AllFreeNovel
Share Us
His questions immediately transported Daryn back to that time. Some of the darkest days of her life. The memories threatened to choke her. But he needed to understand… Shelby—and Daryn.
“First, it goes no further than you and me.” She was trusting him with one of the worst nights of her life. She hoped she wasn’t making a mistake. She hoped he understood what she was about to give him. “It changed us, what happened that night. Inevitable, I guess.”
“You, too?”
“I was there. I just… wasn’t hurt as badly as she was.” Daryn fought the tears. Tonight… tonight would be enough to bring it back, of course. Bring it out of the box in which she’d shoved it. “Darrell found me in time that night to stop it. Then he went looking for Shelby. I’ll never forget what those men did to her. Men who should have protected her. And the ones who just watched. Darrell said they were still wearing their TSP uniforms.”
“Back up. I ran her name myself back then. There was no report with her name, just a traffic ticket. I know that.”
Bitterness she couldn’t contain filled her. She’d looked, too. And looked. There were still peoplelooking.“That’s because the men who attacked her—they wereTSP. She’d called a friend to come and get her. Because we got separated. On purpose. Because that was the game they played then. Luring unsuspecting college girls to their place for their version of fun and games. Not ours. Where they hurt them. I don’t know if they ever raped a woman, Mike. But that night… they could have. And Shelby had told themno. They didn’t like that at all. I got lucky. I got away after they separated us. After they hit me. I got into a closet and I hid until my brother came for me. But Shelby… she couldn’t.” Tears mingled with the rain. “Darrell couldn’t find her in that house, that crowd, right away.”
He stopped walking. “She was assaulted.”
“Yes, but not in the way you mean. But that was next on their agenda. I’m sure of it. Slapped, hit, the way they cut her. They never got her clothes off, but the damage was done anyway. She called Logan Lanning. He just lived right up the road and would have done anything for her. He loved her, I think. Her brother showed up a few minutes later. He helped me help Shelby. The stab wounds were superficial. She was barely even scarred. But the damage they did to her up here,” she touched her head. As she justremembered.Remembered the damage of that night, damage that could never fully go away. “She’s terrified of the TSP now. Like a conditioned response, with full-blown PTSD, I think. She used to shake and pale every time we saw a patrol officer walking by. She goes to therapy now, and it’s helped. She uses Logan’s money to hide. And you and Callum—you brought it all right back up again just when she had finally started to heal. I hated you both for that. For a long, long time.”
How could she not have? Shelby had finally started to heal, just to have the TSP swoop in and destroy her all over again. Her friend had deserved so much better.
12
Mike listenedto her words and fought fury. At the men responsible. He’d heard of those types of parties back when he had first hired on to the TSP. They’d been a popular pastime for a select handful of the uniformed officers. They’d been shut down fast once word had gotten back to the brass. He had been certain Daniel McKellen and Chief Blankenbaker had arrested the men responsible.
The entire side purpose of Major Crimes—the purpose most people didn’t know about—was to find that kind of corruption within their own ranks. To police the police. Even while solving the hardest and high-consequence crimes that plagued the city. To make it better.
“Who were they? What happened to them?”
“I’m not telling you names,” Daryn said, bluntly. “That will just cause trouble. For Shelby, for both of us. She doesn’t need it dragged back up. Neither of us does. I probably work with some of those men every day. And it terrifies me.”
It didn’t exactly sit that well with Mike, either. That someone had hurtherthat way—it just pissed him off. Made him want to make the jerks pay.
“Did you press charges?”
“Yes. We tried. I tried. My brother tried. But it kept getting buried, especially since we couldn’t identify the ones responsible. Not with the great blue wall. Until it was completely erased and they threatened Darrell to keep his mouth shut. Or his career was over. And we never even learned theirnames.”
“And Darrell just backed down? And you came to work at the TSP?”
“No. We finally had to give up identifying them, but Darrell and Zoey still work on the case sometimes. Zoey and I had to focus on healing Shelby. So… Darrell stepped in. He’s still looking, I think. We just don’t really talk about it. We’re just trying to get on with our lives.”
“He got a thing for her?” Mike asked. He could imagine it. He wasn’t blind. Daryn’s friend was flat-out drool-worthy gorgeous. Men would want her with just one look. She was the kind who stopped traffic when she walked by.
Mike had always preferred the cute pixie type, but he could see where Shelby Jacobson would make men into slathering idiots.
“No. I don’t think so. At least, he never said, and he was pretty hung up on Zo for a while there, I think. I think nothing came of that, either. Shelby has pushed men away completely since that day. I don’t blame her.”
No. Mike didn’t blame Shelby, either. But he wondered if the same could be said for the woman next to him. From every rumor he’d heard, Daryn was the one to end things with Naylor. And with Detective Lombard before that.
Gun shy? Literally. It made sense. He had read between the lines of what she was saying.
She’d been attacked that night, too. By TSP. By men thatMikemost likely represented whenever she looked at him.
No wonder she was so guarded and angry with him.
“Is Shelby ok now?” Was Daryn? Mike couldn’t stop himself from wrapping his fingers through hers as they walked. He wanted to pull her closer, but didn’t dare.
Daryn shook her head. “I am not sure. She’s stronger than she realizes, but… Darrell said that she needed to feel more control. So as soon as she had healed physically, he showed up on her doorstep. Argued with her older brother about what he was going to do with Shelby. Darrell was justtherewhen we needed him. Like Shelby’s brother and Logan were. The three of them sort of surrounded us for a while. I know people say Logan was a criminal, but he did a lot for Shelby, and me. I think he helped Zoey out once with some legal fees involving custody of her sister. Darrell basically dragged the both of us down to Garrity. Where he taught us what to do for Search & Rescue. I did not enjoy it at all—but Shelby did. She was considering going into S&R, Mike. Darrell wanted her to. But she didn’t want to work with the TSP. Around here, that was her only real option. She didn’t want to move away—not with her brother being her only relative. So she just practiced S&R with Darrell. Whenever she could. Until she inherited all that money from Logan Lanning, anyway.”
“And then Callum and I interrogated her. Hard.” Mike felt like a total ass. He hadn’t even considered what he had done that day to be that bad. He’d pressed hard, made a few wild accusations, said things to get the woman to trip up. Just like he would have any potential suspect. She never had. But he had been convinced back then… she had to be as guilty as Logan Lanning. Or she had known something she had kept back deliberately. “I was wrong.”
“You were. You were her nightmare personified.”
