“Love. You.” She panted, and then let out a throaty cry, pulling me over the edge with her.
Dahlia
I was watching Baileys dig around the covers, scratching away like he was digging himself a hole as Harambe and Bing lay snoring on their sides. It was strange that the smallest of the lot was the hyperactive one. Finally, he found a comfortable spot and wiggled his booty into it and lay down with a little squeaky groan making both me and Madix chuckle.
I knew that he had something on his mind. While he’d been away, Levi had told us about what had happened at the site. It was the strangest thing! My bets were on a disgruntled employee, or maybe an ex-employee. I’d watched enough episodes of CSI to know that those were the ones you usually had to watch out for.
While I was under house arrest, Jones was looking after the garage. The good news was that Dad was due to fly back next week, and he was bringing my grandmother with him. She was now feeling better, but he didn’t want to leave her behind. He had a small apartment over his garage she could live in until she was one hundred percent, but I think he was hoping that she’d make it a permanent arrangement.
“Do you know anyone who would have a problem with you?” Madix asked out of the blue, snapping me out of my plans to maybe hit the store in town that sold cushions and home accessories for my grandma.
“In general, or is there something specific?” I turned to face him, resting my cheek on his torso, feeling the muscles contracting under the skin as I got comfy.
Picking up a lock of hair, he focused on it as he rubbed it between his fingers. “Someone wrote your name right beside one of the cut hydraulic lines.”
“Huh,” I grunted, frowning at this piece of information. I wasn’t the only Dahlia in the world, but I also hadn’t come across anyone else in the area with the same name. I wasn’t a gambler, but that didn’t bode well for the odds it wasn’t me.
Thinking over it, I couldn’t see I’d ever directly made an enemy out of anyone. There had been plenty of people who hadn’t liked me over the years, sure – no one was immune to that. But to then go and cut shit up to get at me?
“What about your mother?” he asked hesitantly.
This one, I could answer confidently. “Nope, she doesn’t give a shit. She’s never called or even sent a card for my birthday, so why would she cut machinery up to get at me?”
“I don’t know. Stranger things have happened,” he replied, making complete sense, damn him. “An ex?”
It was possible that the ex I’d accidentally bumped into the fountain was still holding a grudge, but the last I heard he had a girlfriend who looked like a Playboy bunny. I wasn’t ugly, but I had a bootay and I wasn’t likely to be chosen for a nekkie centerfold at any point soon, so again, it was doubtful – all of which I relayed to Madix, getting a glare in return.
“Aside from the bullies at school and the lovely Mrs. Crane, I haven’t really had an issue with anyone, Madix.”
All the muscles tensed under my cheek, and then in the next second my head was falling down onto the mattress seeing as how its comfy body pillow was now getting off the bed and reaching for his phone. This left his naked ass right in front of my face, so I did what anyone would do and bit it.
Unfortunately, that was the moment that whoever he was calling answered and heard, “Ouch, that stings. Leave my ass alone!”
Oops!
Eighteen
Madix
“Y ou might be onto something, son,” Jer muttered as I told the family my suspicions. “What were the names of the guys who bullied Dahlia in high school, Levi?”
Levi was sitting looking relaxed, but there was no doubt that underneath it all he was fuming. It was all adding up. Why? Because at one of the sites, we’d underestimated the importance of something. In one of the machines that had been targeted, there had been sugar, water and beer which had blocked the filter and fucked it up. In another, there had been eight beans floating in the hydraulic fluid – that’s what we’d underestimated, and I was kicking myself for it.
“Perry White, Leif Strand, Andy Granger and Nick Short,” Levi replied, almost like he was reading from a list.
Looking at him a bit closer, it was clear that the feelings he had for those four hadn’t died down since graduation. Knowing how protective the Townsends were, and also knowing the soft spot that Levi had for damsels in distress, I didn’t doubt that he would hold the grudge until his last breath regardless of what they did in life to make up for it.
“Did you say Nick Short?” Archer sat up straight and looked at his brother.
“Yeah, why?”
“Nick Short has been working for the company for six months,” Archer informed us all. “He moved back to Gonzales County after his wife divorced him. They’d only been married for four months, but apparently she wasn’t Bueno with him sticking his dick in other women,” he stopped as we all huffed out a breath that would have been amused, if it wasn’t for what this could mean. “He applied for Rich’s job saying he was more qualified than Suave and when I told him we didn’t need another project manager, he asked if I was sure about that and then said that he’d take the job anyway and prove me wrong.”
“And you gave him the job?” I asked incredulously.
“We needed more hands,” Archer shrugged. “I also recognized him from school, not knowing what he did to Dahlia,” he glared at a Levi who had the decency to cringe.
“Where is he now?” Jer asked, standing up and walking over to where his cell phone was charging.
“If I knew the whereabouts of everyone at any time, I’d likely be doing time,” Archer snapped, pulling out his own cell.
As Jer rang the police and Archer rang Rich, I looked over at Dahlia who was sitting frozen in place with my niece on her lap.
The two of us had that in common – that baby scared the bejesus out of us. No doubt our own kids would cure us of that…
The world seemed to narrow in on that one thought as all the voices around me dimmed. Babies with Dahlia. I wanted that, badly.
Before we came over here, I’d thrown a sweater for her to put on and told her to hurry. She’d pulled it over her head and then yelped and turned around in circles begging for help. When I got a handful of the sweater and went to tug it down, she’d dug her nails into my hand and screamed at me to stop. After a couple minutes of trying to persuade her to let me just pull it down, she’d admitted that it had snagged on her nose stud so if I did that, I’d ‘tear her nose clean off her face’. That was yet another moment where her craziness had balanced out my anger making it easier to think calmly and rationally.
So, fuck yeah I wanted to make babies with her. I wanted to make everything with her.
And once I got rid of this asshole, that’s what I was going to do.
Six hours later…
Living in a community your entire life apparently had its benefits. It meant that you knew everyone. It meant you knew everywhere. If you treated people how the Townsends treated people it meant that you had people’s respect and help. It also meant that if a little shit dicking weasel by the name of Nick Short was seen in a certain place, that you would find out quickly. It also meant that the Sheriff who abided by the law instead of using it for his own benefit like the Sheriff I’d worked for had, backed you up and worked with you.
Which is where we were right now.
Not living in a community your entire life and having the experience I had also meant that I could blend in, even at my height. Which is where I was at right now.
Nodding at the chick behind the bar, I took the glass that was full to the rim with bourbon. Raising an eyebrow at her, I looked back down at the glass and got a whiff of it. Jesus!
Swaying on my stool as if I was drunk, I leaned forward and took a small sip of the amber liquid, using every ounce of strength I had in me not to shudder as I swallowed it.
If this made me sterile, I was suing.
“You okay?” Lily, the chick behind the bar
asked. The Sheriff had explained that he was tight with her dad, so he’d had the chance to brief her on what he needed done and she was up for it.
Cole, one of the Townsend cousins who had turned up earlier today, sat down beside me and slapped me on the back. Fucker probably enjoyed that.
“Man, you’re free of her,” he slurred loud enough for the drunk P.O.S. “You gotta drink up and smash it,” he punctuated this by swinging his arm around and smacking me on the shoulder ‘accidentally’.
I was totally keeping a tally of this, and I’d be kicking his ass afterward.
“You tokinbout Da-la Ferg-asss-un,” is what the drunk asshole slurred, exactly like that too.
How the hell did anyone marry this chooch, let alone hire him?
“You know her?” Cole shouted in my ear. I had the misfortune of sitting in between him and Nick so apparently the only way for one to hear the other was to bellow through my ear canal.
“Know ‘er? Bitchowsme!”he yelled, slamming his hand down on the bar.
It took me a second to translate it from basic asshole into normal English, but when I did I realized he’d said she owed him. Owed him for what?
“She steal from you too?” Cole yelled, making my head snap around to look at him in warning. We might be here for a reason, but there were people in this town who already judged her because of her mother. I wouldn’t let him say something even for this that would add to that.
Fortunately, the music was loud though, so no one seemed to be paying attention to our little group.
“Nah,” the asshole waved his hand dismissively. “S’her friends. Killed ma car. Killed ma job. Killed ma marriage. Y’know?”
Okay, the car I got. But the rest?
Nodding as if Cole had experienced this too, he took a sip of his beer – shit, probably should have gone with that instead of the gasoline bourbon – and then banged the bottle down on the bar, getting a glare from Lily.
“Feel you, bruh!” he yelled, thumping his chest. He looked like a basic twat doing it, but whatever.
“Gonna get it,” Nick muttered, sounding the most coherent I’d heard all night. “Gonna get it,” he repeated, and then got up and left.
Here’s where the shit comes into it – we had suspicions. We had coincidence and motive. What we did not have was definitive evidence to prove that he was responsible. His prints were on file and the detectives who had attended both sites hadn’t been able to lift any from the crime scenes. There was no proof. He also hadn’t said anything that would stand up in a court, and that’s what we wanted.
We wanted it to be an airtight case, so we needed to get more on him.
This just wasn’t enough.
Here’s something else, something I learned on my first day as a police officer – revenge makes people sloppy. It fuels their fires making them careless because they’re so intent on getting that revenge, that they act without thinking. Murders, robbery, assault, you name it – they become desperate and fuck up.
Walking out of that bar, still pretending to be drunk, and lighting up a cigarette as I wove across the parking lot toward Cole’s truck, I knew he would fuck up and soon. I just wish I’d known exactly how. If I had, I would have given Dahlia a gun, or I never would have left her side. That was something I would carry with me as a dark stain on my soul for the rest of my life.
Dahlia
The next day…
Well, this fucking sucks!
I was being held at gunpoint by the same asshole who had tormented me throughout high school. He smelled like he’d bathed in beer and cheap whiskey – or gut rot as my dad called it – and hadn’t seen soap or deodorant in a long while.
All I’d done was let the dogs back in while I was at Luna’s house, which was where all the women had gathered while the men were out doing ‘man stuff’, and the next thing I was being dragged by my hair down the path toward a filthy truck that looked like it was being held together by rust and on a wing and a prayer. I’d tried to pull away, but a gun had been pressed to my forehead, so I’d stopped.
I used to read books and think – if someone pressed a gun to my forehead, I’d swing my hand around and knock it flying. In reality, it was far different – especially when the asshole’s hand was shaking and his finger was doing the same thing on the trigger. That’s when you freeze and start to weigh up your options and think through about a thousand what ifs within the space of sixty seconds.
What if I hit his hand and he shoots me in the eye?
What if he presses the trigger and the gun jams?
What if the gun jams and it explodes and takes half my face off as well as his hand?
What if I miss his hand when I swing?
What if I hit his hand and he shoots through the window of the house and gets one of the other women or baby Jamie? That’s the one that made me freeze and take a deep breath. I’d been bordering on hysteria – obviously – and I remember Jones telling me that in a situation where there were high emotions involved, removing as much emotion as you can and assessing it using the facts made it easier to resolve.
Could you resolve a situation where a psycho was holding a gun to your head, though?
So, I’d gotten into the car. I’d gritted my teeth when he’d brought the butt of the gun down on my left kneecap. I hadn’t cried when the kneecap had popped out of position. I hadn’t thrown up when I’d looked down at my knee and seen the kneecap out of position ie on the side of my freaking leg. I’d cried silent tears and had prayed, but I’d bit my lip and refused to let even a squeak out.
“Shoulda fucked you up in high school,” Nick ranted as he drove. Somehow, he knew where to drive to avoid getting attention even with everyone on the lookout.
The Townsends really needed to reassess what security meant.
“Why?” I croaked around the lump, most likely my kneecap, in my throat.
“Because you’re a cunt,” he sneered. “They’re all cunts.”
I hated the c-word. It was disgusting and in all of my years on this earth, I hadn’t used it once. Him calling me and the most beautiful and loving family I’d ever met that heinous name? It pissed me off even more.
At that moment, as if my prayers were being answered – thank you, God. In case I forget! – his car spluttered and drifted to a stop in the middle of the field.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he screamed, hitting his hands off the roof of the car, including the one that was holding the gun which scared the shit out of me. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he continued screaming, punctuating each curse with the slam of his hands off the roof.
Throwing open his door, he ran around the front of the vehicle and almost wrenched my door off its hinges before reaching in and yanking me toward him. That was when I screamed as the pain in my knee amplified itself by a gazillion, radiating down toward my toes and up toward my groin with the epicenter of hell in the piece of bone sitting in the wrong place.
“Shut up, you fucking bitch,” he screamed in my face, spittle flying everywhere.
I had a moment then where I properly took in the changes in him since I’d last seen him. He’d always had a hard look about him, like he lived a really hard life. Now though, he looked at least fifteen years older than he should. I wasn’t sure if it was life in general that had done that, the breakdown of his marriage at such a young age, or if his aging was down to the vengeance that now fueled him, but dude looked old.
That was when he yanked me out of the vehicle, making me land awkwardly on my injured leg. I didn’t scream this time, I scrarfed– screamed and barfed at the same time.
It was like I had no control on the violent spasms as they rocked my center, giving each expelled mouthful of my stomach contents the power to project even further than the last one.
Nick gave me a hard shove that forced me in the direction of my left leg, the bad one, meaning that it took the full force of the shove and ended up with all of my weight on it.
The pain was so bad it felt like
everything in my body froze – my brain, my eyes, my lungs, my heart… and like a sissy girl, I passed out.
Nineteen
Madix
“F uck!” Levi shouted, running toward us. “That was Luna. Dahlia’s missing.”
Not waiting around, I ran toward his truck and got in at the same time he did. In seconds he had us moving toward the houses and was relaying what he knew.
“She went to let in the dogs and when they started losing their shit at the door and she didn’t come back, the women went looking for her. They knew she wouldn’t do that, especially not just now, so they called as soon as they realized it.”
“Jesus Christ,” I roared into the tiny space. “He was waiting. He was fucking waiting, and we didn’t do jack shit.” I was panting by the time I’d finished and little flashes of light were swimming around in front of me.
“We thought we had it all covered,” Levi growled, like he was blaming himself. “Fucker!”
As we got closer to the house, we could see the women’s faces through the glass of the windows. Ariana waved her hand high above the other women’s heads and pointed toward a field with tall grass in it.
“Look at your sister,” I nudged Levi and got his attention on her. Giving her a nod, he put his foot down on the accelerator and drove in the direction she was pointing.
Initially, you couldn’t see jack shit because the ground was so dry that not a lot showed up. Until you got to the grass that was – and then you could clearly see where the wheels of a vehicle had recently gone over it, crushing it down flat.
The growling of an engine distracted me from the path that the vehicle had left ahead of us, and when I looked out of my window, it was to see Rich overtaking us on a Harley. His mouth was pinched shut and he looked just as furious as I was as he nodded and then rode on, leading us through the grass.
“What a dick,” Levi muttered, holding tightly onto the wheel as we went through the tall thick grass now. “He’s on a bike, he should have let one of us take lead so he didn’t get a face full of the shit.”
Mad Gold (Providence Gold Series Book 2) Page 16
