by Dale Mayer
“I did,” he said. “She saw him out in the backyard earlier in the evening, casing the joint. I believe she texted you that already.”
Amos shook his head. “Stupid kids,” he said. He walked back into the hallway with the tools all in the bag now. He approached the kid, shook the bag. “Look at these. Rope too.”
“Not mine,” he said.
“Yeah, well, they’re not mine,” Laurie Ann said. “And you are so stupid to not even wear gloves. Like the detective said, they can get DNA off anything. So you can BS your way all you want, but you’re not getting out of this one now.”
“Honest,” he said, “I was told to bring them, but I didn’t know what to do with them. I’ve never fired a gun before.”
“Ah! So that’s why you left it there,” the detective said. “Why did you even bring it up?”
“Because I was told to.”
“From the boss?”
“Yeah, the boss, and you don’t argue with the boss.”
“Well, except that the boss is in the hospital,” she snapped. “You should be thinking for yourself.”
“Naw, he got out already.”
She groaned and turned toward the detective. “Seriously?”
Amos just shrugged and said, “The law works in mysterious ways sometimes.”
“Depends if you had anything to do with letting them out,” she said in an angry voice.
The detective glared back at her.
“Who the hell keeps me safe if you keep letting the animals out?”
“Well, hopefully this guy here,” the detective said, motioning at Kurt. Amos looked over at the punk. “And what about the hatchet?”
“Well, I brought that,” he confessed.
She stared at him. “What would you do with it?”
“Use it, if you gave me any trouble,” he said.
“I’m supposed to just what? Lie here and let you what? Beat me up? Rape me? Is that what you came for?”
He just stared at her and shrugged. “I was supposed to terrify you.”
“Well, you succeeded in doing that,” she snapped. “What about the rest?”
“If you gave me any resistance,” he confessed, “I was supposed to beat you up pretty good.”
“Keep me alive, or was that a secondary consideration? Especially considering you thought the hatchet was the tool for the job?”
He didn’t give any answer on that. “He just said to make sure that you’d never forget it.”
“How nice,” she said, her tone faint. She walked to where Kurt stood, Sabine as always at his side. He wrapped an arm around her and tucked her up close. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “We’ve got him now.”
“For how long?” she whispered. “Amos let them out last time too.”
“It’s not that I let them out. We must have enough to hold them,” the detective roared.
“And is this now enough?”
“Considering he brought a rope and a hatchet and God only knows what else,” he said, looking at the bag, “and we haven’t even checked him yet. Did you check his pockets?”
Kurt shook his head.
At that, the detective quickly checked the kid’s pockets. And what he found there made him even angrier. Handcuffs. What looked like drugs. He lifted the drugs to the guy’s face. “If this is a knockout drug,” he said, “you’re really going down.”
The kid started blubbering immediately. “I was just following orders,” he said.
“He was supposed to knock me out and then what?” she asked in a horrified voice.
He looked at her, shamefaced. “I was supposed to let them in.”
Chapter 11
Laurie Ann just couldn’t believe what she heard. She looked up at Kurt, but he held her close.
“Nice,” Kurt said. “Well, I hope you enjoy jail. I’ve got some friends over there. I’ll make sure I let them know that you’re fresh meat,” he said in a distant, hard voice.
The kid started crying. “No, no, no. You don’t understand. I can’t go to jail.”
Amos waved the bag and drugs. “Really? And how do you plan to stop it?” the detective asked. “Because this? … This is beyond a lark now,” he said. “This isn’t vandalism. This isn’t hoodlum bullshit.” He dumped the contents of the bag on the kid’s belly, causing some pain. “Now you’ve moved into the big-time. Congrats. An awful lot of jail time is in your future.”
And he hauled him to his feet and marched him downstairs. Laurie Ann sank down to the top step and stared as the detective led the punk out of her sight. She felt chills ramping up inside and working through her system. Immediately Kurt sat down, pulled her into his arms, and just held her. And then a wet nose pushed against her neck. She reached up a hand and gently stroked Sabine. “Hey, sweetie. How are you?” The dog nudged her closer, and the three of them just sat, curled up together.
“It’s been a really shitty night,” she said. “I don’t even know what to think about it. To realize just how close a call I had.”
“But luckily you didn’t suffer through any of that,” he said. “That’s the thing to remember. You were smart enough to call somebody who could help you.”
“What if I hadn’t?” she asked on a whisper. “What if Jeremy were here?” she asked, tilting her head back. “What if he’d woken up? Would they have killed him?”
He didn’t say anything, but she could read the answer in his face.
“My God,” she said, “I just …” and she fell silent.
“I know,” he said. “That level of violence is always shocking. When it’s directed at you, it’s always horrifying,” he said. “But you’re okay, and Jeremy wasn’t here, and we’re making it through this,” he said. “Hopefully, with any luck, all of this group will be taken care of.”
“I’m scared to hope …”
“Sure, but the cops gave them a chance. They let them out of jail, and they went straight for you,” he said. “The judge won’t let them out of jail again.”
“Really?” she said, “Somehow I’m afraid to believe in that.”
“Well, I can make some phone calls, let people know just what’s going on here,” he said, “and see if we can make sure they don’t get out. They don’t have an easy future in front of them regardless.”
“And right now I really don’t care,” she said. “They made those choices.”
“Just like I made the choices I made a long time ago,” he murmured.
She nodded. “And I get that, but you weren’t this bad.”
“No, but, if I’d stayed, I would have been.”
She thought about that for a long moment and then nodded. “I guess once you head down that path, it’s hard to back up, isn’t it?”
“It is, and you have to get out of it. That’s why I had to leave.”
“I always knew you had to leave, and I always understood that you felt you had to leave, but I have to admit there were times when I really didn’t want you to be the one who was leaving.”
“Of course not,” he said, “particularly once you found yourself pregnant.”
“Pregnant and nowhere to go,” she said with a laugh.
“I’ll have a talk with those parents of yours,” he said.
“Don’t bother,” she said. “It’s a waste of time and energy.”
“Well, rejection is a great teacher, isn’t it?”
“That’s one way to put it,” she said. “I really hated them for a long time, and then I realized how much energy it was to maintain that hate. So I let it go, like so much else in my world. I just let it go because I had to focus on the things that I needed to focus on, and that was to maintain my health so I could do right by my son.” She added, “Nothing else mattered.”
“And that’s what is important,” he said, “so good for you.”
“Maybe,” she said, “but now I’m sitting here, tired and exhausted, wondering just how much of any of this is important.”
“All of it. All of it. Rarel
y does anybody in their lifetime come across something like you’ve had to deal with tonight,” he said. “So let’s just hope it’s over with.”
She nodded. “Do we have to go down and deal with the cops?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “We’ll give statements, and we’ll go over the entire scenario and probably have to deal with forensics. I’m not sure.”
“Great,” she said. “So do you still have your motel room?”
He looked at her in surprise and then nodded.
“So what about us going to your place,” she said, “while the cops are all over this place?”
“That’s not a bad idea,” he said with a smile. “Let’s get you a small overnight bag,” he said. She quickly packed up a change of clothes, and then they walked downstairs.
The detective stopped, looked at the dog, and asked, “Is she safe?”
“She is. Sabine’s also the one who warned me tonight,” Kurt said.
The detective nodded. “Well, I’m glad that tonight ended well for you,” he said to Laurie Ann. “We need to get your statement. Then you can go someplace while forensics do their stuff in here.”
“And you will take a good measure of the place, even though nobody was killed, right?”
“Absolutely,” he said.
And this time she believed him. Something a whole lot more concerned and sincere was in his voice.
“I really don’t want to end up raped, murdered, or my son killed because nobody cared enough to stop this from happening.”
He nodded gently. “We’ve got them now. They won’t be getting out of this one.”
“I wonder if a good lawyer would get them out though?” Kurt asked.
“I don’t know,” Amos said. “Again, we catch them, and somehow they end up back on the streets, no matter how much work we put into it.”
And Kurt recognized that same frustration in Amos from before. “Not an easy job,” Kurt said.
“No, it isn’t,” Amos agreed. “About 99 percent of the time, these kids are just bad news and end up dead,” he said. “Every once in a while, we find one who escapes the gangs. But it takes us a while to figure out if that was a good thing or not.”
And no doubt he was staring at Kurt as he spoke those words.
“In my case, it’s a good thing,” Kurt said.
The detective just nodded and then motioned to one of his cops. “Go give him your statement and then get out of here,” he said. “I’ll let you know when we’re done.”
On that note, Laurie Ann and Kurt headed to the side, where the cops quickly took their statements, and then they were finally free to go. She looked at Kurt and asked, “Where’s your truck?”
“I parked it down the road,” he said. “I didn’t want anybody knowing I would be here.”
“Smart move,” she said.
“I’m just glad I was here,” he said. “I’d hate to think what would have happened if I hadn’t been.”
“And I don’t ever want to think about it again,” she said, “because I’ll never sleep again if I do.”
“Got it,” he said with half a smile. The three of them walked in silence as they finally reached his truck, hidden behind an empty house down the block.
They all got into the vehicle, and she watched in amazement as the dog curled up on the seat beside him. “She’s adopted you, hasn’t she?”
“You know what? I think she has,” he said. “Here I was thinking that I was rescuing her, but now I’m starting to realize she’s rescuing me.” And, on that cryptic note, he started the engine and drove toward the motel.
Kurt was still shaking inside at how close tonight had been. That’s the last ugliness to ever touch her, he swore. She was so sweet, so pure, compared to the life that he’d lived, that it bothered him tremendously to think that anything even close to that dirt could hit her life. And he couldn’t even imagine if his son had been there. Jeremy would have tried to protect his mom, and things would have gotten ugly very, very quickly. Not a comforting thought.
When they got to the motel, he brought the two of them inside and looked at the double bed and said, “We’ll have to share.”
“What? You won’t be chivalrous and offer to sleep on the floor now?”
“Tonight we both need sleep,” he said. “My nerves and senses will be dulled if I don’t.”
Immediately her smile fell off her face. “Are we not safe now?”
“We’re safer, yes. Are we out of danger? I’m not sure yet,” he said. “I want to make sure we have the full headcount of that lovely team locked up before I say yes.”
She nodded slowly, and then she walked to the bed, pulled the covers back, stripped down the outer layer of her clothing and laid down in the bed in her bra and panties.
He watched in amazement.
She looked at him, smiled, and said, “We came to sleep, so let’s sleep.”
Just like that, she curled up on one side of the bed and closed her eyes. He grabbed his phone and sent Badger several messages. It was early in the morning; he wouldn’t get them until he woke, but Kurt needed to send off as much of this information as he could. If nothing else, he wanted somebody on his side, just in case more trouble came.
He didn’t realize just how much having some friends, decent friends, made a difference in his world. Back then maybe he would have cultivated more friends if he had realized there was a benefit to them. That sounded cold, but it really meant he didn’t have the benefit of even understanding what a friend was, not until he had Laurie Ann in his life.
After that, everything had changed but not enough. Yet he also knew, inside his heart, that he hadn’t been ready for her. He wasn’t good enough. He needed to grow up and change and learn. He just hadn’t known what that meant. And now that he did, he was grateful for it. He just wished it could have been in half the time.
Exhausted, making sure that Sabine had a bed on the floor, he curled up in the bed. He was asleep almost instantly.
Chapter 12
Laurie Ann rolled over in the night to find herself up against a body. She moaned.
Kurt whispered, “It’s okay. Go back to sleep.”
Her eyes flew open, more awake now, and she stared at him. “How late is it?”
“It’s only five in the morning,” he said. “Sleep.”
She smiled, curled up against him, and said, “I’m really happy that we are together.”
“We could have a lot of time together, if we want it,” he said.
“I want it,” she said instantly. “I just don’t want to push you.”
“You always don’t want to push,” he said. “Maybe you should have pushed me a while ago.”
“Nope, you had to come on your own,” she said. “I have to admit I did look for you for a while, and then I realized you’d moved on, and I just had to live with it.”
“I’m sorry,” he said gently.
“I know,” she said. “I’m just sorrier for the time we missed.”
He looked down at her, leaned over, and kissed her gently. “And I don’t want to waste any more time,” he said. “I was a fool, but I was a young, naive fool. At least I knew what I needed to do to grow up.”
“And you did an admirable job of it,” she said. “I can’t believe it, but you’re even taller and bigger than before, even after your accident.”
“And yet I lost a lot through that healing process,” he said with a smile. “I was quite a bit bigger and heftier before I was injured.”
“Well, if it matters,” she said, “you can be that way again, but I don’t think it matters, does it?”
“Nope, it sure doesn’t,” he said, chuckling. He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close.
She could feel his erection between the two of them. She wiggled her hips slightly. “So just how much do you want to make up for lost time?”
“Well, I want to make up in a really bad way,” he said, gently rubbing his nose against hers. “But I don’t want to push.”
“You know what? Everybody warned me that you were this fly-by-night guy who just wanted to get in my pants. But even back then you didn’t push it,” she said. “I definitely had to force you.”
“It was your first time,” he said, “and I didn’t want you to feel pressured into it.”
“Which is also what made you so very different,” she said, chuckling. With her arms looped around his neck, she pressed her hips against his. “Besides, it feels very much like I have to force you back into this too.”
“Oh, hell, no,” he said, “I am totally okay to take the lead on this.”
“Are you sure?” she asked in a light tone. “It sounds to me like you’re awfully slow.”
He let out a bark of laughter, and he leaned over and kissed her like he meant it, like he’d been wanting to since he first saw her again. He could feel their passion immediately sucking him into that spiral that he’d never felt with anybody else since.
When she finally could breathe, she whispered, “I only ever have a kiss like that from you. That is the way it always was with you. I could forget anything and everything as soon as you touched me.”
“You think it was any different for me?” he asked. He smiled and kissed her and again, and very quickly it wasn’t enough, and little bits of clothing were tossed to the floor. The bedding joined them, and even Sabine sat up and looked at them curiously. When Kurt told her that it was all right and to lie back down again, she chose the pile of bedding and curled up and went to sleep.
Laurie Ann looked at Sabine, smiled, and said, “I guess we already have a ready-made family, don’t we?”
“Between Jeremy and Sabine, I would say so,” he said with a laugh. He stopped, stared down at her, his fingers tracing the stretch marks on her belly.
She immediately tried to cover them up.
He looked at her in surprise. “Those are not things to be ashamed of,” he said, his voice thickening. “To even imagine that my baby was in here.” He shook his head. “To see you ripening with my child,” he said, “I’m so sorry I missed that.”
“Me too,” she said. “It was one of the loneliest feelings in the world and yet, at the same time, one of the best because I could feel him inside me, and there was such an amazing bond, such an inherent connection that I never thought to ever have with a human being again,” she said. “Pregnancy was a very special emotional and physical relationship with Jeremy before he was even born.”