5. Antonio
Chapter 5
Antonio
P issing off the boss definitely had its downsides, especially when that boss was also your closest friend. Tyson had given one of the other deputies the night off and put me on shift this evening, probably just to make sure I didn’t make it to trivia night at Black Thumb. And it was all because of that damn blond pixie, Elka.
I was itching to run a background check on her, but so far, I had no legal basis for it, and she wasn’t worth risking my job. But I was a patient man; waiting was my specialty and I knew she’d give me a reason to check her out sooner or later. No one, especially not a single young woman, picked up and moved to a small town in the heart of Texas if she wasn’t running from something. Or someone. I didn’t want to think about her running from an abusive or angry ex, so I comforted myself with the idea that she was too open and unguarded to be an abuse victim, which only left trouble.
With a capital T.
Still fuming about trivia night with my friends, I drove the patrol car up and down each of the blocks, making sure the citizens of Tulip were safe and secure in their homes, at the park, and even playing the last minutes of a game of tag before the sun sank behind the horizon. Trivia night allowed me to hang with my friends—people I’d known my entire life—and pretend that life was normal and good. That everything was all right.
Several circuits of the town later, I’d stayed away for as long as I could. Now it was break time and I needed a burger and some noise. But I couldn’t shirk my responsibilities, so I took my time, looking down each street that I passed in search of any signs of trouble. Tulip was a safe town. The most we had to deal with was a few domestic violence incidents, kids doing stupid kid shit, and the occasional possession charge. Still, it never hurt to be too sure.
A few blocks from the Black Thumb, the sound of car tires screeching drew my attention. I hit the gas. Chances were good it was a few of the high schoolers doing something stupid like drag racing, but it wouldn’t hurt to check it out. Dust flared up from the Black Thumb parking lot and I swung the patrol car into the half-pavement and half-gravel lot. A familiar figure with long blond hair flowing in the breeze was on the ground, bent over someone lying toes up, which was never a good sign.
When I was just a few feet away, I saw exactly who it was. Elka was bent over Buddy, the owner of Black Thumb. The unconscious owner. “What are you doing?” My voice was a little gruff, but things didn’t look good for her from where I stood.
Elka looked up, those big blue eyes feigning innocence. She opened her mouth to speak just as the front door opened and Nina and her boyfriend Preston, his best friend Ry, Mayor Ashford, and Maxine, who I’d known my whole life, walked out to take in the scene.
“Well? What the hell did you do to Buddy?” I shouted at her, ignoring the way she flinched at my tone.
“What? I didn’t do anything, you ass!” At my skeptical look, she glanced around at the others who were all waiting for an explanation. “I was leaving to go home because I didn’t want to have to walk by myself too late. When I stepped out, I thought I heard a scuffle around there.” She pointed to the side of the bar with very little light. “It’s a bar, so I figured it might be a woman in need of help, but when I got back there, Buddy was staggering as a dark car sped away.”
“Pretty damn convenient.” There was no way in hell that little wisp of a thing was able to get Buddy to the front of the bar.
“Hardly convenient. He was hit in the head and staggering all over the place until he passed out here. I didn’t want to leave him when he was unresponsive.” Her tone was sincere but I still didn’t believe her.
“You could have called 911, or do they not teach that where you’re from?”
Shaking her head in disbelief, Elka turned to Nina. “I dropped my purse somewhere over there when I saw him staggering around.”
Likely story. Just like a woman to lie with a straight face and then get mad when no one believed her. “Back away from Buddy,” I ordered. Firmly.
“I can’t,” she began with a quiver in her voice.
“Now!” I pulled out my gun and aimed it at her. Not my best moment, but for all I knew, she was the one who’d assaulted Buddy. “Back away, Elka.”
Her eyes welled with tears and indecision gripped her—at least that’s how she wanted it to appear. Again, her gaze went to Nina. When Elka spoke, her voice broke. “His head is bleeding. A lot. My hands are applying pressure.” Her head fell and tears streamed down her cheeks.
Ry stepped in and eased her hands away, wincing at what he saw, her dress covered in blood. “Shit, this is bad.” His dark gaze scowled up at me. “We need a rig. ASAP.”
Fuck. I radioed dispatch to get an ambulance here right away. “Five minutes,” I said to no one in particular and scanned the parking lot in search of signs that Elka wasn’t a liar. “Who else was inside?”
Nina got in my personal space and I knew she would have something to say. “No one who would have stuck out. Then again, what do I know? Maybe Elka is some bank robber. I mean, why else would you pull your gun on her?” She shook her head and walked away but I heard the “Asshole” she muttered.
Everyone else pretty much had the same thing to say. “What in the hell is your problem, Antonio? You pulled a gun on a good Samaritan.”
She already had them fooled. “Yeah and what do you know about her that makes her so good?”
Preston’s golden boy features darkened. “What do you know about her that makes her so bad? She’s mostly kept to herself but now I guess we all know why.”
How in the hell did I end up the bad guy here? Preston never lost his cool with anyone, not even his overbearing barracuda of a mother. “I know her type.”
“Yeah, well now we know yours too, don’t we?” Nina continued to glare at me from her spot beside Buddy, holding his hands while Ry checked him out. “You’re too much of a bear to do anything but be okay, Buddy. Besides, if you die, then I’ll put white wine spritzers on the menu.”
“He’s not dying,” Ry told her confidently. “Got a hell of a crack on the head though. Could’ve been a lot worse without the pressure to the wound. Where did you—” Ry stopped and looked around. “Where did blondie go?”
“Her name is Elka,” Nina spat out, eyes still shooting red hot daggers my way. “My guess is she went home to pack her shit and leave Tulip.”
Good riddance.
“That won’t happen,” Mayor Ashford assured everyone, one hand absently rubbing his belly. “Because Officer Vargas will apologize. Won’t you?”
Yeah, when hell froze over. But that wasn’t how you spoke to the mayor, so I stared at him for a good long moment to let him know I wouldn’t be bullied. “Apologize for doing my job? I don’t think so.”
Ry stood and wiped bloody hands on his jeans. “Then maybe you need a new career, Vargas. Buddy backed up what she said.”
Buddy was trying to sit up and Nina helped him, being uncharacteristically sweet and caring. Not that she wasn’t a nice woman, because she was—she just didn’t wear it on her sleeve. “I’d have died back there; no one would have seen me for hours. She saved my life.” Buddy looked around. “Where’d she go?”
All the patrons inside the bar now stood outside, some watching with too much interest, while others had their phones out because heaven forbid one event pass without it being recorded for posterity. “Gone,” someone said.
Waking up in a cold sweat was the perfect way to cap off what had been a disastrous night. After the incident with Elka, the mayor had gone straight to Tyson, interrupting dinner with his grandmother at the senior citizen home, to complain about my conduct at the Black Thumb. I had to listen to thirty-five minutes of lecture from the sheriff about professional conduct. He threatened to put me on desk duty if I didn’t “get the bug out of my ass.” After that, I couldn’t wait for end of shift.
Not that coming home to a silent, empty home was ideal, but it was better than having my friends look at me like I was a monster. They just didn’t understand because they’d had the luxury of living in Tulip their entire lives. Some left for college, but nearly all of them had come back to start their adult lives, while I stayed in New Orleans and worked my way up from beat cop to homicide detective. I’d seen things—hell I’d done things—they would never understand. Couldn’t even dream about.
Women like Elka were how good men ended up hurt, or worse. They lured you in with their sweet smiles and oh-so-innocent -looking eyes, and when you were well and truly hooked, they went in for the kill.
I should know. I lived it and continued to have the nightmares as proof.
It was always the same nightmare over and over.
It was the end of a long-ass shift involving a two-year-old dead from an overdose, and I was so exhausted I could barely keep my eyes open. Instead of going to my apartment on the other side of the French Quarter, I chose to go to Sadie’s apartment. We’d been seeing each other for close to a year and I spent most nights at her place because that’s how she preferred it, and I preferred to sleep with her in my arms.
Her apartment was tiny as hell, probably less than five hundred square feet, but she loved it. I stepped inside the dark apartment and looked around, smiling at her mismatched furniture. The blue-and-white-striped chairs clashed with the yellow-and-green-checked sofa she’d picked up at a thrift shop, but it was comfortable and clean, so I didn’t give a damn. I don’t know what it was about that night that made me stop and notice the photos decorating her apartment, but I did. There weren’t many though—just one of her with her parents, a few with some of the girls she worked with at one of those private clubs for rich people, and three of us throughout our relationship. Everything about the place was tidy but slightly run down.
More shabby than shabby chic, but Sadie made it work.
Kicking off my shoes, I left them beside the sofa along with my coat and made my way to the bedroom. She would be sleeping by now since it was past three in the morning and I didn’t want to wake her.
Inside the bedroom, I knew something was wrong, instantly, but I didn’t want to believe it. I shook it off and chalked it up to the fact that I’d spent the better part of four hours processing a crime scene of a baby, but I should have known better. The room, hell the whole apartment, was too still.
Too quiet. The stifling sort of silence.
I flipped on the light, expecting to get yelled at for waking Sadie or for me to be pissed because she was still out with her friends.
When my eyes landed on the sight in front of me that night, I wished like hell it was either of the other scenarios. Anything would have been better than seeing her dead body tied to the bedposts, cut from throat to pelvis, eyes wide open in terror.
Just like the others.
The stench was so cloying, I had to leave, to stand outside while I called it in. There was no time to grieve as shock and responsibility took over.
Thankfully, that was where the nightmare always ended. In my dreams, anyway. In real life, it had been another few weeks before the nightmare truly began.
Reality didn’t matter as far as my subconscious was concerned, because that damn dream still came a few times a week, even years after that night. Sleepless nights were something I’d gotten used to over the years, especially because Tulip was dead silent this time of night. It gave me plenty of time to think.
Too much time to think about things I had no business thinking about. Like Sadie and her lies. The way she played me for a fool until I was so in love with her that I’d blinded myself to the warning signs. If I’d seen them earlier, maybe I could have saved her. It was that thought that tormented me all these years, even though I knew the moment I saw her body, that the part of her life she kept from me had sealed her fate.
One of the things I learned since then was there was no point wishing you could change the past unless you had schematics on a time machine. But it did get to me. It just fucking did—on more nights than it didn’t.
And like I always did, I grabbed some sweatpants and made my way down to the basement that my friends had helped me renovate. One side of the finished basement was a game room, complete with a flat screen TV, video game consoles, a dart board, and a pool table. The other was where I went when sleep eluded me; it was a home gym where I could run, lift, and punch until I could think straight, or until I tired myself out.
Whichever came first.
As I beat the weight bag with my fists, another thought occurred to me. Maybe it was time to head into the city and find a woman who could make me forget everything. Just for a few hours.