Page 37 of Marlin's Faith

“Call us if anything happens!” Hope called and I returned my eyes back to the blonde siren with the jewel bright eyes.

“You know I will,” I muttered and played the opening chords of one of my old favorite Stones songs.

Faith was still standing by the fire, around two down from ours, talking to the college pretty boy. I watched as she hugged herself, and laughed at something he’d said. A moment later he returned with a couple of cups. They talked, she occasionally sipped, and it all seemed like pretty normal stuff.

I glanced down for half a second and when I looked up again, I could tell something was very wrong. Faith dropped her cup and had her arm out. She had looked down and away from the dude but her hand was out as if to ward him off. I was on my feet, passing my guitar into Hossler’s hands and striding around the fire before he could even reach for her. When his hand closed around her wrist and before her first indistinct shout, I had broken into a run, brothers falling in beside me and hot on my heels.

I was barely a few paces away when she opened her mouth a second time and cried out for me,“Marlin!”

“Nothing!” I snapped out to the nearest brother beside me and he moved forward.

“I got her, take care of him,” he said.

“You’re mine, asshole!”

Nothing pulled Faith away from the little cockbite trying to take her, and I was on him. His little fucking frat buddies started to move in, but all of ‘em were just as quick to step back when the rest of the club got there. I grabbed the little worm, cocked back and while his hands went around my wrist to keep me from choking the shit out of him, I let fly right into his smirking prettyboy face.

I dropped his ass, grounded and pounded him, and didn’t let up until Faith’s panicked shrieking voice broke through the angry haze of red that’d fallen over my vision.

“Help me! Marlin!”

I got off the man-child, moaning and crying like a little bitch in the sand and went to her. Nothing let her go and she lurched forward and away from him right into my arms; her soft, lithe form folding in against me and fuck it all, she was meant to be there. I put my arms around her and held her close.

“I’ve got you, Baby Girl. Arms up, around my neck; that’s it.”

She complied, sweetly, and with complete and total, well, faith in me that I knew exactly what my next move needed to be. I was taking her home,myhome, where I could watch her. Where I could be sure to protect her. She sobbed into the side of my neck as I made strides in the direction of the Marina.

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” her words were slurred around the edges and my suspicions were pretty much confirmed. It happened out here all the time and I should have seen it coming; fuckin’ college spring breakers and their fuckin’ date rape shit. Drug a girl’s drink, get it on… motherfucker! I kept a lid on

“Shhh, you’re good, Baby, I’ve got you. I promised you, no one would ever hurt you again; I meant it. You’re okay now.”

I talked to her, all the way back to the Scarlett Ann. When I got to my boat, I let Nothing and Radar board ahead of me. Faith had become so much dead weight in my arms when I’d hit the steps up to the Marina’s lot, my anger about her having been drugged reached boiling point all over again. I stuffed it down, there weren’t nothing I could do about it except seethe but I could do that, so I did it well. Nothing reached down for her, and him being the closest thing to our resident medic, I handed her up to him before boarding myself.

“Radar, let the Captain and Hope know what’s up,” I ordered.

“On it,” the compact Hispanic man bolted up the dock and took the shortcut, hopping across moored boats, rather than going the long way around up and down the rows of docks separating mine and Cutter’s slips.

Hossler handed me up my guitar and I set it aside and went where Nothing had gone, taking Faith to my quarters below decks. I entered my cabin which was sizeable enough you could walk around the queen sized bed with room to spare. He’d set her on it and was taking her pulse. Satisfied, he went about peeling back her eyelids and shining a pen light into them that had appeared from somewhere out of the inside of his cut.

“What’s the word?”

“If I had to guess its GHB or one of its siblings. Can’t know for sure without a blood draw and testing equipment I just don’t have the access to. That shit ain’t something the town, let alone me, has on hand. That’s why we got such a problem with these fuckers doin’ it here. Good news is, that the shit they use for this kind of thing is fast metabolizing. She’ll wake up thirsty, with a headache maybe… probably with some memory loss for sure.”

“Damn, I hope this don’t set her back.”

“Hard to say, Man. Hard to say.”

“You might want to bail before Hope and the Captain get here.”

“Cops are going to be on this for sure, Dude. You beat the brakes off that happy bastard in front of a lot of people, and you could smell the money.”

“Fuck if I care.”

“Yeah, me either, I’m sure the Captain’ll sort it out.”

“What am I sorting out?” Cutter demanded.

Nothing sighed, and gestured that Cutter had probably best follow him and get the full meal deal, because right on the Captain’s heels was his woman. Hope burst into the room like a hurricane, the energy rolling off her, the air crackling with her rage.

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