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"Doing it right now," I called back, pulling it out of my purse even as I went out the front doors and jogged down the street to catch up with Mark as he finally hung up and tucked his phone away.
I didn't even need to ask once I moved in beside him, feeling at a loss, so I did the only thing I knew I could, reaching for his hand, and giving it a reassuring squeeze.
"Eli," he told me, and I felt my belly tense.
Eli.
The quiet, sweet, artistic, recent doggy dad.
I didn't say anything.
There was nothing to say.
Because there were no words that would take away his worry, that would ease his mind. I knew this because I had four brothers who meant the absolute world to me and I knew they did illegal things that could get them locked up as well. Nothing he or anyone could say to me if that became a reality would help.
What he needed was traffic to be light, cops to be MIA on the way back to Navesink Bank so he could crush the speed limits, and to get to the station as soon as was possible to be with his family and to get the answers he so desperately needed.
And that was exactly what happened. We got his car out of the parking garage; we cursed our way out of city traffic; we hit the main roads where Mark pushed eighty-five the whole way back to his little corner of the world.
He actually jumped out and forgot to cut the engine at the station, making me take an extra minute to do so, then lock up, as I followed him up, my own stomach tensing.
Everything in me rebelled against stepping foot in there, tempting the fates. But when your man who had been nothing but exceptional to you needed you to step inside the belly of the beast, you just had to ovary-up and fucking do it.
So I took a breath so deep it hurt, grabbed the door, and moved inside.
To say I walked into chaos would be an understatement.
Because I walked in to not only find Mark, Helen, and Charlie there, but also Hunter, Shane, Ryan, Lea, and Fee. The only one missing was Dusty, and I had a sneaking suspicion it was because she was babysitting, not because she didn't desperately want to be there as well.
Everyone was talking, talking over one another, practically yelling at the man they were standing in front of.
And who was that man, you might ask?
None other than the man who had interviewed me at the box store after the holdup.
Because, of course.
"And as I said before, Charlie, this is not my case. I really don't have much else to give you."
"I want to know why he would fucking refuse a goddamn phone call to his lawyer," Shane snapped, everything about him a tense, coiled spring about to snap. Lea moved in, putting a hand on his arm, saying nothing at all, but the contact seemed to allow his chest to expand with breath again.
"I don't have that answer for you, Shane," Collings said, clearly apologetic, obviously somehow having a soft spot for the family, despite them all being criminals and, therefore, supposedly his enemies.
"And why he won't see us," Ryan put in, his voice a low, threatening hiss. Granted, I didn't know him all that well, but from the time I had shared with him, he had always been a bit detached. He gave off an aura of competence and control. But there was nothing controlled about him right then either. He looked like he was one wrong answer from getting his very own assault charge.
"Did someone put their hands on him during questioning?" Hunter asked, seeming to be the most under control. But judging by the way that Fee moved in closer when he spoke, appearances were obviously misleading. If she was worried about him, moving in just in case, he was obviously close to losing it too.
"Alright, alright," Collings said, holding up a hand. "I don't know why he refuses to see you all. But I have seen him with my own two eyes, Helen," he said, addressing their mother with a look that said he understood how much she needed the words that would follow, "and I swear on my daughter's life that your son has not been roughed up."
I didn't know Collings. He didn't even seem like the kind of man who had a daughter, more like the kind who was married to his job. But seeing as Helen's shoulders relaxed a little as she leaned into her husband, I figured that he not only had a daughter, but that she meant quite a bit to him. Men who loved their children didn't swear on their lives unless they were one-hundred percent certain of something.
