waving back toward where they were wheeling her toward the ambulance. “I didn’t see shit when I got here. That’s all I know, man,” I said, pushing past him to run up to Theo’s stretcher. “I’m meeting you there, okay?” I said, touching her hand. “They won’t let me in, but I’m gonna be there,” I assured her.
Then, before they could even finish getting her in the back of the ambulance, I was on my bike.
But I didn’t go straight to the hospital.
I made a stop.
To a fancy-ass neighborhood, a fancy-ass house, right up to the fancy-ass door.
“Who are you?” a man in scrubs asked, answering the door.
“My name is Dezi. I need to talk to Theo’s dad,” I said, moving forward, but he blocked the door.
“Edmund is resting,” the nurse, or aide, or whatever he was, insisted.
“His daughter needs him,” I insisted, pushing past him and into the foyer of the mansion. “Edward!” I roared, once, twice, three times before a man in silk black pajama pants and a white tee came moving into the top hall.
“What is this?” he asked, slow blinking at me with half-asleep eyes.
“Theo was attacked,” I told him, not having time to ease him into shit. “She’s on the way to the hospital, but they aren’t gonna let me in to see her or ask about her. So go get your fucking shoes on, we have to go.”
“Theo was attacked? By whom?”
“I’d say I will let you know when I find that out, but then you might be considered an accomplice,” I said. “Shoes. Keys. Let’s go.”
He snapped to right then, rushing back down the hall.
When he emerged no more than three minutes later, he was in a full fucking suit, his hair neat, and strapping a Rolex onto his wrist.
At my look as he came to stand next to me, he shrugged.
“I put a wing on that hospital. I want to look the part when I show up there and insist on both of us seeing Theo,” he told me, leading me through the kitchen to grab his keys out of a drawer. “Is she okay?” he asked.
“She’s in and out of consciousness. And she was beat to high fucking hell,” I told him, figuring it was useless to try to lie to him since he was going to see her sooner rather than later.
To that, Edmund let out a grumble as we went into his garage, climbed into his car, and were on our way.
“How did you know?” he asked into the tense silence in the cab of the car.