Chapter Eighteen

Atlas

"Stop looking at me like I'm going to break," AJ demanded as I grabbed my keys, feeling like a fucking monster for even thinking about leaving her.

It was six days after the attack.

We'd been home together nonstop, thanks to her boss and coworkers who insisted she stay home and rest. And since the job kind of required the ability to use both of her hands in a pinch, she'd agreed to taking some time off.

As much as you need, her boss had been quick to demand. A few weeks, even a month or two. Just focus on you.

It was a good time for time off, too.

We were knee-deep in decorating and creating new little Christmas traditions. Movies we swore were worth watching every single year. Painting ornaments with the date on the back, then hanging them on the tree. Having a gingerbread house decorating competition. Going to the local live manger, then looking at Christmas lights on the way home.

I usually made it back to Navesink Bank for Christmas, knowing it would crush my family not to see me. But I didn't realize how much of the holiday spirit I'd really been missing out on when I wasn't observing traditions.

"We're not going to corrupt her," Fiona Mallick said, coming out of the kitchen with two mugs of ‘Boozy Hot Chocolate' and handing one to AJ. "Much," she added with a wink.

Oh, if there were any women in the world who were capable of corruption, it was these ones.

My sister.

Fiona, the former phone sex operator and current owner of a phone sex operator business.

Lea, Shane Mallick's wife, a former biker old lady.

Autumn Mallick, the proprietor of a sex toy store.

And Autumn's sister, Peyton. Who was married to an outlaw biker. Drove a hearse. And, so I heard, had a collection of alien and monster dildos that she would bring out and show to her friends.

I couldn't help but wonder if she had one in her giant bag.

And how the hell AJ would react to that batshit crazy shit.

The girls hadn't come over to ‘meet my girlfriend' and ‘have a girls night' like I'd claimed when I'd told AJ about them calling.

The fact of the matter was, I was going out.

And I might not be back until the morning.

I wanted someone with AJ. But bringing in my brothers or the Mallicks would immediately make her suspicious.

But the girls? With booze that meant they'd have to sleep over because they couldn't drive? That could work.

To AJ, I was going out with my brothers. And maybe we'd drink too much to drive too.

I hated lying to her.

But I didn't want her to know the truth.

"What did you find out?" I asked Kingston as I stepped into his office, finding not only my other brothers gathered, but the Mallicks as well.

Charlie Mallick, the patriarch of the family, the OG, included.

"What's this?" I asked, head cocked to the side.

"An option," Kingston said, nodding toward the Mallicks.

"Look," Charlie said, nodding at me. "I know your past. I know violence isn't in your nature. But me and mine?" he said, nodding toward his sons. "Violence is our job."

"Are you offering to kill Joss for me?" I asked, straightening.

"It wouldn't be my first kill," Shane said, shrugging. "Had to do something like this for my woman once. Dunno if you will be able to do it and sleep well at night. I wouldn't have a problem with it."

"This is my fight," I said, shaking my head.

"Atlas…" Kingston said, shaking his head.

"Would you kill for Savvy?" I asked, knowing the answer before he spoke it.

"Yes."

"So you get it."

"Killing in the moment, and tracking someone down to take them out in cold blood are different things," Charlie reasoned.

"Like he tracks her down? Like he beats the shit out of her? He almost killed her once. Beat her so bad she blacked out. Then kept fucking doing it over and over again after that."

"I don't think anyone here thinks the fucker deserves to live," Shane said. "We just don't know if you should be the one to do this. That's not the life you live."

He wasn't wrong.

I didn't hurt people.

I never had an urge to do so.

But it didn't feel right to put this off on someone else either.

"I got this," I said, shaking my head.

There was a gun in a bag in my trunk.

I was prepared to do what it took to get AJ safe.

The men shared a look, none of them liking my answer, but also understanding that it wasn't their place to stop me.

"Alright," Kingston said, sighing hard. "Last place I tracked his card to is a shitty short-term rental a couple of towns over. As far as I can tell, he hasn't gone back to his place yet," he said, rattling off an address, then giving me a printout of directions. Old fucking school.

"Where's your phone?" Kingston asked.

I handed it over.

"We'll create an alibi," he said, handing the phone to Rush, who nodded toward Ryan Mallick. "Here's your temporary one. Our numbers are all on the back of the directions, if you need backup."

"And here," Charlie said, handing me a single key on a ring. "You need a car without GPS," he explained.

"I'll bring your car to my place," King said. "And that's… everything," he said, face tight, not liking this.

"It's gonna be alright," I assured him. "Where am I driving this car after?" I asked.

"My house," Charlie said. "I will handle it from there."

There were a few more things said, but my mind was already on the task ahead, my adrenaline rushing through my veins, my memory flashing to AJ's sobs as she cried into my chest. The blood on her face. The bruise that was still on her cheek, just covered up with some heavy makeup, the pain that sliced across her face when she forgot about her bum wrist, and tried to do something with that hand.

As I climbed in the old clunker of a car, the whole radio ripped out, nothing but my own thoughts to keep me company, I went ahead and let my mind wander, to imagine all those times this bastard made AJ feel less than she was.

Calling her fat.

Telling her she was ugly.

Saying the way she was built made her look like a ‘slut.'

Making her kowtow and shrink into herself.

Then still, still, feeling the need to beat the ever-loving shit out of her.

To the point of unconsciousness.

I followed the directions, then parked my car a block away along with a bunch of others that must have belonged to some sort of holiday party.

No one saw me climbing out of the car, thin leather gloves on my hands. Even if they did, they'd have no idea there was a gun tucked in the waistband of my pants.

Or that I had revenge on my mind as I huddled into myself against the cold as I walked down the street, then up the driveway of the rental house.

It was a small cape-style house with chipped paint and cracked storm windows.

I inched around the back of the building, wondering if the owners had any cameras around.

I didn't see any outside, so I didn't imagine there'd be any inside either.

Reaching out, I tested the back door, finding it unlocked, and couldn't help but feel my adrenaline surge, wondering if it was a trap of some sort.

But it didn't seem like Joss was the kind of man who had weapons. Lord knows, he liked to use his bare hands on AJ.

Taking a steadying breath, my free hand going to my gun, I yanked it open, and rushed inside.

There was a strange scent in the house, something I couldn't quite place, but had me wrinkling my nose as I moved into a small kitchen.

It was a cramped space with canary-yellow cabinets and faded linoleum. The table was pressed up against the walls, and the table was scattered with bags, some of the contents scattered about.

Gauze.

Peroxide.

Ointment.

Painkillers.

For the stab wounds?

I took another breath, that strange scent stinging my nostrils again.

Almost hay-like

But we were inside. In the winter. Away from any sort of farm animals.

I'd never smelt anything like it before.

I turned away from the first aid supplies, creeping through the doorway from the kitchen, trying to be aware of any rooms or doorways where a man might be lying in wait, ready to fight.

All of that concern was for nothing, though.

Because as the low sound of a TV news program running met my ears, I laid eyes on the man who'd dared to try to break a woman as amazing as AJ.

He was a lot more… average than I'd imagined.

I guess I'd sort of figured that a guy who could take a girl as gorgeous as AJ was, then somehow slowly convince her she was anything short of perfect, would have had to be really attractive himself.

He just… wasn't.

He was shorter than I'd pictured, with a weak chin and a receding hairline that made the age difference between him and AJ all the more obvious.

But I didn't spend a lot of time analyzing his overall looks.

Because… the man was not in good shape.

I couldn't put my finger on what was wrong with him right away. He seemed sweaty and pale, with mottled skin and a chest that was rising and falling too quickly, considering he was just sprawled on a couch, and he was racked with chills, despite the sweat.

His eyes were open, but he didn't seem like he was seeing much, not even as I inched closer.

Between his lips came low moaning sounds.

Pain?

Disorientation?

Both?

The fuck was going on?

Was he high? Overdosing?

My gaze moved over him, seeing the white gauze wrapped around his upper arm where AJ'd stabbed him.

Nothing there seemed off.

But as my eyes found the gauze lower on his arm, I started to understand what was happening.

Because that gauze wasn't clean and white.

It was saturated in fluids in various shades. The red of dried blood. And the offensive yellow of infection.

My gaze shot back up, taking in the state of him all at once again with this new knowledge. And now knowing exactly what was going on.

He was septic.

From the dog bite.

And from the looks of things, he wasn't going to make it without immediate medical intervention. If even then.

I tucked the gun back away, knowing there was no way a man in his condition was going to be able to charge at me.

I realized as I watched the man for a moment that Kingston would be happy with this development. That my other siblings and the Mallicks would as well.

I didn't have to kill anyone.

I just… needed not to call an ambulance.

Time and his raging infection would do the job for me.

I wondered, though, if this would be worse for AJ. Finding out that the bite from her dog had killed her ex.

But it wasn't like Joss didn't have it coming.

And Samson had done what he'd needed to do to protect his owner.

It wasn't Samson's or AJ's fault that Joss hadn't sought out medical treatment. Or sufficiently cleaned the wound.

Everyone knew dogs' mouths were filthy.

Not getting treatment after a deep cut was just asking for trouble.

The kind that had clearly caught up with Joss. I moved around the living room, finding an open notebook set on a small table under the front window.

I flipped as much as my stupid leather gloves would allow, seeing a seemingly endless list of phone numbers. All of them but the last one with lines drawn through them.

Reaching for my phone, I snapped a picture of the page, wanting to know what those were about, then kept flipping through the notebook, but finding nothing else inside of it.

As Joss's breathing got more and more erratic, and his consciousness seemed to be slipping away from him, I moved through the house, finding his laptop, phone, and his tablet, then slipping them into one of the bags from the kitchen, not wanting anything in them to lead back to the doggy daycare or AJ. I tossed the notebook in for good measure.

Then I stood there and watched as the man slid from mere unconsciousness to complete stillness over the next several hours.

I pressed my gloved fingers into his neck, finding no pulse.

It was done.

He was gone.

He'd never hurt her again.

With that done, I made my way back to the car, then drove out of Navesink Bank to toss the tablet in one dumpster, and the laptop in another, the notebook, and, finally, the phone in a third, before making my way back to Charlie Mallick's house.

And, finally, calling Kingston.

He took all of five minutes to get there, rushing into Charlie's house with me, finding a fresh pot of coffee and some cinnamon rolls sitting there for us, evidence that Helen had been around, that she knew something was up, but that she'd likely gone to bed and left us to handle things from there.

"It's done?" Charlie asked, tone serious.

"He's gone," I admitted, seeing the discomfort slice across King's face. "I didn't have to do it."

"What do you mean?" he asked, stiffening.

"I mean that when you get several severe dog bites, you should probably seek medical attention. Not sit and let it fester for almost a week."

"He died from an infection?" King asked, shaking his head.

"I came in through the back, and there was a weird stench in the house. Like hay…"

"He was septic," Charlie said, nodding.

"Far gone, it seemed. He was only partially conscious. Then, little by little, he slipped away. I didn't have to do anything but wait. I found his laptop and tablet, took them, and tossed them in different locations. And I checked around for anything else that might lead back to AJ."

"They won't even dig that hard," Charlie said, knowing more about law enforcement, thanks to his long career, than we would likely ever learn. "Eventually, a cleaning crew or the owner of the rental will show up. They'll see him. Call the cops. The coroner will know that he died of an infected dog wound. No one is going to assume anything nefarious. Just a random death."

"Who are you calling?" King asked, suddenly tense again as I found the picture on my burner phone, then typed the number in, and set it on speaker on the table as it rang.

"You have reached Navesink Bank Animal Hospital. We will be open again at—"

I ended the call, seeing the curious looks of Kingston and Charlie.

"His notebook was fucking full of phone numbers, all of them crossed off. Except this one."

"He'd been calling vets," Kingston said. "Trying to find where Samson was being taken care of."

"But who would give that information away?" I asked.

"He was probably slick about it," Charlie said, reaching for a cinnamon roll. "Called each place saying he needed to know something like the vaccination record of his dog. Gave AJ's last name, then the dog's name. There's no reason the receptionist would think that's problematic. These aren't human medical records," he said.

I could see it.

The receptionist typing in the information, coming back with no information.

And then another number got crossed off in Joss's notebook.

"How many numbers were there?" King asked.

Fuck, who knew?

The notebook was college-ruled. That was, what, thirty-something lines on each page. There were dozens and dozens of pages with multiple rows, back and front.

"Thousands," I said.

"Christ, that's unhinged," Charlie said, shaking his head.

But it was the only way he could have found her. Because she'd made it impossible for him to find her the way she knew he would be most adept at doing so. With digital footprints.

It all came back to Samson.

The dog he'd bought her as an apology for beating her.

The dog who'd, inevitably, been the cause of his demise.

I owed that dog a big steak.

"What are you going to tell AJ?" Kingston asked, getting up to pour us each a mug of coffee, and bringing it back to the table.

"I don't know," I admitted. "I'll figure it out."