Chapter Twelve

Lincoln

I look over the faces of the guests, who are eating as soon as Raleigh and I step through the door to the restaurant. It doesn’t take long before I spot her friend whom I’d met at the party the night that I’d met Raleigh. But, to my surprise, I find the face of someone that I hadn’t expected to see sitting at the table across from her.
“What the fuck?” I mutter, then gently shove at Raleigh’s shoulder to get her moving. “Come on,” I tell her and then reach down and grasp hold of her hand before leading her over to the table that has both her friend and her date.
“Avett!” I growl, my anger making his name come out sharper than I had meant, but if what her friend suspects is true and he did spike her drink, he and I are about to have words.
At the sound of his name, Avett looks away from Raleigh’s pretty friend and up to me. I can tell the moment that he realizes who I am because all the color bleeds from his face.
I smirk at him, folding my arms across my chest as he stutters, “W-what the fuck, man?” Then quickly stands up, almost tripping over the chair before righting himself, puffing out his chest, and squaring up to me as if he wants to fight me. As if he could take me.
I catch Raleigh’s friend getting up from her seat out of the corner of my eye, then watch, not fully taking my attention from the guy in front of me as Raleigh wraps her arms around the girl and begins talking to her as she leads her away from Avett and out of the restaurant.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I ask him, placing my hand on his shoulder and squeezing at the pressure point, letting him know not to fuck around with me and feed me some sort of bullshit.
“What do you mean? I’m just out on a date with a girl that I met at a party,” he says with a shrug, then grins and snaps and points his index finger at me, “Actually, I think I met her at the same party where you met the girl that you have with you. I guess they’re friends.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” I growl, tightening my grip on his shoulder and making him cower, trying to ease the pain I’m causing him. “Did you slip something into her fucking drink?”
His eyes widen at the mention of that, realizing that I know what he did, even though he had thought that neither she nor anyone else had known.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I ask, then demand, “Put some cash on the table to cover your drinks. If you hadn’t figured it out already, your date is over.”
He awkwardly reaches into his back pocket, pulls out his wallet, fishes out a few bills, and then throws them onto the table. As soon as he does, I use the grasp that I have on his shoulder to guide him through the rest of the diners and towards the front of the building until we’re stepping back through the entrance. As soon as we are out the door, I throw him up against the window and then punch the fucker in the face.
“Do you not remember what fucking happened to Sabrina? Or how that affected Bos?” Then a thought occurs to me, “Did you fucking have something to do with that shit?” I ask with another punch to his face.
“Fu—” he starts, but quickly covers his mouth and nose, cutting himself off. “Fuck, Lincoln! No!” He manages to mutter through his hands. “I didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Sabrina.”
“But, yet you think it’s okay to drug someone?” I throw another punch at him, but he puts his hands up, blocking me. He pushes away from the window and finally defends himself, but I’m too pissed off to stop now. “What were you going to do?” I growl, putting both of my hands up and out at my sides. “Were you going to take advantage of her?” I ask as he comes at me, dodging his punch and following through with another one of my own, clocking him in the side of the head as I ask, “Were you going to fucking rape her?”
He doesn’t get the chance to answer though, because he ends up falling to the ground from the force of the blow, somehow landing with his arm under his head, so that his fucking head doesn’t bust open.
I can hear sirens heading this way and I glance around, looking for Raleigh and her friend, whose name I can’t even fucking remember, as I wait for them to arrive. Finally spotting them off a little way, I turn back to Avett and with a glare shout, “Don’t you fucking move!” Then, I make my way over to them, wiping my bloody hands on my shirt.
“Are you okay?” I ask the girl as soon as I stop in front of them, then wrap my arms around Raleigh and pull her into my chest, planting a chaste kiss against her hair.
“I-I think so,” Serenity mutters as she wraps her arms around herself, whether it’s because of the chill in the air or for comfort, I’m not sure. “I’m shaken up and disgusted that someone would do such a thing, but I think I’m okay.”
“Okay,” I say with a nod, then look down at my girl, then back over at Serenity. “The cops are on their way and are going to want to talk with all of us. Do you think you guys can do that?”
“Yeah,” Raleigh replies, then glances over at the girl and asks, “Ser?”
“Yeah, I’ll be okay. Whatever I’ve got to do,” she says with a nod but doesn’t look or sound convincing in the least.
“I’m sorry. I never thought that Avett would do something like that,” I tell Serenity, Raleigh’s nickname for her triggering the memory of being introduced to her, and release Raleigh just as the first police car shows up.
Looking over to where I left Avett, I’m happy to see that he listened and stayed put. “He’s over here,” I tell the officer that gets out of the car, and then separate myself from the girls to make my way back over to Avett, getting there at the same time as the officer.
“So,” the officer says, hooking his hands on his hips and casting glances back and forth between me and Avett, no doubt taking in my bloody hands and his battered appearance. “Would you boys like to explain what’s happened here, or do I need to draw my own conclusions?”
*His own conclusions? What the fuck?* I think, wondering who the hell this guy is and why he would think it’s even acceptable to say, let alone do, something like that.
“He was out on a date with that girl, Serenity, over there,” I say, pointing in the direction of the girls when I say Serenity’s name. Officer Dumbass looks over at the girls and turns back to us with a raised brow and a smirk on his face.
“Nice,” he says, nodding at Avett.
“Right?” Avett agrees with a chuckle.
“What the fuck?” I snarl because surely this guy isn’t a real cop. Who the fuck does he think he is to act so unprofessionally. “What’s your name again?” I ask, looking at his upper right breast area for his badge.
“Officer McNulty.” Officer Dumbass says with a grin and a tip of his hat. “I’d like to speak with another officer and you can bet your ass that I’ll be filing a complaint about your lack of professionalism, *Officer* McNulty,” I say, putting emphasis on the officer part, considering he’s acting like anything but an officer of the law at the moment.
“Is there a problem here?” Another older, officer asks as he steps up to the three of us. *Rodriguez*, I think, taking note of the name on his badge.
“This guy,” I say, once more indicating to Avett with a nod of my head, “Tried to drug his date. And Officer McNulty here seems to think that *date rape* is a fucking joke.”
“What?” McNulty shouts, looking taken aback. “You said nothing about date rape!”
“I would have if you hadn’t been so busy ogling the girl that he tried to drug!” I growl, pinning him with a disgusted glare.
“Shit,” McNulty curses under his breath at the same time that Officer Rodriguez’s eye bug out, his face turns red and he shouts, “He did *what*?”
When he realizes how loudly he shouted, he looks around at the people surrounding us and pulls a notepad and pen from his dress shirt breast pocket, and says, “He did what now?”
I go through everything that happened with Avett and Serenity, Avett and I, and Officer Dumbasses' part in this whole fucked up ordeal and by the time I’m done, Rodriguez is putting Avett in handcuffs and casting a very disappointed look at McNulty.
“I overheard what was going on inside and saved their glasses,” a waiter says as he steps up next to the four of us as Rodriguez hauls Avett to his feet.
Rodriguez looks at his subordinate and barks, “Do something useful and go gather the evidence and for fucks sake, wear gloves and try not to fuck *that* up too.”
“Yes, Sir,” McNulty says before following the waiter inside, as I hear him ask, “Do you have a plastic storage bag I can use to put the evidence in?”
Just then, another middle-aged cop approaches us with Raleigh and Serenity walking just ahead of him.
He nods at Rodriguez and then takes Avett from him and heads toward a cruiser. We all watch in silence as the cop opens the back driver's side door and places his hand on Avetts head and puts him in the backseat.
“I’m really sorry about *everything*,” Rodriguez says, pulling our attention away from the retreating cruiser and back to him. He takes in all three of us, and then with a look of determination, he nods at us and continues, “We will do our best to make sure that he doesn’t get away with this.”
Serenity just nods, her hand still clutching ahold of Raleigh's. He turns his attention back to me and hands me a card that I hadn’t seen him pull out and says, “If there is anything more that any of you remember or think of, please let me know.”
I take the card, thank him, and then pull both girls into my arms for comfort.
I place a chaste kiss against Raleigh's head and say, “Let's get out of here, yeah?”