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 that what he'd experienced was his first Incredible Hulk moment. 

He considered it a source of pride that he hadn't had 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 the man had been screaming and gripping his bleeding groin, he didn't think that counted, because at the time he hadn't been 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'd felt a marked reduction of rage at the end of each game. 

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'd obtained 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'd dressed for the occasion in a little black dress with spaghetti straps and a hem that rose above her knees; her mission, after all, was to be a honey trap. Attached to the dress, blending in with the many sequins decorating it, was a tiny camera, and it had been recording the whole time she'd talked with him. Maybe it had seen the silver-haired man spiking her drink, but it didn't look like she had. 

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, had spotted the fucker doing it, everything else in the nightclub had disappeared, and everything had gone quiet. His vision had tunnelled until all he'd seen 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 hadn't even been aware that he'd left his own stool at the bar and begun using his legs; all he'd known was that the objects in his tunnel vision had grown closer and closer, until he'd been nearly upon them, and Lauren had sensed him and turned his way, her eyes widening in alarm when she'd seen the look on his face.

He also hadn't been aware his brain had signalled to his hands, but they'd moved anyway, and one of them had balled into a fist and swung at the man's face. The blow had probably broken his jaw and sent him flying off his stool, his fall softened by the surrounding dancers. If his head had made contact with the hard floor, he might have died, and Joe would be in much worse trouble, but instead, he'd slumped, unconscious, into the arms of the frightened men and women who'd witnessed the assault.

Joe had picked up the glass of evidence and raised it high above his head to protect it from all the jostling that had followed, shouting, "He spiked her drink!" to the bouncers who'd taken him away. The glass and its contents had made its way into the hands of the police, and Joe hoped it would prove he was right and justify his use of force. It still might not be enough. The man might press charges anyway, or sue. Shit. That was one thing he'd never considered. They could be ruined financially, him, Lauren and the firm.

Still, if he were given the chance to go back in time and do something different, he probably wouldn't have taken it. First, he'd been prejudiced against this older man, who stylized himself as a bit of a silver fox, a pathetic lech trying to recapture his youth by sleeping with younger women. Joe hoped someone would shoot him if he ever became so ridiculous. Second, he'd been seething inside, watching this man flirt with his wife, as if he would ever have had the chance to score with someone as beautiful, exciting, smart and brave as Lauren if they hadn't been in this engineered encounter; his hands had clenched and unclenched as if throttling the man over a distance, like Darth Vader using the force to choke one of his underlings.

And then. Then. The quick flit of the hand while Lauren had been looking somewhere else, distracted by something he'd done or said. The quick shake over her glass. And Joe had known. He'd known.

He might have shouted Lauren's name as he'd approached, but his voice had been drowned out by the music pounding in his head like a jackhammer. The music had stopped with the suddenness of a car crash as soon as he'd thrown that punch, though, and that had satisfied him almost as much as the punch had. 

The door to the holding area opened, and a constable moseyed over to his cell in that way police did when wearing too much equipment on their belts. "We're letting you go for now," he said. "You'll have a notice to appear before a judge on a possible assault charge. You should be lucky your wife is corroborating your story." The look on his face made Joe think the constable was holding back from saying you're lucky you have a hot wife in a tiny dress pleading for your release.

"I count myself lucky every day I'm married to her," he said as the constable slid the door open.

He patiently endured in reverse all the steps he'd gone through being admitted to the jail: signing forms, getting his wallet, keys and cellular phone back. The only thing he couldn't do was get his fingerprints out of their database now that they were in, or get his mugshot untaken. He was officially in their system, and it would take a bit of luck to get himself out.

It was early morning already, he could see as he looked out the glass front door. The new sun was softening the edges created by harsh fluorescent lights. Lauren waited for him in the lobby, slumped in a hard chair, dozing, the hem of her dress riding dangerously high, her thighs attracting the eyes of cops and criminals alike. His heart swelled in his chest at the sight of her, and the protective instinct that had driven him to break a man's jaw returned with a vengeance, and he glared at anyone who was looking their way, forcing their gazes away as if with his will.

She blinked awake, sensing someone looming over her, and looked up at him, smiling dreamily. "Hey, babe."

He pulled her out of her chair and lifted her into a hug. "I'm so glad you're okay," he said, feeling tears prickle his eyes. 

"I'm fine, Joe," she said, or coughed, as he might have been squeezing her tighter than he should, and he relaxed a little but didn't let go. "I'm more worried about you."

"Me?" he said incredulously. "You could have been drugged, maybe raped."

She sighed and nodded. "In retrospect, I'm happy you came, and a little embarrassed I didn't catch him in the act. "

"He was a sneaky bugger. His distraction was very subtle. I have to wonder if he learned magic tricks when he was a kid, you know, sleight of hand. The spike was so fast I almost doubted my own eyes. Almost."

"So, you erred on the side of violence."

"Yeah," he said sheepishly. "It's about all I've got, isn't it."

"You're a big man, babe. You could have been roughed up by the bouncers or the cops if they saw you as a threat."

"I was as meek as a lamb as soon as they put their hands on me. My rage evaporated as soon as I laid him out."

"Thank goodness for that. The last thing we want is to have resisting arrest added to the charges."

He put her back down and asked, "So, you were able to bail me out?"

"Well, it was recognizance, since this was your first offence, and after I explained the circumstances, they had reason to believe you might have used justifiable force. This is all still up to a judge to decide, though, so be the very picture of contrition when you're arraigned. Once they test the drink they might have evidence to exonerate you. I also gave them the camera, so hopefully it caught him spiking the drink. I had to endure some leers and laughter at my expense when I told them I was a P.I. entrapping a target, but it was worth it in the end."

"I'm sorry I put you through that."

She looked up at him thoughtfully. "You know what? I'm not. The fact that he spiked my drink changes the whole narrative, doesn't it. Maybe he's not a serial cheater that his wife can take to the cleaners, but a serial rapist who might have done this to other women, and more successfully, because they didn't have a guardian angel looking out for them like I did. If the police find the evidence in that drink, hopefully they'll go looking for more, maybe in that apartment he's supposed to have."

He shook his head in amazement. "Babe, you're the smartest, cleverest person I know. You should have been a detective in the VPD."

She shook her head sadly. "It would have killed my father. What I do is more interesting, anyway. This was the most excitement I've had in years." She bunched up his shirt in her hands and pulled him to her, and she was so surprisingly strong that he actually stumbled forward. She leaned in and spoke, low and sultry. "You can't believe how horny you made me when you laid him out."

"I think I saw," he said, smiling. "Why don't I take you home, and you can enact your rescue fantasy on me."

She nodded, biting her lip, and began pulling him to the door, his shirt still bunched in her fist. 

That might have been the night, or day, because it was morning, that they conceived Naomi, because nine months later she arrived, their little miracle after two heartbreaking miscarriages that had made Lauren seriously consider giving up entirely. It was a lucky coincidence that she wasn't back on the pill yet when he took her home that morning, and she rode him until he couldn't remember his name.

Maybe it was that biological imperative he'd considered earlier from the comfort of his jail cell. Maybe, by flattening a potential competitor for reproduction, Lauren's body rewarded his DNA by allowing it to mingle with hers and finally, finally, create a viable offspring. Maybe he'd just had to fight for her to prove to Mother Nature that his genes were favourable, that a child born of them would flourish and thrive.

If that was true, then he had to blame himself for not fighting for her, those dark years she'd had the miscarriages. He hadn't defended her against his parents, who'd not so subtly suggested it had been her use of the pill that had diminished her chances of having a baby now; his Catholic guilt over their use of contraception had prevented him from taking her side against them. 

He'd taken her love for granted because he'd always had it, and pushed the limits of it without her knowledge: staying out late at his job or at the bar with his brother, while Lauren had been doing surveillance work at night; flirting with women in the bar, taking their numbers, throwing them away before he got home. It had been familiar to him, because he'd done the same thing in high school, gently discouraging the Italian princesses because he'd had his love waiting for him back home in Queensborough, but secretly thrilled at the attention. Not that he'd ever felt himself tempted; Lauren had been all he'd ever wanted. 

Until Joanie. That had been where Joe had failed Lauren the most. Those wedding albums had gotten a lot of views from him when they conceivably should have been collecting dust by now. He didn't think Lauren had noticed, because he'd only looked at them while she'd been out at work. But his infidelity must have imprinted itself in his DNA, because God, or fate, had deemed it fit to punish him by hurting his wife, by flushing her fetus out of her twice in a terrifying flow of blood that had sent her both times to the hospital and nearly taken her from him. He wouldn't have been able to forgive himself if she'd died trying to carry his child because he hadn't been the best husband he could have been.

So, he'd made himself do better. The wedding albums had stayed on the shelf, he'd gone home at quitting time to see her before she went to work, and God or fate had rewarded him by putting him in the position to be there for Lauren when she'd needed him most; if he hadn't come home on time that evening, she might have gone to that job alone without telling him, and she might have ended up being raped or worse in a lonely apartment downtown. He'd proved himself, finally, by witnessing what the rapist had done and thwarting his plan before he could enact it. 

When Naomi arrived, he was the best husband and father he could be, because Joanie was so far from his mind that she'd almost disappeared.

And he would have stayed that way, if she'd never responded to a call made from a construction site in Aldergrove twelve years later.

Thanks for reading this far! If you read the last novel in this series, you'd know I wrote a little of this scene from Lauren's point of view, but isn't it interesting to see how both of them viewed her miscarriages so differently? For Lauren, it was a hereditary condition she inherited from her mother, and if she'd been pregnant at the time of this case, she might not have gotten the assignment and distinguished herself in the eyes of the firm, maybe not even made partner. For Joe, the miscarriages were his fault, as if his worth as a man were connected to Lauren's ability to carry a child to term; egotistical, yes, and I wanted to make Joe a little bit of a dick, just to distinguish himself from Al, who's so unassuming and easygoing. Not every one of the LSDC has to be likeable; they are human after all, and one could argue Rachel and Lauren, and Al, aren't blameless either. 

If you liked what you just read, hit "Vote" to send this title up the ranks. If something doesn't ring true about drink spiking, arrest and bail, leave a comment. I strive for authenticity. Now, to see how one pair of goggles can begin to sow the seeds of suspicion, click on "Continue reading."