Grier
My team stayed with me all night, working tirelessly to get Waffles stable. Mom showed up with Aunt Vi and Uncle Luca. There was nothing any of them could do, but just knowing they were there was enough.
Finn held me all night. My hand when I needed to be close to my baby boy. In his lap when I couldn’t stand at all. Not once did he release me, and if I hadn’t already known I was in love with that man, I would have fallen for him during that long, horrible night.
But as Leo started to send people home, or off to tend to the other babies, relief began to settle inside me.
That was when the rage struck. Not slow and steady. More like a freight train carrying enough explosives to decimate an entire state.
Or one florist shop.
Fury like I’d never known burned through me. I was not an angry person. My temper was slower to burn than anyone else in my family. Papa always said it was a blessing and a curse, and the world was a better place for not having to understand why those two things were true.
Finn was on his phone, talking in a tone too low for me to hear.
While he’d held and supported me through the fear and the heartache all night, he’d also been in communication with his mom and various other people in town.
I heard most of his side of every conversation, storing it all away without outwardly reacting in the moment.
Like how the rodenticide had been confined to one area—that blasted rosebush.
That CCTV confirmed when and how much had been placed.
Those same cameras had shown several cats and one dog had come into contact with the poison earlier in the day.
Both cats had been treated, but sadly, the dog was not because it was a stray that had run away when anyone approached him.
After a search, the dog was found, but not before several scavengers had gotten to it. Which meant there were now wild animals who would suffer.
All those details stayed with me, unprocessed until Waffles was out of the critical zone, and then they hit me. Adding to the white-hot anger bubbling in my chest.
I turned off the exhaustion, the soul-deep ache, and set the anger free.
As if I were seeing everything around me in snapshots, I found myself walking calmly out of the vet lab and straight toward the driveway full of vehicles.
I had the UTV for everyday use because it was easier to get around the farm.
Each of my trucks had tow hitches so we could haul the animals in one of our many trailers.
And then there was the Jeep. I rarely drove it, but as with every other vehicle I owned, the keys were already inside.
Just in case something needed to be moved.
The Jeep was the only vehicle not blocked in. Climbing up into the driver’s seat, I started it and hit the gas so hard, gravel spun up. I didn’t remember the drive. Consciously, I wasn’t sure what I was doing. All I felt was the ferocious need to destroy what had hurt my precious Waffles.
It was still early, and Sundays were slow in Creswell Springs. Traffic was nearly nonexistent as I drove through town, only stopping when I pulled up outside the florist shop.
Sitting there, seeing the yellow crime scene tape around that stupid rosebush, I was breathing so hard I could barely catch my breath. All that trouble, all that damage, over a freaking plant. One that I’d helped Miss Hester put into the ground.
I was the one who’d gotten sunburned digging the hole.
I’d had scratches on my hands from the thorns as I’d placed it and then carefully covered the roots.
I’d watered it when Miss Hester was having a dizzy spell from her high blood pressure.
I’d taken care of that stupid, stupid rosebush because Miss Hester had loved her flowers like I loved my babies.
And I would be the one who upended those dang things.
I had a pair of work gloves in the cupholder. I jumped down from my seat and pulled them on. Walking to the back of the Jeep, I grabbed the rope that I always kept there for emergencies. I tied one end to the tow hitch and the other end around that rosebush.
It didn’t take much effort to pull the bush up by its roots, sending flowers and debris across the sidewalk and the front steps of the shop.
Seeing the damage I’d caused didn’t ease my fury.
If anything, it only caused it to burn hotter.
Like the first eruption of a volcano, it released the pressure, but what followed was the real destruction.
Dragging the bush behind me, I drove to Hilary’s house and dumped what was left of her prize-winning roses on her lawn.
Hopping out, I untied what remained of my load and tossed the rope back inside the Jeep just as Hilary came out her front door, screeching louder than a storm warning. Along the street, her neighbors flooded from their homes to see what the commotion was about.
She was so loud, it took me a moment to register the sound of sirens in the distance.
Dressed in a cami and pajama shorts, Hilary suddenly had a bat in her hands that she was swinging around at nothing in particular that I could see.
A mean part of me wanted to tell her she didn’t have the kind of boobs to be showing off without a bra.
But I was enraged, not cruel. Even though she was a fur-baby murderer, I wouldn’t body-shame her.
More than one of her neighbors was an Angel’s Halo brother, their leather cuts already on as they stepped from their homes.
They were still in sleep clothes, but they rarely left the house without those leather vests.
That almost made me smile. Before my family had made the permanent move, we’d visited so often that seeing all the bikers never scared me.
I’d been in awe of the men on their big motorcycles.
Down in SoCal or even back in Tennessee, bikers weren’t as… friendly.
Two police cruisers came to brake-squealing stops, one on the street a few feet from my Jeep, the other driving over the curb and onto the neighbor’s lawn. They both opened their doors in a rush, guns out.
Which was debatably excessive for the situation. Tasers would have been a better option in my opinion, and I kinda wanted to see them electrocute Hilary a little.
Then I realized the deputies had their guns pointed at me, not Hilary.
I blinked at one officer and then turned my head, giving a double blink. They had their guns aimed at me.
Guns. Aimed. At me.
Well, now I could scratch that off the list of things I never wanted to experience.
A laugh bubbled out of me, not even close to amused. Hilary had killed a poor little dog. Caused two cat parents untold emotional and financial turmoil. Nearly took my sweet Waffles from this world. And I was the one these buttheads were pointing their guns at.