Chapter 13
Maisie
Over the next hour, I bite every nail on my left hand down to the quick.
The statement I gave to the sheriff is thorough. So thorough that it’s night outside and my mouth is bone dry despite draining two bottles of water and having two bathroom breaks.
It’s everything I told Wyatt, Elias, Hunter, and Knox. All my pain and hurt. Every fight I can remember. The night I wished a cop had come to tell me my husband was dead. The desperate fear I would be trapped in a life I hated forever.
I reveal all of it.
I get no judgment from the sheriff. There are no pitying looks or the slightest hint that he doesn’t believe me. He listens quietly, notes down everything I say, and says he’ll start the paperwork to get a restraining order in place.
The second Derek shows his face in Rios, the sheriff will throw him straight into jail.
The relief is… incredible.
And Wyatt is true to his word. He keeps a hold of my right hand and periodically makes me smile by telling me he is still mentally burying Derek six feet under.
When the sheriff gives him a pointed look, Wyatt says, “Mentally, Sheriff. All acts of violence involving an ax to his head are happening in my mind only.”
I don’t have a picture of Derek when the sheriff asks for one. There was no way I was taking any piece of him with me when I left Oregon.
“Not to worry, Maisie. I’ll get one,” he says.
The sheriff knows about Derek’s trial and conviction, so a picture will be easy to find since he’s already in the system. He intends to share those with the businesses in town. No matter which store Derek goes into, someone will see him.
The sheriff tucks his notebook into his pocket.
“We dusted your car and apartment door for fingerprints after the fire. I’m still waiting for the results to come back, but I’m positive we can get him for arson and attempted murder.
With your statement, I have more than enough to put him away for a long time. ”
My eyes widen. “You knew it was him?”
The second the words leave my lips, I realize how stupid a question it was to ask.
I just laid out nearly ten years of our lives together. No one else would have a reason to set my apartment on fire with me inside it except my ex-husband, who nearly killed me in a Nevada motel room before I got away.
“I’ve been keeping an eye out for unfamiliar faces,” the sheriff explains, his brown gaze knowing. “You were running from trouble, even if you weren’t ready to talk about it. It’s about what I expected.”
“You did?” Am I that much of an open book? Can anyone read me?
He holds his palm out. “Can I take your hand?”
After a brief hesitation, I give him my left hand. If he hadn’t been as understanding and patient as he was when he listened to me tell him all about Derek’s abuse, my hesitation would have been much longer, or I’d have told him no.
Wyatt still has my right hand and shows no sign whatsoever that he’s ready to let go of it yet. I don’t have a problem with it. His touch grounds me in the present when the past wants to drag me into painful memories.
The sheriff takes my palm and squeezes it between his two large, warm hands.
“Fear is a powerful motivator to stay with a controlling man. What happened to you and the motel worker in Nevada must have convinced you to keep quiet and always keep moving, but the more people who know, the more we can help. You did a very brave thing by leaving and by talking to me about it. What you trusted me with stays with my men at the station and me, and I will do everything in my power to protect you, Maisie Lucas. You have my word on that.”
My eyes prick with tears. “Thanks, Sheriff.”
There aren’t many people I’ve wanted to hug since Derek turned my life into one filled with pain, but I pull my hand from Wyatt and hug the sheriff for taking care of me even before I felt I could ask for his help.
“Will you be staying here?” he asks me once we’ve pulled apart.
I glance at the four alphas who have stayed by my side and haven’t looked like they will ever leave it. This is their home, and I’m a guest here for however long they want me to stay.
Wyatt takes my hand and squeezes it. “She’s staying with us.”
The sheriff hums. “That’s good. I couldn’t help but notice your security system.”
“What security system?” I never noticed it. Maybe I’m blind, but outside looks like a perfectly ordinary farmhouse to me.
“We had it installed before you came to stay,” Elias explains. “We asked the landlord if it was okay, and since we were happy to pay for it and install it ourselves, he didn’t have a problem with it.”
Hunter rakes a hand through his hair, wincing when his fingers snag on a tangle. “Knox said it might not be a bad idea to get something set up in case you ever needed a safe place to stay. He had a feeling trouble might follow you here. We all did.”
“That had to be expensive,” I say, touched.
Knox lifts one shoulder in a casual half-shrug. “It was just a few bits and pieces.”
The sheriff’s eyebrows shoot up, and I’m almost scared to ask how much those few bits and pieces cost. From his reaction, we’re not dealing with a cheap security system he picked up from Walmart.
“What exactly is this security system?” I ask.
“Motion sensor lights in case anyone approaches the house,” Knox says. “If someone trips it at night, floodlights will blind them. During the day, we live far enough out of town that we can hear an engine and see a car approaching. Means no one can surprise us.”
Lights can’t be that expensive, can they?
“Oh, that’s not so bad,” I say.
“It’s linked with an alarm that will deafen a person if they try to open the doors and windows.” Knox avoids my shocked gaze as he scratches his jaw. “And an external camera I can view through an app on my phone.”
My jaw drops.
“That’s it.” Knox’s rapid glance at the sheriff reveals it isn’t it at all. There’s something else he doesn’t want the sheriff to know about.
I envision a panic room or a closet filled with an arsenal of weapons. Then I wrinkle my nose and tell myself to stop being ridiculous. This isn’t an action movie.
The sheriff gets to his feet. “I’ll get out of here,” he says, surprising me by not pushing to know if Knox is hiding something illegal from him. “Maisie staying here will encourage Derek to keep his distance.”
I make a face as I ask a question I suspect I already know the answer to. “That means no going back to work, right?”
The smartest thing I can do is to stay away from town and not give Derek a target.
“At least for the next few days,” he says apologetically. “I know you’d like to get back to work. Once Derek shows his face, things can go back to normal around here. I’m not the only one missing your pies, Miss Lucas.”
Smiling at his compliment, I feel confident in saying, “It’s okay. Nico would want me to be safe, even if that means he’s down a waitress for a little while. Maybe I can figure out another way of helping him that isn’t so public.”
“Maybe you can,” he agrees.
By the time he leaves with a wave and a promise to keep us updated, it’s nine o’clock, and I’m fighting a yawn.
My stomach grumbles, and not even that loudly.
Hunter wraps his arm around my shoulder and steers me toward the kitchen. “Come sit. I’ll rustle up something for dinner.”
I blink up at him, surprised. “You cook?”
“Yup.” He gently nudges me into a dining chair and heads for the refrigerator as Wyatt and Knox chat about the security system, while Elias joins me at the dining table in the middle of the kitchen.
Elias spins the chair beside mine around and drops into it, folding his arms across the top.
“If it’s from a box and comes with detailed instructions, I can manage it.
” He points his chin at Hunter, who has his head stuck in the refrigerator.
“He’s the one who can throw a bunch of ingredients together.
Like that cooking show.” He squints up at the ceiling as if trying to remember the name.
“MasterChef?” I suggest, as if I haven’t lost literal hours of my life sprawled out on my motel bed, binge-watching shows when I was too tense to sleep after I’d heard a strange noise outside my room.
With a grin, Elias snaps his fingers. “That’s it. The one with the box of ingredients and fighting in the pantry.”
I lift my brow. “Fighting?”
“Gentle nudging over the truffle oil or whatever fancy ingredient only chefs use.” Elias corrects himself.
“Those guys are pros,” Hunter says as he lays out peppers, mushrooms, sausage, and pasta on the counter. “What I cook is simple, fast, and mostly edible.”
Hunter says mostly edible while wielding a chef’s knife like… well, a chef.
He pushes a small pile of thin slivers of onion to the corner of his chopping board and catches me staring wide-eyed. He grins at me. “This is just practice. That and I hate onions. The faster I chop, the less I cry.”
“I just use the jar stuff in the refrigerator,” Elias says.
Knox snorts. “Elias is talking crap. He does not use the jarred stuff. He lingers in the kitchen, complaining about not knowing what to cook until Hunter gets fed up, pushes him out of the way and takes over.”
Elias shrugs but doesn’t deny it.
A loud vibration pulls my gaze to Wyatt, who fishes his cell phone from his pocket and glances at the screen. “Ah. My family. I'd better go take this.”
As he wanders out of the kitchen, Hunter turns from the chopping board nearly overflowing with sliced sausage and veggies to yell after him, “This is going to take twenty minutes. Twenty.”
“Why are you telling him that?” I ask.
Hunter pulls a large pot and a skillet from a cupboard and sets them on the stove.
“Wyatt can spend hours on the phone with his family. There are a lot of them, and they’re Southern, so they can talk,” Knox explains, joining Elias and me at the table.
I’m watching Hunter add water to the large pot when Wyatt shouts from the next room, “Maisie! I need you for a second.”
“Is something wrong?” I get to my feet.