My mother’s mouth dropped open. “Then why did I invite Lydia if you have another girlfriend?”
“I don’t know, mom. Why did you?” Baylee drawled.
My father, with the one-track mind, chose that moment to butt in. “What kind of car is it?”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s a ’69 Charger. It’s candy apple red with a 454. Sounds fucking sweet.”
“But then why’d her parents tell me y’all were back together?” Mom asked.
Turning back to her, I answered. “Fuck if I know. I haven’t even spoken to her since she moved down here.”
My mother’s mouth gaped like a fish. “Well why on earth didn’t you tell me you had a new girl? When do I get to meet her?”
I shrugged. “As soon as you stop inviting my exes to dinner, I suppose.”
She scowled at me.
“Is it stock?” my dad asked.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and showed it to him. “Yes. Doesn’t make a difference, though. Things a beast. I bet it could hold its own on the quarter at Lone Star Speedway.”
My father was holding the phone up to his face, his glasses raised so he could study the detail work on the paint when it rang in his hands.
Handing it back to me, I scanned the caller ID and sighed. “Roberts.”
“Your girl’s house was vandalized. No sign of her, though,” Downy’s chilly voice rumbled into my ear.
I froze. “How bad is it?”
Downy hummed for a few seconds before he said, “Not bad, per say. More like the girl won’t be able to close her door for a while. It’s been a while since it happened, though. There’s all kinds of debris and leaves in her house from the wind. Colder than fuck, too. Doors been open for a while.”
“I’ll be right there,” I said and hung up.
“I gotta go,” I said to my parents. “Reese’s house was vandalized and I haven’t been able to get ahold of her all day.”
“Okay, honey. Be careful. I’ll take Katy back to Baylee’s with me. Come get her whenever you’re ready,” my mother said.
I nodded and shook my father’s hand, gave Sebastian a nod at his position on the floor with the kids, and left. All the while I thought about how stupid I’d been to tell her not to come.
I was a dumbass.
***
By the time I found out where she was, four hours later, I was hot.
She wasn’t answering her phone. Her house was a fucking mess. Her car had been trashed, and I couldn’t find her anywhere.
Then I’d had to play phone tag calling each and every goddamn member of The Dixie Wardens looking for Grayson’s number, just to get ahold of Reese’s sister to see if she was with her.
She was.
And I found myself pulling up into the driveway, still fucking pissed.
The forty-five minute drive to Grayson’s place only served to make my anger simmer.
I hadn’t known where she was for four long hours.
How fucking hard would it be to send off a text message and let the man you’re seeing know where the fuck you were?
I got out of my Dodge truck and slammed the door with a flick of my wrist, on a mission.
I was set on my mission, too, until I was stopped by Grayson and his father before I even made it inside.
They both looked worried.
“Thank fuck!” Booney yelled. “I don’t think I could handle one more goddamned second of that shit!”
I blinked in surprise. “What?”
“Her ballin’ her eyes out about how fucking sad she is that no one wanted to spend Thanksgiving Day with her,” Grayson sighed. “More cryin’ about how she wants another baby and wants a man to love her like her daddy loves her mom. Jesus, the girl’s probably cried more tears than could fill a fuckin kiddie pool.”
The thought of Reese spending the night crying really tore me to shreds. Especially since I was the reason it’d happened. She wouldn’t have spent any of it alone if I hadn’t been thinking about myself.
I put both hands on my head in frustration. “My fuckin’ mom invited my ex. I didn’t know what else to do!”
Grayson shook his head like I was a dumbass, and honestly, I probably was. “You choose her. If you’re getting ass from her, you always choose her.”
He said it slowly, almost as if I would comprehend it better if he did.
“Fuck,” I said, taking the three steps that led up to the porch. “That’s not even why I came, unfortunately. I wish it was,” I said, glancing through the glass door inside.
Reese and Tru were laying on the floor, a bottle of wine in between them with coffee cups as wine glasses.
They were facing each other, talking, I assumed.
“And why’s that?” Booney asked as he leaned up against the wooden railing that surrounded the front porch.
I turned my back on the glass door and looked out at my truck.
“Reese’s place was trashed tonight. We’re not sure on the timeline. One of the neighbors that was home and said that it happened sometime between three and five in the afternoon. Her couches are slit. Kitchen cabinets emptied. Food dumped out. Glasses smashed. Even Rowen’s room was trashed. Clothes were all torn to shreds. Her car was scratched to hell and back with what resembled a screwdriver. It was bad.”
Grayson’s mouth tightened and his hands clenched into fists. “Goddamn bastards. I knew I shouldn’t have allowed Tru to go get her. If she hadn’t, her car would’ve at least been alright. What’s she going to do now? Were there any witnesses?”
I shook my head. “None. The old man who called it in was the same one who gave us the time period. He’s the one in love with Reese’s car. Said he used to have one exactly like that when he was younger, that’s why his eyes always strayed toward it. He saw it when he was letting family in for dinner, and called the police.”
“Fuck me,” Grayson growled. “Can’t do anything because it’s the day of Thanksgiving, and there’s no way I’m going out in this shit on Black Friday, nor am I letting the two of them go. She can stay…”
“She’s going to be staying with me,” I interrupted.
Grayson shook his head. “She won’t stay with you. She’s got some fucked up rule in her head that says she won’t live with a man until she’s married to him. Only reason I know that is because I heard it for the last four hours.”
Well…we’d just see about that.
Chapter 15
As soon as this day’s over, I plan on having a nervous breakdown. Feel free to leave me the fuck alone, or you’ll be pulled in with me. On the plus side, there’ll be ice cream, so it won’t be all bad.
-Secret thoughts of Reese
Reese
“I’m not staying with you. There’s nothing you can say that will change my mind,” I yelled, waving my hands in the air wildly.
It was four in the morning and I had yet to go to sleep.
After I’d sobered up, Luke had explained what was going on, and immediately brought me back to my place so I could see the damage.
“Rowen,” Luke said.
One word, and I wouldn’t convince him.
“We’ll be staying in separate rooms. And I’ll be sleeping in the garage apartment,” I compromised.
His eyes narrowed. “We’ll see.”
I sighed and looked around the living room.
It was horrible.
Everything that I’d worked so hard to acquire over the past ten years was now gone.
My recliner that I’d rocked Rowen in when she was a baby through many colic filled nights, was ripped to shreds.
The TV I’d bought brand new just last year smashed to smithereens on the floor.
My pictures. My clothes. My food.
Everything, ruined.
Anything that wasn’t nailed down, was literally in pieces if it could be in pieces.
The only thing that I’d found so far that was still in working or
der was the shower curtain in the bathroom.
Which was sad because it was literally the only thing in the entire place that I could afford to replace.
“I just spent my entire savings paying off my school loans and buying new furniture. Now it’s gone. Every single bit of it, and I have nothing to replace it with,” I whimpered.
I didn’t realize I could become so attached to inanimate objects. However, now that they were gone, I realized what they’d meant to me.
What hurt the most, though, were the baby clothes I’d been saving. The ones of Rowen’s that had meant so much to me, just…gone.
That was the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak.
Covering my eyes with my hands, I started to cry.
Big, fat, ugly tears.
Luke’s muscular arms wrapped me up tight, surrounding me so completely, that some of the coldness at seeing the horror of what was done to my place leeched away.
“It’ll be okay, beautiful. Now, you can stay with me until your place is back up to par and cook me breakfast in bed. Iron my socks. And fish bullets out of the washing machine,” he teased.
A watery laugh escaped my lips, and I tipped my head up to stare into his impossibly blue eyes. “I’ll fish bullets out of the washing machine, and possibly cook you breakfast, but only if you’re a good boy.”
He smiled devilishly. “I can be a good boy.”
His good boy act didn’t faze me in the least. I was immune to bullshit, which was what had come out of his mouth. “Yeah, right.”
He grinned. “Now, let’s lock this place up and go meet my parents.”
“Your parents?” I screeched.
He nodded. “Yeah, they’re very interested in the girl I fucked over to bring my ex to Thanksgiving, whom, I might add, invited herself after it was all said and done. And you don’t have to tell me how stupid I was not to bring you, because I already know. In fact, I started kicking my own ass about an hour before my parents showed. Which, if you’d had your phone on, you would’ve known.”
I shrugged. Honestly, it was probably better that I hadn’t been there. I didn’t want to be anybody’s pity dinner date.
I wanted to be first choice and there was nothing wrong with that.
“So where are we meeting your parents?”
***
“I cannot believe your mom’s shopping in this shit,” I said, looking in horror at the mall parking lot.
“Mom and Baylee do it every year. I’ve been picking them up and chauffeuring them around for years now,” he said, scanning the parking lot.
“In your cruiser?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Yeah. Or my dad’s.”
I blinked.
“Isn’t that illegal?” I wondered.
My eyes widened as I saw a fight break out in the middle of the parking lot.
His muttered, “No,” was drowned out by the yelling and screaming of the six women or so that were about to throw down right in front of our car.
“Aren’t you going to break that up?” I asked.
His eyes flicked to the fight, then back to the doors. “No.”
“But you’re a cop. Aren’t you supposed to, you know, serve and protect?” I asked dryly.
His grin played at the corners of his mouth, and he shook his head. “This mall has security. I’ll let the rent-a-cops do their job. It’s what they’re paid to do, after all.”
Spying something, he started the truck and flashed his lights four times at, who I assumed was, his mother.
However, I couldn’t tell, because all it did was illuminate the fight in front of me.
“That girl just tore out a chunk of the other girl’s hair,” I observed.
He didn’t look away, instead focusing on something beyond the fight that I couldn’t see.
“If they pull a gun, I’ll intervene,” he muttered.
I shook my head. The man was unshakable.
“I can’t believe they’re doing this in front of a police car,” I shook my head in surprise.
He gave me a sideways glance. “Some people don’t give a shit about a black and white. All it means to them is help when they need it. Nothing else.”
With that lovely parting comment, he got out and slammed the door, walking around to my side before opening the SUV’s back door and ushering Baylee, and an older version of Baylee into the back seat.
“I hope you cleaned this seat before you made us get into it,” Baylee muttered, sounding disgusted.
“It looks pretty clean,” Paige, Luke’s mother, said.
“Yeah, that’s what you’d think if you saw it at first glance. I’ve been there when they start putting the naked bodies into the car. Then they vomit everywhere. Or shit. Or piss. Or…” Baylee was interrupted by her mother’s outraged cry.
“This better not have any of what I think she was about to say on it!” Paige declared.
Luke grinned and closed the door.
I stayed facing forward, awkwardly.
Then their eyes turned to watch me as he made his way around the car.
“So,” Baylee said. “On a scale of one to ten, one being minutely and ten being I’m gonna shove a boot up his ass, how angry are you with my brother?”
I grinned and turned sideways in my seat, talking to her through the grate. “Probably about a seven. But he knows how to sweet talk his way out of anything.”
Paige grinned. “The boy’s just like his father, that way. His daddy had a silver tongue when I met him, and not a thing has changed in the last thirty-two years.”
Then a commotion toward the front of our car brought our attention back to the hair pulling match that’d continued while we were speaking.
That’s where we found Luke talking to the ladies.
Although I couldn’t hear what he was saying, I knew it wasn’t nice.
“What do you think he’s saying?” Paige asked.
I turned to look at her, only to find her staring straight at me, startling me.
“Probably that one girl’s hair is fake, and she needs to pull her shorts out of her vagina,” Baylee quipped.
Of course, my eyes couldn’t help themselves. I had to look.
And the girl did, indeed, need to pull her shorts out of her vagina.
“I’m fairly positive that those words would never come out of your brother’s mouth,” I assured her.
Baylee laughed. “Oh, my dear, what you have to learn.”
And for some reason, I believed her.
***
“I’m not a fan of pumpkin pie,” I said, eyeing the plate with disgust.
Luke stared at me like I’d grown a fourth head. “What?”
“It reminds me of snot and baby food,” I made a gagging gesture.
He looked at me for a few long moments before shaking his head and devouring the piece he brought to me. In two large gulps, he finished it off and washed it down with a gulp of beer.
“Pumpkin’s my Luke’s favorite. You’ll have to learn to make it if you plan on cooking for him. He’s got one hell of a sweet tooth,” Paige said, smiling fondly at her son.
The disgusting man.
I was fairly sure he’d have to brush his teeth before I could stand to be next to him again.
Hell, who was I kidding? All I had to do was look at the man and any and all disgust would melt away.
“Where did your parents end up getting stuck?” Luke’s father, Travis, asked.
I turned to him and smiled.
I liked Travis.
He was a large man, much the same as Luke. Except where Luke had only tightness at his midsection, Travis had the smallest of guts. His hair was also no longer blonde, but a silvery gray that made him look incredibly sexy.
A loud screech echoed through the room and Luke’s head snapped around to take in the little black box on the counter across the room from us.
He sighed and stood, walking str
aight over to the little black box and picked it up. He read quickly then clipped the device on his belt before walking toward us.
He kissed his mom on the cheek first, ruffled Baylee’s hair, and gave me a soft kiss on the lips.
“I’ve got to go. Be back when I can,” he whispered against my hair.
Then, without further ado, he disappeared out the door.
I saw him running across the yard, then he jumped into his police cruiser, flipped the lights on, and barreled down the road.
“Was that a pager?” I asked into the stillness of his wake.
Chapter 16
So you’re a police officer? Do you do anything with that baton besides hit people with it?
-Reese to Luke
Luke
“What’s going on?” I asked as I walked into what we called the command room.
Really it was just a room off the side of my office that had two computers and two televisions lining one wall. As well as a large U-shaped desk allowing for the other members of SWAT to sit down and see the computers in the middle of the room.
In the center of it all was John Atoms, our information specialist and director of all things that took more brain than brawn. In fact, he was borderline genius according to his IQ test.
He’d been a hacker in his teenage years but had chosen to be on the law’s side when his little sister had been shot down in front of him when he was seventeen.
I trusted the man with everything.
“A shooter at a residence on Templeton. Neighbors called when they heard what sounded like a tommy gun going off at the neighbor’s place. Said it sounded fake, and they’d thought at first it was their kids outside playing. When they realized it wasn’t, they found the front door of the neighbor’s place covered with bullet holes,” John said, keeping his eyes on the computer. “They called the police when a few more shots came from inside the house. Only person there that they know of is an elderly man.”
My eyes went to the map up on the screen, and my gut twisted.
It was the neighbor who’d called in the burglary at Reese’s place the night before.
Knowing I wouldn’t accomplish anything by letting the panic setting loose inside my chest out, I tamped it down viciously and stared impassively at the monitors
Code 11- KPD SWAT Box Set Page 11