Chapter 27
Twenty-Seven
I swing both ways. Violently. With a bat.
—Birdee to Creed
Birdee
“Why do you think there are three bikers sitting on Creed’s back porch?” I wondered. “And why do you think that Odin’s been looking at you like you were his last meal for the majority of that?”
Because seriously, the man was hot as hell, and I was in a very happy relationship with a man sexier than him, yet I couldn’t stop myself from feeling all hot and bothered by the looks he was shooting Bernice’s way.
“I’m trying not to think about it,” Bernice admitted.
Mable arrived with drinks and set them down beside us.
They were nothing grand. Just packet hot chocolate, but it was special to me. Because Mable was here, with me, instead of at the hospital with her longtime best friend.
I felt seen for the first time by her in my life.
“What do you think about my cup?” Mable asked, sitting down with her own mug of hot chocolate.
She took a sip out of the coffee cup, and my lips twitched.
My coffee cup was pretty tame. Just a bull riding a cowboy. Bernice’s was slightly worse, a snail leaving a trail of slime while wearing a thong.
But Mable’s was downright hilarious.
It was a doctored photo turned into cartoon of Edward Cullen dropping it low on a stripper pole wearing a thong with the words “This is the skin of a killer, Bella” written on it.
“That’s…fantastic.” I giggled.
“I thought so, too,” she said. “I didn’t even see it. At first, it was a black mug.”
“I bought that for him a couple of years ago,” Bernice said softly as she took the cup in.
“It was a long-standing Christmas tradition. I’d buy him a funny coffee cup.
Sometimes it was just a really cute one I saw at the Dollar Store.
And while he was in prison, I kept up the tradition and continued to buy them.
” She wiped at a tear. “I was moving apartments one day last year and the box just disappeared out of my pile of boxes. I thought I’d left it at the old place, or someone stole it off the sidewalk when I’d been moving.
It’d broken my heart to know that all his presents were gone. But seeing these…”
It had only occurred to me then that Bernice had gone unnervingly silent when Mable had brought the coffee cups in and set them down in front of us.
“Do you think he stole them?” I wondered aloud.
“Someone did.” Bernice smiled.
“You don’t think it was him?” Mable asked.
Bernice hesitated.
“Mable knows,” I said softly. “Her husband was in the same boat as Creed.”
“Oh.” Bernice looked relieved, thinking she’d already said too much. “I’m going to have to be more careful.”
“Just keep hanging out with us, and we can talk about it among ourselves,” Mable offered.
“Well, we don’t have to worry about that with me. I have five friends,” I offered up.
“What do you think’s going to happen next?” Mable asked quietly after my words had settled. “I can’t believe Cody would do something like that. And be stupid enough to get caught. This is crazy.”
Everyone and their brother knew that you didn’t fuck with Montana Game Wardens.
They were like the boogeyman of the state.
And to be caught not only hunting out of season, but hunting moose at that?
This wasn’t going to be swept under the rug. This was going to raise a huge stink that the entire state would be hearing about.
That was exactly what Creed needed…
There was a knock at the door, and I got up. “That’s gotta be Charleigh.”
But it wasn’t Charleigh.
It was Dad and Grace.
“What the…”
I opened the door hesitantly and said, “What’s up?”
They both looked wrecked.
I could imagine this day hadn’t gone all too well for them.
“Where is he?” my dad asked.
“Where is who?” I asked.
“Don’t play dumb with me right now, Birdee.” He growled. “Where. Is. He?”
I shook my head. “If you’re talking about Creed, he’s not here.”
That was the only “he” I could think that they’d be looking for. But weren’t they at the hospital with him?
“His truck is literally right there!”
I cringed at the way my father raised his voice.
His body shook with the emotion roaring through him. I flinched away from him, causing my arm to jolt.
I glanced to the side and sure enough, Creed’s truck was there.
But he hadn’t come through the front door…
“He must still be out here,” I admitted. “Because he didn’t come inside. He…”
“Don’t lie to me!”
I froze solid at Grace’s screech of outrage.
When I jerked my gaze to her, I found myself staring down the barrel of a gun that was pointed directly at my chest.
I’d never seen the barrel of a gun before. At least, not straight down it. I’d never been brave enough to look, not even when it was completely unloaded.
I’d grown up around guns. My dad had always had them. He’d taught me how to safely handle them.
But…
“Grace,” my dad said, wary as fuck now. “What are you doing? Put that away!”
At least he was rational about this.
“I can’t!” she sobbed. “That man stole my baby!”
Dad moved toward her, and she twisted the gun to aim at him. “Stay back! And find that son of a bitch!”
“What’s going on here?” Creed asked quietly, sounding wary.
I looked up to find him standing off to the side of the porch, his forgotten cell phone in his hand halfway to his head.
He’d been here, but on the phone to the side of the house.
Grace whirled, putting her sights on Creed.
That sent a wave of chills directly down my spine.
Two headlights turned down our drive, and I had the irrational thought that whoever it was shouldn’t be driving.
We’d sent Creed’s friend Courtland after Charleigh again because she’d been worried about me, and he was on the way here anyway.
Apparently, Creed’s place had become the hub for the winter storm that was about to blow in, and no one had been concerned in the least about the possibility of being stuck here unable to leave.
“Put the gun down,” my dad tried again. “This is ridiculous, Grace. Cody’s dead, but your life isn’t over, too.”
“Oh, that’s fine for you to say. Your daughter is still alive!” Grace cried out, leaving the gun pointed at Creed, but staring at my dad like he’d just personally offended her with his words.
Cody was dead.
What?
How?
When she’d been taken by the ambulance to the hospital, she’d only been suspected of having a concussion and broken bones!
The car paused halfway up the drive, and I breathed a sigh of relief when Courtland started to back out instead of pulling farther in.
“Grace,” Dad pushed gently. “Honey, listen to me, please. Put the gun down. This hasn’t gone too far yet…”
That’s when Grace yanked the gun toward my dad and pulled the trigger.
She shot him in the leg.
“Hasn’t gone too far?” Grace hissed as Dad fell to the ground, blood gushing from the bullet wound in his leg.
“Hasn’t gone too far? My child is dead! And that man…
” She pulled the gun up to aim at Creed but he wasn’t standing where he’d been earlier any longer.
He was steps away from her, and heading toward her as fast as he could, head tucked down and sprinting.
Grace tried to redirect the gun in his direction, but Grace didn’t have enough time before Creed hit her so hard that she all but cracked as he landed on her and slammed her to the hard packed brick beneath them.
The gun skittered into the snow, disappearing somewhere deep into the depths just off of Creed’s porch.
Vito cried out. “Grace!”
Pounding feet sounded from inside, and I could practically hear Mable’s feet as they screeched to a stop on the floor.
“What the fuck is going on here?” Mable cried.
“Back inside!” Creed barked. “Both of you. Right the fuck now!”
I backed up quickly and carefully, bumping into Mable as I went.
I closed and locked the door, then hurried to look out the window across the room that gave me a great view of what was happening on the front porch. Mable squeezed in next to me, practically pulling the blinds off the wall in her haste to see.
We couldn’t see much, either. Just my dad on the floor, looking in horror at what was happening behind the large shrubs that he’d planted twenty years ago.
I could also see Creed’s feet, but that was it.
“What’s going on?” Odin barked.
“I…”
“My best friend’s mother and stepfather were here,” Mable said stiffly, pushing herself away from the window and walking to where Romeo had come in off the back porch.
She moved straight into his arms. “Grace pulled a gun. Shot Vito and then was about to shoot Creed but he slammed her into the ground before she could.” Mable moaned. “Cody’s dead.”
Romeo swiftly inhaled, pulling Mable into his arms. “What?”
A loud fist banged on the door, and I moved to open it.
Boone cut me off. “Uh-uh. Go back there. Sit down. Don’t move. You’re not supposed to be doing anything strenuous anyway.”
I did what he said, sitting down with a heavy thunk.
Boone cautiously opened the door, keeping the majority of his body out of the door’s line of sight, and effectively blocking me from sight.
“Get out here and put some pressure on this dumbass’s wound,” Creed muttered through clenched teeth. “She must’ve hit an artery when she shot him. Also, call the cops. Grace is unconscious. Maybe dead. I don’t know. My fuckin’ fingers are freezing and I can’t tell.”
“What?” Dad hollered.
Mable started to sob.
I gasped when the back door opened, but instantly relaxed when Courtland led Charleigh inside.
She found me and mouthed, “What the fuck?”
I shook my head.
Hours later, when the worst had passed, I sat cocooned in Creed’s arms, wrapped in a comforter, sitting around a firepit in the middle of a snowstorm.
Luckily, the firepit was mostly covered, with a small chimney going through the very top directing the smoke out.
I was deliciously full, overly tired, and extremely exhausted.
Yet, we still had a house full of people.
Creed had only gotten back a few moments ago.
When he’d gotten there, he’d picked me up from my seat, planted his own ass in my seat, then curled me into the curve of his arms.
Bernice, at my side, had said, “Awwww.”
Creed had flipped her off, but he’d done it with a smile on his face.
Now we were discussing the day’s events.
“What happened?” Mable asked, leaning just far enough out of Romeo’s hold that she could pop her face out from underneath her own blanket.
All of the women had one.
I’d stolen them all out of the hall closet for us to wrap up in, since we’d been temporarily kicked out of the house.
The men hadn’t minded and had started a fire in the firepit that was new, and probably rarely used.
They’d also unearthed chairs from the garage and started cooking hot dogs from someone’s truck.
“When that moose stomped on Cody, they think that a blood clot formed somewhere. It traveled to her brain, and she had a stroke. The clot was busted, but another one had formed in her heart, and she had a heart attack. It was just too much for her body, and she passed away,” Creed said softly. “I’m sorry, Mable.”
Mable nodded, tears dripping down her cheeks.
“After that, we left. I went back to the office and filled out paperwork, debriefed with my boss, Major, then came here. Major called with an update on Cody’s parents, how they left angry as hell, and a concerned doctor had called it in to the police.
Gentry had called it in to Major thinking I was still with him, and Major had called me.
I was on the phone with him around the side of the house, leaning on the back fence, when they got here. ”
I shoved my face deeply into Creed’s neck, and he sighed.
“It’s not your fault,” Mable said what I was thinking. “None of this was.”
Creed pressed his cold face into mine, and I curled my bad arm out to cup the side of his cheek, sifting my fingers through his thick beard.
“Sure the fuck doesn’t feel like it,” Creed grumbled.
“Cody knew exactly what she was doing. She knew it was wrong,” Mable said. “I can’t believe she would be so stupid. But that isn’t on you. That’s on her. She knew better.”
Creed took in a stuttering breath.
This was affecting him.
The poor guy.
“As for Grace…” Mable sat up. “She’s always been passionately crazy about Cody.
It was a little suffocating, and I think that’s why Cody always disappeared when the goings got tough.
I’m not excusing Cody’s behavior in the least, but just explaining.
I’m not surprised that this all happened after Cody’s death.
But listen. Seriously. What you did with Grace?
That was your only option. She could’ve shot you.
She could’ve shot Birdee. She could’ve shot me.
Hell, she could’ve shot Vito again. You had no other option. ”
And right then and there, I knew that Mable was a very good person.
She could’ve held a grudge.
She could’ve not given him any words at all.
But she’d done this for him. She’d taken his side, even after her best friend had died. After Creed had contributed to the life-threatening injuries of the woman who’d been more of a mother than her own stepmother had been.
I knew I would do whatever I had to do to let her know how utterly kind that was of her to do.
Listening to Mable’s words had caused a lot of the tension in Creed’s body to relax.
“Is she still alive?” I finally scrounged up the courage to ask.
“Yeah,” he admitted. “Same hospital bay as her daughter was in earlier, but alive. I overheard one of the doctors say that she isn’t able to move her feet. They think she might be paralyzed.”
“You did take her down like a linebacker.” Odin snorted. “Watched the video of the whole thing through Apollo’s security feed he has on your house. And already sent it in to Gentry. Nothing more can be done on your end.”
“I know,” he grumbled. “This has been a really bad day.”
“Definitely not keeping a low profile,” Bernice muttered under her breath.
I was jolted slightly sideways as he bent down, scooped up a handful of snow, and tossed it into the small hole that she’d left for her face with the comforter.
Bernice shrieked in laughter as she tried to push the snow out with her nose.
My smiling gaze moved to where Odin was watching, and I blinked in surprise at the open need there.
When he moved his gaze away and caught mine, his entire face shut down, and it was blank once again.
I snuggled in closer to Creed and closed my eyes.
That was the last thing I remembered until hours later when I woke in the dark.