My head was bouncing around on my neck as I cut the wheel at the end of my driveway. I threw my Cherokee in drive and tore down the street, heading straight to the sheriff’s department.
But my stomach sank when I caught sight of it and saw the lights on at the front but nothing else. No one beyond those big windows.
And it came to me this was Glossop, not Denver. The police stations didn’t stay open all night.
They didn’t need to when only one man got dead not of natural causes or by his (or her) own hand in over fifty years.
“God!” I shouted, swinging into the side parking lot and coming to a jolting halt when I slammed on the brakes, staring at the lineup of five Ram trucks looking parked precisely and ready for action but with no one around to activate them.
I looked stupidly down to my passenger seat then my lap and realized I might have kept my keys but not my purse, which held my phone.
But I’d left a creepy creep in my house.
I’ve heard more about him than is healthy for anyone outside Brad Pitt.
Lou’s words came to me and they came with the fact that not only did I know Hixon had moved to those not-so-great-not-exactly-the-projects apartments on the west side of town, something everyone knew.
He was also the sheriff.
Not to mention the man who’d put in his bid to look after me.
On these thoughts, I reversed out, put my foot down and drove like the woman possessed by fear and adrenaline that I was.
I entered the apartment complex and saw his Bronco right away.
So I parked with the hood of my car butted up against a small stand of trees next to it, got out, ran behind my car, the Bronco, some silver car and to the side stairs that surely had to lead to Hixon since his car was parked to the side, not to the front like some other cars were.
I clambered up the stairs, not getting far before I slipped on one and went down to my hands and knees, this digging my keys into my palm so hard I cried out at the pain and dropped them through the slatted stairs.
I was pulling myself up when a light from above me came on.
I threw my head back and watched the door at the top of the stairs open slowly then it was thrown open, the storm was thrown open and Hixon was standing at the top of the stairs wearing nothing but a pair of simple, light-blue pajama bottoms, his hair a sleepy mess.
He looked down on me for not even a second before, for some reason, he bellowed, “Shaw!” and came down the stairs in great leaps, taking them three at a time.
I had one hand up on his railing, mostly hanging from it, knees to the slats, but then I wasn’t hanging from it and my knees weren’t on anything at all.
I was hauled up with his hands under my arms and then I was flying, my legs went careening, and finally I was caught snug in a hold at his chest as he ran (yes, ran) up the steps, taking them two at a time.
“Dad,” I heard as Hix prowled into the dark room.
“Lights on. Get the icepack. And get dressed,” Hix ordered.
“Holy shit, what happened?” the other male voice in the room asked just as a light went on and Hix carefully set me down in an armchair.
I saw a pullout bed open, covers mussed, and a cramped room.
Then I saw nothing but Hix’s face.
“What happened, baby?” he asked.
“I . . . that guy . . . I . . . that creep . . .”
Greta, pull your shit together!
“Hix, that creepy guy from the Dew attacked me while I was coming into my kitchen tonight.” I reached out, grabbed his neck on both sides and pushed out, “He’s in my house. I got away but I left him in my house.”
“Dad, what’s going on?” a girl’s voice asked.
Hix lifted away and then I saw nothing because I had the cold of an icepack in a dish towel held to my face.
“Get dressed,” Hix ordered. I felt fingers wrap around my wrist and lift my hand to hold the icepack, all the while Hix kept issuing commands. “Girls, get dressed. Shaw, take her to the hospital. Have them check her out. The girls go with you.”
“Dad, where are you going?” a younger girl’s voice asked.
I pulled the icepack away to see Hix disappearing down the hall and his two daughters standing to the side of it, heads turned, watching him go.
Then I saw his son bent toward me. “Uh . . . Greta,” he was gently lifting my hand then he disappeared behind the biggest icepack in history, “keep that on. Long’s you can. ’Kay?”
“’Kay,” I mumbled behind the pack.
“Hurry, Cor, Mamie, fast. Get dressed,” Shaw took up the bossing.
For my part, I started shaking.
Like, a lot.
But I jumped when I heard Hix roar, “Corinne!”
My hand not holding the icepack was taken up in a firm, warm grip.
“Greta, sweetheart, you hold it together,” Hix started bossing me.
“I’m here, Daddy,” I heard.
“Corinne, come here, sit with her, talk to her while your brother and sister get dressed. She’s going into shock. Make her talk. Keep her with you.”
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Sorry,” he said, like it wasn’t to his girl. “Greta was slippin’ into shock. That’s an affirmative, Hal. She’s three-two-two Rosewater. Get there. Now.” Then, definitely to his girl and not a guy named Hal, “I’ll meet you at the hospital. I got my phone, honey. You call me you need anything. Okay?”
“Okay, Dad.”
“Take care of her.”
“’Kay.”
His hand left me, another hand took mine, and then I felt Hix kiss the top of my head.
“Get this sorted, sweetheart, promise,” he murmured to my hair and then I felt his presence leave.
There was silence before I heard a hesitant, shy, “Uh . . . hi, I’m Corinne.”
I burst into hysterical laughter, leaning forward with the overpowering pull of it.
What pulled me out was feeling her hand squeeze mine again and again, her other hand behind the back of my neck doing the same, and her calling, “Hey. Hey. Hey, Greta. Heyheyhey.”
I sat up abruptly, her hand at my neck falling away, icepack still held to my face.
I sucked in breath and said, “I’m here. I’m a little freaked out right now, darlin’.” I held her hand tight and shook it. “But I’m here.”
“I’ll take over now, Cor. Go finish gettin’ dressed,” Shaw ordered, my hand was exchanged and I had Shaw. “Good job holdin’ that icepack to your face,” he encouraged.
I wanted to burst into hysterical laughter again but instead I held his hand in a vise-grip in an effort to hold it together.
“Okay, well, remind me not to arm wrestle you,” he quipped.
I released my grip some.
“I just need to . . . uh . . . get over having my face slammed into my kitchen island . . . um, twice . . . and then it’ll be all good,” I shared.
Stupidly.
“Fucking fucker,” he hissed.
Okay, apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
So noted.
“Shaw, Dad’s gonna be mad you dropped the F-bomb twice and in front of a lady,” the younger girl’s voice declared in deep horror.
If I wasn’t in pain, freaked out and skimming the edge of hysteria, it would strike me as not a good thing I was meeting Hixon’s children this way.