LENNON HAD ONE hell of a shiner at practice. I only wished I’d done more damage than I had. I couldn’t help but notice that his hands were kind of swollen, too. I didn’t remember doing anything to him that would have caused it, but maybe he’d hurt them while trying to remove my fingers from his throat. Served the bastard right if that was the reason for the damage. I hoped it was due to something I’d done to him and not due to something he’d done to Natalie after they’d gone home.
The coaches called him in after practice was over for a meeting, presumably to find out what the hell he’d been doing to get a black eye. He’d been known to party and get into bar fights while out on the town with his previous team, so no doubt they were doing damage control. The team’s owners wouldn’t be happy about this because the behavior of the guys on the team would reflect on them.
I wasn’t worried that he’d tell them I was the one who’d caused it. He’d have to explain why I’d done it, and that was the last thing a son of a bitch like Lennon would want. Abusers liked to keep their abuse quiet.
The rest of the boys called him Haymaker. I had been, too.
That was before.
Now that I knew he threw haymakers at women just for the hell of it, for fun, for sport, or however the hell he thought of it, I wasn’t inclined to call him anything but Dirtbag, Piece of Shit, or Toe Scum.
Even those seemed too good for him.
I showered and got dressed to head home after briefly stopping in to request a meeting with the coaches and the general manager. I still hadn’t quite decided what I intended to ask of them—whether I wanted to be traded or if I would insist on Lennon being shipped out or something else—but I’d have time to think about it. My meeting couldn’t be arranged for a couple more days.
Either way, I had no intention of remaining on a team with this motherfucker. One of us had to go, and I wasn’t overly particular which one it was. I couldn’t fight as part of a team alongside someone like him.
Carter had spent the morning with Tallie and Harper Fielding, our starting goaltender’s wife and daughter. I’d promised I’d take him out for ice cream when I picked him up. We had a date for burgers and ice cream at Braum’s this afternoon—not somewhere I normally ate, but whatever. Carter liked it, and I liked to make my kid happy, so we were going. At least their burgers were good, for fast food.
On the way out of the building, I turned on my cell phone so I could shoot Tallie a text that I was on my way. Once it powered up, I heard the familiar ding signaling a message. With any luck, that didn’t mean Carter had been acting like a little shit today.
I tossed my gym bag into the trunk and got in the car to blast the AC before looking.
Then my heart stopped.
911 Nat showed up from an unfamiliar number.
It had to be from Natalie. And she’d sent it four fucking hours ago.
But Lennon, the scumbag, had been at practice, the same as I had been.
I didn’t understand. Not at all.
Maybe he’d beat her up again this morning before leaving the house? Maybe she hoped I could get to her before he came home?
I didn’t know.
I tapped out a quick reply: U ok? and sent it.
No response.
I forced myself to wait another minute or two.
Still nothing.
Fuck.
I slammed the car into reverse, backed out, and took off. I pressed and held the button for Siri. “Send a text message to Tallie Fielding,” I said.
“Okay, composing a text message for Tallie Fielding,” Siri replied. “What should it say?”
“Can you keep Carter for a while? Emergency situation came up.”
Siri repeated the message back to me and then I had her send it. I didn’t even bother with waiting for Tallie to respond. She wouldn’t mind. I knew it. And even if she did, this was quite possibly a life-or-death situation. She’d understand once I had a chance to explain it to her.
My house was on the way to Lennon’s place. I stopped, raced inside, unlocked the safe, grabbed my handgun, made sure it was loaded before I could second-guess myself, and jumped back into the car.
It seemed as if every light turned red on my way. I’d never been prone to road rage before, but I found myself blaring on my car horn and swerving to get around vehicles that wouldn’t move the fuck out of my way.
Finally got there. Two cars were parked at the curb, neither of them Lennon’s.
Slammed my car into park, left the engine running, and raced to the door.
Unlocked. Thank fuck for that.
I cocked the gun, threw open the door, and rushed inside.
No one in the living room, but it was a mess, clothes strewn everywhere and furniture disheveled.
And some blood on the floors and the couch.
It looked like a fucking crime scene. I’d seen shit like this before, back when I was a kid. I’d been on the receiving end of beatings that left messes like this—but the clothes being everywhere was something new.
It turned my stomach.
Motherfucker. I should’ve killed the bastard last night. Should’ve tossed Natalie over my shoulder and put her in the car even though she didn’t want to go with me. Taking her home with me last night, protecting her against her will, would’ve been better than this.
Coming from upstairs, I heard a muffled moan along with the familiar, rhythmic thumping of a bed hitting the wall.
I flew up the stairs.
The sounds were coming from the bedroom at the end of the hall, the one with the door closed. I braced myself for whatever I might find in there, flung it open, and nearly lost my shit.
Natalie was covered in cuts and bruises, not to mention the two bastards who were raping her, one above and the other below. They didn’t even look up when I came in, a tangle of grunts and limbs. Maybe they’d just expected me to be Lennon coming to join the party, so they didn’t bother to stop their fun.
They had a phone set up on a goddamned tripod, filming everything they were doing.
Thinking fast, I grabbed the phone in my left hand and kept it trained on them, holding my gun steady in my right. “Get off her,” I bit off.
“The fuck?” the one on the top of the pile said. He turned red, bleary, stoned eyes my way. The second he registered the gun, he jumped up and fled to the side of the room. “Jase, stop, man.”
The other guy finally caught on and shimmied out from under Natalie’s bruised and broken body, his hands in the air where I could see them.
They both had some blood on their bodies.
Her blood.
Goddamned motherfucking raping sons of bitches.
I ought to kill them both. My finger itched to squeeze the trigger.
But death was too good for them.
Natalie moaned again.
I couldn’t tell if she was aware of what was going on around her. Couldn’t spare the time to check her out more fully because I couldn’t afford to lose focus on the two bastards who’d raped and beaten her bloody.
Besides, Lennon could show up any minute.
I was a big dude, and I had a gun, but I also had a battered woman to get out of there. With three of them against just one of me, I could easily be overpowered. I had to get Natalie out of there. I couldn’t risk her safety.
“Down on the floor,” I said to the raping bastards. “Hands behind your backs.”
They complied, even though they kept up a litany of threats and curses, so I propped the camera back on the tripod, focused it on them, and grabbed a pair of jeans from the floor. It had a belt still looped around it, so I used the belt to secure the first guy’s wrists behind him and the jeans to tie up the other guy. There were some dirty socks nearby, which I shoved into their mouths. It took every ounce of restraint I possessed not to kick the shit out of them, but no matter how much I wanted to kill them, no matter how much they deserved to die, I couldn’t afford to do that right now.
Besides, with the cell phone video, I had plenty of evidence.
Once I was reasonably certain they were secure, I gingerly wrapped Natalie’s broken body in a blanket and picked her up. She whimpered, and her eyes were swollen shut. She didn’t have enough strength to hold on to me, her body limp in my arms. I only hoped I wasn’t hurting her worse, but that couldn’t be helped. I had to get her out of here.
“I’ve got you,” I assured her. “It’s Ethan. You’re going to be safe now.” I would make sure of it.
Since her rapists were tied up, I shifted my grip on Natalie so I could carry her over one shoulder, even though I knew it had to hurt her. Then I engaged the safety on my gun and shoved it into my pocket so I could grab the cell phone that had been recording everything on my way out. I wanted as much evidence as I could possibly get my hands on.
Natalie moaned again when I set her in the passenger seat of my car.
“I know it hurts. I’m so sorry,” I said, gingerly fastening the seat belt around her. “It’ll be better soon. It’s all going to be better soon.”
Because that son of a bitch would never lay another finger on her again. Not if I had anything to say about it.
Once I had her secured in my car, I rushed around to the driver’s side and took off for the hospital, calling the police on the way.