Riveted

by Jay Crownover

  “If anything happens to her . . .” I trailed off and allowed Jules to haul me up to my feet.

  “We’re gonna make sure nothing happens to her, Dash.”

  I winced in pain that had nothing to do with the bleeding hole in my shoulder. “I wish I could believe that, Dad. Our track record isn’t so great in that department.” I followed him to his cruiser all while he was shouting orders and rallying the troops, and we hit the doors at a run and peeled out into the street and after the speeding sedan. Jules tossed his radio at me and ordered me to relay every twist and turn we took as we followed. I knew he was trying to make me feel productive and helpful in the pursuit but all I could feel was panic and fear threatening to choke me. She’d sacrificed herself for me, for Elma. She took care of me when it was my job to take care of her. She would give up everything for the little bit of good we’d had together.

  “We might not have a winning track record when it comes to keeping them, but we’re undefeated when it comes to finding the best women to make a life with. I think the big guy upstairs owes us a solid, son. Keep your head in the game.” I was trying to, but I felt like I was getting sucked into a black vortex that was filled with familiar pain and hopelessness.

  “She told me she loves me.” The words ripped out of my chest. It couldn’t be the last thing she ever said to me, not without me being able to give that back to her. I needed to give that to her regardless of what happened between us in the future. “She loves me and I was so fucking worried about Elma falling that I didn’t stop and grab my gun when we left the house. I knew trouble was brewin’ and I dropped the ball.” I felt my head fall forward as pain and blood loss started to zap some of my energy. She loved me and she very well could die because of it.

  “I think that love has been pretty clear from the start. I don’t think she would have agreed to come here, to hold your hand as you found your way back, if she didn’t love you. And just in case you keep wanting to be stubborn it’s obvious you love her, too.”

  I sighed and told him to pick up the pace and turn once we hit the long, flat stretches of rough road that led out of town and towards the more rural parts of the county. It was obvious neither Dixie nor the guy holding the gun on her had any idea where they were going. The poorly marked roads that seemed to go on forever were causing them to double back and speed haphazardly along roads that went nowhere.

  “How could you know I love her before I did?” I wanted to kick myself and take back every second I’d spent pushing her away. That was familiar regret and I couldn’t believe I wasn’t smart enough to learn my lessons from the first time I had done that with a woman that brought nothing but sunshine and light into my life. “Looks like they’re making a U-turn and they’re headed back towards the main road. They’re going too fast. All that gravel and unfamiliar roads . . .” I trailed off worried Dixie was going to lose control and flip the car.

  “We’re going to block them in. We’ll be at the junction at route 9 in a few minutes. He’s not going anywhere with her.” The sirens wailed overhead as the car flew so fast over the road that it didn’t even seem like the wheels were touching the ground. I’d never been so happy that the man that raised me came with a badge and a gun before. He cut me a look and went from cop to parent in the blink of an eye as he told me, “I knew you loved her because you introduced her to your family. I knew you loved her because you stayed in Denver for her even if you had other reasons for lying low. I’m not a fool, as soon as I saw you with her I knew she was your main reason. I know you love her because instead of running from whatever is waiting for you when we get to her, you’re right here running towards it. You might be scared she’s going to get hurt, but your love for that girl is stronger than your fear, Dash.”

  I couldn’t think of a response to any of it because he was right. Even though I’d let fear steal time and important moments with my family away, they were still the most important people in my world and as much as I liked Denver, the Delta was always calling me home. I’d stayed longer than I’d planned because of her. I wasn’t ready to go back to gray days and frigid nights alone without her in my life. He was also spot-on about the fact I couldn’t get to her and the danger she was in fast enough. I understood that she was in the hands of a madman, that her fate was being held in the hands of a lunatic, and there was nothing I could do about it. But instead of losing control and running from the very real possibility that I might lose her, I was racing towards whatever may come so that any time we had left together wasn’t wasted. I would fight for Dixie until the bitter end. There was no giving up on her, even if forever wasn’t a guarantee.

  We watched in silent horror as the older car started to fishtail and lose traction. It screeched from one side of the road to the other, a cloud of dust swallowing it up. When it came back into sight the vehicle was bearing down on the fleet of police cars thundering towards it. “Doesn’t look like he’s letting her take her foot off the gas or pull over and surrender.” They were blurry through both windshields and the smoke screen of road debris that the tires were kicking up but I could see the stark look of terror on Dixie’s face and the gun that was pointed at the side of her head.

  Jules nodded and his hands tightened on the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. “He’s not going anywhere.”

  My phone rang and I was jerked out of my pensive thoughts. It was such a normal thing in a situation that was not that it took me a minute to juggle the device and get a finger free to swipe across the screen. I winced when I noticed I smeared blood across the glass when I hit the speaker function. It was a blatant reminder of the kind of violence the man who had my girl was capable of. “Not a good time, Royal. Let me call you back.”

  I’d asked the gorgeous lady cop to check out all of Dixie’s online dates but I already knew the culprit was Joseph thanks to Dixie calling his name out while he threatened her with the gun.

  “Is that a siren?” She sounded alarmed but I didn’t have time to reassure her everything was okay.

  “In the middle of something. Like I said, now isn’t a good time.” I barked the words at her far more harshly than I meant to.

  “Okay, well, I’ll talk fast because you need to hear what I have to say.” She took a deep breath and then words erupted out of her so fast I could hardly keep up. “All the guys on the list you gave me checked out except for Erikson.” I grunted because she wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know. “We can’t locate him but we did get a nasty surprise when we checked his home. There was a dead body inside the house, Church. An older woman that we’ve identified as Marie Erikson. It was bad, gruesome. If the son is the person behind this murder, you need to be careful and you need to tell Dixie to be careful. This guy is unhinged.”

  “Fuck.” I bit the word out and looked over at Jules. My dad’s jaw was clenched and a muscle was ticking rapid-fire in his cheek. “Thanks for the heads-up, Royal. I’ll call with an update when I have one.” When Joseph had talked about everyone keeping him from what he wanted I had a suspicion he’d been referring to his mother. This news wasn’t good but it was far from unexpected at this point.

  “Just tell me that you’re in the front seat of that cop car and not the back.” She sounded like she was kidding, but I could hear genuine concern in her voice, which let me know she wanted some kind of real reassurance that things were under control. They were far from it but there was nothing she could do to help the situation from Colorado.

  “I’m sitting shotgun. My dad’s a cop and we have a situation but we’re handling it. Chances are I’ll be able to hand Erikson over to you at the end of the day.”

  She made a noise. “Hand him over alive, Church.”

  That wasn’t a promise I could make. “I’ll be in touch.” I knew what was at stake here and there was no way I was going to be making a phone call to Dixie’s family telling them she hadn’t made it. I wasn’t going to let some lonely, crazy person take her from us. This was a war I was dete
rmined to win. I’d lost enough battles when it came to love and loss in my life.

  I could hear the motor screaming over the noise of the sirens. I felt my heart drop and everything inside of me go still and on high alert.

  “There’s a convoy of cop cars behind us. Where does he think he’s going to go?” I put a hand on the dash as the distance between me and my girl grew smaller and smaller in a dangerous way.

  “I don’t think he’s thinking. Look at Dixie, she’s trying to tell him there’s nowhere for them to go.” Jules sounded tense as he bit the words out.

  Her mouth was moving and her hands were curled around the steering wheel in a death grip. I could see the tear streaks on her face and I wanted to reach through space and time so I could wipe them away and tell her everything was going to be okay.

  “You need to stop. He’s going to make her keep going. He has a finger on the trigger.” He was waving the gun around wildly and screaming at Dixie. She flinched but her eyes never left mine as the struggling sedan continued to thunder closer and closer.

  “Think he’s got every intention of running into us whether we’re moving or not.” Jules started to slow the cruiser down but he was right. It was clear that he wasn’t going to let Dixie take her foot off the pedal. In fact, as the car slowed he jammed the gun so hard into the side of her temple that the action jerked her head to the side. I said her name even though she couldn’t hear me, but she must have seen it because her lips twitched.

  She turned her head and looked at her captor. I couldn’t make out what she said but whatever it was it pissed the guy off. The gun waved around some more and then he held it in two hands as he pointed it right at her face.

  I screamed her name again as she turned back to look at me. The sedan picked up speed again as her eyes locked on mine. Her lips moved slowly and deliberately. She mouthed the words I love you over and over again as my heart stopped and my soul tried to jump out of my body to stop her from doing whatever it was she was going to do. I couldn’t watch her sacrifice herself for me, even if that’s what she had been doing from the get-go.

  “No!” I put my hands up and shook my head, but she kept repeating I love you and I heard it like she was yelling even though there was silence. The cruiser rolled into position horizontally across the road and I was out the door and on my feet running towards the oncoming car before the wheels stopped. I vaguely heard Jules yelling my name but all I could see was Dixie and her unfailing desire to save everyone but herself.

  “I love you!” I screamed the words back at her but I had no clue if she heard or understood because the second the last word left my mouth she cranked the wheel as hard as she could to the side, which sent the quickly moving car careening wildly to the side of the road.

  Traction was lost.

  The overtaxed motor whirred.

  Gravel and rocks kicked up and pelted me even though I didn’t feel them.

  The front wheels hit the dip of the ditch and all it took was momentum and gravity to send the big machine end over end.

  It felt like it flipped a thousand times. The sound of metal crunching and glass breaking was deafening. The smell of fuel and rubber burned my nose.

  I was frozen to the spot in horror in the middle of the road as my worst nightmare played out before my eyes.

  She’d called me a hero, and yet again I’d been unable to live up to the title. I couldn’t save her when she was so desperate to save me and everyone else she thought she could help. She was the one who was a hero and I almost hated her for it, but it was the fact I couldn’t not love her that finally had my feet moving as my body had no choice but to follow my heart towards the woman that owned every piece of it.

  Chapter 19

  Dixie

  I was flying.

  Sure, the car had left the road in a symphony of screaming metal and noisy mechanical parts pushed past their limits, but that wasn’t why I was weightless and free, floating above everything bad happening in the front seat of the twisting, turning, flipping sedan. I was flying because Church loved me and he was ready to let me love him. Even if a second was all we got to have of that love, it was enough. The light had pushed back the dark and he was standing in the sun after lurking in the shadows for far too long. It was the only thing I wanted and he had shown up to give it to me, in case it was the last thing I ever laid my eyes on. My last vision would be one of love and courage. It would be one of bravery and acceptance. It would be my dream coming true.

  I heard glass breaking all around me as I let go of the steering wheel and covered my face with both my hands. Joseph was still screaming next to me, calling me names, telling me he was going to kill me, yelling that after I was dead he was going to make it his mission to kill everyone I loved, but then there was a sickening crunch as metal made contact with the ground as we rolled over and over again. Joseph quit saying anything and I felt something sharp rip through my clothing and skin at my shoulder. It was my turn to scream as something below the dash broke loose and trapped my foot between the weight of it and the gas pedal.

  Joseph wanted me to keep going.

  He knew there was nowhere to run, not with the entire Lowry police force stretched out in front of us. He told me it was all my fault. Over and over again he told me I should have given him a chance, that I shouldn’t have been leading men on if I was in love with someone else. I tried to stay calm and reason with him. I tried to tell him that wasn’t rational. He kept telling me to go faster, to keep my foot on the gas. He jammed the gun into the side of my head so hard I saw stars and I panicked, thinking that he was going to pull the trigger by accident. There was no way in hell I was going to let him murder me in front of Church. I wasn’t going to be another slash across Church’s barely stitched-together heart. I refused to let him blame himself for the misfortune befalling yet another woman he cared about. It wasn’t his fault. None of it had been and now that he could see that, I wouldn’t let him drift back into the darkness.

  I told Church I loved him. I said it out loud over and over again. I repeated it what felt like a thousand times, each word making Joseph angrier and angrier. His rage didn’t matter. All that mattered was that I got to say what needed to be said.

  I saw Church run towards me. I could clearly see the fear and worry on his face. I told him I loved him and prayed that he could hear me. I watched with my heart in my eyes and determination coursing through every part of my body as he told me he loved me back. I didn’t need him to give that to me, but I was overjoyed that he had. It made what I had to do next far easier than it would have been otherwise. Love was stronger than fear and I felt that strength fill me up as I cranked the wheel of the speeding vehicle as far to the right as it would go. There was no hope for the sedan. It left the road and started to summersault instantly, the farm fence meant to keep in livestock and trespassers out was no match for the tumbling vehicle.

  My head was spinning. I could taste blood and dirt all across my tongue. There wasn’t a single part of my body that didn’t hurt and I couldn’t get my eyes to focus. Every breath I took burned and it felt like there wasn’t enough air. The world was upside down and sideways but I figured I must still be alive if I could feel all the things that were wrong with me. I tried to turn my head to see if Joseph was still in the seat next to me, or more accurately to see if there was still a weapon that could be pointed at me, but I screamed as white-hot pain scorched down the side of my neck when I tried to move.

  “Dixie!” I heard my name, but it didn’t sound like it normally did. Church was screaming it and it sounded like both a prayer and a curse. None of that smooth drawl was present. All I could hear was a frantic man worried about the woman he loved. He sounded tortured and stripped bare. It was his soul screaming out in search of mine, but I couldn’t answer. I tried to, but I couldn’t make my muscles work. I couldn’t get my tongue unstuck from the roof of my mouth and I couldn’t speak around the tang of blood at the back of my throat. Luckily I didn’t need to be
cause within seconds that familiar face with those remarkable eyes, twice their normal size and flooded with fear, were hovering in front of me. He was upside down, but I could make out the lines of worry and concern on his face as he reached into the mangled side of the car and put his fingers on the side of my neck.

  I had a pulse. I must have. I could hear my heart pounding between my ears and every thump of it made my chest ache with pain. I tried to blink heavy lashes so I could give him some indication that I was okay, but even that feat proved to be too challenging. I couldn’t make anything cooperate.

  “She’s got a pulse, but it’s thready. She’s bleeding all over the damn place and there’s a piece of the goddamn fence sticking out of her shoulder.”

  “Don’t move her until EMS gets here. They’re two minutes out.” I heard Jules like he was speaking through heavy fabric. I could see his legs somewhere beyond where Church was kneeling and holding on to my face with his hands.

  “I’ve got you, pretty girl.” He did have me, and now it seemed like he wanted to keep me. “Where’s Erikson? He isn’t next to her. He must have been thrown clear when they rolled.”