This Trophy Isn't Real Love

Chapter 16

There's one of the security guards Jack is more familiar with, watching the door of the room Matty directed him to when he approaches. Her hand twitches towards her radio, and there's a slight crease that appears in her forehead. Jack is smart enough - and savvy enough when it comes to reading people - to know what this means, what she's evaluating him for, what kind of threat she's decided he poses. He walks right up to the door itself, the woman's hand settling solidly on the body of her radio as he does.

"I need to be allowed in there," he says, voice granting no room for negotiation.

"Dalton…" she hesitates anyway. He gets it, he really does, but he doesn't have time for this.

"You know who that is?" Jack asks, and she nods. "And you know why he's here?"

"Not exactly, but I can guess." Her voice is grim, and Jack knows they walked past her in the lobby, the day Mac showed up with that black eye. It's not hard to put together, now that she's been instructed to guard Mac's father in a holding cell.

"Right. Then you know why I need a word with him." He holds up a hand to forestall what she's about to say, the objection he's sure she's going to lodge. "I just want to talk. Trust me, I know what's at stake if I give the guy the beatdown everybody seems to think I'm gonna. I won't. I just have some things I need to say to him. I won't walk outta there leaving him with one more mark than he had when I walked in, but I've gotta go in there. Okay?"

The security guard gives in maybe easier than Jack would deem wise, were he approaching the scenario as an uninvolved, objective observer. She doesn't seem to be too deeply invested in absolutely guaranteeing James' safety. She's done her due diligence and won't go a step further, and that makes Jack inclined to believe she's guessed if not exactly what happened, then at least pretty close to it.

"You can't keep me here," is the first thing James says when Jack walks into the interrogation room. He's sitting back in his chair with an arrogant arch to his chin, the chain of the handcuffs securing him to the table pulled just taut enough to visually display his annoyance with their presence. Not hard enough to hurt, though, Jack observes. Not that James had held the same concern for his son's wrists. The ghostly imprint of his hands around them had been visible in dark bloom on Mac's skin as he turned the steering wheel in the car that morning.

This thought doesn't help Jack's words come out civil, though civility is not a priority he holds in high regard when it comes to James. Not any more. It had been, in the beginning, but the right to that courtesy disappeared the first time James raised his hand against Mac, used his words to cut Mac down, to manipulate or intimidate him.

"The hell we can't," he snaps, coming to a standstill across the table. He finds he doesn't have it in him to take a seat, to sit in a chair across from the man responsible for the insecurity he's seen in Mac since the day they met, responsible for the acute pain the kid's in now. James is a smart man, he couldn't have missed the weight Mac carried around with him. He'd seen the damage, and then re-broke Mac's heart again along the fault lines, and Jack can't sit across from him like he's an equal. So instead he stands, arms folded, and studies James.

Normally, he would find some amount of satisfaction in the bruise on the man's jaw, the evidence of the right hook Jack had delivered yesterday. Normally, though, he wouldn't have the memory of how that punch had been delivered in the process of interrupting the man while he'd been hurting Jack's partner, wouldn't have the mental image of a bruise inked in the same place on Mac's face, superimposed over James' whenever Jack blinks. Satisfaction is not something he is going to find in this room today, but that isn't what he came for.