Complicated

by Kristen Ashley

  Then again, the kids liked her house. Greta had made them comfortable there from the moment they’d walked in the door Thanksgiving night. Not to mention there was a fully-stocked kitchen in all the ways that could be and Greta made more than just great breakfasts, so his kids knew they’d get a good meal that wasn’t takeout, delivery or its origins were mostly from a box.

  But that wasn’t the only reason they did it.

  “Hey, Dad,” Shaw greeted.

  “Hey, Mr. Drake,” Wendy called.

  Greta looked over her shoulder at him and smiled.

  Mamie whirled and cried, “Hey, Daddy!”

  “Hey, guys,” Hix said, coming in, shrugging off his jacket and moving around the room to lift a hand and squeeze the back of Shaw’s neck, get Mamie’s hug when she danced to him and bend in to touch his lips to Greta’s mouth. “We need a second,” he told her quietly when he’d pulled away.

  She stared into his eyes and nodded.

  He retraced his steps to go to the living room and jerked up his chin to Corinne before he threw his jacket on the back of the couch. Curled in Greta’s armchair, his daughter grinned at him and gave him a little wave before she went back to her conversation, curling a lock of her hair around her finger.

  He unbuckled his gun belt and started up the steps, going to Greta’s room where he hung it on hook inside her closet, coming out of that closet to see her walking into the room, eyes on him.

  “Is everything okay?” she asked.

  He moved into her space, putting his hands to her hips.

  “Right, you filed for that protection order on your mom and the judge granted a fourteen-day order, ex parte. Yeah?”

  “I know,” she told him, looking like she spoke even while holding her breath.

  “Yeah, you know. What you need to know now is that we haven’t been able to find her to serve the order. I called Becker, he told me he scraped her off and has no idea where she is. He didn’t sound happy to be talking about her, so my guess is, she finally did some shit that made him find his way free of whatever hold she had on him and he’s done with her.”

  “Not great news for Mom but I’m not in the mood to care that my mother lost her meth-cooking boyfriend so . . .” She didn’t finish that but did lift her brows in request he get to the point.

  “If she isn’t served, sweetheart, the order is ineffective. She needs to be aware that the order has been issued, if she isn’t, it hasn’t officially been processed. And she needs to have that order served so that fourteen days can play out so you can return to the judge and request a permanent one.”

  “Do you . . . want me to call Mom? Ask her to come around?” she asked.

  “Hell no,” he answered.

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “I’m just saying, she pulls shit, gets near you, takes pictures after she’s been served by a protection order, that pushes her into felony territory. But if she hasn’t been served, she can still do whatever the hell she wants.”

  “Awesome,” she muttered sarcastically.

  “She doesn’t have a job, she’s not at home, she lost her sugar daddy. Maybe she took off,” Hix suggested hopefully.

  “Maybe,” Greta replied skeptically.

  He bent in and touched his lips to her forehead before moving back. “Seein’ as the process servers for McCook County are me and my deputies, not thinkin’ we’ll give up on this one.”

  That made her grin.

  Hix grinned back.

  She watched his mouth a beat before she looked again to his eyes.

  “We have kids to feed,” she reminded him.

  “Yeah,” he murmured.

  She lifted a hand to his neck, rolled up on her toes and kissed the bottom of his jaw.

  She then rolled back and they held hands to the top of the stairs.

  He let her go so Greta could walk down before him.

  They managed to pry Corinne’s phone from her ear to sit down to eat.

  Then they sat at Greta’s awesome table and had a family dinner.

  “You need to call Hope. We need to know what she’s buying them from these lists. We shouldn’t double up.”

  Greta was sitting across from him at his desk at the department, her head bent as she shuffled through the papers in her hands—his kids’ Christmas gift wish lists—doing this bossing him.

  “I’ll get on that right away,” he muttered and her eyes shot to his.

  “This is serious, Hixon.”

  “Of course it is,” he assured.

  She gave him a hard stare to assess if he found her amusing (which he did) but he figured he’d managed to hide that when she raised the lists and shook them in the air. “We also need to be careful to go equal. It wouldn’t be cool to make it bigger than what she gives them since there are two of us.”

  “Babe, they’re gonna be at their grandparents’ house Christmas Eve night, gettin’ spoiled rotten, dropped at my place at the end of that to wake up and get spoiled rotten on Christmas morning, then heading to Hope’s to get spoiled rotten Christmas night. With all that, I don’t think anyone is gonna be able to keep track of who spoils them more rotten.”

  “It’ll be noted,” she returned.

  He leaned into his folded arms on his desk and reminded her, “Hope’s lettin’ that kinda shit go.”

  “I know she is,” Greta replied. “And I know it has to be hard on her, the holiday is going to make it harder, so we shouldn’t do even the littlest thing to make it even harder.”

  He stared at the woman he loved, having reason once again to love her more before he sat back and said quietly, “I’ll call Hope and we’ll get it straight.”

  “Thank you, Hix,” she replied quietly.

  It was time to move on to something else.

  “I’m settin’ up the guest room,” he declared.

  “I . . . okay,” she returned, sounding confused.

  “My folks come visit every once in a while, they don’t have plans to hit town until the weather shifts since they’re not big fans of snow, which is why they now live in Florida. But Andy can’t sleep on the sectional anymore when he’s over. I know he doesn’t mind and that just means he’s closer to the TV and Shaw so they can play videogames every waking moment they’re together. But the man should have his own space when he’s at home so we’ll set it up for him. I’m sure it’ll be cool with him that we use it as a guest room when he’s not around.”

  It was Greta staring at Hixon when he got done talking, and the way she was doing it he felt in a number of areas of his body, his gut and chest the most prominent.

  “What?” he whispered when she didn’t speak.

  “Can we shut the blinds to that window and do something probably very illegal on your desk?”

  That he felt in his dick.

  “No,” he unfortunately had to answer.

  “Shame,” she murmured.

  “But the minute the kids are back with Hope, you can do something not illegal to me in my bed and I’ll return that favor.”

  She gave him a look he also felt in his dick.

  “It’s gonna be so good it’ll feel illegal, smokey.”

  “Then I’ll look forward to that, sugar.”

  She smiled at him.

  He smiled back and decided it was time to move them on to something else again or he’d be sitting behind his desk at work with a raging hard-on.

  “You wanna cook for the kids tonight or go out and—?”

  He didn’t finish because a sharp rap sounded on his window.

  His head jerked that way and the warmth in his chest and gut vanished when he saw Bets standing there, her back to the window, her hand to the butt of her firearm in its unclipped holster, her eyes glued toward the front of the department.

  Hix’s gaze immediately moved there and he went entirely still for half a beat before he was out of his chair, his voice low and abrasive as he ordered, “You do not move from that seat, Greta.”

  “Hixon,
” she whispered but she didn’t move and he knew this even though he didn’t pry his eyes from the window as he quickly walked across the room.

  He shut the door behind him and just as quickly moved down the hall.

  He slowed his gait when he hit the mouth of it and swiftly assessed the situation.

  Donna was five feet from the left of her desk, clearly having been stopped by what was happening in the process of walking in from the back. Her hand was on her firearm also in its holster, eyes locked on reception.

  Hal was up and to one side, behind the reception desk, legs braced apart, one in front of the other in a modified squat, firearm out, up and aimed at reception.

  Larry was the same, behind his desk, and he was ordering, “Drop the duffle and put your hands where we can see them!”

  And just inside the door stood a very large, very tall man with straggling, wild, light-brown hair, a weathered face, wearing a canvas jacket with a big duffle slanted across his back.

  He was unmoving and his eyes were not at the guns pointed at him or the further threats from the deputies who were ready to unholster their weapons.

  They were on him.

  “Drop the duffle and put your hands where we can see them!” Larry shouted.

  “Larry,” Hix called loudly, but calmly, moving in front of Bets slowly, making his way to the aisle, his arms down by his sides, his right elbow hitched up slightly but his hand was not on his gun.

  “Boss—” Larry started.

  “Lower your weapons,” Hix ordered.

  Hal’s “Boss?” was terse.

  “Do it, Hal,” Hix commanded as he made his way deliberately down the center aisle, not taking his attention from the man just inside the door who still had not moved.

  He didn’t check to see if Larry and Hal had obeyed his order, he just kept walking with his attention locked on the man at the front until he was standing two feet from the swinging, half door.

  He braced and heard Hal’s clipped, “Fuckin’ shit,” and Larry’s, “Goddammit,” that came when the man moved.

  But the guy just walked directly to the reception desk, lifted his hand and lowered it to the desk. He engaged his other hand when a balled piece of paper fell out of the first.

  He smoothed it out, spreading it open, then he took a step back, leaving it there.

  It was one of the artist’s sketched pictures of him they’d sent out as a notice to homeless shelters.

  “Is that you?” Hix asked him.

  The man didn’t speak.

  “Are you here to turn yourself in?” Hix asked.

  The man said nothing.

  “Did you kill Nat Calloway?” Hix pressed.

  The man stood still and stared into Hix’s eyes.

  An unpleasant thrill chased down his spine when Hix saw the man’s eyes were empty. Void. Hollow.

  “He had a wife and two children,” Hix told him quietly.

  Nothing came from the man. Not a movement. Not a sound. Not a change in expression.

  Except one thing.

  A tear fell from his left eye.

  Shit.

  “We need to take your duffle. We need to take your jacket. We need to pat you down. We need to cuff you. And then we’ll need to arrest you,” Hix told him, voice calm and still quiet.

  The man moved, the room tensed, the duffle dropped.

  Hix let out a breath and then another one when the jacket dropped.

  The guy lifted his long arms and put his hands behind his head, his gaze never leaving Hix’s.

  “Careful and gentle, men,” he ordered as Hal and Larry moved around him.

  Hix followed them, going through the swinging, half door to stand with his hand now on his firearm as Larry got behind the guy and Hal took his brother’s back with his hand also on his holstered gun.

  “Read him his rights, Deputy. Go slow,” he instructed then called, “Donna.”

  “Here, boss,” she said from close.

  “Get the defense attorney here and call the court psychologist,” he ordered, not losing eye contact with Nathan Calloway’s killer.

  “Do we have a court psychologist?” Donna asked.

  “Find one,” Hix bit out.

  “Right,” he heard her mutter as Larry finished with reading the man his Miranda rights.

  “Do you understand your rights?” Larry asked.

  Hix butted in. “You can just nod.”

  The man took two beats then jerked up his chin.

  Hix nodded. “Take him back.” He moved out of their way as they carefully pushed the guy forward. “Process him.”

  Hal held open the door, Larry guided him through, Hal fell in behind Larry as they took him to the back.

  Hix followed them until he got to Bets.

  “You monitor that, every second, every move, holster clipped, Bets,” he commanded in a low tone. “That guy is big and that guy is unpredictable and Hal and Larry need you as backup. He gets loose and gets the jump on you, I don’t want him to have a clear shot to your gun. You need to use it, you can unclip it.”

  “Yeah, boss,” she murmured, moving directly toward where Hal and Larry rounded the corner to get to where they did their fingerprints and mugshots in the back corner of the department.

  “I get these calls done,” Donna started, standing with the phone to her ear but her eyes to Hix, “I on that too?”

  “Absolutely. But you and Bets give him space. I do not want that man to feel crowded or threatened beyond what I’m guessing he knew was gonna happen.”

  Donna nodded, looked toward the back and Hix moved straight to his office.

  Greta was getting up slowly as he opened the door and her face was white as a sheet. “Is that the guy who—?”

  “I need you out of here. I need you to keep this quiet. But I need you somewhere safe and right now, that is not here.”

  She immediately started gathering her jacket and purse even as her face got even paler. “Is it not safe for—?”

  “Baby, no questions. I gotta escort you out then I gotta do a lot of other shit.”

  She nodded and didn’t delay. She got her jacket on, her purse over her shoulder, and she scooted out with Hix dogging her heels.

  He got her out the front door and around the side of the building where he stopped her, bent in, pressed his mouth hard against hers and pulled back, muttering, “I’ll call you later.”

  “I love you, Hix.”

  He froze.

  They hadn’t said it. He’d been waiting for the right moment. He felt it from her and guessed she was waiting for the same.

  Then again, she sang “Glitter in The Air” to him so she’d already said it.

  “Best man I’ve ever met,” she whispered, rolled up on her toes, pressed her lips hard against his and rolled back.

  She then walked swiftly in her high-heeled boots down the sidewalk cleared of the snow they got yesterday.

  “He’s mute, due to a medical condition or a trauma, I don’t know. He’ll have to be examined,” the psychologist told Hix and Donna outside the interrogation room. “He’s also suffering a variety of other conditions, none of which I can accurately diagnosis, considering he’s mute, he’s big, and he scares the beejeezus out of me.”

  “Doc—” Hix began but stopped speaking when the psychologist lifted her hands and shook them.

  “He needs a full medical evaluation and a full psychiatric evaluation. However, the one thing he’s given me, his attorney and your deputy is that he killed Nathan Calloway. He jerks up his chin every time it’s mentioned. He jerks up his chin when he’s asked if he understands the meaning of that. He jerks up his chin every time he’s asked if he understands why he’s been arrested. I’ve asked him to write down what he wants to say if he has anything to say and he’s refused. For whatever reason, physical, psychological or some of both, that man is deeply disturbed. However, in my professional opinion, he understands completely that he’s done wrong. He saw that picture of himself and knew you
knew who he was and you were looking for him. But my sense is, he’s not here because he thought you’d find him. If that man doesn’t want to be found, he could get lost forever. He’s here to atone for it.”

  This was not news to them, except the last. They’d watched it all in the observation room, with Hix watching from inside the room while Larry asked the questions.

  Hix turned to Donna. “Set up a supervised physical. The psych eval can happen here.”

  “On it,” Donna muttered and took off.

  He looked back to the psychologist. “Your professional opinion, we ever gonna know why he did what he did?”

  She shrugged. It wasn’t casual. She was taking this seriously. She simply didn’t know.

  “I honestly can’t say. He doesn’t trust me to open up to me, which isn’t a surprise, I haven’t had enough time with him and I’ve never done this. I did my best but the man frightens me and I’m afraid I couldn’t completely hide it in a way he surely read it. It may be you’ll need to do the psych eval somewhere else so he doesn’t feel trapped or cornered and he might open up. But he may never open up. He might not even know how. Again, I can’t say for certain.”

  “He’s arrested, an unknown who’s committed a violent act and a flight risk,” Hix pointed out. “Not feelin’ good about takin’ him to a doctor so I’m not feelin’ good about doublin’ up on that to take him to see a shrink.”

  “Yes. But this man is not one who spends much time surrounded by four walls. Just being inside, my hunch, is costing him. It being a sheriff’s department isn’t helping matters.”

  “He essentially turned himself in.”

  “That’s the atonement I told you about. This isn’t easy for him. But he’s doing it. If someone can get him to a place he’ll find some way to communicate in the presence of someone he can trust,” she shook her head, “I just don’t know.”

  “I can’t let you be alone with that man even observed and even with his attorney present and even as he is now, chained to a table. When I say that, not you or anyone,” Hix told her. “We have some idea of what he’s capable of. His size, I’m not testing that.”