Chapter Twenty-Two
Twila
The next morning, putting my uniform back on feels stranger than taking it off ever did.
Badge, service pistol, cuffs, two spare magazines, radio, body cam.
Hair pulled tight. Duty belt heavy around my hips.
Deputy Dix stares back at me from Whiskey’s bathroom mirror like she hasn’t spent the last several days sleeping in an outlaw biker’s bed, chasing mutant deer through the woods, and making increasingly questionable life choices involving a man who once put her in handcuffs for reasons that had nothing to do with sex.
I straighten my collar.
Whiskey leans against the bathroom doorway behind me with his arms folded, watching.
Of course.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit.”
His gaze travels slowly down my uniform before coming back to my face.
“You got a problem with the badge?”
“Several.”
“Name one.”
“You look too fucking good in it.”
I roll my eyes. “Other problem.”
“Means some asshole gets to tell you what to do.”
I turn toward him. “That bother you because you’re jealous?”
“Bothers me because I’m supposed to be the asshole telling you what to do.”
“What other asshole? The law?”
His mouth closes.
Mine starts to smile.
He pushes away from the doorway and comes into the bathroom, stopping close enough that the heat of him reaches me in the small room. Then he straightens the edge of my collar I already straightened.
I let him.
Mostly because I like his hands on me.
Also because I enjoy watching Whiskey pretend little domestic gestures mean nothing while behaving suspiciously like a man in a relationship.
Whatever the hell this is.
His thumb brushes the metal edge of my badge before he looks up. “You sure about this?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t gotta bait him.”
“I know.”
“Could let Legend handle Crowley.”
“No.”
“Could let your daddy.”
“No.”
“Could let me.”
I look him straight in the eye. “Absolutely fucking not.”
“Figured.”
“This was my idea. You know where I’ll be, you know what time, and you know exactly where you’re supposed to wait.”
Whiskey’s expression sours. “Two streets over like some obedient little bitch.”
I smile sweetly. “Look at you listening.”
“Hate it.”
“Growing hurts.”
“Twila.”
“What?”
“If that man touches you…”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
The teasing drops out of his voice.
“If Crowley so much as puts a fucking finger on you, I’m gonna have charges.”
“You always have charges.”
“Violent ones.”
I step closer and put my palm against his chest. The muscle beneath my hand is already hard, and I know exactly what part of this plan is eating at him.
Not violence.
Whiskey understands violence just fine.
Waiting is harder. Trusting me to handle myself is harder. Trusting me to decide when I need him might be the hardest thing I’ve asked of him yet.
“You promised.”
“I said I’d try.”
“Same thing today.”
“Ain’t.”
“Whiskey.”
He breathes out through his nose. “Fine.”
“Fine what?”
“I wait.”
“Until?”
“You call.”
“There we go.”
“Still hate it.”
“You can hate things and survive them.”
“Been surviving you.”
“Barely.”
He catches my waist before I can walk away and draws me against him. His mouth brushes mine slowly enough that I lean after him when he tries to stop.
Too slow.
“You wearing the body cam?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Phone recording too?”
“Soon as I’m outside.”
“Emergency button?”
“On my portable. Hits dispatch and county radio. Club tech patched the county scanner to your burner, so if I hit it, you’ll hear the call.”
“That’s my signal.”
“That’s your signal.”
“Gun loaded?”
I stare at him. “Do you know what I do for a living?”
“Apparently worry me.”
Something trips beneath my ribs.
He says it like an accusation, like I personally invented worry just to inconvenience him.
I kiss him once. “Two streets over.”
“Yeah.”
“No stalking.”
He looks offended. “I don’t stalk.”
“You followed me before.”
“Protective surveillance.”
“That’s stalking with a cut.”
“Sounds cooler.”
“Whiskey.”
“I’ll wait.”
I study him for another moment. And believe him. That might be the strangest development yet.
I grab my actual keys from the counter. My Interceptor, recovered from near the old Pearly Gates access road after Daddy found it abandoned there, has finally been processed, cleaned, and returned to service after Daddy threw enough weight around to make county administration remember how quickly paperwork can move when the sheriff is pissed. Whiskey watches me head for the door.
“Twila.”
I turn.
His expression has changed again. No joke this time.
“Come back.”
It ain’t an order. That’s why it hits differently.
“I plan to.”
He nods. Then lets me go.
The Paradise County Sheriff’s Department looks almost offensively normal at eight thirty in the morning.
The flag moves lazily in a light breeze, two cruisers sit out front, and somebody has abandoned half a biscuit on the sidewalk beside the employee entrance, which feels like a crime worthy of investigation all by itself.
Mrs. Talley from dispatch waves through the glass.
I wave back.
Nobody looking at this squat county building would guess records have been gutted inside it for more than a decade. Nobody looking at me would guess I’m deliberately making myself visible to a preacher I now know stood inside rooms where captive girls were forced to kneel while he prayed over them.
Normal is good camouflage too.
I spend the first hour doing actual work. Reports, calls, a complaint about somebody’s goat escaping again, followed by a parking dispute outside the pharmacy.
I almost appreciate the goat. Goats are uncomplicated.
At ten twenty-seven, I walk outside with coffee in one hand and my phone recording inside my pocket. The body cam clipped to my uniform is already running.
Daddy knows what I’m doing.
Legend knows.
Whiskey knows.
Nobody likes it.
I don’t give a damn.
At ten thirty-four, a black SUV pulls into the visitor lot.
For one beat, I feel nothing.
Then the driver’s door opens.
Reverend Crowley steps out.
Clean navy suit. White shirt. No clerical collar. Silver hair neat. Pleasant smile. The kind of man a church committee would trust with the budget and somebody’s grandmother would insist makes wonderful potato salad.
He closes the door gently, studies the sheriff’s department, then finds me beside my patrol unit.
“Deputy Dix.”
My skin crawls.
I take a drink of coffee. “Reverend.”
He walks closer without coming near enough to crowd me.
Smart.
“I hoped we might speak somewhere less theatrical than Mercy House.”
I smile. “You mean somewhere you don’t keep restraints bolted to walls?”
His pleasant expression doesn’t move. “Old buildings collect ugly histories.”
“So do old churches.”
“People, unfortunately, are capable of many ugly things.”
“Funny how often you’re standing nearby when they happen.”
That earns me the smallest pause.
He clasps his hands loosely in front of himself. “I understand you have questions.”
“I have plenty.”
“Your father did too once.”
There it is. No warm-up. He wants me afraid.
I lean one hip against the Interceptor and make myself look casual. “You seem to know a lot about my father.”
“I’ve known of Sheriff Dix for many years.”
“Known of me too?”
Crowley smiles. “Paradise is a small place.”
“My mother?”
That lands differently.
His head tilts. “Laura.”
Everything inside me turns cold.
“Her name was Laurel.”
His smile barely changes. “My apologies.”
Fuck him. That wasn’t a mistake. He wanted me to correct him. Wanted to see whether the name mattered enough to make me react.
“Don’t say her name.”
“She was a very beautiful woman.”
My fingers tighten around the coffee cup. “You never knew her.”
“Didn’t I.”
“Did you?”
“I remember the obituary.”
“Why?”
He looks briefly toward the flag stirring above the building. “Community awareness.”
“Bullshit.”
His attention returns to me. “You have her directness.”
“I got her temper too.”
“So I’ve heard.”
From who?
I don’t ask.
Not yet.
“Mercy House,” I say. “What was it really for?”
Crowley sighs as though I’m a difficult child. “A residential outreach program.”
“For captive girls?”
“For difficult girls.”
Something ugly twists beneath my ribs.
“Difficult.”
“Girls without structure. Girls who rebelled. Girls whose families could no longer control them.”
Control. Of course.
For one unwanted moment, I think about Cal telling me what kind of life I should want. Daddy deciding what danger I could handle. Whiskey dragging me into a basement because he believed knowing better gave him the right to choose for me.
“What did you do to them?”
“I did nothing to anyone.”
“Kaylee Quill remembers you.”
His face stays composed, but his eyes sharpen.
“She says you prayed over them.”
“I’ve prayed over thousands of young people.”
“She says they had to kneel.”
“Prayer traditionally includes kneeling.”
“She says you knew they couldn’t leave.”
Crowley lets the silence stretch before that pleasant smile returns. “Traumatized young women often reinterpret structure as captivity.”
I nearly throw my coffee in his face.
Instead, I take another drink.
“Did Cider reinterpret the blue room too?”
His smile changes.
Barely more than a hesitation around the eyes, but I catch it.
Deputy brain lights up.
“What blue room?” he asks.
Too smooth. Too late.
“You tell me.”
“I have no idea what you mean.”
“Sure.”
He takes one step closer. “Your father understood something you do not.”
“What?”
“When to stop digging.”
There it is. Exact. Clean. Recorded.
My heartbeat picks up, but I keep my expression flat.
“You threatened him.”
“No.”
“You sent him a picture of me.”
“I did no such thing.”
“But somebody did.”
Crowley says nothing.
I push. “Somebody connected to Pearly Gates photographed a sixteen-year-old girl outside her school because her sheriff father was asking questions.”
“I wasn’t responsible for every act committed by people who believed in protecting the ministry.”
There. Got you. My face stays neutral while every alarm in my head starts ringing.
“You just admitted people acting to protect the ministry threatened my family.”
“I admitted nothing.”
“Sounded pretty clear.”
His eyes drop.
Not toward my gun. Lower. My body cam.