Human Hieroglyphix - Dex & Leila

by J. A. Hornbuckle

  Leila, who was able to hear both sides of the conversation, laughed and rolled her eyes.

  Dex opened the curtain and sent Leila back out to reception so he could clean his booth. They worked out logistics and he rode his motorcycle back to her place where he watched as she stopped the Mustang with the wheels at the beginning her driveway. He pulled up to her window to see her eyes wide and her hands covering her mouth. He followed the direction of her eyes and saw it.

  'Cunt' had been spray painted on her garage door in big bold three foot high letters. Bright red, three foot high letters.

  He twisted around on his bike, looking every direction before it occurred to him that the person or persons that had marked her garage door were obviously long gone.

  He pulled off his helmet and leaned over to her car window.

  "Change of plans, princess. We'll go back to my place and take the bike or call for delivery, alright?" Dex watched her swallow and nod before she brought her eyes to his.

  "Who-who…" she stuttered.

  "Don't know, Elle. But we're going to have to call Detective Pierson and report it all the same. You with me?"

  Dex watched her nod as she reached for her cellphone.

  "Ah, babe? Let's get up off the street first, okay?"

  This was bad.

  Not so much the spray paint, or even the word.

  It was his girl's reaction to it that was bad.

  He would be willing to bet that she'd never been exposed to this kind of viciousness, this kind of vindictiveness in her whole life. And while he'd never been the brunt of it, he'd seen this and worse in his travels on his motorcycle after his melt down.

  They made it inside the house after she'd called and reported it to Lester on the front desk, who put her into Pierson's voicemail.

  He was standing next to her at the bar, rubbing her back trying to get her to settle, when his cellphone rang.

  "Dex? Ted Pierson. Just listened to Leila's voicemail. She okay?"

  "Holding it together is a better way to put it."

  "Where you guys going to be tonight?"

  "Think we'll be at my place since she…ah, since this doesn't feel like a safe place for her at the moment."

  "Sounds good. I'll come by and check it out tonight. Make sure you get pictures of it both up close and from across the street so that her house number is clearly visible in the pictures and then email them to me. Okay?"

  "Will do and thanks," Dex replied, grateful that the detective was willing to cut into his own Friday night. Dex disconnected and repeated their conversation to Leila.

  "Need to grab what you'll need for the weekend, princess, and then we'll go to my place, alright?"

  He felt her nod and begin to release the grip she had on his t-shirt.

  And all he could think of, as he followed her up the stairs, was all the different ways he was going to fuck up the person that made his girl feel unsafe in her own home.

  He followed her as he drove his bike and she drove the Mustang as they made their way over to his house. He noticed that her driving was careful, almost overly careful, which was another clue that showed how shook she was by what she had seen.

  As they made the turn onto his street, he pulled ahead of her so he could use the garage door opener, but he saw it before he even pressed the button.

  Same red paint.

  Same style of writing.

  Different words.

  Words written not on the garage door.

  'Leave Her Alone' in letters three feet high that began just to the left of the front door and spread across the entire white stucco front of his house.

  And Dex felt his heart clench.

  He waved Leila up into the driveway and pulled out his cellphone to call Pierson and to take pictures.

  They ended up at the Grantham hotel, since Leila was close to losing it over the fucking shit that had been spray painted on both their houses.

  Their hotel room was beautiful and something they both would have probably appreciated more had the circumstances been different.

  But they weren't.

  So they didn't.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  I knew that Dex was worried about me and my reaction to what had been done. While he was always solicitous, today he kept me closer than close.

  I couldn't stop shaking.

  My mind was chaotic, unsettled.

  What kind of person would do something like that?

  Did I know them?

  They, whomever 'they' might be must be close enough, somehow feeling that they were in the right, in whatever it was that they believed to be true, to spray paint those words, those particular words, on our houses.

  I laid down on my side, face towards the full length windows on the hotel bed, and tried to find my center, tried to find a way to relax. I felt the bed dip before Dex's arm wrapped around my waist, his chest to my chest, as his legs tangled with mine. I kept my eyes closed but I moved closer to him, wrapping my arm around his back.

  "You alright, babe?" he said, his lips against my forehead.

  "Will be," I replied as I nuzzled into his neck.

  "You want to order dinner from room service?"

  "Yeah. And have Dirk send up a bottle of tequila, with salt and lemon wedges," I mumbled against his neck. "I think you might get lucky and have drunken sex tonight."

  I felt, rather than heard, Dex's chuckle.

  "So all I gotta do to get you in the sack is spray paint stuff on your house?"

  "Not funny, honey."

  "I know, Leila."

  "Who do we know, Dex, that would do something like that?"

  "Dunno, babe."

  "Do you think the person, or persons, that did it would do anything else? Do you think they're the ones that messed with our cars?"

  "What I think is," my man said with his nose pressed alongside mine, "we need to keep our heads and let Pierson do the speculating, the investigating, and keep ourselves safe, alright?" He said this as he used his beautiful long-fingered hand to stroke me from my knee to my hip and lightly grip my waist.

  It took a moment, a long freaking kind of moment, for what he said to sink in. He was right, there was nothing he or I could do at this point. We just need to leave it to the police.

  The phone by the bed rang and Dex reached a long tattooed arm across to pick it up.

  "Pierson's downstairs. Wants to know if we want to meet him in the bar or the room."

  "I vote room. How 'bout you?"

  "Pierson? Yeah, come on up. Room 402."

  I got up and ran a brush through my hair and added a quick swipe of lip gloss. I really didn't care how I looked. I did it more just to keep myself busy.

  I heard Dex on the hotel phone, ordering dinner and asking to have Dirk call our room when he got a chance.

  I opened the door to Detective Pierson and closed the door behind him.

  "How you holding up, Leila?"

  "I'm holding. That's about all I can say at the moment." I said softly, and it must be said, with a deep sigh.

  We made our way further into the room and I heard Dex finish up the phone call. He shook hands with the detective and they sat in the chairs that were bracketed on either side of the little table. I made myself comfortable , sitting on the edge of the bed.

  "I went to Leila's and had a look around. Unfortunately, I didn't find anything. We are doing to do a door-to-door canvas tomorrow to talk with the neighbors in the hope that they might have seen something. I'll swing by your place, Dex, and take a look around. But, I need to ask you both some questions."

  My glance cut to Dex.

  My Dex, my man.

  How did this happen, that this gorgeous, free spirited man come to be in my possession, caught up in my business?

  And then it hit me.

  Holy shit.

  I mean, holy freaking shit.

  I loved him.

  I did.

  I totally freaking did.

  I loved Dex.
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  Not the idea of him. Not just the image of him, his beautiful face or body.

  No, I loved Dex.

  I blinked a couple of times. Or more.

  I heard noises in the room; of course I did. I was conscious, I was human and fully functional so I heard both the noises inside and outside our room.

  But I kind of didn't.

  Because my mind was completely captured with the concept that, for the first freaking time in my life, I recognized that I loved someone that was not a family member.

  That I loved someone that was a member of the opposite sex.

  That I loved someone for real.

  And the particular someone that I loved, loved for real, freaking loved me back.

  I knew that was the truth, the deep-to-the-soul kind of truth.

  The kind of truth you can't deny.

  I tilted my head down to study my knees, peripherally aware of Dex and Pierson's conversation as my mind and heart dealt with my own discovery.

  Which, I gotta say, was a lot more interesting than whatever it was that they were talkin' about.

  There was a knock at the door of our room that I was so hoping to be Dirk with the Tequila, etc., that I said "I'll get it!" maybe just a little too fast and a little too fervently as I bounded off my bedside position and hit the three sides to take me to the room's door.

  I glanced through the hotel peephole and saw it was Ram Patel, our city's Chief of Police and drool-worthy, crime fighter. And I stepped back when opening the door to allow Ram and all that was him of broad shouldered goodness to come into our room.

  "Hey Ram," I heard my man to say as I closed the door.

  "Chief," was the other offering, which I knew was from Pierson.

  I poked my head outside the doorway and glanced down both sides of the corridor to ascertain that Dirk wasn't quite here with my tequila order.

  Disappointing news, Dirk hadn't made his way to our floor yet.

  Okay, so I may have been taking the girly way out, as in sticking my head in the sand, but truthfully? I was so sticking my head in the sand.

  Dex, who I have had in my bed and in my body on more than a couple of occasions and who I'd learned to love (ohmigod!) but who wasn't freaked by the stuff written on our houses could be the one to work with the police tonight.

  And who would bring me up to speed tomorrow.

  At the moment, all I wanted to do was to stick my freakin' head in the sand and have the bad asses in my life deal with the freaking crazy crap that someone was tryig' to do to both me and Dex .

  Then we both just would need to … need to … .mothafreaking, move the freak on.

  If you, ah, kind of, uhm, get my drift.

  So I stood in the hallway that connected our room to the door that met the hall at the most wonderful hotel in our town and watched as three macho, alpha dogs did everything but smell each other's butts, meta-freaking-phorically speaking, of course.

  Was I losing it? You bet.

  Did I care? Nope, not at all.

  I rolled my eyes at my own thoughts and stepped into our seriously badass bathroom which was one of the selling features of the hotel.

  Not only did each and every room have a wonderful view of the mountains that framed our city, the hotel also boasted that each room had its own gas fireplace and balcony that was framed by french doors. And, that each and every bathroom had double sinks with his and hers telescoping magnification mirrors.

  Awesome.

  So, rather than listen to or even have to deal with the yada-yada of the men folk, I immediately moved to my tweezers and the seriously magnificent magnification mirror in our bathroom. Lotti'd worked wonders on me. But it was up to me, going forward, to discover if I could keep myself up to Lotti's standards.

  Next knock, which had me two steps from the peep hole of the hotel room doorway, and had me ushering in Dirk, the bartender. My gaze roamed over the tray in his hands. Bottle of Tequila, check. Bowl of lemon wedges, check. Bucket of what appeared to be ice, double check.

  I had Dirk set everything up on the long counter in the huge bathroom since the bad-asses had commandeered the only table in the room.

  I slipped Dirk a ten and got a hug in return before Dirk did a chin lift to the fellas.

  I raised my eyes to Dex.

  Yep, he got me and began the slow process of letting the freaking crime fighters go to do whatever it was that they needed to do.

  So that we could do whatever it was that we did best for each other.

  And what it was that I do best for myself.

  Self-medicate as I stuck my head back into the sand.

  Chapter Thirty

  It was a slow coming to, coming to awareness, for me.

  I knew I was hung over and I knew, unlike the last time I'd gotten drunk, that I was cared for and had someone that was taking care of me.

  I did a quick blindness kind of scan, unwilling to open my eyes, and determined that I was alone in the bed, even though I followed that with a long slow loop of my hand over the sheets and pillow just to make sure I hadn't missed anything. But I was alone.

  I rolled to my back and moved the hair from around my face as I listened, trying to hear of shower noises and the like.

  Nothing.

  I raised my self to sitting which, unlike the last time, was not an impossibility or requiring the help of the arm of a couch. I was dizzy but not sick to my stomach.

  Good news, I thought.

  I paused on the edge of the bed, my legs over the edge of the mattress, as I caught the smell of coffee and glanced over my shoulder and saw the coffee service spread across the table nestled close to the windows.

  I stood and stretched, not thinking and not worrying about anything other than getting myself to the heavenly promise of caffeine that was less than eight feet away from me.

  I heard a key in the lock of the room as I was mid-pour before it all, and I mean all of it came down on me in an instant.

  The destruction of Dex's car.

  The keying of my car.

  The vicious words sprayed in bright red paint in yea-high letters across my garage door and Dex's front porch.

  And, the how and the why of exactly why I was pouring coffee from a kick ass coffee service instead of pouring it from my old fashioned and noisy Mr. Coffee unit. And all I could think of to say about all of it was, 'Shit'.

  "Shit!"

  "Baby, what's wrong?"

  I felt Dex's arms wrap around my waist and his kiss hit my shoulder. I stopped pouring and turned in his arms to rest my head against his chest.

  "There's just so much…well, shit, going on to both of us and we don't know who's behind it, the police don't know what going on and I thought the Tequila would help but now I have a headache and our cars are still messed up and our houses have red paint on them and I…"

  "Babe. Slow down. I'm here," I heard him say as his hand began to slowly move up and down my back. "We've got some shit going on, true. But we're safe here. The police are looking into everything that's gone on. Pierson seems to know what he's doing and we've even got the Chief on board."

  "But, baby…" Dex leaned back so he could capture my eyes. "You and I are okay. And, Elle, we're together. Right?"

  I nodded.

  "I get that there's someone out there that doesn't want us together. But we still are, and baby, to me that's the most important thing, alright?"

  I nodded again and sighed. He was making sense when nothing else seemed to make any kind of sense.

  "Now, even though I didn't get to play with a drunken, Leila…"

  "What?"

  "Babe. You passed out after the fourth shot."

  "But, I wanted to have drunken sex with you."

  I did.

  I totally did and was upset that we didn't get a chance to play. I tried to remember what went on but it was really hazy and thinking that hard made even my hair hurt. I decided I hated hang overs.

  "I hate hang overs, Dex."

 
Dex pressed my head into his chest but I could still feel the laughter he was trying so hard to contain.

  "Why don't you shower and get ready. Then we'll get breakfast and figure out what we are going to do, okay?"

  "Yeah, honey."

  At breakfast, Dex called Jake and asked about a referral to a contractor who could remove, cover up, in other words get rid of the paint on our houses. But Jake, being Jake, had already heard about it (which I discovered later was that Ram told Marianne who told Caitlin, who told Jake. Gotta love the friend network!), and had a guy already on it this morning.

  "We've got some good friends, honey," I said still working through the huge breakfast I'd ordered. Jake's cellphone rang just as he was shoving it back into his pocket.

  "Pierson," he said softly as he brought the phone up to his ear.

  There were more than a few beats of silence as Dex listened to Detective Pierson and I watched as all the blood seem to drain from Dex's face and his hand on the table was clenched so tightly his knuckles were white.

  "Right. Be there in ten, fifteen. Right." I heard him say before he disconnected. "Babe. We need to leave right now."

  I grabbed my purse while trying to gulp the rest of my coffee, and stood up. We had left Dex's bike in the hotel parking lot and used my car to drive to the diner. We made it back to my car as fast as our feet could move.

  "What's going on, honey?" I asked as I clicked my seatbelt in place.

  "Someone smashed the windows," Dex muttered through clenched teeth as he moved the Mustang quickly through the busy streets.

  "At the house?"

  "At the shop, babe."

  Oh my God.

  The shop's front was made entirely of glass -- two big plate glass windows and the door.

  I glanced at the dashboard clock and saw it was just after nine.

  "Was anybody there?"

  "Ben and Crys," came his tight lipped response.

  Oh, no.

  Oh, shit.

  God, no.

  We made it back to the hotel and Dex got on his bike. I followed him, as much as I was able, as we made our way to the shop. He was weaving in and out of the slow moving traffic, something I'd never seen him do before.