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Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Hornet

Iheard Ariel whimpering through the baby monitor and slipped out of bed to tend to her. I pulled a bottle of milk out of the mini-fridge and dropped it into the electronic bottle warmer before approaching her crib. My adorable daughter looked up at me with trusting eyes and then kicked her feet and wailed angrily.

I quickly changed her full diaper and wiped her down with warm baby wipes. As I rubbed baby oil on her skin and snapped a clean onesie into place, I remembered Brook saying she didn’t need a fully body clean every time she had messy diaper—but considering the unholy mess that tiny little girl made, she sure needed a good hose down right now.

By the time I lifted her out of the crib and put her on my shoulder, she had quieted down a bit. We settled into the rocking chair, and I held her securely in my arms while she greedily sucked on her bottle. When my little cutie pie had eaten enough, I leaned her against my shoulder and burped her as I walked around her nursery.

Once she nodded off, I carefully laid her back down on her back, then went back to bed. Snuggling back up to Brook felt like home.

I woke up to the sunlight creeping in around the edges of the closed blinds. Grabbing my phone off the nightstand, I checked to see if there were any messages from Brook’s mother. There wasn’t, so I assumed my meeting with her father was still on.

I found myself desperately hoping to find evidence that he was the one responsible for Brook’s injuries. At least then I could deal with him, and we would have some closure. If it didn’t turn out to be Herb, that meant it was likely a random stranger. I couldn’t deal with the fact that someone could run an innocent woman off the road and then just get off scot-free.  That was one reason I wanted to keep the woman I loved extra-safe right now. I wasn’t going to take a chance on anyone taking another swipe at her while she was recovering.

I eased myself out of bed when I heard knocking at the front door downstairs. I padded down the stairs and after checking the security cam I opened the door to find my mom’s bright smiling face.

“I can’t tell you how happy we are to get your invite to spend some time helping Brook with Ariel.”

“Thanks for coming,” I said when she strolled past me and into the living room, followed by my father.

“Where’s my granddaughter?” my dad asked, looking around the living room.

“She’s still sleeping. It’s only seven in the morning. Thanks for coming over this morning, I’ve got some stuff I need to do, and I didn’t want to leave Brook alone. I’m going to get dressed and head on out. The girls will wake up when they wake up.”

“You look like the one who needs to sleep late,” my dad joked. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’d been partying the night away.”

I scrubbed my hand over my face, “Yeah, partying all night with a two-month-old. Wouldn’t trade it for the world though.”

“Ah… I remember those days.”

“No you don’t, you snored your way through every feed with Drue,” my mom retorted with a laugh.

“Maybe I got some making up to do with my granddaughter, then. You sure she’s not awake?”

I couldn’t get over the change in my dad. After just a few short weeks, he’d gone from the world’s biggest grouch to grandad of the year. It was fun to see the old coot mellow. Shooting him a look, I added, ’Don’t you dare wake Ariel up. She’s on a schedule, and I don’t want it disturbed so you can get some awake time with her.’"

“Don’t worry, I’d never let him do something like that. We brought donuts and coffee. We’ll just make ourselves at home until they wake up,” my mother promised.

I gave my mother a kiss on the cheek. “You’re worth your weight in gold, Ma.”

I crept around upstairs, pulling on clothes and shoes. I grabbed my wallet and keys, turning to give Brook one last look before snagging the baby monitor and sticking my head in the nursery to check on Ariel.

My mom met me at the bottom of the stairs and took the baby monitor.

“I should be back around noon.”

“Take as long as you need, we don’t have any plans.”

I picked up my helmet from the side table and headed for the door. Turning, I told her, “Call or text me if you need anything at all.”

***

The ride to the coffee shop in the early morning helped clear my head. I needed to be sharp and get to the truth. Hacker had already verified Brook’s father didn’t own a truck. That didn’t mean he didn’t borrow one. Hell, he could have bought a junker and put the tag from his BMW on it and used it that night. It would have been all too easy to have it crushed at a junkyard afterwards.

I recognized Brook’s father right away from the photos Hacker sent me, along with plenty of other info. Herbert Remington Arnold III was fifty-four-years old and CFO of Rockwell Enterprises, a corporation of hard money lenders who specialized in short-term financing for commercial properties. Honestly, I would have spotted him without any intel from Hacker as he looked out of place in his three-thousand-dollar bespoke suit. I was getting pompous asshole vibes from him already.

I carefully schooled my expression into something neutral before approaching him.

He stood as I approached and held out his hand. “You must be Drue Davis.”

I grasped his hand firmly and shook. “Yes, sir. Thank you for meeting me this morning.” We both sat down, and I got right down to business. “I’m here to talk to you about Brook.”

“I don’t know why you want to talk to me, I washed my hands of that girl four years ago.”

“The accident,” I said, trying to hold my anger back.

“My wife told me, someone tried to run her off the road.” He glanced at his Rolex, then out of the coffee shop window like he had somewhere he’d rather be.

“That’s about the size of it, and we’re trying to find out why.”

“What does this have to do with me?”

“Your prior treatment of her, we’re looking at people who might hold a grudge against her.”

“If you’re insinuating that I abused her, you’re dead wrong. I never laid a hand on her,” he responded hotly.

“Yeah, I know that. That’s why I concentrated on her abusive ex-boyfriend first.”

The color drained from his face. “Brook had an ex-boyfriend who abused her?”

“That really shouldn’t come as a surprise. What did you think would happen to her when you threw her out at eighteen, she had to figure out a way to survive. He charmed her until he had her right where he wanted her and then abused the hell out of her. She ended up in the hospital a couple of times before she walked away. He even stalked her for several months while she worked two jobs to keep a roof over her head.”

He looked devastated for a second, before his expression shut down. “I’m sorry that happened to her, but if you think I would do anything to harm her, you would be very wrong.”

“I know for a fact that you harmed her emotionally by throwing her out, restricting her contact with her mother and not allowing her to see her brothers.”

“I put money in her account so she could get her first apartment, so don’t act like I left her homeless.”

“Yeah, I’m sure that assuaged your conscience at the time. Seriously? You put an eighteen-year-old literally on the streets, she was sleeping in her damn car. You took away her family, her life, and her chance at further education. What you did was psychologically devastating for Brook. What I don’t know is if you’ve had some simmering rage over the last few years and decided that killing her might erase her physically, much the same way you tried to erase her mentally.”

“You have no right to talk to me that way or demand answers from me. You’re not a cop.”

I leaned over the table and lowered my voice. “Do you think that makes me more dangerous or less?”

When he didn’t immediately reply, I said, “You’re going to answer every single question I ask or I’m going to beat on you to the point that you’re drinking your meals through a straw. Do not try me on this.”

He glared at me defiantly, but I could see a hint of fear. Good, the bastard had every right to be afraid if I found out he had anything to do with hurting my Brook. “Just ask your damned questions. I want you out of my face as expeditiously as possible.”

“Where were you on the seventh, around eight in the evening?”

“Working. In case my wife hasn’t mentioned it, that’s pretty much all I do.”

“Do you own a blue pickup truck?”

“I drive a BMW. The only other car would be my wife’s Mercedes. There are no pickup trucks in the Arnold household.”

“Have you removed either of the license plates in the last couple of weeks?”

“I don’t know where you’re going with this line of questioning, but no. Why would I do something that absurd?”

Ignoring his question, I asked, “Have you bought a vehicle that you haven’t had a chance to register?”

Understanding lit up his face. “No. I have zero interest in trucks. Look, I’m sorry Brook was hurt, but I didn’t have anything to do with her car accident.”

“It wasn’t an accident if someone intentionally ran her off the road, wouldn’t you agree?”

A dark expression jumped onto his face and was gone again in an instant. “It seems absurd that someone would intentionally want to run Book off the road.”

“Well, they sure as hell saw fit to make an attempt on her life. If I’d arrived five minutes later, she wouldn’t have survived.”

That seemed to shake Herb up a bit. The hand holding his coffee cup began trembling and he quickly pulled back. “Look, I would be willing to put up a ten-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to the arrest of whoever did this.”

Shock rolled through my mind, I detested his type, throwing money at any problem like it was nothing, with no regard as to how their behavior impacted those around them. “Now, why would you do something like that? Why put up such a large amount of money for a daughter you threw away?”

“Come back after your wife makes a fool out of you by getting you to raise another man’s child. Once you’ve been through what I have, we’ll talk.”

“Yeah, it sounds more like you’re trying to paper over the hole she left in your life with money—pay her to go away, pay someone to find out who tried to hurt her, all so you can just close your wallet and try and forget she ever existed. The problem is, you’re punishing your daughter for her mother’s mistake.”

“Unfortunately, Brook isn’t my daughter, just a very potent reminder of my wife’s infidelity.”

“I’m gonna be real honest with you, Mr. Arnold. I don’t like the way you’re talking about Brook like she’s just some object that reminds you of something painful. She’s a human being. One you loved for eighteen years. Brook still misses you every single day. She misses her brothers too. Her mom has to sneak around to spend time with her. That’s not right that everyone has to tiptoe around your bruised ego, and you damn well know it.”

“You don’t understand what it’s like,” he said weakly.

“Maybe not, but I’ll tell you what I do understand. The person you’re hurting the most by cutting her off is yourself. You had a wonderful daughter. Now you don’t. You have big empty hole in your heart where Brook used to be even if you don’t realize it, and you’ve got nobody to blame but yourself.”

Before he could respond, I got up and left. I was pretty certain this man didn’t have it in him to try to kill his own daughter. This wasn’t a wasted trip, though, because his idea to put up a reward for information leading to the arrest of the person who tried to kill her was a good one.

***

I headed to the clubhouse to touch base with Hacker and Storm. I found them both in Hacker’s office with the door ajar. Hacker motioned me in excitedly when I stuck my head in.

“I was just about to text you.”

I quickly stepped into the room, shut the door behind me, and slid into the empty seat next to Storm. “What’s going on? Do we have another lead?”

“Yeah, we do. And you’re not going to believe it,” Storm said.

“Let me guess. The ex lied. I knew there was something shifty about that slimy fucker.”

“I followed up with the restaurant and strip club Tate said he took his girlfriend to that evening. The server who waited on them said they were a weird couple, but the thing that stuck into her mind was how apeshit crazy the girlfriend was. Said she was dressed like a sex worker and gave every woman who looked their way the evil eye. The server said the girlfriend shoved her not once but twice, saying she got too close to her boyfriend. Another patron intervened and Tate jumped him. The ensuing brawl ended up getting both men locked up for the night, so the charming couple never made it to the strip club like Tate said.”

I rubbed my chin, not seeing what the big deal was. “So he’s got an alibi for that night.”

“He’s got a jealous girlfriend,” Hacker said.

“Who owns an older model midnight blue pickup truck,” Storm added.

The penny dropped. “You think there’s a possibility she got extra crazy while Tate was in lockup?”

Storm nodded. “It’s the only theory that remotely makes sense at this point. You up for paying her a little visit?”

“You know it, brother.” Excitement built in my gut because this lead was more solid than any we had so far. My mother always warned me not to underestimate how vindictive a woman could be.

It took us about thirty-five minutes to get to her house. It turned out to be a lakeside cabin with a garage built onto the side out of what appeared to be rough scrap lumber. Weathered paint covered half of the structure, like someone started the job and then gave up and never got back to it.

We walked up to the front porch and knocked. Since there was no truck outside the cabin, it was either in the garage or she wasn’t home, hopefully it was the former. Storm reached past me and pounded on the door again, much louder than I had. He didn’t let up until the door cracked open. A redhead with bed hair poked her head out the door.

“You trying to wake the dead or something?” she grumbled sleepily. “What the hell do you want at this ungodly hour?”

“It’s eleven in the morning,” Storm clarified.

She shook her head in disbelief. “God damn, it’s not even noon yet? Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want any.”

When she tried to close the door, Storm stuck his big, booted foot between the door and the frame. “Are you Charlene Hillindrith?”

“Who the hell is asking?”

“We’re here to talk to you about the woman you ran off the road,” I said.

Charlene turned and ran.

“Oh hell, this went sideways fast,” I muttered as I pushed the door open and ran after her.

Before we got halfway through the living room, a bullet flew past my shoulder. In that moment, I remembered the glimpse of Brook sleeping peacefully in my bed this morning. I’d be damned if I let some psycho make a second attempt on her life.

I pulled out my own gun and took cover behind the snack bar that separated the living room from the kitchen. I heard footsteps come up to the edge of the bar and then slowly back away. I glanced across the room at Storm, who now had his gun drawn as well. He looked miserable and I knew it was because he hated anything to do with strong-arming a woman. I was feeling much less angsty about it myself. I’d do what I had to do to protect the woman I loved.

Suddenly, the footsteps were back, light and fast, as if she were intent on making a run for the front door. When they got close, I sprung up and slammed the butt of my handgun into her face. She lost the grip she had on her gun and went sprawling backwards. I kicked her gun away, and she scrambled to her feet with blood gushing from her nose. Before I knew what was happening, she grabbed a large kitchen knife from the counter and turned on me. I didn’t want to shoot her because I wanted answers, but I couldn’t wrestle the knife away unless I had two hands. I tucked my gun away and met her halfway. When she took a wild swipe at me, I grabbed her wrist and gave it a rough twist. She let go of the knife and I kicked it away.

“That was all kinds of unnecessary,” I said angrily. “You know that, right?”

“Fuck you. You have no idea who you’re messing with,” she growled through bloody teeth.

I grabbed her arm and spun her around, so her back was to me when she tried to spit a mouthful of blood in my face. I wasn’t too angry about that, since I was the one who bloodied her face. If I were her, I’d been looking for some payback too. Hopefully she had good dental cover because I think she lost one of her veneers.

Once she was immobilized, I picked up her gun, I didn’t think she needed any further persuasion, but a little threat never hurt in situations such as this.

“Which way to the garage?” I asked firmly.

“There’s nothing in the garage,” she responded a little to innocently.

This woman must have taken us for complete idiots. I began frog-marching her back through the kitchen, where I suspected the door to the attached garage was. “Good. Then you won’t mind if we have a look.”

There was a stench of what smelled like cat piss in the kitchen, I couldn’t see any signs of a cat, but her house was so filthy it was hard to tell what was living in there.

Storm rushed ahead of us, found that the door was locked, and kicked it in. The acrid smell of cat piss got stronger, and my eyes started to water. The three of us walked inside anyway.

Storm inspected the damage to Charlene’s truck. The entire left side of the vehicle was damaged, it looked exactly like she had smashed the truck against another vehicle. Relief surged in my chest that we’d finally found out who did this awful thing to Brook.

“I think we found our evidence,” Storm mused out loud as he inspected the damage.

“I hit a guardrail,” Charlene stated in an annoyingly disgruntled voice.

“No, you didn’t.”

“You’ve got no proof that I hit anyone,” she responded hotly.

“I have the other car. I’m pretty sure the damage and paint that rubbed off on each car will be an exact match.” When she didn’t reply, I asked, “Why did you run Brook Arnold off the road two weeks ago?”

“I didn’t,” she said while looking away. “Stop fucking accusing me of things I didn’t do.”

“You’re used to talking to idiots, aren’t you?”

My head was starting to pound, and my eyes were streaming. The sooner we got out of this stinking garage the better. What the fuck did she have in here? I knew what dead bodies smelled like and it wasn’t anything decomposing. If anything, the chemical smell was more like—

Oh shit!

“Hornet, you should probably come and have a look at this,” Storm called from the other side of the truck, his voice sounding strained as well it should.

I led Charlene around the back of the truck and saw the discarded boxes of decongestant and cold remedy scattered on the floor. Open bottles of solvents, glassware and God knows what else were on the narrow counter.

Everything a meth cook needed.

Storm held his hand near the metal pressure cooker for a second. “It’s still warm. Let’s get the fuck outta here.”

“Roger that, brother.” I pushed Charlene along to get her out of the garage.

By the time we’d been outside for a few minutes, I began to feel the effects of the fumes decreasing. Storm coughed for a bit longer but that went away eventually.

Charlene stood there glaring at us, I wondered what we were going to do with her.

I was all too aware that she never answered my question. For some reason not knowing why she almost killed the woman I loved was gnawing at my insides.

“I want to know why you ran Brook Arnold off the road. What do you have against her?”

Charlene paused for so long I didn’t think she was going to answer. Her brief explanation left me angry. “Tate fought for me at the diner and wound up getting arrested. I tried to bail him out, but they said I couldn’t until he saw the judge and bail was set. It made me mad there was nothing I could do to help him. I was on my way back home and stopped off at a grocery store to pick up some beer. I saw that bitch buying fucking ice cream and chips and I snapped. I remembered all the times Tate complained about her ruining his life. I thought maybe this was something I could do for him, to make up for him spending the night in a jail cell. So, I followed her from the store and bumped her off the road,” she explained with a smile.

The unmitigated gall to think that she had the right to hurt someone out of some misguided sense of loyalty was absurd. I wanted to scream at her that trying to kill someone was not equal to her boyfriend sitting in lockup overnight and getting bailed out by her the next day.

I had a thought, how the fuck did this meth head even know who Brook was, unless she’d been stalking her. It’s not like they moved in the same social circles, and Tate didn’t have any photos of Brook on his phone. “It was you, wasn’t it? The complaints.”

I could hear Storm on the phone calling our contact in the Griffinsford police department.

“Tate suffered so much because of that bitch. I don’t even know what he saw in her in the first place—what does she have that I don’t? I got her fired from three jobs over the last year. I’m going to give her current employer another call. He’s the only one who didn’t just get rid of her after I complained. I even slashed her tires. It was fun for a while trying to figure out new ways to punish her, but it was getting boring. I thought I’d finally gotten rid of her when I run her off the road.”

Storm must have seen how upset I was because he came over and said, “I can watch over this one if you want to walk off some anger.”

“Yeah, Thanks. That would be great.” I pulled back my rage and walked off before I could light into this pathetic excuse for a human being. All this because some junkie bitch was jealous and had some misguided loyalty to her shitty boyfriend. Just the thought of her sitting around devising ways to hurt Brook while she was busy working her ass off to keep a roof over her head and food on the table pissed me the fuck off.

Storm called after me, “Stay in sight. I don’t want her claiming I did anything to her.”

I glanced back at her bloody face, feeling zero remorse. “Nope. That was all me. I’ll make sure they know.”

It took me about ten minutes of pacing in front of our bikes before I calmed down enough to call Brook and let her know she was safe.

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