by Aimee Hix
From far away I heard hammering on the front door. I had forgotten the black-and-white. There had been a cop outside the whole time. How had Ingalls gotten in? He wasn’t supposed to have been able to get to me. That was the damn point of the security detail. Why the hell was Ingalls bleeding on my floor if I was being protected? Then I remembered Seth’s comment about some cops being neo-
Nazis too. Could Tony Harrison have helped Ingalls?
I looked away from Ingalls only long enough to grab the phone handle and lift it from the cradle. I saw that my hand was covered in blood, oozing from a dozen little cuts. With a shaking hand I punched in the numbers and eased away as far as the phone cord would allow.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“I’ve been attacked in my home. I’m hurt. I shot him.”
“What’s your address, dear?”
“I’m a … I, uh … I don’t remember.” An address I knew by heart was just gone from my mind.
“It’s okay, dear. I’ve got the address. I’m dispatching help to you right now. I need you to stay on the line with me until they get there. Can you do that?”
I nodded, forgetting that she couldn’t see me. I coughed hard again. My heart tripped in my chest. The adrenaline was overwhelming my system.
“There’s a cop here already but Ingalls shouldn’t have been able to get past him. I don’t know if I should let him in.”
“Let him in, ma’am. He’s there to help you.”
The lady’s voice was so calm but my heart was drumming in my head. “Are you sure?”
Knocking on the kitchen window startled me and I dropped the phone. I heard the 911 operator’s voice calling out to me. Harrison was yelling at me through the glass. “Pennington, open the door.”
I looked down at Ingalls again and then at the phone swinging on its cord against the wall.
Blood from my hands smudged onto the emergency phone number list taped to the surface. I looked away from it. The latest perversion of my mom’s orderly house.
I didn’t know what to do. I stared at Ingalls. At the holes in his shirt, blood spreading out from them, running into the logo on the fabric. I tried to focus on the logo.
“PENNINGTON. Let me in.”
Of course Harrison wasn’t working with Ingalls. I rushed to the hall and twisted the deadbolt before turning the handle and pulling open the front door. It bounced off the wall but stayed open. I still had a ton of adrenaline flying through my blood. Harrison’s face stared at me.
“What the hell happened, Pennington?” he asked, easing the gun out of my hand.
I led him to the kitchen and Ingalls on the floor. He kicked the knife away from Ingalls’s body.
I reached for the phone receiver and it slid against my hand, slick with blood. “I’m back. I let him in.”
The operator talked to me in soothing tones and I heard sirens in the air. The neighborhood association was probably flooded with complaints about all the noise this week. I wondered why I cared. And then the house was full of people. I forgot to say goodbye before I hung up the phone.
The paramedics worked on Mark Ingalls, trying to stop the blood, get a regular heartbeat. I could barely tear my eyes away. I was responsible for those injuries and I knew the men working frantically to save him. I had worked car accidents with them. I wanted them to stop. I wanted to tell them what kind of man he was, what he had done, what he had tried to do. I wanted to scream that he was a monster. I said nothing. They would do their jobs no matter their feelings.
“Pennington? Can you tell me what happened?” Tony Harrison stood in front of me. The house I had grown up in was now a crime scene. There was blood on the kitchen floor.
“Um, I shot him. He had a knife.”
He looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time. “Are you okay?”
I nodded. A racist who had tried to kill me was bleeding out in my kitchen. Could I tell him what had happened? I could barely figure it out myself.
“This was self-defense, Pennington.”
I nodded again even though it hadn’t sounded like a question. The trashed house and bruises blooming on my face were a pretty good indicator that we’d been fighting. And the knife that had been lying next to Mark Ingalls. I covered my eyes with my hands, barely feeling the black eye. I just needed a moment to gather my thoughts. Harrison needed a timeline.
“I was thirsty. I wanted some water.”
He waited, a patient look on his face. It struck me that he was doing a good job pretending he didn’t hate me. Was that how he was with victims? Was I a victim? A man had broken into my house. He had hit me and threatened me. He had told me he was going to kill me. He’d tried twice before. Harrison was going to put my name down in the victim field on a form.
“My brother is staying with a friend tonight and I was waiting for him. No, not him. Seth.”
Ben could have been here. That bastard could have hurt by baby brother. My sweet, brilliant, just-becoming-a-man baby brother. “How did he get in, Harrison? How did he get past you?”
If he was embarrassed that Ingalls had gotten past him, he didn’t show it. “Wilkes said the door in the basement was open.”
Goddamn broken sliding glass door.
I saw Harrison turn away to talk on the phone.
I was suddenly exhausted, the adrenaline wearing off. It had been a really long time since that morning. I just wanted to lie down. It was probably a bad time for that. I slumped against the wall.
“Pennington, I need you to sit down, okay? Boyd’s on her way. She’ll want you to tell her the story yourself.” He had me by the arm and was leading me over to the wrecked dining room, away from the commotion in the kitchen. There were so many people. It seemed like dozens but I didn’t remember that many people arriving. He picked up the nearest chair and gently settled me into it.
“The ATF is doing a search right now. Or maybe it’s over by now. I don’t know. I can’t remember. Is it still today? Seth can tell you.”
Something swam in my head. It slid around like oil on the surface of water. I pushed myself up and moved toward Ingalls and the paramedics.
Harrison tried to push me back toward the chair. “You don’t need to see this, Pennington.”
“His shirt. The logo, Harrison.”
He let me by and held me up as I leaned over the paramedic who’d cut the shirt down the middle to access the wounds.
“I need to see the logo.”
Harrison nodded at the EMT and the man flipped the shirt flap up off the floor. Just like the truck I’d seen during the stakeout. There had even been one in the parking lot at Killian’s. I hadn’t even thought twice about them. Those trucks were all over the county.
“Harrison. You need to call Boyd. Tell her Farley Brothers Construction.”
He looked at me uncertainly. “Willa, you’ve had a big shock tonight. You’re not making sense.”
“Harrison, please call her now. She’ll understand.”
He pulled his radio off the shoulder holster and began talking.
I tried to keep my thoughts straight but they were impossible to hold on to and it was hard to keep my eyes open. I was so tired.
I looked up at Harrison talking to Boyd on the radio, but he was taller than I remembered. I couldn’t see his face. I couldn’t see anything above his neck. It was just a gray blur. I wondered how his face could be gone if I could hear him talking. He was saying something but his words were like bees buzzing around my ears. I didn’t understand how his words could be bees.
And then I knew. “I’m going to pass out now.”
My body gave out from my control and all I could hear was his voice, sounding so far away, yelling, “Officer down.”
Chapter
25
I hated hospitals. I hated the smells and the fake cheeriness.
The room looked standard issue with crappy linoleum and a TV bolted to the wall but there was no other bed. How had I rated a private room with no insurance?
I didn’t hate the drugs. Those were pretty awesome. I didn’t remember much about my second visit to the ER in as many days. I had gotten much better drugs this trip, which probably explained my sketchy memory. I knew Boyd had been by and that John’s mother had brought Ben to see me. I vaguely remembered threatening to take a hammer to Ben’s computers if he called our parents. The nurse had told me a bunch of cops had been in asking about me. I wondered if that meant Seth. I couldn’t remember if I’d seen him.
My back ached from lying flat so I adjusted the bed up. I tried to turn on my side but the compression bandage reminded me that I had broken ribs. I couldn’t get comfortable. Considering my injuries, that wasn’t too surprising. I decided being a martyr wasn’t helping anyone, so I pressed the button. The nurse had warned it would take a few minutes for relief to kick in, so I began to count slowly, evening out my breath like she’d advised. I had gotten to two hundred when I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I opened my eyes and saw the woman from Killian’s glaring at me from the doorway. Head Bitch. Her dark green eyes were staring daggers at me.
“I recognized you when I saw the cops hauling out the pictures from his room.”
The pictures?
“He’d still be alive if you’d kept your nose out of it.”
She was talking about Ingalls. She’d seen the cops hauling out the murder wall.
I watched her edge just slightly into the room. Her coat was over her arm, pulled tightly against her stomach.
“He wasn’t a bad person. They’re making it sound like he was this awful person on the news.”
I motioned to the stitches in my eyebrow. “He did this to me. He hit me in the face with his fist.”
Her face hardened. “It wasn’t your business. You should have stayed out of it.”
“He killed his friend. Shot him in the chest and then rifled his pockets. He did that before I even laid eyes on him. That makes him a bad person.”
She looked away. I could feel the blurry edges of the pain medication pushing in. All my limbs felt warm and heavy but my brain struggled against the darkness. I couldn’t let myself fall asleep.
“He was my son. I’d have known if he was like that.”
She was Mark Ingalls’s mother? Alarm shot through my numbed body. What was she capable of if she had raised him?
I grabbed the call button and pressed it three times quickly. I just had to keep my eyes open until the nurse got to the room.
“He came at me with a knife,” I said. “He blocked me in that motorcycle shop and set the fire.” My tongue was thick and the words dribbled out. I pressed the call button again.
“You’re lying.” Her image began to sway.
Where was the nurse?
A voice rang out from the hallway. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
Seth.
“She killed my son! He’s dead! My baby is dead. She killed him!” Head Bitch was screaming and crying.
I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer. But it was okay because Seth wouldn’t let anything happen to me. I let myself fall but there was no building, no smoke, just darkness.
“Will?”
I cracked open my good eye. Seth was standing at the foot of the bed, his hand hovering over my foot.
“Good morning, Sunshine,” he said.
“Hey, super spy.” My voice was hoarse. I watched as he sat down in the chair next to the bed and then glanced around.
“Nice digs, huh?” Seth followed my eyes around the room. “Courtesy of your friendly neighborhood ATF field office.”
“Seth.” I scooted my hand over toward the edge of the bed, close to him. He didn’t move toward me. Instead he looked up at the heart rate monitor.
“It was the least we could do. The least I could do. I almost got you killed. I’m so, so sorry.”
I tried to push up off the bed and my torso screamed at me to lie the hell back down and be still. I ignored the pain and pushed on. Seth jumped up, reaching his hands out to assist. I grasped his bicep and squeezed as hard as I could. My wrist protested but it had been through worse so I ignored it too. My wrist and ribs could start a whiners club together. I pressed my cheek into his chest while I tried to wrap my other arm around his waist. Not the best hug I’d ever given him but I was sure he’d forgive me, considering. He wrapped his hand gently around the back of my head.
“Seth, you are not to blame for this.”
He let out a deep breath and I felt his chest rise and fall against my face. I liked it. It felt like safety.
“You scared the shit out of me, Will. When I saw all those alerts from Boyd, I freaked out. Gordon just pushed me into a car and told me to go, that he’d get a ride. When you weren’t at the house … God, I thought you were dead, Will. I thought this asshole that I hadn’t stopped had killed you.”
“I’m fine. See?” I pulled away slightly. “Near perfect. Slap some makeup on me and no one will be able to tell.”
He laughed and sat back down, keeping hold of my hand. The smile dropped from his face. “I’m serious. I know you’re tough but this asshole was not messing around. He wanted you dead in a bad way. Your dining room is wrecked.”
“That was mostly me.” I gave him the best fake smile my bruised face could muster. The right side of my mouth didn’t want to lift. I probably looked like I’d had a stroke. “I put anything in his way I could get my hands on. Mom’s going to be pissed that I destroyed most of her creepy little figurines.”
Seth looked like he wanted to smile at the image of me cartooning ceramic tchotchkes at Mark Ingalls. My near fatal beating seemed to put a damper on his humor. Understandable.
I gave his fingers a fluttering little press with mine. “I know it looks bad, but I am okay. I promise. It hurts like shit and I’m pretty sure I won’t ever play the piano again, but I will live to piss off another lunatic.”
“Of that I have no doubt. Can you promise me that the next time you don’t cut it quite so close?” He gestured at my face.
I knew it was bad. My eye ached bone deep. Even blinking hurt. Anything more than that glancing blow and… well, I didn’t want to think about it.
“Harrison said Ingalls got in the sliding door. He must have come through the trees from the next street over when he saw that patrol car.”
Seth’s eyes flashed angry. “Harrison. I almost killed the asshole. He was sitting out in the car while Ingalls was beating the crap out of you.”
“It’s not his fault, Seth. He didn’t know Ingalls would be crazy enough to sneak in the back with a cop sitting out front.”
“I should have made you stay at the apartment.”
“You’re determined to take the blame for this, aren’t you? No one is to blame but Mark Ingalls.”
He cleared his throat. “I don’t know if you remember. His mother was here earlier. You were pretty out of it.”
I nodded. “I was calling for the nurse but you rescued me instead.”
“You were still asleep so I went to the lobby to make some calls. I didn’t want to disturb you. It took longer than I thought. I’m so sorry, babe.”
“You have to stop apologizing.”
“You could have died.”
“But I didn’t. Ingalls did.”
I tried to harden my heart. Mark Ingalls was not a person who deserved life. He had been a horrid human being, full of hate and rage. I understood feeling hate and rage, but not the cause of it. The color of someone’s skin wasn’t a reason to hate them. I also understood feeling helpless. But I couldn’t understand feeling so lost that you took it out on others, hurting them to make yourself feel better. I hadn’t ever gotten that deep in the abyss. I would never understa
nd that.
I didn’t know how I felt. I knew it was a righteous kill. He’d broken into my house. He’d hurt me. He was trying to kill me. I just got to him first.
But.
But his mother had loved him. She’d called him her baby. He’d been a baby once. He’d been innocent once.
“Yeah. He died on the operating table. Listen, you did what you had to. He made the choice, not you.”
I nodded. I tried to swallow down the lump in my throat. I had gotten used to doing that. I refused to cry but I did gasp. I didn’t think I was going to be able to hold it in anymore. This was exactly why I quit the force. I didn’t think I could survive having killed someone, having to knock on someone’s door and shatter their world, when I knew first-hand what it felt like being on the other side of that door.
I had killed someone.
I made a sound I had never heard before. The breath was leaving me faster than I could suck it in. Oh god, my lungs didn’t work anymore. I couldn’t breathe. I felt Seth’s grip on me tighten.
“Will! Listen to me. You need to breathe slower. You’re hyperventilating.”
I locked eyes with him. I tried to focus them. Blink and breathe. One, two. In, out. I don’t know how long we sat like that with me just breathing. It helped focusing on his eyes. His pale green eyes. It was like they belonged to me. It got easier and then my chest no longer felt like wet cement. It was just me and Seth, him rubbing my hand, the other on my leg, grounding me.
“You’re okay. I’m not going to let anything happen to you ever again, babe.”
At some point I had closed my eyes. Being sixteen sheets to the wind on painkillers will knock the piss and vinegar right out of you.
“Still with me, Sunshine?”
I nodded carefully, trying not to jog loose any bones that were holding on with a wing, a prayer, and a double shot of bubble gum.
“So, I think I made the emergency room staff real nervous in my gear. I bet I have some footage from my vest cam if you want to see. You’d think they’d be harder to scare, given their jobs.”