Page 74 of Colton's Secret Weapon
Pulling up outside the medical center the next afternoon, Mitchell was as tense as he ever got, due to the lack of firmly considered next steps.
Starting with Whaler’s homecoming.
He’d offered his home to the old sea captain and had been turned down. Not all that kindly. The man damn well didn’t need charity.
So Mitchell had paid for private security—all off-duty law enforcement—at least for the first twenty-four hours. Dove, who’d be staying at Whaler’s place, knew the officers would be inconspicuously watching her father’s property. Whaler did not.
She also had the head of command’s cell phone on speed dial—a phone that would be on-property at all times, held bywhoever was in charge any given hour. Had promised to push the speed dial icon every hour if need be. She was to report every single creak she heard in the floorboards. Even if it was because she was walking on it at the time.
Mitchell hadn’t yet decided where he’d be staying. Close, he knew that much. Probably sleeping in his car. No way he was going to his place outside of town—too far away.
And there was little likelihood that Whaler was going to stay home. The man was headed straight for a bottle. Probably starting with glasses of amber liquid poured from one for him while he sat on the stool that was as much home to him as his own bed.
Dove didn’t think so. She’d been adamant—with Mitchell during a phone call, and, according to her, with her father—that he was not leaving the house.
Nor was she going to let him undo the healing his body had worked so hard to do over the past week. Another couple of days and his liver would be completely detoxed. The rest, the mental and emotional healing, would take a lifetime.
She wasn’t looking that far ahead yet.
Which was why she couldn’t see what Mitchell already knew. Whaler had no desire to stay sober. Which meant she’d lost the battle before she’d even started to wage the war.
Seeing Whaler’s truck already in the parking lot, with Welding just climbing out of it, Mitchell parked and joined the detective. As already laid out, Welding would be catching a ride back to his own car with the officer currently on duty outside Whaler’s hospital room. After they led Whaler and Dove home, with Mitchell right behind the truck.
It wasn’t a great plan. Or even a good one. But it was the best they could do after Whaler’s very loud assertion that he had the right to make his own choices and he was damned well going home in his own truck.
How the man could be so confident that he’d be okay when he’d just spent days in the hospital after having been abducted and left for dead, Mitchell couldn’t even begin to understand.
The only thing that made sense was that Whaler just plain didn’t care if he lived or died. But he’d allowed the fact—mostly because it was the only way the doctor would release him, which was required in order for insurance to pay his medical bills—that he probably shouldn’t drive. Dove would be in the truck with him.
She’d readily agreed to the proposed entourage.
And didn’t yet know that Mitchell was financing all of the extra security. When she’d come to his office to hire him, she’d said she’d pay his bill, no matter the cost, on installments. There’d been no stipulations as to getting costs approved first. And it was up to him what line items he chose to include on that bill. As were any discounts he chose to offer.
If she thought the city was financing the locally employed police officers outside her father’s home, he could choose to just leave it that way, too.
All smaller aspects of the lack of solid planning that was making him so uneasy.
While Welding waited outside, watching the area, Mitchell went in to let Dove know that her father’s old truck was there and ready to go.
He walked up just in time to hear, “This is garbage! You’re nothing but a whiner. Always have been. I said I want you to drop me at the bar, and that’s exactly what you’re going to do.”
Dove had told him that the anger was to be expected. As heavy a drinker as Whaler had been, he’d be going through serious withdrawal. But hearing anyone talk to her as her father had just done…he had to make a conscientious effort to unclench his fist.
She’d told him during one of their conversations that her father had never spoken harshly to her growing up—except the time she’d been in the water without permission. And that she’d never heard him speak to her mother that way, either. Didn’t mean he hadn’t done. Only that he’d never verbally attacked his wife in front of their daughter.
Mitchell took a deep breath, trusting her version—that Whaler was in the throes of a medical situation and couldn’t be held accountable for his rage. And put a smile on his face as he played his part in getting all of them out of there.
Whaler followed instructions, keeping himself glued to his daughter, and climbed immediately into the passenger seat of his truck, allowing Welding to help him up.
And then, looking between Welding and Mitchell, who’d seen Dove to the driver’s seat, he said, “Thank you both. I’m sorry for being so much trouble.”
Mitchell nodded. Glanced at Dove in time to see tears brimming in her eyes, and as he was closing the truck door heard “I’m most sorry to you, my girl. I’m not myself.”
As he moved quickly to get into his own car and be ready to follow closely behind when Dove hit the gas, Mitchell was glad he hadn’t decked Bob St. James back in the hospital.
Once again, Dove had called the situation better than he had.
Because she was far better at winging through life than he was.
