Page 29 of Third Wheel

“Hi,” Cassidy said quietly, stepping forward and bringing her hand up to meet Lincoln’s and shaking it. “I’m sorry about this.”

Behind Lincoln, David raised his eyebrow, and Kincaid scowled at him. Not that David noticed. He was too busy giving Cassidy a once over, as though he was trying to figure her out. As if Kincaid hadn’t sent an entire file over about her.

“It’s not your fault,” Lincoln reassured her, patting her hand. “And we’re going to keep you safe. This is David. He’s my team captain.” Lincoln turned slightly, gesturing to David and dropping Cassidy’s hand as he did so. David did not step forward to shake her hand, his hands were firmly in his pant pockets as he gave her a nod. A civil nod, not a friendly one. Kincaid would have to have a talk with him. “He’s going to help you get settled.”

“We’ve found a place for you to stay with some housemates, so your name won’t be on the lease,” David said briskly. If he was aware of Kincaid’s glare, he didn’t show it, his entire focus on Cassidy. Well, at least that was how it was supposed to be. “You’ll have to find a job yourself, but Jennifer… you met Jennifer? Okay, Jennifer has bookmarked a bunch of listings you might be interested in. The first three months of your rent have been paid for, so you have a bit of time before you have to look.”

Cassidy nodded, keeping her gaze averted from David’s, as though she sensed the same thing Kincaid did—the man wasn’t particularly friendly to her. Though he didn’t need to be friendly in order to protect her, Kincaid would prefer that she was surrounded by friendly faces.

“Who is she going to be living with?” he asked.

“One of our team, the youngest, but he’s solid, so don’t worry about that,” David replied. “He has a housemate, and they had an empty room. The house has a solid security system, and Jensen knows that as long as she’s there, he’ll be spending every night there. If something comes up where he’s unable to, another team member will take his place.”

The drawling way he ran down the list made it clear that he thought this was excessive. Kincaid scowled at him.

“Good. If Don figures out where she is and follows her up here, you’ll need to warn Jensen that he may become a target, too. Several members of our club had strange things happening to them, along with the escalation directed at Cassidy.” Kincaid put his hand on the small of her back to reassure her. He knew she felt guilty about how Don had started harassing not just her but the people she knew, the people who were protecting her.

Right now, he wouldn’t object to David receiving a little harassment if it meant he stopped acting like this was no big deal. Cassidy was extremely sensitive to emotions, and from the way she was shrinking in on herself, he could tell that David’s demeanor was affecting her.

Maybe Lincoln could, too, because he stepped in.

“Okay, Cassidy, why don’t I take you around to meet the rest of the team?” Lincoln turned slightly, away from David, offering his arm. “We’ll let Kincaid and David talk through any further details, then Jensen will take you to the house to get settled in.”

From David’s scowl, Kincaid assumed that had not been the original plan. He would be willing to bet good money that Lincoln had asked his team leader to take care of that. So, at least Lincoln wasn’t blind to David’s attitude, and he was taking steps to prevent it from affecting Cassidy.

As soon as the two were down the hall and out of earshot, Kincaid lit into David.

“What the hell is your problem?”

“Excuse me?” David had been watching Lincoln and Cassidy walk away, and now he turned back to Kincaid with a glare. Behind him, Jennifer was looking down at whatever was on her desk—either not listening or doing a very good job of pretending she wasn’t.

“What. Is. Your. Problem.” Kincaid repeated, enunciating each word and biting it off at the end. “Don’t act like there isn’t one. Even Lincoln noticed your shitty attitude because I betyou were supposed to give Cassidy the tour and take her to the house. Otherwise, there was no point in you being here to meet her.”

David scowled even harder, obviously not liking having it pointed out that his boss had subtly reprimanded him by taking him off the duty he’d originally been assigned. Well, too bad. Kincaid wasn’t going to let him get away with making Cassidy feel worse than she already did, and he was glad to see that Lincoln was on the same page.

“There was no point in me being here, anyway. First of all, what’s the likelihood of her ex following her up here? And secondly, if it was that high, why the hell didn’t she report him to the police?”

“You know why. I put all of that in the report unless, of course, you didn’t read the report.”

“Of course, I read the report,” David snapped. “I read all about how your little club tried to handle everything themselves instead of filing a report, just so she could save some face and not have to admit that she was at a BDSM club when the incident happened. Did any of you think about what happens after that? What if he had left her alone and gone to do exactly the same thing to someone else, all because she didn’t file an actual report, and he faced no real consequences?”

The heated anger that filled Kincaid’s chest had very little to do with David’s question and far more to do with the reality of the situation—a reality David clearly didn’t understand. While Kincaid might find that frustrating, even angering in this day and age, it was nothing compared to the rage he felt about how the system worked.

“And you think he would have faced real consequences if she’d filed a report?” he snapped back. “There’s a fifty percent chance—hell, probably even more—that if she tried to file a report, the officer would hear BDSM club and immediately writeher off. Or tell her that there’s no point because, obviously, she invited that kind of treatment. If she gets lucky and gets someone who takes her seriously and takes the report, all those things will come up in court and worse. Any attorney would go through her entire sexual history to make her out to be some sort of slut, on record, then he’d walk away scot-free.”

“But at least there would be a record for future women,” David insisted, though his vehemence had dropped a few notches. “That way, if they look him up, they’ll know.”

“He’s blackballed from every BDSM club in a four-state radius. Any submissive who tries to go to a club with him will immediately find out, and most of the people who choose to throw house parties rather than go to the clubs have some kind of connection to those in the know, so they’ve been warned, too. Not to mention, several of our submissives had taken it upon themselves to watch the dating apps and FetLife in case he pops up there.”

With every sentence, David wilted a little more, but it wasn’t enough for Kincaid. He wanted this point hammered home if he was going to leave Cassidy under Black Fox’s care.

“We can’t protect everyone, but we did our best, and as a former police officer, I can tell you that we did far more than they would have. And we protected Cassidy, which is now your job, and if you’d rather throw her to the wolves, if you don’t care what reporting and a trial would have put her through as a person, and you only care about some hypothetical future women—which, by the way, would have still had to look him up and then believe what they found—then I’ll ask Lincoln to assign her to someone else.

“She already feels guilty as hell for what he’s been putting her friends through, on top of her fear for herself. She doesn’t need your self-righteous bullshit over a situation that you would never, ever find yourself in and therefore could never fullyempathize with or know what you would do if it did happen to you.”

Applause sounded from behind David, making both of them jump. David spun around to stare at Jennifer, who was now standing behind her desk, hands high in the air as she clapped. Her fierce gaze was focused on the redheaded team leader, whose shoulders sagged even further.

“You tell him, Kincaid.”

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