by Lucy Score
“Cabbage Casserole that, motherfuckers,” Mrs. Penny shouted with satisfaction as she emerged from behind the wheel, hands on her head as a dozen stunned officers trained their weapons on her.
There was a long beat of silence, and then the world started spinning again.
Burt the dog loped out of the minivan and jumped into the fountain to deliver face licks to Riley, Nick, and Weber. Satisfied that his people were alive, he shifted his attention to trying to bite the jets of water that arched into the center.
“We’re coming out,” Weber yelled, holstering his gun and gesturing for Nick and Riley to follow him.
Hands up, they limped and sloshed their way as a threesome to the lip of the fountain.
Cops and EMTs moved in barking orders, searching for wounds and weapons.
The vigilantes high-fived and took a selfie… with the unmasked Josie.
“No fucking way,” Nick said, pointing to his employee. “Richard Nixon.”
“Oh, you didn’t know?” Riley asked innocently.
“You did? She didn’t say a word in the car.”
“I’m a psychic, remember?” She grimaced and looked over her shoulder to make sure no one had heard her confession.
He shook his head and grinned. He slipped an arm around her waist, being mindful of her gunshot wound. In return, she wrapped an arm around his hips.
“Which one of us is holding the other up?” she asked as they limped toward the paramedics.
“We’re holding each other up. That’s what partners do,” he told her. “By the way, where’s my car?”
She grimaced. “Left it in the middle of a shootout on City Island.”
“Nice.”
A feral howl came from behind them. They turned to see a sweaty, bloody Duncan Gulliver swaying on the sidewalk ten feet away. The hand that held the gun was shaking.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Nick said, jostling Riley behind him. He tried to take a run at the gunman, but the bullet in his ass and the girl jumping on his back impeded him.
“Another gun!” someone yelled.
“Christ! How many more fucking bad guys are there?” one of the cops yelled, unholstering her weapon.
Before anyone, including Duncan, could react, ninety-two pounds of pissed-off dog supermanned into the air.
“Burt!” Riley yelled.
The dog’s trajectory had him plowing into the henchman’s arm and knocking the gun free before he slammed into the man’s chest.
Duncan crumpled to the cement like tissue paper.
Burt pinned him to the sidewalk with two beefy paws on his shoulders and barked once in his face.
“Whose lion is this?” bellowed a capitol cop with pants wet to the knees and gun drawn.
“Mine,” Riley said, sliding off Nick’s back.
“Ours,” Nick corrected her.
“Aww.” She grinned at him.
Nick whistled Burt off the blubbering bad guy. The dog bounded over, tail wagging.
“Buddy, you are getting the biggest rib-eye I can find tonight,” he told the heroic canine.
Burt danced around in a circle, oblivious to the carnage and confusion around them.
“You two wanna get those souvenirs looked at?” Weber asked, gesturing at their matching wounds.
While Nick flopped facedown on a gurney to give the lady paramedic a peek at his ass, he watched Riley sit on the curb to pet the very, very good boy and let an EMT fuss over her wounds.
His heart did a stuttery thing in his chest. Yeah. Marriage might be in the cards, and he wasn’t even mad about it. Sometimes it was just better to surrender.
“Okay there, lover boy?” the paramedic asked.
“Better than I’ve ever been,” he said.
“Uh-huh. Well. Your hands and feet and ass are blue. You’ve got yourself a slug lodged in your ass, and your girlfriend looks like she went a few rounds with a hangry reality TV housewife. You’re both going to the hospital,” the lady paramedic told Nick briskly.
He swore ripely and when her back was turned, Nick climbed out of the ambulance and gimped his way toward his girl.
“Whiner,” Riley teased from her seat on the curb.
“Yo, Weber,” Nick called.
The detective looked up from the heated conference he was in with the officer in charge of the scene.
“We under arrest?” Nick asked.
Weber gave a rueful headshake. “Not as of this moment.”
“Good. You can drive us to the hospital.”
Nick’s phone rang, and he paused to fish it out of his pants pocket. He swiped the water droplets off the screen. It was Perry his semi-homeless wiseman. “Hey, Perr. What’s up?” he said.
Riley swiveled her head to look up at him, and Nick saw her nose twitch.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard but you’re gonna need a new office space and apartment,” Perry told him.
Nick pinched the bridge of his nose. “And why is that?”
“Burnt to a crisp. Arson, of course. I mighta got a peek at the firebugs before they fled the scene.”
“Shit,” Nick said. “Fuck. Anyone hurt?”
“Not as far as I could tell.”
Nick gritted out a sigh. “Okay, man. Thanks. I’ll buy you lunch this week.”
“What burnt down?” Riley asked, eyes wide when he hung up.
“Damn,” Weber said, ambling over. “Someone beat me to it.”
“Beat you to what?” she demanded, her hands stilling on Burt’s red fur.
“Nick’s apartment and office burned to the ground early this morning,” Weber announced. “Guessing it was Shapiro’s dirty work. Probably the two cops who tried to take out your Nature Girls gang last night on the 83 bridge.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have knocked on my door,” Riley said to Nick. She was wearing his t-shirt and he thought that was fucking adorable.
“Are you kidding, Thorn? This is the most fun I’ve had in a long time,” he said, reaching down to help her up.
“I’m sorry about your place,” she said, brushing her blue hands on her damp shorts.
Nick shrugged it off. It wasn’t much more than a few tons of paperwork and takeout menus. “Son of a bitch. Now, I’m going to have to buy all new dog stuff,” he complained.
“Hey, man. It also means you get to buy a new flat-screen,” Weber pointed out.
Nick considered that a win. “I’m going eighty-inch with this one.”
Riley winced. “Getting shot sucks almost as much as running.”
“But think of the big screen we’ll get to recover in front of,” he told her cheerfully.
“Where are you going to hang a big screen if your apartment and office are in ashes?” she asked.
“I’ll figure something out,” he promised.
Weber led the way to his car. They followed behind at a leisurely pace conducive to limping.
“When were you guys in Tijuana together?” Riley asked.
“Never,” Nick said with a grin. “We just thought it made us sound cool when we were rookies.”
“That’s adorable,” she said.
He held onto her a little tighter with his blue hand. “I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this before, but you’re a real pain in the ass, Thorn,” he quipped.
“Ha. I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you because I was too busy wondering if it was too soon to use ‘get the lead out’.”
“Very punny,” he said, dropping a kiss on top of her Smurf-tinged hair. “I’m still pissed at you though. We’re definitely having a fight about this.”
“I’ll pencil you in,” she promised.
“Riley! Hey, Riley!”
“You have got to be kidding me,” she muttered.
Griffin Gentry was running toward them with a camera crew on his heels. “Is it true you shot several police officers and tried to drown your lover in the capitol fountain?” he yelled into the microphone in his hand.
“Oh, honey, I got this,” Nick
promised. He handed Riley over to Weber, walked up to Griffin, and punched the guy right in the face.
Griffin crumpled to the concrete. Nick stepped over him and inhaled a lungful of summer morning air and nodded. “Yeah, this is a good day.”
58
9:37 a.m., Sunday, July 5
They parted ways in the emergency department. Nick was wheeled off to meet with what Riley could only assume was a butt surgeon. Weber stayed with her while the nurses fussed over her wounds. The detective had changed out of his water-logged clothes into blue scrubs that matched his feet in the plastic flip flops someone had found for him.
“I gotta ask,” he said, after the flurry of gauze and tape and antibiotics fed through a very sharp needle. “What were you thinking meeting Flemming alone like that?”
“I knew Nick was going to get shot if he showed up today,” she said. “I thought I could change the future.”
“By sacrificing yourself,” Weber said.
She shrugged. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
He sighed. “It was a very brave, very stupid thing to do.”
“Yeah, but Nick and Jasmine are alive, aren’t they? And Flemming isn’t getting anyone’s seat in the legislature anytime soon.”
“You could have been killed,” he said sternly.
“But I wasn’t. Wait. Jasmine is okay, isn’t she? She didn’t die in some kind of church bus shootout did she?” Riley asked, sitting up.
Weber held up his hands. “She’s fine. The walking club is a little shaken and maybe confused about what constitutes kidnapping. But Jasmine is fine.”
She relaxed back on the bed. “Now it’s my turn to ask a question.”
“Shoot,” he said, then winced. “Sorry.”
“How did Nick know he could trust you?”
He gave her a grin. “Because I’m always the good guy.”
Riley rolled her eyes. She was starting to collect arrogant men the way her Aunt Sage collected erotic snow globes.
“Did you both know Detective Shapiro was dirty?” she asked.
“I had my suspicions,” Weber said.
“Which were confirmed when she had you suspended and took over the case.”
He nodded. “That one pissed me off. Nicky eventually figured it out, too. He’s a lot slower than I am.” Weber glanced at his watch.
“Have to go?” she asked.
“Yeah. My lieutenant and the chief scheduled a contest to see who can yell the longest at me for running an off-the-books op while on suspension.”
He didn’t look too worried about it.
“They want to have a conversation with Nicky, too, so I called your dad to come pick you up,” he explained.
She felt a jab of disappointment. Oh, wait. Maybe that was just the hole in her love handle. She’d had a cute fantasy of limping out of the hospital arm-in-arm with Nick and going home to have some less acrobatic, more gentle sex than last night’s round. And then food. A lot of food.
That was the thing about fantasies. Unlike psychic visions, they didn’t come true. Considering the fact that there was no reason for them to pretend to be engaged anymore, she’d be lucky if she ever saw him again.
She moped until she was discharged, handed her bloody t-shirt—well, Nick’s bloody t-shirt—in a biohazard bag, and wheeled to the hospital’s entrance.
“What the—”
Her dad was waving from behind the wheel of Nick’s Scientology van.
“You sure you want to get a ride home in that?” the orderly asked.
She laughed. “Yeah. I guess so.”
The orderly helped her out of the chair, and Riley, suddenly bone-weary, lugged her body into the passenger seat.
A large, wet nose snuffled at her hair.
“Dad. Why are you in Nick’s van? And why is your cow sniffing my head?”
Roger beamed at the heifer. “Had to get my girls back home, didn’t I?”
Daisy mooed in agreement, right in Riley’s ear. Man, cows were loud.
Her father and his spite cow were picking her up at the hospital after she’d been shot.
She’d never had a chance at turning out normal.
“Where’s Burt? Where’s Mom?” she asked, wincing as she secured her seatbelt.
“Gabe picked up Burt and drove him and the rest of your neighbors home since Mrs. Penny’s minivan is now evidence. Your mom, sister, and the girls are staying up at the commune for the day. And your waitress friends said something about helping in the back pasture,” he said, easing the van onto Second Street, where just hours ago his daughter had pedaled for her life with a madman on her tail.
“How mad is Mom?”
Roger shrugged. “Eh. About as to be expected with her daughter getting herself shot over some guy.”
Nick Santiago was not merely “some guy.” But until she found out where things were going now that the fake engagement was for real over, she’d keep her opinions to herself.
“How mad are you?” she asked.
“I’ve been madder,” her dad mused. “Besides, I’ve done some dumb shit in my day. Like thinking I was gonna dump your mom for crushing on some guy she hadn’t even met yet.”
“Dad, I’m really sorry about that,” she began.
“Sorry? You were four. What the hell do you have to be sorry about?”
“I broke you guys up.”
Roger shook his head. “That’s bullshit. I broke us up.”
“Yeah, but you wouldn’t have if I hadn’t told you Mom was kissing another guy.”
“Those three months and nine days without having you and your mom around were the longest of my life. One week into it, I knew it was the biggest mistake I’d ever made. But without it, I wouldn’t have known how much I really loved your mom and how ready I was to be a husband and a dad.”
Daisy shoved her giant face between the seats and mooed.
Roger chuckled and gave the cow a little scratch between the ears. “Yeah, I love you, too, Daisy girl.”
“You honestly aren’t mad about it?” Riley pressed.
“Mad? We got your sister out of the deal. I got a trivia night partner. And I’ve got three little cuties who call me Pop-Pop and build birdhouses with me.”
“That’s very Blossom Basil-Thorn of you,” she observed.
“What can I say? You Thorn women rub off on a guy.” He grinned.
She couldn’t help but smile back. “But seriously. You left your wife, and she got pregnant to another man because I opened my big, fat mouth.”
“Ah, Rye Bread. You always were too hard on yourself.” Roger sighed. “Lemme ask you this. This Nick fellow. You did what you did because you had a vision or something that he was gonna get shot in a fountain, right?”
“Yes.”
“Did he or did he not still get shot in a fountain today?”
“He did,” she said slowly.
Nick had gotten shot in a fountain.
Dickie had gotten himself murdered.
Her parents had broken up over a man her mom hadn’t even met.
“Wait,” Riley said, straightening in her seat and then wincing at the full-body soreness. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I don’t know how this woo-woo stuff works. But maybe you saw those things happening because they were gonna happen no matter what.”
She thought of the ugly comforter at the commune. Of Nick ranging his gloriously naked body over hers. Then she remembered she was in a vehicle with her dad and his pet cow.
“Are you saying you think all of that stuff was fate?”
“I’m not really sure what I’m saying,” Roger said. “But it’s something to think about, isn’t it? It’s a possibility you were seeing things that were gonna happen no matter what you did. Maybe you should ask your grandmother about it.”
They both shivered.
“Maybe I’ll have Mom ask her,” Riley said.
“Good call.” Roger yawned. Daisy mooed. “Let’s get some tacos and
then get you home.”
Her dad left her in front of the mansion with a greasy bag of tacos and one of queso and chips before driving off with his cow.
The heavy interior door was open behind the screen, and Riley could hear the sounds of the house and its residents. Mrs. Penny was yelling for Bloody Mary ingredients from the front parlor while Lily and Fred argued over who was Great-Aunt Esther’s favorite growing up. Riley could smell fresh laundry in the dryer.
Just across the road, the river gleamed under the summer sun. Birds sang. Neighbors mowed their lawns.
Things were blissfully, comfortingly normal.
She sat down on the rocking chair and took a breath. Things were going to change. Several of them. But it didn’t seem quite as scary now that she’d faced down bad guys with guns. She’d survived getting shot and almost drowned. She’d survived spending the night with Nick in her bed. She could survive being less normal.
She heard a scrabble of nails from inside. Burt gave a happy bark and bounded through the screen door. He trotted up to her and shoved his face into her lap, looking up at her with love-struck brown eyes.
“Hey, buddy. Who’s the best boy in the world?” she asked, leaning down to hug him.
His tail slashed through the air, back and forth in dangerous happiness.
The screen door creaked open again, and Gabe appeared. He was dressed in his usual skin-tight workout wear and holding a bowl of ice cream in one hand and a gym bag in the other.
“Riley! You are back!” In his rush to hug her, he threw the bowl over his shoulder. The dog dove for it.
Riley returned his hug one-armed.
“Thank you for telling Nick where to find me,” she said.
He looked surprised. “How did you know?”
She tapped her temple. “Psychic, remember? Also, how else would Nick have figured out where I was? I had his car with the police scanner.”
“I was honored to use our spiritual connection to aid you today,” he said humbly. “It has been an honor to serve you, Riley Thorn.”
The man looked like he was about to cry. She eyed the gym bag he’d dropped.
