Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 69772 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69772 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Then he told me what happened.
“I’m sorry, but what?”
“We hurt the girl,” my senior officer, my right-hand man, said. “Ameer got the door open with the ram, and the girl was coming out with a packed bag. She was caught with the door, and then she was knocked backward about five feet.”
The visual that gave me made the bile churn in my stomach. “Is she okay?”
Nobody answered me, but Assman started to speak.
“Then Elliette went all fuckin’ nutso on her and slammed her back into the ground, causing the cut on her forehead to open up more,” Assman said, sounding pissed as hell.
Well, he wasn’t anywhere near as mad as I was.
“She did what?” I asked.
“She cuffed her when she tried to get up and save a plate that her grandmother made,” Assman said. “She was screaming about her grandmother’s plates, and not about how she was being brutalized.”
I closed my eyes as horror washed over me.
A long time ago, before she’d retired, Shayne’s Nonna had made pottery.
When they’d made the move from Italy, only a few of her original pieces had made it over.
Shayne had worshipped those plates.
I swallowed the bile that threatened to come up following that statement.
“Then what happened?” I rasped, the words feeling like they were burning my throat.
Boseman gave me the rest of the story, almost reluctantly.
“She’s unhinged,” Assman muttered when Boseman had finished. “I’ve never seen an officer act like that.”
I looked to my father as he came to stand in the doorway, not knowing what to do.
“She’s been put on administrative leave…” he paused. “And I’ll be letting her know as soon as we can find her. She never made it to my office. Came back here, did all the right things, then disappeared when we had a couple of rowdy drunks come in.”
I whipped my head around to stare at Boseman. “Where is she?”
“She left,” Boseman hesitated. “After Assman pissed her off and called her out on her shit.”
“And why didn’t you call her out on her shit?” I snarled, my extremities literally shaking.
Boseman eyed the exit, and I knew that I was making him uncomfortable.
“I was dealing with the brother,” he admitted. “And she didn’t cry out in pain or anything every time Elliette hit her, so I didn’t know what was happening at first. When we came in, I hadn’t even realized that she’d been hit by the door. My sole focus was Costas because he tried to run from me. I was busy subduing him, and only when Costas yelled about us hurting her did I notice that she was on the floor with Elliette.”
Horrified thoughts started to fill me.
When I’d first learned that Shayne couldn’t feel pain, I’d thought it pretty cool. Until the one night we were out to eat, she’d stumbled on a rock, and had started to tip over onto her backside.
I’d caught her, and we’d walked for a bit longer before she said she was having trouble walking. Not because it hurt, but because she kept hearing the bones in her ankle crunch.
Low and behold, after getting her to the hospital to get her ankle checked out, we found out that not only had she hurt herself and didn’t know it—continuing to walk on it for another fifteen minutes—but it was so badly broken that she had to have surgery on it.
From that point forward, I made sure to always be aware of her and her body.
I closed my eyes.
She hadn’t cried out at all as Elliette had assaulted her.
“She can’t feel pain,” my dad said to Boseman. “Her not crying out wasn’t because her body wasn’t experiencing pain, it was that her wires are crossed, and she physically can’t ascertain what pain feels like.”
“I pulled Elliette off of her,” Assman babbled rapidly. “Then so did Ameer. She wasn’t listening to any of us.”
He was wringing his hands, clearly just as uncomfortable.
“Where’s Ameer?” I shifted my neck from side to side, trying to alleviate the tension already building there.
“With Shayne at the hospital,” Assman crossed his arms over his chest, clearly pissed still. “I asked him to stay with her.”
“Hospital.” I tried to steady my breathing, but it was clear that I wasn’t going to accomplish that without laying eyes on her and making sure she was okay.
I drew a deep breath, trying to contain my rage.
Surprise, surprise. It didn’t work.
I gritted my teeth before turning back toward my father. “I’m leaving for the rest of the day.” I paused in my stride toward my desk and looked at the men in the room one by one. “Find her,” I growled to no one in particular. “Before I do.”
“Understood,” Dad said. “It’s already cleared with the chief. You have the next week off.”
I nodded once, then finally collected all my things before heading out the door.