Page 53 of Carver’s Crusade

My pulse pounds harder.

Because now I understand why Tony’s escalating.

Raven didn’t just humiliate him once behind the gym.

She humiliated him again.

And men like Tony never forgive that kind of thing.

CHAPTER 22: RAVEN

The room goes still.

Babe stands near the kitchen counter with his arms crossed over his chest, looking too big for my tiny apartment. Min stands next to him, offering me quiet, reassuring smiles. Carver sits in the chair beside the door, elbows braced on his knees, his expression unreadable. Shield lays his head back in the recliner and stares at the ceiling.

Neither of them says anything right away.

I wish one of them would. I fight the urge to stand up and pace. Or flee. My face throbs from the punch Tony gave me. I touch it tenderly, prompting Min to rush to the freezer for a fresh bag of peas. She takes the pack that I dropped on the coffee table.

Shield finally breaks the silence.

“I heard about what happened at the bar. One of the waitstaff found the woman in the bathroom and called the cops. The woman couldn’t remember what happened. She said that someone took her outside and then brought her back in.”

A knot twists in my stomach. “She doesn’t remember anything?”

“She spent the night in the hospital under their watch as they flushed the drugs from her system. Another detective interviewed her this morning, but she doesn’t remember anything more about what happened.”

I close my eyes briefly.

Thank God.

Shield watches me carefully. “Her blood tests showed that she’d been drugged with rohypnol. Probably in her drink.”

“By Tony,” Carver muses.

Tony.

The name burns through my head like acid.

I press the cold peas harder against my cheek. I can still see his face when I tasered him. The anger and hatred making my skin colder than the frozen peas could.

Shield leans back in his chair slightly. “No one in the bar remembers who she was with, so they don’t know who slipped her the drug.”

“Tony made sure of it, or he got lucky again,” I mutter.

Shield nods once. “By the time police got there, nobody was outside anymore.”

Of course they weren’t.

Tony’s a coward, but he’s a smart coward. The second that fight turned against him, he ran.

“You should’ve called the cops,” Shield says.

Suddenly the apartment feels too hot and too cramped. I can feel everyone’s eyes on me.

“Maybe. I didn’t know how to explain my being there. It wasn’t like I was dressed to go bar hopping. I looked like I was gearing up to rob a bank. What could I have said? Besides, I didn’t think the cops would believe me.”

Shield’s expression hardens. “You assumed the worst.”