by Scott, Ada
There was no time to mourn the potential loss of a worthless sack of shit, not when I had to catch up to James before he… I couldn’t even bring myself to think of the what-ifs. Whatever happened, James wasn’t going to fuck with mine and Hazel’s life together after tonight. Not if I, and his cousin’s handgun, had anything to say about it.
I rushed to the kitchen, grabbed my keys off the table and followed in James’ footsteps as I headed to the front door, stooping to pick up my boots as I ran into the night barefoot. The ’57 Chevy started up first time, and I almost laughed maniacally at the relief, having half-expecting the damn thing to refuse to catch like in a horror movie. The laugh turned into a string of rage-induced cussing as I rushed out of the truck to kick the garage doors open and returned to the driver’s seat.
The rear wheels of the pickup sprayed dirt back into the garage in twin plumes as it roared forward. I lurched out onto the street and floored it, sparing one shaky glance in the rearview mirror. If there had been any doubt in my mind five years ago about whether I’d ever see that place again, there could be none now. There was probably no favor I’d earned in Ex Machina big enough to let me set foot in a town where I was a cop-killer.
I drove the pickup with white-knuckled intensity, fish-tailing around most corners as I tried to come to grips with how it handled. My lips pulled back from my teeth and my jaw clenched the whole way so that I almost felt like I had a cramp in my face by the time the Chevy mounted the curb outside Hazel’s house.
With gun in hand, I sprinted from the truck, hurdled the fence and burst into the house. When I rounded the corner to the living room, James was waiting for me, standing on the spot where I’d played with my daughter only a few short hours ago.
He stood behind Hazel, using her as a human shield with the knife from my dad’s kitchen pointing into her throat. Her shirt was torn open and his free hand was holding her in place by the breast, squeezing it through her bra like he was rock-climbing with no safety harness. I fucking seethed at the sight of his hands on her.
“You sure as fuck weren’t a ninja in your past life, huh dipshit?” he asked.
“Ninja enough for your fucking cousin,” I said. “Let her go, James.”
“What did you do?” James asked.
“He had a change of heart. Are you OK, Hazel?”
Hazel nodded almost imperceptibly.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” asked James. “Put that gun down.”
“Let her go and we’ll leave,” I said.
“Fuck that. Put. The gun. Down.”
With each new sentence he pushed the knife against Hazel’s throat harder, until her eyes squeezed shut and blood flowed from her neck to match the tears flowing down her cheeks. There was no winning this game of chicken.
“OK! OK! Just stop…” I crouched down and placed the gun on the floor, instinctively raising my hands in surrender.
“Kick it over there.” He jerked his head to his right.
Being barefoot, I stepped on it and then sent it sliding across the carpet. James jerked his head in the other direction. “Now get face down on your stomach over there. Move, motherfucker!”
I slowly walked to where he indicated and he turned to keep Hazel between us, taking a few steps backwards in the direction of the gun. Once I was on my stomach, he shoved Hazel hard enough that she just about fell over me and then he picked up the gun.
“Are you OK? Your hand…” she said.
“Shut the fuck up!” James yelled and pulled out his phone and held it to his ear.
My hand was covered in Greg Poppleton’s blood. “I’m fine,” I whispered. “You? Where’s Sienna?”
Hazel nodded again.
“I said shut the fuck up!” James still had the phone to his ear as he side-stepped towards the door, keeping the gun trained on us. “What the fuck did you do?”
Suddenly there was a scrabbling of claws on the floor coming from the kitchen and the kind of terrifying sounds I hadn’t heard rumble out of Chopper in years. The huge rottweiler was a black and tan flash as he leapt on James, knocking the grown man clear off his feet.
James’ phone skittered across the floor, his cousin’s possibly still ringing on the other end. I sprang to my feet and cursed when I saw the gun was still in his hand.
“Get him, Chopper!” I yelled, racing to help, praying I could get there before James managed to point the gun in any useful direction.
Thankfully, Chopper had James by the arm that was holding the gun. It had to be sheer good luck, because I’d never trained him for this, but it was stopping James from getting any kind of control over the weapon.
I jumped in the air and came down knee-first on James’s face as Chopper ripped his forearm to shreds. James screamed and lurched as I rose up to drop my knee on his skull again.
The gun went off, deafening in the small room, and more adrenaline dumped into my body, as if I needed it at that point. I dived for his hand, and Chopper let go as I yanked it and ripped the gun out of James’ grasp.
With the weapon secured, I stepped away from James’ prone form. He groaned, as groggy as I had been after his cousin had pistol-whipped me a couple times.
For the first time, I saw Sienna sitting in the hallway outside the living room, slumped against the wall and staring pale-faced at the scene that had unfolded in front of her. Then I remembered the gunshot.
My whole body went numb as I ran over and crouched next to the little girl. Behind me, Hazel screamed Sienna’s name.
“Sienna?” As I was reaching out, she turned her head to look at me, and feeling came back to my extremities in the form of painful pins and needles.
“I… I tried to kick him in the balls but they were too high…”
“It’s OK…”
Hazel nearly knocked me sideways trying to get to Sienna. “Sienna-bear? Are you hurt?”
“No… I tried…” Sienna mumbled, then burst into tears.
Hazel picked her up, running her hands all over the little girl’s body, seeking any injury, as I turned back to James. Chopper was lying down, panting next to James’ prone body, and I was about to say something about how he wasn’t as young as he used to be, when he rolled to his side and I saw the blood-matted fur.
“Oh… no, Chop… oh noooo…”
I sank to my knees next to him, not knowing what to do. His big brown eyes rolled up at me as if I was his only hope and he whined weakly, breaking my heart.
Gently, I lifted his head onto my lap, trying to think of what to do. The vets were closed at this time of night, and unless by some miracle Hazel’s neighbors didn’t hear or care about the gunshot, we were going to be swarmed by cops in the next several minutes. There was nothing in this town to help us, and the closest safe-haven for us might be a fifty-minute drive away at the Ex Machina chapter in Shackleford.
“OK, we’re gonna get you out of here and get you fixed up, Chopper.”
Chopper’s little tail wagged a couple of times at the mention of his name and his tongue lolled out to lick my hand, but he never pulled it back, going completely limp where he lay. I sobbed, gritting my teeth and looking up at the ceiling.
Next to me, James groaned again and I turned my head to look down on him with more hate than has ever been leveled at another human being before. My fists clenched so tight I thought I was going to tear the gun apart.
“Take Sienna out to the truck,” I said.
“I tried to kick him in the balls but they were too high,” Sienna repeated. “I… I thought Chopper could do it. I’m sorry!”
She started to cry, but I couldn’t look at her. “It’s not your fault, Sienna. None of this is your fault. Take her to the truck. Now, Hazel. We’re leaving in a minute.”
Behind me, I heard Hazel lift Sienna and run out the front door. A second later, I heard the clacking of claws as Molly scampered after them. Then I was alone with James.
“You motherfucker,” I said, the emotionless tone of my voic
e unnerving even myself.
I went to the couch and pulled a couple little cushions off, returning to James and straddling him, bearing my weight down on his chest and stomach to make breathing as difficult as possible. All I wanted in that moment was a month to make James hurt as much as I was hurting right now. The universe wasn’t going to grant me that, but I couldn’t suffer the knowledge that James walked the earth after today, I just couldn’t.
“This is better than you deserve,” I said, putting the gun under his chin and smothering it with the cushions to try and mask the sound.
With a deep whomp sound, feathers, blood and bone sprayed out as I pulled the trigger. James’ body tensed under me and then went as limp as Chopper’s. Good riddance.
I tucked the gun into the back of my pants and leaned over to scoop up Chopper. His body was still warm, but knowing that it soon wouldn’t be was almost too much for me to take.
Chopper’s body was impossibly heavy, heavier to me than if he had been squirming and writhing trying to get back to the ground. When I walked to the front door, Hazel was grabbing the last of their suitcases.
“Is he…?”
I nodded. Hazel’s face contorted in pain and the grunt of effort when she lifted the suitcase sounded an awful lot like a sob.
We followed her out and I carefully placed Chopper in the bed of the truck. He would have loved to ride back there, sticking his head out the side and no doubt pretending that he, Chopper, was the fastest Good Boy in the whole world, so fast that his tongue would flap in the breeze out the side of his mouth.
I gave him a pat and a rub on the side of the neck. The last time I would touch his still-warm body, the last time I could let even a small part of my brain pretend he was just sleeping.
After a pause, I entered the truck on the driver’s side and fired it up, pulling back onto the road and turning us in the direction of Shackleford. Sienna was leaning hard into Hazel from the car-seat I’d mounted in the middle, and Hazel was hugging her fiercely but reached out a hand to lay it on my arm.
I looked over at them, and down at Molly in the footwell by Hazel’s feet. Chopper had sacrificed himself to save my family. In my mind, I promised him I’d make them happy, that it was worth it.
In a few minutes, we reached the town limits. We kept on driving, and I’d never turn in the direction of Shippensburg again so long as I lived.
Epilogue
Jeff - Two Years Later
I ran a soft cloth over the pictures on the headliner. They told the story of my life. From the family photo when I was a baby, that happy day with Hazel, my dad and Chopper, and the latest one from a photo taken last year when Hazel, Sienna, Molly, Sam and I finally moved into our new place.
Soon, after Sienna’s little brother or sister arrived, we’d take a new picture and I’d have it added to the series. There wasn’t infinite space in there, so I’d have to be careful with what milestones I chose to immortalize, but that one would definitely count.
In the bed of the truck, Sienna was playing with Sam, the only puppy from Molly and Chopper’s litter we had kept, the only one that could have been mistaken for a purebred rottweiler. He looked a lot like Chopper, without the battle-scars, and now that he was fully-grown, or close to it, he dwarfed his mum.
The two of them had chosen to play back there for the majority of the time I’d been cleaning the pickup, getting soaked and a little soapy, but the warm summer sun dried everything pretty quickly. I took a deep breath and listened to Sienna laughing, feeling the truck shake as Sam chased a tennis ball around the confined area of the pickup’s bed.
Even with the help of someone like Jace Barlow, it had taken a long time before I felt like I could sleep easy. I knew he was powerful, but I didn’t know how far the billionaire mafioso’s generosity would go, even if I did help save his family’s life at that shootout in the cabin in the woods that time.
Turned out, his generosity went a long fucking way. Maybe it was the way Sienna played with his baby son when we met, maybe he saw a little bit of his family in ours when we talked about our situation over lunch.
When Jace Barlow pulls strings for you… whatever is at the other end of those strings fucking moves. The media stopped caring about the drama unfolding in Shippensburg, the investigation turned on the Poppleton family and we read that Hazel’s parents ended up getting awarded a huge amount of damages from it when evidence turned up that it wasn’t just James and Greg who were in on the contamination of the Rivera Vineyard.
Just to be safe, we still had to move to Canada, which was a small price to pay. With the money I’d saved, and a top up from Jace Barlow, who channeled the money from the sale of my dad’s house through an untraceable series of fucked-if-I-knew-what to me, we had enough to buy our place and make our dreams from all those years ago start to come true.
Hazel ran the doggy-day-care, and I had a workshop to fix and restore classic cars. Her side of our business had taken off a lot faster than mine. It seemed everybody had a dog and wanted to take holidays around here, but word was finally getting around that I did good work and I was kept busy enough that the vehicle restoration side was probably going to be bigger for us by the end of the next financial year.
I glanced up at Sienna and Sam in the rearview mirror, then opened the door and stepped out, shutting it with a clunk behind me. After tucking the cloth into my pocket, I reached both hands behind my head and looked up to the clear blue sky as I stretched.
When I lowered my head, I caught a look at my reflection in the ranch slider on our house and my breath caught in my throat. Behind me, I could see the pickup, with Sienna sitting in the bed on one of the wheel wells, facing away from me and looking down at something by her feet. Sitting directly behind me, looking over my shoulder with his tongue hanging out as he panted happily, was Sam. From this distance, in the reflection, I couldn’t even make out the differences in his face and color markings between him and Chopper.
Tears welled up, but I didn’t want to look away to rub my eyes. I wanted to see this, to feel it. Maybe to pretend, if only for a moment.
Then I looked over my reflection’s other shoulder, in through the pickup’s window and nearly had a heart attack. If it wasn’t a trick of the light, there was somebody sitting in the truck.
I wanted to whip my head around so fast that I might have injured my neck, but something held my gaze, something about the shape of that face looking out at me. It looked… I blinked rapidly… it looked like my dad.
Why wasn’t Sam going nuts at somebody sneaking up on us? Why couldn’t I turn around? I felt my body shaking like I was lifting some heavy weight, the tears flowed and I still couldn’t look away.
The man rested his arm on the far side door where the window rolled down, and looked from me to the windshield ahead of him with a smile on his face, like a man going for a cruise on a Sunday afternoon.
Finally, something snapped, the spell broke and I spun on my heel. There was nobody in the cab of the pickup. Sam wasn’t sitting behind me. Sam was lying down soaking up some sunshine, he’s what Sienna was looking at.
I tried to stare in every direction at once, as if I might be able to catch them, but there was nobody in sight, no sounds but Sam panting, the wind through the trees, and some of our canine guests having fun in the distance. Not to mention my thundering heart.
Behind me, another sound had me spinning on the spot again. Hazel had slid open the ranch slider and was walking in my direction with Molly at her side. Well, partly walking and partly waddling due to her advanced pregnancy.
“You look a little lost, friend,” she said with an imitation southern-belle accent and a smile, but the smile turned to concern when she saw my expression up close. “Everything OK?”
“Yeah, I just thought… I don’t know… it’s weird.”
“What is?”
I took a deep breath, but ended up simply letting it out again, shaking my head and shrugging my shoulders. “I wonder…”
“I used to think that if I got too close to you, I’d shatter the illusion and you wouldn’t be perfect anymore… but, I was just thinking…if people get close enough… then they never really leave you.”
“You’re talking crazy, Daddy,” said Sienna.
I laughed, and felt like all the weight on my shoulders, in my soul, finally left me.
Hazel smiled. “So get closer.”
She had to twist to the side a little to make room for the baby-bump, but she still fit into her little spot under my arm. Sienna stood and leaned out over the side of the pickup, using my hair and face as handholds as she clambered on to my shoulders.
“I love you guys so much,” I said.
“Love you too,” said Hazel.
Sienna let out an exaggerated groan, but giggled when her mom looked up at her. It was a beautiful sound, and a beautiful feeling.
* * *
From the author: I hope you enjoyed Hazel and Jeff’s story as much as I have enjoyed sending it out to the world. If you’d like to know more about the ‘puller of strings’ Jace Barlow, I have included a bonus chapter from Still a Bad Boy (Still a Bad Boy #1) below!
Bonus Chapter from Still a Bad Boy
Enjoy this sample chapter from Still a Bad Boy, the first book in Ada’s Still a Bad Boy series. This is set in the same world as the one you’ve just read in Who’s a Good Boy, but each book is standalone.
Still a Bad Boy (Still a Bad Boy #1)
Kendall
He wasn’t supposed to notice me. Jace Barlow: the most powerful man in the city. Mysterious, scarred, pure muscle and tattoos.
He was my first. That didn’t stop him from pinning me against a wall, using me for his own pleasure until I screamed his name.
