Chapter Twelve
~ Floyd ~
Three weeks to the day. It doesn’t sound like much until you try to measure it out in sleepless nights, cups of gas station coffee, and the number of times you almost send a message and then have to break your own hand to stop.
After twenty-one days without Ransom, my body looked like I’d been exhumed: skin gone sallow, cheekbones out sharp enough to cut, eyes so rimmed with red that I started keeping the station lights on low to avoid scaring off the townsfolk.
This was my evening: sitting in my living room, not watching TV, not listening to music, just letting the stale air press against me.
My uniform—clean, pressed, but no longer tailored to a body that actually ate—hung off me like I’d stolen it from a bigger, meaner man.
Every time I moved, the fabric bunched up around my shoulders, like it was trying to fold me up and put me away for good.
The coffee table was a graveyard: three mugs with rings of sludge at the bottom, the same shade as pond water, each one with a lip print like a fingerprint, evidence that I was still haunting the place.
Takeout containers stacked on the floor next to the couch, orange grease bleeding through cardboard, each box a timestamp for another dinner eaten without taste buds or company.
The bed—when I made it that far—was a shrapnel field of unwashed sheets, pillowcases balled up at the headboard, blanket in a heap like I’d been wrestling ghosts.
My phone lived on the arm of the couch. Once an hour, I checked for missed calls, texts, emails, even the junk folder.
Ransom’s number was pinned to the top of every app, as if the little blue star would conjure him back into existence.
Nothing. Just the same county spam, same Amber Alerts, same biweekly reminder from my insurance to drink more water.
It wasn’t that I’d given up. I just didn’t know what else to do. I’d tried everything: guilt, anger, ritual. I let the house fall apart, then spent a weekend scrubbing every surface with bleach, like maybe I could disinfect the memories out of it.
For two days, I got so drunk that I had to lock my guns in the garage, afraid I’d start using them for target practice inside. I even tried going back to therapy, but the new guy spent more time complimenting my self-awareness than telling me how to make the ache stop.
Tonight, I just sat. It was almost peaceful, the kind of quiet that you don’t get in a house until everyone’s dead or gone.
The first noise was the radio, set to the lowest possible volume, the dispatcher’s voice a mosquito whine in the background: “…possible break at Inked Rebellion, Main Street. Caller reports a suspicious—”
My pulse woke up before I did. I straightened, the bones in my spine clicking like dice in a cup. I grabbed the mic from the end table, thumbed it alive.
“Dispatch, say again?” My voice barely cleared a whisper, the dryness catching on the end.
The dispatcher repeated, slower: “Sheriff Hardesty, we’ve got a report of a suspicious person at Inked Rebellion. Visual on the side entrance. No sign of owner, but possible forced entry. You copy?”
For a second, the entire world was just the phone in my hand. I wanted—needed—to hear his name. Even if it was just a false alarm. Even if he’d come back to torch his own shop and leave nothing for anyone.
“Was it Ransom?” I asked. The words broke on the way out.
A pause. I imagined the dispatcher glancing at her notes, picturing Ransom’s file in the digital Rolodex, his mugshot from the last time he “accidentally” set off a car alarm at the VFW.
“Negative, Sheriff. Caller described a minor, possibly a teenager. Male, average build, dark clothing. No further details.”
The hope evaporated, replaced by something colder and meaner. This wasn’t Ransom, it was some punk—maybe a copycat, maybe someone who thought they could just take what wasn’t theirs because the owner wasn’t there to defend it.
The next words out of my mouth felt right for the first time in weeks: “On my way.”
The uniform jacket barely hit my shoulders before I was out the door. The air outside slapped me hard, and I inhaled so deep it felt like a threat. Every step to the cruiser was automatic; I wasn’t even sure I’d locked the house behind me.
The second I hit the driver’s seat, I flicked on the lights—no point in being subtle. Half the town could watch me floor it down the avenue; I wanted them to.
As I burned rubber onto Main, the scanner kept chirping updates, but I tuned it out.
My hands were steady for the first time in forever.
The dull gray of the streetlights, the deep blue swirl of the patrol LEDs, the reflection of my own face in the windshield—all of it came into focus so sharp I could have drawn it from memory after one look.
Inked Rebellion was only three blocks away, but I took the turn so hard the tires squealed, the adrenaline giving me back the five pounds I’d lost. The shop’s sign was visible even at night: gold leaf, hand-painted, the logo a mockery of class in a town full of shit-shoveling utilitarians.
The side entrance was lit up, door hanging crooked on its hinge, light pouring out over the sidewalk like a wound.
I radioed dispatch: “Arrived on scene. Entering to secure premises. Advise backup—” But even as I said it, I was already out of the car, boots hitting concrete, weapon drawn. It wasn’t procedure. It was personal. If anyone was going to desecrate that space, they’d have to go through me.
I stood outside the door for a second, letting the adrenaline pool at my feet, and then I took it in one hard kick, badge out, voice at full volume:
“Police! Show yourself!”
Inside, the walls were a riot of color, flash art in rows, the air thick with disinfectant and aerosol.
Something crashed deeper in, past the divider, a sound of glass shattering and then footsteps.
I went after it, heart going wild in my chest, every step bringing me closer to whoever thought this was just another score.
I didn’t know what I’d do when I found him. But for the first time in three weeks, it didn’t matter. I was alive again, and I was ready for blood.
The back of the shop was chaos—smell of paint, sting of aerosol, the high chemical reek of spray that had just been loosed on a wall that had never done anything but try to be beautiful.
The first thing I saw past the divider was the vandal: tall, skinny, dressed in a hoodie so deep it swallowed the face, arms up and tagging the wall with all the desperation of someone who knew they’d already lost.
He was writing with both hands. The left sprayed a crooked line through a piece of flash—one of Ransom’s award-winners, a watercolor wolf that bared its fangs in an impossible gradient of blue and white.
The right hand smeared something red—lipstick? Paint? Blood?—across the counter, carving out words I didn’t want to read. Behind him, the glass in the display case had gone to gravel, shards reflecting a mess of color and broken neon.
I shouted, “Police! Freeze!”
The kid—he had to be a kid, the way he moved, all elbows and panic—bolted for the back.
In the two seconds it took to register the mess, he had cleared the divider, trampled a tattoo chair, and nearly took down the shelf with the bottles of green soap and disinfectant.
I followed, vaulting the counter, boots crunching through broken glass, hand on the grip of my service weapon but not trusting myself to use it with the blood in my eyes.
He darted left, toward the break room, but the floor plan was burned into my skull from too many hours spent staring at Ransom’s ass from that exact spot.
I cut him off at the pass, driving my shoulder into the hollow of his chest and slamming us both against the wall. The drywall buckled with a sound like a tree trunk splitting.
I heard him grunt—voice gone high, almost girlish—but he wriggled out of my hold, arms slippery with sweat and cheap cologne.
“Stop! I said stop!” I grabbed for him again, but the kid ducked under, popped up behind me, and swung a metal toolbox at my head. The corner caught me right on the temple, stars detonating across my vision. Blood instantly hot and sticky down the side of my face.
The world went to half-speed, and for a split second I remembered the feeling from Basic, the bell rung in the sparring ring that tells you this is the last thing you’ll ever know.
But I’d taken harder hits from Ransom with a smile on my face.
I grabbed the hoodie at the neck, twisted, and yanked hard enough to spin the kid around.
He came at me with both fists, but had nothing behind it; I absorbed the blows, pinched him in a bear hug, and tried to get us both back on our feet.
He wasn’t just skinny—he was desperate. The fight went wild, sideways, limbs everywhere. My vision blurred at the edges, but I locked in on the task: subdue, detain, don’t let him wreck anything else that mattered to Ransom.
He thrashed, and in the mess of elbows and knees, we crashed into the display of vintage motorcycle parts.
Ransom’s prize collection—old Harley badges, a set of chrome handlebars, a battered piston ring—came down in a glittering, catastrophic hail.
The noise was deafening, the clatter of metal and the punctuated crash of something ceramic hitting tile.
The kid tried to use the distraction to break free, but I had a cop’s instinct for leverage. I twisted his arm, pushed him face-first into the wall, and started to reach for my cuffs.
He shrieked, actually shrieked, and mule-kicked backwards, heel catching my kneecap so hard I felt the cartilage grind. My grip loosened for a second, and he spun, ducked, and lunged for the open door to the alley.