Page 54 of Protected By West
Myles and Duval made it onto the deck with the rest of them.
"Goats?" Myles looked around at the group. "Stubborn nature." He pointed a finger at Duval who was standing beside him. "He's stubborn and gruff, too. He can be Goat."
Duval shoved him and he stumbled back, laughing as he went. "Can you read?"
Jack leaned over to look at Duval's shirt. She pointed at his chest. "Where'd you get that?"
Duval pointed at the picnic table. "It was on the table with the pens and-"
Jack lifted up not one, but two middle fingers in his direction.
"I lived with my grandma in Florida for a while. Around Jacksonville. So that's one reason people called me that. When I was in the academy one of our instructors had a bone to pick with me, something about a bad fucking attitude."
Tracy kept her smile as hidden as she could.
"When something went wrong, even when I wasn't responsible, he'd look at the group and yelled, 'Where's that guy from Duval!"
Tracy nodded in understanding. "Over time it just shrunk down to 'Duval.'"
Duval folded his arms across his chest. "If you ask my mom, she would say that it was destined from my first name."
Dally was the one to say it. "McCrae."
Fox added in the rest, dusting off her long hidden Western knowledge. "Robert Duvall played Gus McCrae on Lonesome Dove."
"I thought that was Steve Zahn." Oxy looked back and forth. "Right?"
Fox answered again. "When the other guy was played by Karl Urban, yeah. But, Robert Duvall was with Tommy Lee Jones, I think."
Tracy's memories were starting to pop up again and she didn't like the feelings that were coming up with them, so she tried to move the conversation slightly. "So what's your last name?"
Duval pulled up a chair and sat in the gap between Oxy and Dally. "King."
That made her smile. "Like the King Ranch?"
"Like," Duval replied, "but not closely related."
Jack reached into the cooler and pulled out a couple bottles of water, handing one to the State Trooper before she turned back to Duval. "Any relation to Sloane King?"
Tracy's interest was piqued. She'd heard about the socialite who'd formed charities to help women and children in need.
Duval lifted a hand and twisted it back and forth. "Sort of. Distant, I think. We've met a time or two at events where they needed security."
"Ah..." Tracy grinned at that. "She sounds pretty cool."
Jack took a sip of her water and then cupped the bottle in her hands. "When I can fit it in with my other jobs, I teach self-defense at a few of the Women’s Centers."
After she said the words, she looked like she wanted to shrink into herself.
What little she knew about the deputy, Tracy couldn't see Jack being anything but the bold and brassy person that she'd met a few hours before.
Jaclyn, or 'Jack,' as people seemed to call her, was the kind of woman that Tracy liked seeing in movies. Princess Leia? Ripley? Those are the characters she'd been thinking about as she watched Jack do some drills with the other Rangers.
Seeking to put a close to this conversation, Tracy leaned on the edge of the table to talk to Jack. "Could we pay you to come to the Credit Union and teach us some self-defense skills?"
Jack slid a glance over at Weston who'd walked up to the other end of the table.
"You want to handle this, Boss?"
