Then my mind turned back to the scene. The horrible fucking scene.
I’d killed him, but how the fuck was I supposed to know that was a fake goddamned gun?
“I’m not a fucking mind reader or precognitive. I can’t look through the gun he was holding in his hands and see that it was plastic! All I saw was the black gun pointed at my face and I reacted,” I explained, much more calmly than I felt.
“The gun?” the Chief asked.
I nodded, pointing to the weapon that was still lying next to the man’s dead body.
“I told him to drop it. I fucking told him!” I ground out.
The Chief raised his hand in a calming gesture. “I know. Now. From the beginning, tell me what happened.”
I lifted my hands, scrubbing my head with my tired fingers.
“I arrived on scene with Downy. We’d gotten a report from a neighbor that a man had a gun pointed at his wife in the front yard. When we got here, he did indeed have a gun,” I sighed. “Downy and I both ordered him to put it down. When he refused, the wife ran forward and got in his face. When he pushed her away, he turned the gun on us, and I fired.”
The Chief’s muttered, “fuck” didn’t really make me feel any better, either.
We both knew it was about to become a shit storm of mass proportions.
And two hours later, when I found myself in a meeting discussing the event, I was anything but better.
“Officer Roberts?” the IA (Internal Affairs) bitch asked. “Can you tell us why you didn’t use your Taser?”
I suppressed my growl of frustration.
“I’m an officer of the law. I’ve been an officer for six years. On the Kilgore PD for five of those. I was a Marine for nine years. I’ve been on the opposite end of a gun more times than I can count. And none of those times did I ever think of pulling a Taser. First off, when I have a gun pointed at me, I’m not going to Taser him; I wouldn’t be within range. Secondly, a Taser makes muscles contract. If I shoot him with the Taser and his finger’s on the trigger, there’s a very high possibility that he’ll get a shot off before I can take him down,” I explained through clenched teeth.
The woman came off as quite a bitch.
I’d never seen her before, and I didn’t care to see her ever again.
I doubted she’d ever been in the field as an officer of the law. Any right-minded officer wouldn’t have bothered asking a stupid question like the one she’d just asked.
I really wanted to go the fuck home.
I’d had a bad fucking night, and this was the last thing I wanted to do was sit in a meeting with an IA, the chief of police, the fire chief, the two first responders, Downy, and myself.
“And why didn’t you shoot him in the leg or arm? Surely you could have done something…anything better than what you did,” the IA asked.
My fists clenched, and I saw Downy wince. He knew my temper just as well as anyone, and this bitch was getting on everyone’s last nerve.
“Have you ever shot a gun before, Ms. Dion?” I asked calmly.
She nodded. “Yes, I have.”
She sounded offended that I’d asked but fuck her.
“When you’re shooting at a target, are there legs on the target?” I asked.
She blinked, thinking about it. “No.”
I nodded. “Right. Well, the reason that is, is because when you’re in a situation where you’re shooting at a live person, most likely due to a volatile situation, you aim for the biggest part of the body. That’s center mass. The reason being is that I could miss. Or wherever I shot them at, say the leg, will only pissed them off and they’ll shoot me anyway. Which was what I was trying to avoid.”
Ms. Dion nodded her head at my explanation. “Okay, well that’s all I have for you tonight. You may go. Y’all too,” she said, pointing to Downy, as well as the first responders, Tai Stoker and Drew Dillon. Both firefighters with the Kilgore Fire Department.
“Don’t go far, Roberts. I want to speak with you after we get done,” the Chief ordered tiredly.
I nodded, walking out with Dillon and Tai, I barely managed to control the urge to slam the door like a temperamental child.
Barely.
I only just managed to make it into the hallway before I was kicking the metal trashcan in the middle with such force that trash spewed like confetti.
The bull pen turned to witness the act, surprise evident on all of their faces.
It was a sight to behold, me getting mad.
I wasn’t one to lose my temper in front of others, so if it happened in a room full of my colleagues and people I respected, it was big, and they knew it.
“I loved the part where she asked me why I didn’t get the body off the street faster,” Tai said, flabbergasted.
I’d liked that one, too.
In Texas, paramedics weren’t allowed to pronounce someone ‘dead.’ They had to have the Justice of The Peace come out and pronounce the person dead. From there, he’d take them to the mortuary, or morgue.
Paramedics, although capable, weren’t supposed to pronounce death.
They could say that the patient had injuries ‘incompatible with life,’ but they couldn’t do the actual pronouncing.
Drew snorted. “My favorite part was when she asked why there wasn’t any EMS on scene. How many times has the chief drilled into our heads, ‘scene safety?’ It’s at least every other shift.”
They also wouldn’t stay on scene if they were of no use.
They couldn’t do anything. Not if they wanted to uphold the integrity of the crime scene.
Downy rumbled his agreement, but I left, not really wanting to be around anyone at that moment.
I knew I was about to be put on administrative leave pending investigation. I also knew an appointment with the force’s psychiatrist was on the agenda.
It’d at least be paid leave, if nothing else.
When Drew and Dillon hung a left out the front doors of the station, Downy followed me to my office, and sat in the chair across from my desk.
He didn’t say anything, and I was grateful.
An hour later, I was dotting my last ‘i’ on the report when I realized that it was nearly thirty minutes after school let out.
“Fuck!” I said, standing up and rounding the desk. “I forgot Katerina.”
Downy stood at my uttered oath, and he nodded. “I’ll tell the Chief what you’re doing.”
“Thank you,” I said hastily, practically running out the door.
Why hadn’t they called?
My question was answered minutes later when I pulled up in front of the school, parking in the fire lane, and found my girl playing hop-scotch with a smaller brown-haired girl who looked exactly like her mother in the fenced off playground.
Reese was sitting on the bench in the playground, watching her two charges with a small smile on her face.
A little bit of my anxiety over the day seemed to release at the sight of the two innocent girls. Their outlook on life. How a simple game of hop-scotch made them so happy.
I walked slowly up to the chain link fence, stopping slightly to the side of the bench Reese was on, and leaned my elbows against the metal bar. Grasping the chain link with both hands.
“Thank you,” I said.
I sounded tired, even to myself.
She smiled over her shoulder at me, her pretty, wavy hair falling over her shoulder and brushing the back of the bench.
“She’s good with Rowen. Rowen’s a little hellion, but Katerina handles her perfectly,” Reese said
I nodded. “Katy plays well with everyone. She’s got a vast range of kids she plays with. My friends all have kids of varying ages. How old is Rowen?”
“Five. She started kindergarten this year,” she said, laughing at Rowen when she missed two boxes, skipping over them completely in her quest to get through the game as fast as Katy could.
I found myself smiling, too.
“My sister’s got a six-year-old boy, and a three-year-old little girl. A couple of my friends have five-year-olds. She’s a social girl,” I said, shaking my head. “I have no idea where she gets it, because I’m not.”
She grinned at me. “I can tell. But you’ve done well raising her. She’s got impeccable manners.”
I raised my brows. “Damn straight. I’d not tolerate anything less from her.”
She stood and came to stand by the fence.
Today she was in Spiderman scrubs.
“Do you have a thing for Superheroes?” I asked.
She placed her hands in her pockets and looked down at her shirt. “Yeah, kind of. I used to work in cardiology at Christus Health in Shreveport. They allowed us to wear what we wanted, and I generally gravitated to these because they were uplifting. That floor was a killer.”
I’m sure it was. It didn’t sound like a fun floor to me.
Then she did something unexpected.
Moving fully into my vision, she stared into my eyes as she wrapped her hands around mine, as much as the chain link allowed.
“Are you okay?” she whispered.
I blinked, surprised at the emotion that was welling in my chest.
Her hands warmed mine.
I hadn’t even realized that they were cold. That I was cold.
Her eyes were full of pain.
For me.
She’d heard about my day.
“I’m okay,” I rasped.
She gave me a wry look.
“I’ll be okay. How’s that?” I asked.
She looked at me, studying my face with her green eyes. She was exceptionally observant.
She was also stunning, and in that moment, I wanted to kiss her more than I’d ever wanted anything.
Badly.
Which, of course, was when my daughter squirmed her way between the fence and Reese, smiling up at me with a devious scowl on her face.
“You forgot me,” she growled.
It took everything I had not to burst out laughing.
“No, baby. I’d never forget about you,” I told her, even if it was a tiny white lie.
She raised one eyebrow at me, exactly like my own mother still did on occasion, and sniffed. “You’re so full of it.”
It would be Reese’s peel of laughter, the pure joy on her face that got me through the night. Through the nightmare of replaying that one event of the day over and over again through my mind. Seeing the man’s body jerk as the bullet tore through his chest. Seeing him fall lifelessly to the ground in a heap.
It would be her laughter that pulled me out of the nightmare that kept repeating through my head, tearing through my thoughts like an unwelcome parasite.
That’s when I truly knew. Knew that I wouldn’t be able to stay away from her.
She’d be mine. Soon.
Chapter 7
Having a sister is like having a best friend you can't get rid of. You know whatever you do, they'll still be there.
-Truth
Reese
“Yes, hoe, I got the freakin’ cake. And the decorations. What’d you get again?” I asked suspiciously.
I heard Tru’s dark chuckle. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“I wouldn’t have asked, if I didn’t want to know, bitch,” I quipped as I pulled into the driveway.
My eyes widened when I looked in the back seat at Rowen. Who, luckily, was sleeping.
I tried really hard not to curse in front of my daughter, but my sister brought out the worst in me.
Instead of answering her, I opened my parent’s garage with my opener, and pulled into my mom’s spot inside, shutting it off and closing the garage door before getting out.
Leaving Rowen to sleep, I walked inside and found my sister talking to my dad in the kitchen.
My dad clocked me as soon as I walked through the door.
Tru, however, didn’t.
My dad was used to our antics. Thirty and twenty-eight, we still acted the exact same as we did twenty years ago when we were ten and eight.
I held my finger up to my lips, and my father’s lips twitched, knowing exactly what I was going to do.
He turned his face away to conceal his smile, and I made it all the way up to my sister before grabbing her waist and yelling as loud as I could.
Tru screamed, whirled, and threw a punch. But I’d anticipated her move, stepping back just in time for her fist to fly past my face with more than a foot to spare.
“You bitch!” Tru screamed, taking off after me.
I put the island in between us to keep her from hurting me.
“Prepare to die,” my sister exclaimed.
I smirked at her. “Keep dreaming, Tru-Tru.”
She flipped me off, and my dad finally broke in. “Girls.”
That’s all it took. We both stopped circling the counter, knowing when my dad finally spoke, he meant business.
Frank Doherty wasn’t one to take shit from anybody, even his daughters.
Dad was a fire marshal for the Shreveport Fire Department and had been for the last thirty-five years.
He and our mother met while my father was investigating a fire. My mother had been the patrol officer who’d responded to the scene first, and from there it was history.
They had a love that I would forever base all of my future relationships on. My father taught us how a woman was supposed to be treated, and to expect nothing less than a forever kind of love from our husbands. My parents had a connection; a type of connection that stood the test of time, two kids, two extremely demanding jobs where they had to put their lives on the line to do, and illnesses.
Which was why I couldn’t find anybody.
The standard was too high.
I’d broken that standard once when I met Rowen’s father, and I never would again.
Lesson-fucking-learned.
And I had the scars to prove it.
“So…when’s Cabe bringing mom to the bar?” I asked, ready to get my mind off things so depressing.
“T-minus one hour and counting. Now, let’s get to cooking,” Tru instructed.
“Clean up after yourselves,” my father ordered as he left the room.
Tru and I both looked at each other for a good five seconds before we both burst out laughing.
Yeah, right.
***
I tried valiantly not to look.
I really did.
But Jesus Christ. I’d never seen him in regular clothes before, and holy shit could the man fill out a pair of jeans!
He even had an ass.
He had on a black Pittsburg Steelers hat pulled low on his head, and a red t-shirt that looked incredibly soft. I just wanted to walk up to him and rub my cheeks along his chest; apparently, though, that’d be creepy.
What surprised me the most was that he was wearing tennis shoes.
I guess I just thought he’d be a boot man, but he worked those black and gray Under Armor shoes. I wanted some just like them.
He was leaning back against the bar with his feet crossed in front of him.
His beer was hanging from two fingers, and he was talking to somebody I’d never seen before. Most likely another Dixie Warden if the vest thingy was any indication.
This one was someone new; he’d apparently come home on leave from the Navy and brought a few friends with him. I’d heard through various people that he was only here for a week or so, and his name was Sterling.
He was pretty badass looking, though.
My sister hadn’t met him, either, in her time she’d been with her boyfriend, Grayson.
A boyfriend who’d been giving her such hot looks throughout the night that I was squirming in my seat.
“Jesus Christ,” I said, fanning myself when I caught Grayson’s stare at my sister. “What’s going on with him?”
My sister smiled. “I told him I loved him on the way over here.�
��
I looked at my sister in surprise. “Really? Isn’t it kind of early for that?”
She shook her head. “No. It’s true.”
I believed her. She’d changed a lot in the time she’d known him, and I could tell that it was the real thing.
It was only a matter of time before he asked her to marry him.
Looking around for Rowen, I found her at a table sitting with my mom in the restaurant portion of Halligans and Handcuffs.
“Who’s the hottie at the bar?” I heard one of the female cops who worked with my mother ask.
“Which one?” my mom asked, running her nose along Rowen’s head.
It made my heart happy to see my mom having enough strength to hold Rowen.
A lot of times in the past year that she’d been battling cancer, she’d been unable to hold Rowen. Too weak to even lift her head on some days.
It’d about killed me to leave her to move to Kilgore a few months ago, but I’d had no other choice if I wanted to be able to live.
My mother had been my primary caregiver for Rowen on the days that I worked.
When she’d gotten sick, I’d had to rely on my sister a lot, and it’d gotten to the point where I was worrying myself sick and missing too much work because no one could watch her.
After the fourth day of missed work, I decided to start looking for a job that was daytime hours only and found the job in Kilgore.
Most of the time, now, I was out in time to get Rowen from school, and the constant nagging feeling of worrying about who was going to pick my kid up from daycare, go pick her up from school because she was sick, or find someone to watch her during the school holidays, was gone.
“Luke Roberts. That’s Baylee’s brother,” my mother said.
My mother knew everybody.
I knew Baylee, but I hadn’t known that Baylee was Luke’s sister.
What a small world that both of our sisters were involved with a member of The Dixie Wardens MC.
“Sebastian’s wife?” the woman asked.
I scanned my memory for the name, finally remembering that Sebastian was the VP of the MC. Sebastian’s father was the president of the club, and a scary man.
My sister didn’t think he was all that scary, but I sure as hell did.
Code 11- KPD SWAT Box Set Page 5