“What the shit, Linc?” Amie grabbed her, and I got the weapons out of the way.
While Amie put Mallory in restraints, more for her own safety than for ours, I cleared the kitchen of all the knives and wondered what the hell I’d said wrong.
“You’re going to be okay,” Amie whispered, trying to soothe the obviously distraught woman.
“He didn’t do anything,” Mallory insisted as she refused to look at me. “He didn’t do anything, and I won’t press charges against him because I fell.” Her eyes moved wildly between the two of us and I fought the urge to snap and rage against the lies she told. The pain she endured at the hands of Royal sent a jolt through my body.
I had my phone in my hand, taking photos of her face and arms before the ambulance got there, to make sure I had them before she was cleaned up. Not only would we need them for the report, but whether or not she pressed charges, I wanted it documented.
Abusers didn’t start with what we were looking at. They escalated from somewhere. They started with a minor act. Something they liked, that made every dark and perverse desire they had stand out. Pain.
Kennedy. Kennedy had been engaged to him. She’d broken it off, and she’d run away from her life with him. Hell, I could still smell her perfume in his fucking house, and she hadn’t been there in months.
“Is he obsessed with her?” The question tore from my throat like a tornado ripping through the countryside. “Is he planning on hurting her, Mallory?” The thought made me sick, and I struggled to keep my lunch from coming back up.
Mallory didn’t meet my eyes. She didn’t move an inch. She didn’t say a word. And as much as I wanted to shake her, to demand that she tell me the truth, I couldn’t. She was a victim too, even if she was an unlikable one.
Bootsteps approaching had both me and Amie turning to see the paramedics arriving on scene for Mallory. The entire time they talked to her, prodded her, and assessed her injuries, Mallory didn’t say a word.
If she hadn’t just gone off on us, I’d think that she was in a catatonic state. As it was, there wasn’t much we could do other than file a report.
Amie waited until the ambulance pulled away from Royal’s house before she shut her body cam off and turned, waiting for me to do the same.
“I know how to hide a body,” she offered in complete seriousness. “My husband’s a lobsterman; you know that. Just need a hacksaw and some of his lobster traps. They’ll never even find the bones.”
Despite her good-natured appearance, I knew Amie would help me hide a body if I needed. She knew who Royal was, who he’d been to Kennedy. Hell, she knew that if Chief Townsend found out that his daughter had been in a physically abusive relationship that he’d lose his shit. We all knew there was something wrong, and that he’d hurt her, but not like that.
I seriously considered her offer for a second before shaking my head. “We can’t. You’d lose your job, and I don’t want to go to prison when I finally got the girl.”
Amie shrugged and then looked around Royal’s house. “He’s a douche, anyway. Constantly defending assholes who try to game the system. Do you think he’s going to have an alibi for today? To keep her from being able to press charges if she’d wanted to.”
“Oh,” I scoffed. “Without a doubt. Might as well take some photos for the report, but I don’t think it’s going to amount to much more than that.”
I hid the tremble in my hand as we documented the scene and then signed off. I was still shaking, still trying to wrap my head around the trauma Kennedy must have faced at his hands when I pulled into Remy’s driveway after work. Thankfully, I hadn’t had a single other call after that, because I don’t know if I’d be able to get images of Kennedy, bloody like Mallory had been, out of my head.
Remy met me at the door. “Heard about the call. Nox is out back with Rett. Do you want a beer?”
I didn’t have to say a word. He just handed me the beer and led the way to their backyard, where Nox was playing soccer with his friend, Everett James, the son of one of our high school friends.
When I told him what we’d seen, what it was clear happened to his sister, Remy was more than ready to commit murder.
“I’m gonna kill him. I’m going to cut his body into tiny pieces, and then I’m going to drop those pieces into the middle of the ocean and nobody’s gonna know what happened to him.” Just like with Amie, I knew for a fact that he wasn’t kidding. He’d do it, and I couldn’t blame him, honestly.
“I just don’t know why she’d protect him after that. I saw what he did to Mallory. What he probably did to Kennedy. I don’t know how she feels safe.”
“Because.” Nox gasped for air as he stumbled forward, showing that he’d been eavesdropping on our conversation. He and Rett shared a look before he turned back. “Because you have her six.” He gulped for air. “She said that you sit outside her house at night, protecting her. You’ve got her six, Uncle Linc. Why would she worry about anything when you’re there?”
Rett shoved him in the arm and they took off again, kicking the soccer ball around the yard like Nox hadn’t just gutted me with a word. Kennedy knew. The entire time. She knew that I was there. And she didn’t push me for more.
“I fucking love that kid.”
16
Kennedy
“I can’t believe you’re pregnant.” I eyed Parker’s stomach suspiciously. “And like, super pregnant. You’re not showing at all. You just look like normal Parker.”
“Shut up,” she bit out while stuffing her face full of hot dog. “I’m chunky, that’s why you can’t tell. You’re saying you can’t believe I’m that far along? I can’t believe it. I’m almost due, Kennedy.” She lowered her voice while stealing a taco off my plate while we sat at my usual table in the back of Lucy’s.
“I don’t share my tacos with anyone.” I glared at her as she fit the entire thing in her mouth in two bites. “You’re lucky you’re eating for my favorite niece now.”
Parker groaned miserably. “You know this means we got pregnant like the first or second time we had sex, right?” She tilted her head to the side. “I wonder if it was the time it started with him grabbing me by the neck.”
“Oh, what the fuck, Parker?” I put my hands over my ears trying to drown out her description like I was a little kid. “I can’t believe you’d say that to me.”
She snickered and shrugged, taking the time from my distraction to grab another one of my tacos off my plate. My plate that was severely losing the tacos that Vi brought me.
“Can’t you just order your own tacos?”
“Yeah, but yours look so much better than mine would.” Parker batted her lashes at me. “Will you go with me to tell your brother about the baby?”
“Fuck no,” I said while shaking my head. “That’s your responsibility, not mine. I went with you to the appointment, which I didn’t even need to go to, I might add. That’s all on you, girl.”