“Back,” I ordered. “Denver PD. I said back.”
They didn’t budge, but they didn’t move forward either, so I unsnapped the guard and eased the gun out of the holster.
“She’s some kinda girl rapist or something! Help!” Simon shouted.
I twisted my grip on his collar, choking him less hard than I wanted.
The Hulks exchanged a meaningful look and took a step forward, so I brought my gun up and pointed it at the one on the right, thumbing the safety.
“Ah ah,” I said. “We don’t want you doing something I’ll have to fill out paperwork for. Now back the fuck up.”
Besides the Vampires, which I guessed numbered around fifty, maybe more, there was no telling how many other supernatural things surrounded me in the club. Or what the hell the Hulks actually were. Something told me, however, that starting a fight there would not be good, and I’d probably lose. Fast. Who knew if guns even worked on whatever the Hulks were? Which made me wonder what, if anything, my gun would work on here. A thought I didn’t particularly want to dwell on.
What I needed? An out that didn’t involve shooting anyone or showing them just how ignorant to all of this I truly was. The solution popped out of my mouth so fast I didn’t have time to consider if it were good, bad, smart, or stupid.
“Move back, or Vladymir will hear about this,” I said in a low voice.
I don’t think I could have said anything else that would’ve had the same impact. The Hulks uncrossed their arms, mouths moving wordlessly before nodding to me and stepping aside. I pushed Simon past them and then held him close beside me so I could turn and back out of the club. I didn’t put my gun down until we were outside and halfway to the car. Putting the safety back on, I replaced the gun in the holster and took a deep breath. I loosened my grip on Simon, and he bolted.
Unfortunately for him, Simon has never been the athlete our father or other brothers were, and I caught him fast and took him down to the pavement. You’d think my police training prepared me for such takedowns, but it was actually growing up in a house full of boys who liked to wrestle. Twisting his arms behind his back while he screeched and squealed, I reached for my cuffs and snapped them onto his wrists.
“Stop it,” I ordered as he tried to get free. When he didn’t stop, I pushed his arm up a little further into his back.
“Owowowow!”
“Well, stop fighting me!” I pressed my knee into his back for emphasis, and he stopped fidgeting. “Are you going to stop now?”
“Yes,” he said, voice full of hatred. Getting up, I hauled him to his feet and back to the car.
“You’re a bitch,” he said as I shoved him into the back seat. Hard. Face first.
“Yeah, love you too,” I replied.
* * *
“You are such a bitch. I hate you.”
This from my little brother. Such a charmer. I don’t know why he can’t get a girlfriend.
Other than this comment every once in a while, the only other contact he and I had for the first ten minutes as I drove home came from his kicking the back of my chair every twenty-five seconds. I counted. Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five—there it is. I get it; he’s upset. I handcuffed him, embarrassed him, but does he really want to make it worse? Yes, because he is Simon, maker of worse things. If he were a superhero, his name would be The Worsenmaker.
That actually sounded better in my head.
“Knock it off,” I ordered.
“Why?”
“Because I’m telling you to knock it off.”
“Why do you always do this?”
“Do what?” I asked, eyeing him in the rear view.
“Come down on me,” he replied.
“I’m not coming down on you, Simon. I’m enforcing the rules you broke. You’re grounded, remember? You’re supposed to be home being punished, not in some depressing club.” I omitted the part about it being a club chock full of Vampires and only God knows what else. I hadn’t come to terms with that yet, so why bother him with it?
“So you arrest me, acting like a cop, like him,” he spat.
“I am a cop like him,” I said.
I got several kicks to the back of my seat in a quick staccato pattern for that. I switched from eyeing him in the mirror to glaring.
“Act like a criminal, get treated like one,” I said through gritted teeth. “And stop kicking my seat!”
He did. “I shouldn’t even be grounded. It’s not fair!”
“You broke the rules, Simon. Pop’s house, Pop’s rules. You break ’em, you’re gonna get punished.”
“Fuck Dad.”
I crossed three lanes to get to the side of the interstate, slammed on my brakes and threw the car into park, having just scared and or pissed off a half dozen other drivers. Simon screamed bloody murder before I had my seatbelt off. Halfway into the backseat to throttle him, he shrank back and as far away from me as he possibly could in the small space. I grabbed his legs and pulled, which sent him into a squirming and kicking frenzy. He nearly clocked me in the face before I had him close enough I could knuckle him on the thigh. Repeatedly. Punctuating each punch with a word.
“Today-is-not-the-day-to-piss-me-off-little-brother!” I shouted. Nothing worse than a knuckle to the tender flesh just above and to the right of the knee.
“Ow! Ow! Get off! All right, all right! Get off!” he shouted, kicking to get free. He actually landed a fairly good blow to my gut, but I wasn’t going to let him know that. Instead, I knuckled up and went for the Charlie horse on his left leg.
“Say you’re sorry!” I demanded as I landed the perfect knuckle.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” he screamed. I gave him one more, this time to the right leg, causing him to cuss at me some more.
I let him go and sat back down, fuming. I put my hands on the steering wheel and kept them there, taking deep breaths while he tried to stretch his legs out and keep them from cramping up. I did not have time for this shit, nor did I have the patience. Not today. Deep breaths … calm thoughts. Butterflies, green pastures, and all that shit.
“Dad doesn’t need this right now, Simon,” I said in a reasonable approximation of the quiet voice my dad had always used to convey ultimate anger and which Captain King had used on me just that morning. Pride flared in my chest for managing it as well as I did.
A flash of guilt crossed my little brother’s face, reflected in the mirror. He looked down, blushing. Good. He should be ashamed. He didn’t say another word as I pulled the car back out onto the interstate and took us around to C470 and on towards home. For my part, my nerves were shot, my patience gone, and I was just about at a breaking point emotionally.
And I still had to talk to my dad. Not something I looked forward to.
Chapter Ten
My relationship with my father has always been a complicated thing. The first things that come to my mind when I think of him are strength, kindness, and justice. I’ve wanted to be like him all my life, though I never let him know it, or how much I respect him. Maybe that’s a mistake on my part, given how little time we have left, but every time I open my mouth to say something to him, tell him what he means to me, the words melt away and I just sit there. Quiet.
At the tender age of sixteen years old—hell, no older than Simon is right now—my father knocked up his high school sweetheart. Neither his parents nor hers took the news well, but my dad didn’t hesitate to ask the girl to marry him. Her name? Eve, Mikey’s mom. She died two years later, killed by a drunk driver. Pop’s parents disowned him before the wedding, and Eve’s parents couldn’t handle their daughter’s death and stopped returning his phone calls, leaving Pop to fend for himself with a toddler. He’s told us this story once or twice, but honestly, he doesn’t like to talk about it. He only did so when Mikey pressed him to know more about his mother, her family, and where he came from.
I never got the sense Pop resented Mikey for asking; it was just a painful topic full of hard memories. My gr
eat-grandmother saved him back then—a strong, no-nonsense Catholic woman who frowned upon the actions of, in her words, her damned fool daughter. She took Pop and Mikey in, helped raise him for the first few years of his life. Helped Pop get on his feet and finish school, set him on the path to becoming a cop.
I have vague memories of her, impressions mostly. She died when I was very young.
Mom and Pop met around Mikey’s eighth birthday. They dated for a couple of years before deciding to get married and have a couple kids of their own. To us, Pop is the strongest man alive. Nothing could stop him; no one could stand toe-to-toe with him. Superman in every sense of the word. Family always comes first, no matter what. Hell, that’s why we moved to Denver in the first place, so he could ensure his family’s safety and watch his kids grow up in a good environment with good schools and all of the stuff people always talk about.
That’s who my dad is and will always be to me: the strong guy, the one you can always count on to be there for you. Rigid in his sense of right and wrong and justice, his purpose in life to protect and serve everyone, be it family, friend, or stranger. Didn’t matter to Pop. He was a good cop, a loving father and husband.
My dad. Tall, proud, full of life. Not what he has become. Not small, weak, battling cancer and God knows what else while trapped for most of his time in a wheelchair on our front porch.
I watched Simon in the rearview mirror. He pushed hard, maybe harder than all the rest of us combined, and I couldn’t blame him. His father was dying, and he barely knew him.
Still, it pissed me off. I wish there was something more I could do. For Simon. For Pop.
* * *
Not a light on at the house as I pulled up. Pop’s Lincoln took up the space in front, so I pulled up into the driveway. Simon had fallen into a sullen silence, and it was fine with me. I didn’t really feel like talking to him any more than he wanted to talk to me. I hauled him out of the backseat, and he stood there for a second before turning and pushing his wrists at me. Digging the key out of my pocket, I unlocked the cuffs and slid them into my back pocket.
For a minute, his mouth moved like he had more to say to me. I waited, but in the end he just rubbed his wrists, threw one last murderous glare in my direction, and ran inside the house. I followed him, and from the porch steps, I could hear the bass thumps of his stomping up the stairs followed by the quick bang of his door slamming shut.
“What in hell did he do to his hair?”
I turned, squinting into the shadows. Pop sat there just in front of the bay window. His voice lacked the rumbling, baritone thunder I grew up with, coming off more gravelly than anything else. Thin, clear tubes ran from his nose to the oxygen tank attached to the little cart sitting beside him. An unlit cigar rested in the corner of his mouth. He chewed on them now, like a dog with a bone who really wanted to light the bone and suck its sweet marrow out in the form of smoke.
“Dyed and spiked it,” I replied before taking the empty chair beside him.
He grunted, biting down on his cigar.
I used to love the smell of his cigars. He had a little office just off the dining room, and he’d disappear in there or sometimes into the backyard, and then this smell would just fill the air. Pop smell.
Staring at him in the dark, I imagined his thin, gray hair, clinging in clumps to his blotchy scalp, as it used to be: thick, red, cut in a flattop. I couldn’t see him well in this light, but I knew his shoulders slumped where once they’d been as broad and wide as the Rockies. Add to that thin, bony appendages where thick, muscled arms and legs used to be, and anyone looking at him saw someone wasting away, bit by bit, betrayed by his own body and the cancer that had spread too fast, too aggressively.
Reaching over, I adjusted the blanket wrapped around his legs, patting his knees. He couldn’t get warm these days.
He sighed, letting go of the anger before it could build too far. The doctors had cautioned him not to get too worked up. The heart attack a couple of years ago left him at risk of another attack or even a stroke.
Then the doctors found the cancer.
“You busted him like a perp!” he laughed gruffly.
“I did,” I said with a smile.
“Remember when I did that to you?” he asked, and I couldn’t help but blush, relieved he couldn’t see it, but still. “You were with—what’s his name?”
“Barry Walters,” I supplied the name with a wince.
He snapped his fingers. “Barry! I remember him. I didn’t like him. Shifty eyes. I slapped the cuffs on both of you and dragged your asses home, then made you do a perp walk to the front door.”
“I was mortified.” I was still mortified.
“It was statutory. Or near enough. What? I’m supposed to sit by while some kid mauls my only daughter? Not in this life.”
I rolled my eyes. This from the man who’d knocked up his sixteen-year-old girlfriend. Barry never spoke to me again, wouldn’t even walk down the same hall in school for fear my father might be lurking around the corner, just waiting to pounce. Made dating anyone at school very difficult from that point on, which was probably part of why the old man did it in the first place, now that I come to think of it. Took years for me to forgive him. I was utterly humiliated, and everyone talked about it and me. Didn’t help when Barry got busted for dealing a couple years later. He had quite a little pot business built up at college. Did major time for trafficking across state lines.
I hated when the old man caught something in someone I didn’t.
“I can’t control him anymore, Sam.” He flexed his hands out before him, clenching and unclenching his fists. “No juice left.”
“You do all right,” I replied.
“If it weren’t for you …” he paused, emotion thick in his voice.
I reached over and patted his blanket-covered knee again.
“How was work, Detective Kane?” he asked, changing the subject and putting his emphasis on detective.
My dad had always been a beat cop, a patroller, right up ’til the day he retired. He said he never wanted to be anything else. That his daughter had become a detective? A source of fierce pride.
Which made it all the harder to lie through my teeth.
“It went well!” I said with as much enthusiasm as I could manage. I really didn’t want to get into any of the past two days with my dad. In fact, I can honestly say he’d be the last person in the world I wanted to know anything at all about my day.
“Really? ’Cuz Marty Spitz—you remember Marty? He tells me it’s all gone to piss and Jorge is in the hospital.”
Shit.
Chapter Eleven
Marty Spitz. A career cop like Pop, close in age, who probably should’ve retired when he got shot in ’03. Instead, he started working a desk and apparently has his finger on the pulse of departmental gossip. Thanks, Marty.
I stood up. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Kid, look, it happens. We roll with it; we deal. Talk to me. Tell me what happened. I hear Jorge is hurt pretty bad.”
I took two steps and turned around. “I said I don’t want to talk about this. I did what you wanted. Simon’s home safe, and I need to get home too. It’s been a helluva day, and I just need to go home.”
“Samantha—”
There it is: Saaamanthaaaa said in all the condescending glory only my father is capable of. And it was the last straw, the snap. I hit my limit. When he said my name that way, it translated to disappointment in me. Hearing him say it reverted me in a flash to a pigtailed little girl hiding in the closet because I accidentally broke a crystal clock Mom kept on the mantle.
Everything boiling beneath the surface, all the emotions and stress bubbled forth.
I did not need this. Not from him. Not today.
“No,” I said sharply.
He stared at me, and I could only imagine how I measured up in his eyes.
“No,” I repeated, louder now.
Maybe he chomped down on
his cigar a little harder. Maybe my eyes played tricks on me.
“I am not going to rehash all of this with you. I’ve done enough of that today between cops grilling me, my captain crawling up my ass, and then Jack Mayfair making me relive it all again in super-max surround sound. Enough! I’m going home.”
“What did you say?” he asked, but I was already down the stairs and halfway to my car.
“Samantha Kane!”
I jumped when my father’s voice cracked like thunder behind me. He stood there, blanket discarded, leaning on his oxygen tank, bony knees wobbling to stay upright.
If I’d only heard his voice and not seen him standing there, I’d never guess that cancer ravaged his body. In that moment, like magic, all the medical issues, the heart attack, the cancer, all faded away, and Pop stood there again.
Frozen in place, I didn’t know what the hell to do.
The illusion shattered, though, as he struggled to stay upright.
“Pop?” I asked, taking a tentative step forward.
“What the hell does Jack Mayfair have to do with you?” he wheezed, voice failing him again. “Answer me,” he said, coughing up phlegm and spitting it out in a clump. His oxygen tubes were tangled up around his arm.
Whatever held me in place vanished, and I flew to him, sliding my arm under his to support him.
“Mayfair,” he gasped.
“It’s okay, Pop,” I said, twisting him towards the door. His hand clutched the front of my shirt.
I met his eyes—my father’s eyes, full of utter fear. I’d never seen my father scared before, not like this. Yet here he stood, scared to death and struggling to breathe. I led him to the door and pushed it open.
“Listen to me,” he gasped. “Mayfair … have to … tell …”
“I know, Pop, it’s okay,” I cooed.
He shook his head, hand tightening on my shirt. “No!”
“Mom!” I shouted. I had him in the entry now, steering him towards the nearest chair.
“Rosario,” he coughed. “Find … Rosario …”
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