by David Archer
I slammed on the brakes, but they just don’t work well on grass. The car went into a slide and crashed through a fence between the yard I was in and the next one, and I tore the right front fender off on a tree. That made the car spin, and I slid sideways until the back end hit the corner of the house.
I was dazed, and shook my head to try to clear it quickly. When I got my eyes to focus again, the SUV was stopped in the street right in front of me and the driver was climbing out. Her gun was pointed straight at me, and I instinctively dived below the dashboard.
The windshield disintegrated as she fired, and some part of me flew into a rage. Dex and I had just paid a lot of money for this car, and it was being destroyed the first time I ever drove it! I thought about trying to open the passenger door and get out, but there was no cover out there. I was laying across the console, which was pretty doggone uncomfortable, and suddenly the crazy woman appeared at the driver’s window.
The gun was pointed straight at me, and once again I thought I was going to die, but then I heard a scream and the woman looked back toward the street. I acted without even thinking, hooking my foot in the door handle and yanking with my toes, then kicking the door as hard as I could with both feet. The door struck the woman, the gun went off but the bullet flew right over me, and that enraged me even more. I rolled up hard and my feet hit the ground, and I saw the woman sitting on the grass with a slightly stunned expression on her face, so I grabbed hold of the door and shoved it as hard as I could. It hit her again, knocking her over backwards, and then I was on my feet.
She still had the gun in her hand, and tried to raise it to aim at me, but I dived onto her like a wrestler. She was apparently left-handed, so my right hand grabbed hold of the gun and shoved it back, and I curled my left hand into a fist and started pounding on her as hard as I could. I struck her in the face several times, but then she reached up and jabbed me in the throat with her free hand, and I instinctively let go and put my hands up to my neck.
And that damned gun came back around toward my face. I slapped it away once again, but I couldn’t catch at this time, and she tried to bring it back to bear on me, and that’s when I lost it completely. I smacked her arm down, then raised both fists over my head and brought them down together into her face. Her nose shattered and blood flew everywhere, and then I grabbed the gun and twisted for all I was worth. I managed to wrench it out of her hand, then flipped it and pointed it at her as I climbed off.
“You so much as breathe wrong,” I shouted, “and I will blow your ass away!”
Sirens were screaming, and it suddenly dawned on me that there were people standing in the yards around us. Squad cars came screeching up in front of the house, and a half-dozen officers were suddenly swarming around me, their own weapons aimed at both me and my attacker.
I laid the gun down on the ground and raised my hands. “I’m Cassie McGraw,” I said. “Somebody call Detective Jim Pennington.”
“I’m already here,” Pennington said, as he forced his way through the crowd that was gathering around us. “Are you ever going to let the police do their jobs?”
I looked up at him, the remnants of my rage still simmering below the surface. “You weren’t exactly here,” I said. “I don’t know about you, but when somebody’s trying to kill me, I put up a fight!”
He broke into a grin. “Don’t I know it. I’m not sure you even really need our help, but I’m holding out hope.”
One of the officers had flipped the woman over and cuffed her, and they were dragging her to her feet. She managed to look at me, her busted nose still bleeding, and the hatred in her eyes caught my attention.
“Who are you?” I asked. “Why the hell were you helping Danny? Don’t you know he’s crazy?”
“He’s not crazy,” he said calmly. “He is God’s warrior, just like his brother was. He brought me from the depths of my sin and raised me up to help him do God’s work.”
I stared at her for a moment, then turned to Pennington. “Why is it,” I asked, “that all the loonies seem to be drawn to me?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But at least you seem to be able to catch them.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, “that reminds me.” I turned to the crazy woman who was just about to be taken to the squad car and grabbed her face to make her look into my eye. “I hereby place you under citizen’s arrest!”
EPILOGUE
I called Dex then, to tell him all that had happened and let him know that I was okay.
“Are you sure? I mean, I’ve been—I’ve been worried, babe.”
“I’m a little sore,” I admitted. “I ended up tumbling down some stairs, which banged my hips up a bit, and I’m afraid I wrecked the Cuda.”
“I can fix a car,” he said. “I don’t care about the car, I care about you. Are you really okay?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine. I could probably use one of your wonderful massages, later.”
I could hear the smile come into his voice. “That will be no problem,” he said. “In fact, it will be my pleasure.”
“Mmmm, mine, too,” I said. “Listen, I have to go down to the police station for a while, to finish giving my statements. Somebody is going to go to my office and get Annette out of that bomb, and she’ll probably need a ride home. Would you mind?”
“Not a bit, babe. Call me when you’re free, okay?”
“You got it,” I said. “And by the way, I deserve something nice for dinner tonight.”
He was laughing as he hung up.
I limped my way over to where Pennington was still staring at the Cuda. “Dex can fix it,” I said. “It’ll be just like new.”
“I hope so,” he said. “That’s heartbreaking, to see it like that.”
“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “You get me out of the station within an hour, and I’ll let you borrow it for a weekend sometime.”
The smile almost broke his face. He grabbed me by the arm and rushed me to his car and back to the station, and I gave my keys to a lieutenant from the bomb squad who was waiting. He and his men took off toward my office, and they called back twenty minutes later to say that they had successfully removed the bomb from Annette.
Twenty minutes after that, I walked out the door. Pennington had taken my statement, I had signed it, and I had a receipt in my pocket that certified that the Tulsa Police Department had received custody of my prisoners. I had made my first actual arrests, and I intended to be proud of both of them for a long time to come.
I called Dex as I got into Pennington’s car for the ride home, and he was just getting to the house. He had already taken our truck and picked up the Cuda and taken it back to the shop, and said he would start rebuilding it the next day, after putting the new glass in my GT.
He was waiting on the front porch when I got home, and came down to the driveway and walked me into the house. I went straight toward the bedroom and stripped, then ran the bathtub full of hot water and climbed in. Normally I just get a shower, but that evening I needed to soak.
Dex stayed in the bathroom with me, and even washed my hair for me. It felt so good, but I couldn’t help thinking that it wasn’t all that long ago when I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone touching my head. While the hair on most of my head was still soft and healthy, anyone trying to wash my hair was going to end up touching the burned scar tissues on the left. I had even refused to let my mother wash my hair for me, because I couldn’t stand the thought of her feeling that rough texture, or the stumpy spot where my left ear used to be.
With Dex, though, it was more like he was caressing me, and even when his hand brushed the stub of my ear, it actually felt somehow nice.
When I got out of the tub, he wrapped me in a big towel and then waited until I got my eyepatch on before he turned another one into a turban on my head. I followed him out to the kitchen, where I found he had made a stop at Boston Market and picked up roasted chicken and all the trimmings.
We sat down to eat, and I waited
until I had answered all of his questions about the events of the afternoon, and then I looked directly into his face.
“So,” I said. “Sometimes, when you find yourself in an extremely unpleasant situation, it makes you think about things that you might not have really thought about before. Or, maybe you thought about them, but just didn’t want to really think that deeply about them. Am I making any sense?”
Now, I’m sure I’ve told you before, Dex can read me like a book. If I ever really need to keep a secret from him, I’m probably going to have to go into hiding. He seems to have a natural talent with body language, and he can spot when somebody is lying like nobody I’ve ever seen. Half the time, I find myself wondering if he has a secret ability like ESP, because it often feels like he’s reading my mind.
The point is, I’m pretty certain he knew exactly where I was going, but he looked at me, all innocent like, and said, “I think so.”
I cracked up laughing. “Dex,” I said. “Remember when we were at the Center of the Universe? When I was checking out the weird sound thing it does?”
“Yeah.” He nodded.
“You really couldn’t hear what I said?”
“No, I really couldn’t. Like I told you, I tried to read your lips, but—well, your lips are very hard to read.”
“That’s probably because they’re only halfway there. The other half got burned away, but I’ll remember that in case I ever need to use it to my advantage. Anyway, the thing is, what I said—what I actually said was, ‘I love you.’ I figured, since you were telling me you wouldn’t be able to hear it, I’d know by your reaction if you really could or not.”
His eyebrows rose a half-inch. “Damn, now I wish I could have heard it.”
“The point of this is,” I went on, “that I said it when I was pretty sure you wouldn’t be able to hear me say it, even though I was looking right at you at the time. And now, I feel like a big coward. While I was up there dealing with Danny today, there were a couple of moments when I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to come out of there alive. And when I felt that way, I suddenly realized that I’ve been cheating both of us by not being willing to tell you how I feel, or listen to what you want to say to me. Can you understand?”
“I think I do,” he said cautiously, “but I’m going to keep my mouth shut. Right now, I want to hear what you want to say.”
I licked my lips. “Dex, what I want to say is that I love you. Abby’s been trying to tell me for a while that I was in love with you, and I kept shutting her up, but today I realized that she’s right. I’m in love with you.”
Dex just stared at me for a moment, then he leaned forward and crossed his arms on the table.
“And does this have any bearing on the future?”
I looked at him and chewed on the inside of my cheek for a couple of seconds, but then I smiled. “I think it does,” I said, “if you honestly do want us to have a future together. Like, a real future, a permanent one.”
He sat there without saying a word for thirty seconds, then got up and walked out of the room. I didn’t know whether I should follow him, or just give him space. For all I knew, I might have waited too long to open up to him. He might be thinking about how to tell me that he didn’t want that future, after all.
He came back a couple of minutes later and stopped right in front of me. I slowly raised my eye up to look at him, and that was when he suddenly knelt down. I think my eyeball tried to pop out and run away, because he reached out and took hold of my left hand and pulled it toward himself.
“Cassie,” he said softly, “I think I’ve been in love with you since the day we first met. There was something so different about you, so powerful and strong and—and original, that I knew before you walked away from me that first time that I was going to need to see you again. I knew it. Since then, I have only come to love you more every single day, and while I know that you are strong and capable, I am absolutely terrified that something is going to happen to you, and you’ll be gone from my life. I want to have you in my life for as long as I possibly can, and for that reason, I have to ask you a question.” He reached into his pocket and came out with his hand clenched in a fist. He held it up in front of me and opened it, and I saw a diamond. “Cassie, will you marry me?”
I stared into his face for a moment, and then I looked at that diamond again. That’s when I noticed that it wasn’t exactly a diamond ring. I mean, it was, but the ring and pinky fingers on my left hand were fused together after the fire. The doctors said it was either that or take them off, and I’m glad they chose the way they did.
Of course, that meant I could never wear a normal engagement ring again; in fact, they had been forced to cut off the one I’d been wearing that horrible night. Once I got used to the two fingers being one, I had never really thought about it again. Besides, who would ever propose to Freda Krueger? It wasn’t likely to ever be an issue again, or so I thought at the time.
The thing laying in Dex’s hand had obviously been custom-made. It looked like two rings had been put together, and one side had a beautiful diamond and several smaller ones.
“Where in the world did you find that?” I asked him.
“I had it made about a month ago,” he said. “It was right after the night you tried to do shots with Nicole, and you passed out. I used some smooth copper wire and wrapped it around your fingers to get the shape and the size, then took it to a jeweler so he could make this.”
I leaned forward and kissed him quickly, then sat back again. “Yes,” I said.
The custom rings fit perfectly, and they’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
It was only a little after seven, so I got up and went for my phone. I took a picture of the custom ring on my hand, then sent it to Mom’s phone.
“I give her two minutes before she calls,” I said to Dex, but it was less than sixty seconds later when my phone rang.
“Hey, Mom,” I said nonchalantly. “How’s it going?”
“Cassie?” Mom asked. “Don’t tease me, young lady! What is this picture you sent me?”
“Well, that would be a photo of the custom engagement ring that a certain wonderful man just put on my fingers,” I said. “Remember when I told you not to start planning any weddings yet?”
“Yes,” she said cautiously.
“I’ll let you know as soon as we set the date.”
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