by Katie Ruggle
With a small noise of disgust, Daisy yanked at the material. In her half-awake panic, she just managed to tangle herself further. Her feet caught the edge of her blankets, tripping her as she lurched out of bed. She landed on her hands and knees, the hardwood floor connecting painfully, the throb telling her she’d have bruises later. Twisting so she was sitting on the floor, she kicked her way free of the covers that still managed to cling to her feet.
Finally free, she scrambled to her feet and hurried toward the stairs, whacking her shoulder on her bedroom doorframe as she passed through it. She grimaced, rubbing the spot where yet another bruise would appear. It was like the house itself was punishing her for what she’d done that day eight years ago.
Although she hadn’t had a destination in mind when she’d fled her bedroom, her legs carried her automatically to the training room. Ignoring the creeping feeling of menace emanating from the immobile equipment, she jumped onto the treadmill. Daisy arrowed up the speed past her usual warm-up, needing to run fast enough to get away from the nightmares and the memories and her stupid, panicky, shut-away life.
Running was too monotonous, though, giving her too much time to think. She kept thinking she heard things over the steady burr of the treadmill—a creak of a floorboard or the click of a latch. Every imaginary sound made her jump and flinch so strongly that, several times, she stepped on the edge of the belt and almost fell. Running wasn’t enough to kill her past and present ghosts, so she started a circuit, moving from pull-ups to leg-lifts to jump-ups to burpees to sit-ups to punching the heavy bag to push-ups and back to the treadmill for more sprints. She lost track of how many rotations she’d done, her muscles burning until they finally just went numb.
Numb was good, she decided, as the feeling disappeared from her body and then her brain. She stopped hearing the phantom intruder, her mother’s sobs, a gun firing. All she knew was her feet pounding on the treadmill or her fists smacking against the bag, until either she tripped or her legs decided they were done, and she sprawled on the floor.
That didn’t hurt as much as it should have, either, so there was another benefit to the numbness. With the current noodle-like state of her muscles, she barely managed to roll over onto her back. The high ceiling was white and bumpy, and Daisy stared at it until her eyes grew fuzzy and she had to close them.
She wondered if she’d really damaged her body, if the lack of feeling was disguising a serious injury. With her phone upstairs, Daisy would have no way to call for help. She’d be trapped in the exercise room, possibly for days, until Chris decided to visit. Or maybe he’d never come. He’d decide she was too much trouble, or the sheriff would order him to stay away, or Chris would find a girlfriend who could actually leave the house and go on a date, and he’d marry this non-messed-up woman, and they’d have adorable blond babies who’d wear Chris’s charming grin.
Daisy knew she was wallowing in self-pity, but she couldn’t stop. Her muscles and her mind had nothing left to give, no reserves of emotion or energy to help her bounce out of her funk. She could only lie there, tears seeping from under her eyelids and tracking over her temples. Finally, she took the only escape she had open to her—unconsciousness.
* * *
The pounding woke her. It was faint, but persistent, and it seemed to be growing louder. She rolled onto her side and groaned when every piece of her shrieked in agony. The floor was hard underneath her, and she reluctantly opened her eyes to see the legs of a weight bench in front of her face.
Painfully, she hauled herself to a sitting position, blinking a few times to orientate herself.
“You couldn’t have made it to the mats before you passed out?” Daisy muttered. She’d never been drunk, so she’d never been hungover, but she wondered if it felt anything like her current state. If so, she’d continue abstaining for reasons other than just because her dad refused to buy her alcohol.
The pounding was getting ferocious, so Daisy stumbled to her feet, straightening her body with a whimper. Her first steps were stilted and uneven, although moving helped the stiffness in her muscles. By the time she reached the front door, she was walking almost normally—normally, at least, for a ninety-year-old woman.
She jabbed at the intercom button. “What?”
There was a pause before Chris’s voice came through the speaker. “What do you mean ‘what’? Why didn’t you answer?” He sounded pissed.
“I was sleeping,” she snapped, feeling a little cranky herself. “Why didn’t—this is dumb.” Releasing the intercom button, she buzzed Chris in and then leaned against the door, taking some of her weight off her complaining legs.
The exterior door closed with a harder thud than usual, meaning Chris had helped it along. For some reason, the idea of him slamming doors like a hormonal thirteen-year-old girl made her snicker as she unfastened the interior door locks.
When she saw his face, her initial theory was confirmed. He was indeed pissed.
Although she expected him to tear into her as soon as he was inside, Chris remained silent until she’d locked the door and made her stumbling way into the kitchen.
“What’s wrong with you?” he finally demanded, following her. Instead of heading to the coffeemaker, he stood stiffly by the far counter, his arms crossed over his chest. As always, it really did nice things to his muscles when he stood that way.
Daisy shook off the lecherous thoughts, trying to focus. “What’s wrong with me?” she repeated. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”
His scowl deepened, and Daisy didn’t have the heart to tell him it made him more attractive rather than intimidating. “You’re limping. Are you hurt?”
“Just sore.” With a yawn, she figured she might as well take advantage of the brewer if Chris wasn’t interested. “I worked out pretty hard last night.” She started a cup of coffee and grabbed a glass for water. From the way her head was pounding, she knew she had to be dehydrated. She downed two glassfuls while Chris glared at her.
“Why didn’t you answer your phone?”
Apparently, it was going to take a few more minutes for Chris to get over his snit. “My phone’s in my bedroom.”
For a moment, he looked more confused than angry. “You just said you couldn’t hear me knock because you were sleeping.”
“I was sleeping.” She traded her water glass for the coffee mug. Between the water and the caffeine, one or both should help with her headache. “Just not in bed.” A yawn interrupted her explanation. “I fell asleep in the training room.”
“Why were you sleeping in the training room?”
Sometimes it was a pain to be friends with a cop. “It wasn’t really a planned decision. I was tired after working out, so I lay down and dozed off.”
“On the floor of the training room.”
Since her mouth was full of coffee, she just gave an affirmative shrug.
“How long did you work out?”
Seriously, he was a bulldog. “I don’t know. A while.”
“A while.” He’d talked about the sheriff’s confession-winning stare, but his wasn’t too shabby. “Did you fall asleep or did you pass out?”
“Does it matter?” She couldn’t hold his gaze. Instead, she focused on tracing the rim of her mug. “Did you want some coffee?”
“Yes, it matters.” He ignored her other question. “What happened? Was it hearing about the Gray case?” His arms uncrossed so he could scrub his hands over his face. “I knew I shouldn’t have gotten you involved.”
“No!” she yelped, panicked at the thought of her new friends disappearing as quickly as they’d entered her life. “It’s not that. I like hearing about the case. I just had a nightmare. It was probably from eating too many brownies.”
“Brownies.” His tone was skeptical, but he let it go as he connected the brownies-to-eggs-to-father dots. “Your dad’s here?”
She shook her head, glad to be focusing on something other than the possibility of getting kicked out of the Nancy Drew club. It wasn’t Chris’s decision, but she didn’t know the women well enough to determine if they’d stay away if he asked. “He stopped by with groceries and demon dolls, but he left right away for a new job.”
“A new job? He didn’t even stay one night?” The muscle on the side of his jaw was doing a weird twitchy thing. “Wait. Demon dolls?”
“Yes. I guess it’s a huge new house going up outside of Parker. And wait until you see these creepy things.” She hurried over to where the box was still sitting on the counter. She’d brought the kids’ books into the study but left the dolls, since the kitchen was the room farthest from her bedroom.
“Daisy. We’re not done talking about… What the hell?”
“Hell.” Daisy moved the box closer to Chris so he could get the full creepy impact. “Exactly. Because that is where they are from and where they want to drag us all.”
“Your dad brought those?” He glanced at her in disbelief and then returned his focus to the dolls, as if he couldn’t stop himself. “Why?”
“He found them at the junk store in Connor Springs.” Feeling she’d tortured Chris enough—even as high-handed and bossy as he was currently being—she returned the box to its place on the counter and closed the flaps before reaching for her coffee again. “He said they looked old, so he thought I could sell them online.”
“Someone would buy those?”
She shrugged and gave him a small grin. “My dad did.”
His snort was more than half a laugh, and he moved to the coffeemaker, so Daisy assumed lecture time was over. “They look like something we’d find in a serial killer’s house.”
“Exactly.” She eyed him over the top of her mug. “And it was the dolls that made him do it.”
That time, Chris really did laugh. “No wonder you had nightmares last night.” The reminder sobered him. “Was it the usual?”
“Yeah.” Her hands were suddenly shaky, and she put her mug on the counter so the hot coffee didn’t slosh over the sides onto her fingers. “Mom. You weren’t there, though.”
His head whipped around so he could stare at her, his expression stricken. “I’m usually in your nightmares?”
He looked so upset at the thought that she hurried to reassure him. “No. It just normally follows what really happened.” Her hands were sweating now, as well as trembling, so she rubbed them on her pajama-slash-workout pants. “Last night, after Mom…fell, he looked at me. The gun…the gun was…” Her throat closed, not permitting her to speak, barely allowing her to breathe. Even though her palms were dry, she kept rubbing them up and down her thighs.
“Hey.” Chris was suddenly right in front of her, holding her wrists and keeping her hands still. “I was there. I shot him before he could even think about doing anything to you, okay? I just wish…”
“I know.” Leaning forward, she let her forehead rest against his chest. “I wish that, too.”
His thumbs stroked the inside of her wrists as they just stood silently for a while. Daisy basked in the rare contact of his skin against hers. She was tempted—so tempted—to raise her head, to bring her lips to his. The only thing that allowed her to resist was the memory of his appalled reaction the last time she’d attempted to kiss him. If she tried again, would he stop visiting her altogether? The thought was so terrifying, she felt the prickle of anxious sweat.
“Next time you have that nightmare—any nightmare,” he said quietly, “don’t work out until you’re unconscious. Just call me, okay?”
With her forehead still pressed to the front of his shirt, not wanting to give up the contact, as little as it was, she said, “You do enough for me, Chris. I’m not waking you up at two in the morning because I’m scared of a bad dream.”
“Yes, you are. And half the time, I’m awake at two a.m.”
“Because you’re working.” She lifted her head so she could give him a stern look. “I’d probably call you in the middle of some sort of sting operation, and the ring of your phone would give you away, so the bad guys would scatter before you could bust them.”
He stared at her and then started laughing. His hands slipped away from her wrists as he retreated to the coffeemaker, and Daisy swallowed hard with disappointment.
“You do realize I work for the Field County Sheriff’s Department, right? At two this morning, I was helping Ian Walsh and some other guys from Fire drag a bull elk off the road after a semi hit it. After that, I directed traffic for a while so some dumbass who was moving and didn’t secure his things in the back of his truck could pick up the remains of his possessions. He’d been losing chairs and boxes and even a mattress for several miles before he realized he was leaving a trail. Let’s see…then I had a quiet half hour to write reports, which ended when I was sent on a domestic call.”
His monolog had allowed her to push the memories of her nightmare and the triggering event to the back of her mind where it belonged. Since her hands were steady again, she retrieved her coffee and leaned against the counter to enjoy Chris’s story.
“Everyone okay on the domestic?”
He snorted. “They were uninjured, but I don’t know if you could call them ‘okay.’ For some reason, whenever those two start fighting, they take it to their front yard. The neighbors don’t appreciate the screaming, so they call us. The only actual violence was when the woman threw their daughter’s doll against the garage door. It knocked off the head completely.”
“Poor kid. Do you think she’d like a replacement…or two?” Her gaze flicked over to the box.
Chris gave her a chastising frown. “Why would you want to traumatize an innocent child like that? Besides, I managed a pretty good repair job after we got the parents to stop yelling at each other.”
“That was nice of you.” The mental image of Chris, the doll doctor, made her smile. She hid it behind her mug.
He shrugged, focusing on his coffee. “Didn’t want the kid to find her doll decapitated. That’d require a lot of future therapy.”
“True. Busy night.”
“I’d rather have that than a slow shift. Lots of action makes the time go by faster, and it keeps me awake. I did have a minute to read the transcripts of the interviews with Ellie’s dad. Looks like he wouldn’t say a word, either time. If he knows who Gray’s murderer is, he’s not telling.”
Her legs were still tired from her workout, so she placed her coffee mug down and attempted to boost herself up to sit on the counter. Unfortunately, her arms had suffered as much as her lower half, so they refused to support her weight. Daisy’s feet returned to the floor with an ungraceful thump.
Without even trying to hide his amusement, Chris put his coffee aside and moved toward her. Not sure what he was planning, Daisy eyed his approach warily. He grabbed either side of her waist and lifted her, making her squawk in surprise, and then deposited her onto the counter. The unexpected assistance made her wobble, and he waited in front of her, his hands still at her waist, until she steadied.
“Good?” he asked, retreating a step, although he kept his arms extended as if to catch her if she fell.
“Uh…yes?”
Chris returned to his corner and his coffee, leaving her feeling off balance in a couple of ways. That was twice in five minutes that he’d voluntarily touched her, and any Chris contact, no matter how fleeting, had the power to destroy her equilibrium.
“So…” It took her a second to pick up the conversation where they’d left off. “Did you get a chance to look into the arsons?”
That made him scowl at his mug. “No. For some reason, the arson reports aren’t filed with the rest. I couldn’t find the call notes in the computer system, either. I’m going to have to stop by during nonvampire hours and talk to Stacy in Records to see if she knows where they’re stored.”
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br /> “Why would the reports on those calls be treated differently?” Daisy wasn’t familiar with the department’s record-keeping system, but it seemed strange to her that one type of report would be kept elsewhere.
“Could be because Fire’s involved,” Chris offered. “Rob and Chief Early are both responsible for the suspected arson investigations. With interagency cases, the paperwork’s gotta be a beast.”
She nodded, took a sip of her coffee, and then asked, “Not that I’m complaining, since I’m always happy to see you, even in the predawn darkness—”
“The sun’s been up for hours.” When she looked skeptical, he amended his statement. “Well, maybe not hours, but it’s definitely not predawn.”
“Anyway…” She stretched out the word. Although Chris rolled his eyes, he stayed quiet. “Is there any reason for your daily visits to Daisyville?”
He choked a little on his coffee. When she looked at him questioningly, he just shook his head, declining to explain his reaction. Instead, he coughed and said in a slightly strangled voice, “A lot’s been happening lately. I get worried.”
That wasn’t a very satisfying answer. “You can’t just text? If you abbreviate obnoxiously, it’s only four letters—R, U, O, and K.”
“Doesn’t work when you don’t answer your phone.”
“Hey, I take sleep where I can get it, even if it’s the hard floor of the training room.” Swinging a leg, she tried to kick him, but the kitchen was too wide. “And quit dodging the question.”
“Why didn’t you…never mind.” He shook his head. “I’m not dodging the question. I already answered it. Stuff’s been going on around here, and there’s been a lot to discuss.” Glaring at his coffee a lot harder than it probably deserved, he was quiet for a few moments. “I like talking things out with you. I’ll be in the middle of a call where something crazy is happening, and I’ll think, ‘I can’t wait to tell Dais about this.’”
His admission made her stomach warmer than the coffee had. “I like talking to you, too. It wasn’t a complaint. I was just curious.”