Err on the Side of Violence: Terribly Acronymed Detective Club Series (Book 3)

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Joe, Summer, 1999

When Joe thought back on his night while sitting on the hard metal bench in the holding cell of the Vancouver Police Department, he decided what he'd experienced was his first Incredible Hulk moment. 

He considered it a source of pride that he didn't have one until he was thirty-three years old, that he'd held his fury in check through all of his childhood and teenage years; he'd conducted his life as Dr. Banner even though he had the height and strength of his childhood hero. 

Even when he'd pushed over Mr. Trybek while he'd been screaming and gripping his bleeding groin, he didn't think that counted, because at the time he hadn't angry, he'd been scared to death of what the bigger man might do to them all if he'd recovered from Lauren slicing his dick off, and at the time Mr. Trybek had been an obstacle blocking the doorway into the living room, and they'd had to get through him to get to Rachel.

He didn't think his football years counted either because, as a defensive tackle, it had been his job to push, hit and take opponents down. It was sanctioned violence, but it was also violence with a set of rules and prescribed penalties for breaking those rules. Those years on the gridiron might have actually helped him channel the urge to smash, because he felt a marked reduction of rage when the game was over and he was showered and changed, and when he came home to Lauren he felt loose, relaxed and ready for love, which was exactly how she wanted him.

He thought he might have refrained from violence all these years because he'd been so afraid of the hurt he might have caused, the damage he might have done. What pleased him about the moment he'd finally given in to his rage was that he didn't regret it at all, that the object of his violence was a rapist, and that he'd knocked him out to protect his wife. It was the most primal thing he'd ever done, and if he hadn't been almost immediately led away in handcuffs he might have led Lauren to a quiet place in the nightclub, lifted her little dress over her head, and done to her what the older man had clearly been intending to do himself. The way Lauren had looked at him after he'd laid him out, her breath quick and her face flush, he thought she was thinking the same thing; her husband had fought another man for her and won, it was pure biology, natural selection.

He shuddered when he remembered Lauren had seriously considered going to the nightclub alone. She'd gone there to entrap a man his wife thought was cheating on her, picking up young Asian women in nightclubs and bringing them to his apartment in town when he told his wife he was working late. 

Lauren had risen quickly through the ranks at Justiciar, ditching the security guard work as soon as she was able to obtain her P.I. license, and this case was her biggest opportunity to make a name for herself in the firm; most of her work up to that point had been simple surveillance, while this was that rare opportunity to engage with a target to secure a result. If anyone could do it, she could; she'd been chosen to engage the target because, of all the investigators at the firm, she most closely fit his type. 

She dressed for the occasion in a little black dress with spaghetti straps and a hem that rose above her knees; her mission was seduction. Attached to the dress, blending in with the many sequins decorating it, was a tiny camera, and it was recording the whole time she talked with him. Maybe it saw the silver-haired man spiking her drink, but it didn't look like she did. 

When Joe, who'd been watching her like a hawk from as far away as he could safely see her without tipping off the target, spotted the fucker doing it, everything else in the nightclub disappeared, and everything went quiet. His vision tunnelled until all he saw was the high table, the tall stools, Lauren sitting in the one, luckily not touching her drink yet, and the man whose action had been akin to waving a red cape at a charging bull. He wasn't even aware he'd left his own stool at the bar and begun using his legs; all he knew was that the objects in his tunnel vision grew closer and closer, until he was nearly upon them, and Lauren sensed him and turned his way, her eyes widening in alarm when she saw the look on his face.