“That’s twice, Dais. Twice in two days that you almost died. Don’t do it to me again.”
It was a choked hiccup of a sound, but Daisy still couldn’t believe he’d actually made her laugh—here, covered in a murderer’s blood, lying next to the sheriff who was missing the back of his head. There really was something wrong with her brain. “I’ll try.”
“You better. I love you too much to lose you.”
“I love you, too, Chris.” Her hand paused on the back of his head. “Did you see? I left the house.”
“I saw. Knew you could do it.”
“I threw up on the porch.”
He made a sound very similar to her earlier parody of a laugh. “It’s okay. I’m proud of you.”
“Tyler burned my house. He’s on the porch, too.”
“What?!”
Before she could explain, the sound of booted footsteps came from the direction of the front door, followed by two voices calling out, “Sheriff’s department!”
Chris raised his head, revealing his newly blood-streaked forehead, and Daisy propped herself up on her elbows so she could see. Two deputies charged into the room, guns out. The gory scene brought them up short, and they stared in silence for a frozen second.
“Dad?” A bloody-faced Tyler appeared in the doorway behind them. One of the deputies turned, holstering his gun, and used his body to both stop Tyler from entering and to block the boy’s view of the room. “Dad! What’s wrong with him? What’d they do to him? Dad!”
As the deputy backed a still-screaming Tyler toward the front door, the other cop finally shifted his shocked gaze from the sheriff’s body to Chris. “What the fuck happened here, Jennings?”
Chapter 23
If Daisy had known how long it would be before she got to go home, she might’ve reconsidered leaving her house. But then an image of Chris’s limp body flashed through her mind, making her shake her head. Even if she’d known she’d never get to return home, nothing could’ve stopped her from heading to his rescue.
“Daisy?”
“Dad?” She blinked at the bearded face peering around the curtain that made up the wall of her cubicle. “What are you doing here?”
“I heard about what happened on the radio—well, the basics, at least. They didn’t mention you, but I called to make sure you were okay. When you didn’t answer your cell phone, I tried Jennings. His went to voice mail, too, so I drove to Simpson. The fire chief told me they’d taken you to Connor Springs in the ambulance.” He eyed the scrubs a kind nurse had found for her to change into when her gory clothes had been taken away in evidence bags. “He said you were covered in blood.”
“Not mine,” she explained. “Except for some bruising on my face and…well, pretty much everywhere, I’m okay. The EMTs insisted I come here, though.” Under the cover of their professional calm, she’d been able to tell that the amount of gore she’d been wearing had freaked them out. It had taken a while to convince them that they weren’t missing a gushing injury.
“How’d…” He rubbed a hand over his mouth and started again. “You’re out of the house. Was it the fire?”
“No.” After all the horror and shocks of the night, her trek through the burning house and across the street had been pushed to the back of her mind to deal with later. “I saw the sheriff attack Chris. I had to go.”
That time, she was pretty sure his face swipe was to wipe away tears. Gabe caught the back of a chair like it was a cane and lowered himself onto it. Propping his elbows just above his knees, he stared at the floor.
“That’s…good, Daisy. Really good.”
From her spot sitting on the padded table, she reached over and patted his rounded shoulder. “Thanks, Dad.”
For a while, they sat in silence. Daisy had to fight back her threatening tears at the sight of her hard-as-nails father crying. Eventually, he gave his face a final, two-handed rub and leaned back in his chair, stretching his work boots out in front of him.
“Where are we going to live?” she asked, wanting to break the silence that had grown awkward.
Cutting off his laugh in the middle, he shook his head. “Don’t worry about that right now. We’ll stay at the motel if we need to.”
“I wonder how Chris is doing.” She was tempted to start a search of the hospital to find him.
As if he’d been waiting for an excuse to move, her dad stood abruptly. “Want me to check on him?”
“Sure. That’d be great. Ask”—Gabe was already gone, so she sighed and finished her sentence under her breath—“if I can see him.”