The Sleuth Will Set You Free - A Gallagher Girls Story

Chapter Fifteen

"Shirt off, Goode.  You know the drill."

"Shouldn't you buy me dinner first?"

"Hilarious.  Now come on.  I've got three more appointments after this."

"You're seeing other women?  Doctor Jasons, I must say, I am truly heartbroken."

He rolled his eyes and it was impossible not to notice that he was leaving my jokes in the dust.  "I'm not a doctor, I'm a medic.  Shirt off."

"Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed today," I muttered, stripping myself of my official Gallagher uniform.  My shoulder groaned with the movement still tight from the other night.  When Scout saw it, he cut me a look, but then he helped pull.

I had gotten used to watching Scout work.  I could usually see him through the mirrors on the other side of the room, watching as his brows crinkled and his tongue poked his cheek.  He was so determined—so focused.  Like the entire world had fallen apart in those few minutes and he was going to glue it back together again.

Sometimes I could convince myself that he was working on another girl, separate and safer than myself, but when I felt a sting, the girl in the mirror flinched, reminding me that she and I were one in the same.  "Did that hurt?" he asked, snapping his eyes up at me.  "That shouldn't have hurt."

"It's nothing," I said, which wasn't the truth, but it felt like the right answer.

It wasn't.  "Don't say that," he said, his voice taking on the sort of impatience that came with repeating himself a hundred times.  "Nothing is nothing, okay?  If you have so much as a mildly uncomfortable hangnail, I want to know about it."

"Well, for the record, I'm hangnail free."

"This is serious, Maggie," he snapped, and I saw something crackling beneath his surface.  The pops of a fire, just starting to spark.  "What have you been doing to yourself?  I told you to stay away from upper body activity.  Push-ups, pull-ups, handstands, Yoakum maneuvers—"

"Then it's a good thing I didn't do any of that, isn't it?" I said, and it was the truth.  I hadn't done a single one of those things.

"The only other thing that could have caused this was some sort of high-impact hit," he told me.  My heart skipped a beat.  "Something way stronger than what a person could have done.  Something like guns, Maggie, and that's obviously not it, so tell me what you're doing and I can help you."

"I didn't do anything, Scout."

"You're lying to me," he said, bitter.  "Which sucks, because I was under the impression that we didn't pull that crap with each other.  Guess I was wrong."

Guilt.  It had been an overused tactic from everyone lately, and so it slid right off me.  "It didn't even hurt that bad," I grumbled.

"You know, Maggie," he said.  "Back when I was in spy school they told me that you have to tell a few truths if you want anyone to believe your lies.  It's a lesson that would serve you well.  I don't know what you did to yourself, but it's earned you another week on the bench."

"So you're punishing me now?  That's what this is?"

His words were louder than I'd ever heard before, the flame finally roaring.  "When are you going to get that some people just want to help?  That the people who care about you aren't out to destroy you after all?  When are you going to get that through your thick skull, Goode?"  The words stung, harsher than any old cut in my back, especially coming from him.  "What if you had reopened the wound?  Or worse, what if you only reopened one layer, and then I'd have to cut through the other perfectly healthy ones just to fix you up.  Did you think about that?"