Chapter 5 #2
I might have believed it if her eyes weren’t filled with despair.
Her cheeks could have been painted, a reflection of the beautiful flush of color over the sky directly before the sun disappeared, a soft pink against the sweet tawny smoothness of her skin impressively captured by the camera.
There were a few bruises on her face that stuck out almost as much as her eyes.
They were a gentle brown color, dark with disdain and as soft as a fresh jar of honey.
I struggled to shake the thoughts out of my head.
This girl was none of my business. Yes, she was beautiful and haunting, I couldn’t let myself think about her a moment more.
Her father was a murdering bastard who hoarded pictures of her, like he probably did my entire family.
He was a jerk who followed my cousins with a camera until they slipped up, a predator seeking out his prey with little knowledge of how easily we could put a stop to all of this.
If my grandfather wanted, he could snap his fingers, and this whole town would burn.
Sometimes, I wish I had that power. It was disgusting for me to think about, but didn’t everyone want to have that much control over their life? To snap my fingers and know Sebastian Dawson’s body would be floating down Miller River by tomorrow morning? It was a sick dream.
If my rankings were higher, I wouldn’t have to worry about killing anyone. Someone would have done it for me. Instead, I had to clean up my father’s mess like some low-level recruit.
The sooner this FBI guy and his daughter were delt with, the sooner I could get back to my semi-normal life with my kid.
I tossed the lid lazily back on the top of the box in my hands and sat it to the side. I planned to place it back on the shelf after checking for any evidence of Estelle’s pictures in these boxes.
My plan was quickly sidetracked when a deep growl tore through the garage. It bounced off the bricks of the inside of this dense building, leaving me to kneel behind the Corvette with my left hand hovering over the knife in my boot.
Shit. He had a police canine.
Levi was a dumbass for not double checking.
He should have known the fed would bring protection.
Sebastian knew our dogs were readied at any moment.
He had firsthand experience with avoiding Lukas’ father through the graveyards.
He came back to town with his own sidekick, most likely the rustling I had heard crawling around through their unmanned disaster of a backyard.
“Fucking damn it.” I spun around and searched the old garage for an opening.
The dog growled again, huffing against the door.
There was no doubt in my mind he could smell me, hear my quiet mutters of anxious squabbling to open the old window on the side of the brick.
I wouldn’t fit through. Even after having a child, I was five foot five and lean from my cheerleading days, but this window still suggested I’d struggle to get down on the other side.
A loud creak gave away my position. The dog froze, all its noises stopping as the hinges of the old window squealed. I jumped at the sound of the dog’s loud, shrilling barks. It dug at the loose door, blowing air of frustration through his nose into the wooden frame.
“I’m gonna kill you, Levi,” I grunted as I hoisted myself up onto the Corvette and jumped from the door to the top of a tall dresser. “How did you miss a fucking police canine?”
Once I had better leverage, I quickly worked on squeezing myself through the small window.
It was tight. Fuck. It was as if I was stuck crawling through another small cellar door.
The old brick and sharp hinges dug into my back through the protective leather of Dominik’s jacket.
I regretted wearing jeans with rips already in them when I felt the tension of the strands attaching the fabric of my knees catch on the window hinge.
The dog’s barking grew louder until a light was flicked on from inside the Dawson home.
It was further in the front of the house.
The multiple long windows allowed me to see the brightness blanketing over the backyard from a room deeper inside the large manor.
I tugged at my jeans, desperately trying to get my leg unstuck as I grabbed the limb of a tree nearby for support.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” I kicked my leg and tried to loosen it from the ancient window frame. It wouldn’t give, leaving me no choice but to cut the fabric with the pocketknife hidden on the inside of my boot.
Slicing through the surprisingly strong strings, I soared into the overgrown bush just below the brick window. I winced. The sharp dead branches stabbed me in the worst spots. I would have preferred to slap my head on the mossy bricks than get a stick shoved up my ass.
“Who’s in there?” a gruff voice hissed. My spine prickled with discomfort as a familiar clicking noise traveled through the almost clear air. He had taken the gun off safety and loaded it, ready to shoot and kill whoever he found. “My dog will bite! Do not make me send him in.”
I knew it.
I fucking knew it.
Levi must have set me up. He wanted me to get my ass chewed on to prove I was one of them.
I’d rather get torn up by Boris or Yuri than a police dog.
It would drag my ass straight to prison and I’d be just like all the other deadbeat parents in my family.
I was not going to be the same parent I grew up crying over.
A loud crack vibrated through the bricks I leaned against. I managed to stand up and press myself against the brick wall of the garage.
He had kicked open the door. I could hear that dog’s nails scraping against the cement floor as Sebastian encouraged him to search for me. This felt like a sick nightmare.
I dashed across the yard in the direction of my bike, just out of sight in the darkness.
Before I could get close enough to toss myself over the front of the iron fencing, I heard the dog’s nails scrape across the floor closer to the door.
In a split second, I took cover behind a broken pizza oven made of deteriorating bricks.
There wasn’t enough light to see me here. Sebastian stepped out from the garage slowly, his gun still pointed inside the building. The uneven floorboards of the porch creaked as the shadow of a dog darted to sniff before growling and running back inside the garage.
“Get his ass, boy,” Sebastian hissed through the crisp hair like a crackling fire.
The dog whined, his dark shadow only giving me little flashes of orange tail and large paws. It rushed into the garage a third time and barked, echoing his vocal frustration through Cross Key Grove.
I didn’t dare move. The dog could bolt out of that door and bite me in the face the second he laid his sharp eyes on me.
I’d seen a police dog take out one of my father’s men before.
I was five, sitting in the back of his car after practicing with the horses at the Quintana farm.
I remember Papa driving us in the other direction so fast, I thought my seat belt was cutting into my hip from the tension of the booster seat.
It was that day Papa threatened to snap my bow in half if I didn’t start hitting the targets.
And I did.
To this day, I don’t understand what made my father choose to teach me mounted archery over firearm protection and safety. Papa threw a gun in my hands one day and told me to shoot at a man he didn’t like. It was the first time I ever shot someone. I wish I could say it was my last.
The light coming through the large window shifted and yanked my attention to the right.
Sebastian’s daughter was coming down the stairs now with messy hair, rubbing sleep out of her wide, worried eyes.
There wasn’t enough lighting for me to see if she had a gun with her as well, but the positioning she held made that thought seem like an ill assumption.
My heart skipped a fearful beat, spotting that wide-eyed fear easily on her face.
She backed up from the source of her anxiety, and I flickered my eyes from her to where Sebastian and his dog were out of eyesight.
Her hand reached up and tugged on the collar of her top, chest rising and falling enough that I could see it from this distance.
Sebastian stormed back in the direction of the house.
A blur shot past him, out of the garage and back into the large manor.
The dog was a dark tan, close to orange color, ears perked up and tail wagging viciously.
He was too fast for me to make out if he was a German Shepard Dog or a Belgian Malinois.
I’d never seen an orangey-looking German Shepard before.
It had to be one of those Belgian Malinois. Those bitches had the hardest bite.
If I knew anything from spending my evenings working with Amanda at Barkin’ Babe, the dog kennel I worked at for community services hours, and being around my family’s Dobermans, I was in the worse position if that dog caught my scent.
I’d have no choice but to stab the dog before I became a shredded chew toy.
My breath caught in my throat when Sebastian appeared back in my view. He stood in the window, his hair wild in his eyes, standing—no, no, towering—over his daughter’s figure with a gun pointed straight at her face.
At his mother. Fucking. Child.
The instinct to protect her kicked in. I shot up and leaned against the bricks in front of me. The knife’s handle dug into the palm of my hand as I gripped it tight enough to shake my arm.
I had only been four years old when my father held a gun to my face.
As much as I wanted to shake those errant memories from my mind, the youth he stole from me in that moment was only the beginning.
I wasn’t prepared for everything Papa would take for me.
He carved images into my brain like the tattoos I was forced to ink into my flesh, the blood rite of being a Harrekson.