In Safe Hands (20 page)

He grunted. “Why does he need
your
number for that?”

“So he knows who's texting him? Why are you being so weird about it?”

“I'm not being weird.”

“Right.” With a shrug, she dropped the subject and headed toward the living room. “You hungry? We could do the early-bird-special dinner, or we could watch a movie first and then break out the pizza.”

“I can wait.”

“Okay.” Turning to face him, Daisy walked backward and grinned. “You just can't wait to watch
Brutal Fists
, can you?”

As soon as she reversed direction, Chris's gaze shot up to meet hers. “Uh…right.”

A little confused by the guilt in his expression, she continued to walk backward, frowning at him. “What'd you do?”

His answer came too fast. “Nothing.”

“Your lying skills could use some work. Don't they teach you that in cop school?”

“No. Watch where you're going, or you're going to run into something.”

Cocking her head to the side, she stopped so she could study him. The obvious answer was too ludicrous to consider, but it popped out of her mouth anyway. “Were you looking at my butt?”

“No.” That time, the quick denial was paired with a dark red flush across his cheekbones.

“Liar.” She turned away from him to hide her pleased smile. “Do you want something to drink? Besides coffee, I have…well, water. Or milk.”

“I need to actually sleep tonight, so I'll have some water.” He sounded like he'd regained his equilibrium. “I'll get it though. Want some?”

“Sure. Thanks.” As she set up the DVD, she couldn't stop grinning. Deputy Chris Jennings had been checking out her butt. Once she had everything ready to go for the movie, she pulled off her hoodie. Although she told herself it was only because she'd get too warm otherwise, Daisy knew she was lying to herself as she smoothed the soft material of her newly revealed fitted shirt. When Chris returned bearing two water glasses, she quickly dropped her hand and took a seat on the couch.

“Guess what?”

“What?” he responded absently, placing the water on the coffee table in front of them.

“I have a new therapist.”

His head jerked up, and he stared at her for a moment before a grin stretched across his face. “Hey, that's great, Dais!”

“Yeah.” Her face was flushed with excitement and embarrassment. “We had our first session over the phone this afternoon, and we're going to do a video conference on Monday. Dr. Fagin is in Denver, so he's going to come here eventually, but I told him I'd feel more comfortable doing the phone and video thing first.”

“He?” Chris seemed to lose a little of his enthusiasm.

“Yes.” Making a face, Daisy explained, “I figured that might keep Dad from sleeping with this one.” Chris laughed. “And this guy was really highly recommended.”

“Do you like him?” he asked, sitting on the other side of the couch and angling his body so he could look at her.

“I do.” Daisy tucked her bare feet underneath her. “We didn't talk about anything too intense today, since it was kind of a get-to-know-you session, but he seemed really relaxed and laid-back. He didn't have that condescending psychiatrist thing going, either.”

“That's great.” His grin was open, without even a hint of the weirdness that had been popping up lately. “I'm proud of you, Dais.”

“Thanks.” She bounced a little. “Ready for
Fists
?”

With a mock-groan, Chris turned toward the flat-screen mounted on the wall. “Am I ready for horrible fighting technique and cheesy dialog? Sure. Hit me. I mean it. Hit me hard enough that I pass out and miss this movie.”

With an amused snort, Daisy ignored his moaning and started the DVD. “Whatever. I know you're dying to see it.”

Although he gave a huff of denial, she noticed that Chris's eyes were already fixed on the screen. Grinning, she settled back to watch the movie.

* * *

“I'm feeling a violent need to punch her.” Daisy jammed a spoonful of brownie sundae into her mouth. “Why is she just standing there while her boyfriend is pummeled?”

Chris smirked at her. “Pummeled?”

“Yes, pummeled. Thrashed, beaten, ganged-up on, smacked-down, trampled.” With a groan, she closed her eyes. “And now she's screaming. Great. That's really helpful.”

“Why are you acting like you've never seen this movie before?” He bit into his brownie. Unlike Daisy, he preferred to have his dessert straight, without ice cream and hot fudge. “We must've watched this fifty times.”

She shrugged. “I always forget how useless Taylor is until her stupid screams remind me. I mean, look.” Daisy pointed at the screen. “Those three guys have their backs to her. No one's paying attention to her. She could take those guys out easily.”

“Easy for you, maybe,” Chris said mildly. “But you have skills.”

“Mad skills,” she agreed, making him laugh. “Even if she's clueless, though, she should at least try
something
. Call for help, even. I know she has that stupid bejeweled cell phone in her pocket, since she was just texting her friend in the last scene.”

“Don't judge until you've been there,” he said, focusing on the still-screaming woman on the screen. “You never know how you'll react until you're in the middle of a life-threatening situation. Your brain and body do some crazy stuff in crisis mode—most of it not helpful.”

“I know.” Putting her bowl on the coffee table, she tucked herself into the corner of the couch and hugged her knees. Although she was sure Chris hadn't meant them to hurt, his words gutted her with their accuracy. When it had mattered, when she could've acted and saved her mom, she'd been just like Taylor—useless. Maybe that was why she hated the character so much.

Daisy stared at the screen as the attackers fled and Taylor threw herself on her boyfriend's limp body. Normally, this was the point where Daisy mocked the woman's lack of first-aid skills and ranted to Chris about how her clutching the semiconscious man had probably just aggravated a spinal injury, but Daisy wasn't seeing the movie anymore. She was sixteen and huddled in the corner of Miller's Convenience Store, trying to hide behind a display of individually wrapped Little Debbie snack cakes.

“Dais.” Chris must have moved, since he was right next to her. Cupping her face with both of his hands, he tipped her head so she had to look at him. “I'm sorry. That was a stupid thing to say.”

“No. You're right. I just sat there and did nothing to help her.” It was too hard to keep eye contact when Chris looked at her like that, with so much kindness and sympathy that she didn't deserve. Her gaze shifted to his left eyebrow. “I even screamed at exactly the wrong time. I wasn't just useless like Taylor; I was destructive.”

Despite her effort to avoid his eyes, he moved his head slightly so she couldn't help but meet them. His fingers tightened, not quite enough to hurt. “Your mom was just shot in front of you. I think you're allowed to scream.” His voice was rough, as if something was caught in his throat.

“No.” Since he wasn't letting her dodge his gaze, she closed her eyes completely. She'd held these words inside of her for eight years and, now that she'd started letting them out, she couldn't seem to stop. “It was a second before he pulled the trigger. I startled him. I screamed, and he shot, and she fell. That's how it went.”

“
No
. No, that's not how it went. Daisy, look at me.” Although she really didn't want to open her eyes, it was hard for her to deny him anything, especially when he was being so serious, so intense. She met his gaze. “I was there, Dais. I was there, and that's not how things went down.”

A remote part of her brain was touched that Chris would lie to try to make her feel better, but she couldn't duck the responsibility of what she'd done. “It was, Chris. I see it happen every night.”

“Oh, Dais.” It was Chris's turn to close his eyes, and when he opened them again, his expression was fierce. “You're not the only one watching the reruns. I was the first deputy on scene after the call went out.”

“Did someone outside see what was going on?” she asked. “I always wondered how you got there so fast.”

He frowned. “Didn't anyone tell you what happened?”

She tugged on his wrists, and he released her. It felt good to be touching him, though, so she shifted her hands and tangled her fingers with his. “I never wanted to discuss it—or even
think
about it. Besides, people probably figured I already knew, since I was there.” There in the corner, screaming at just the wrong time.

Her explanation didn't seem to placate him. “I'm sorry, Dais. I should've told you a long time ago, but you always used to walk away when I tried to bring it up, and I…well, I hated talking about it, too. I didn't realize you were blaming yourself all these years. The clerk pushed the emergency button under the counter, and Dispatch sent out the call that an alarm had been triggered at Miller's Convenience Store. I was only a block away, so I was the first deputy on scene. Almost all of those types of calls end up being false alarms, but I'd only been working as a deputy for six months, so my heart started beating fast. I'd been on my own for just three weeks after finishing my probationary training period, and I hadn't had time to get bitter and jaded yet.”

As he paused, she watched the muscles in his jaw work. Listening to him tell the story made her feel disconnected from it, as if everything that had happened that day had ruined someone else's life, not her own. It was completely different from her nightmares, which allowed her to say fairly calmly, “I can't imagine you ever getting bitter and jaded.”

Chris smiled, but it was faint and disappeared quickly. “Miller always had those promo posters hanging in the windows, so I couldn't see what was going on inside. I had my gun out, and I was worried that would scare people in the store if it was just a false alarm. As soon as I entered, though, I saw him, saw them both…him and your mom.”

“You yelled, ‘Sheriff's department! Drop your weapon!' over and over.” She squeezed his hands. “I was so relieved to hear that. I hadn't thought that help would ever come, and then there you were.”

His lips pressed together until they almost disappeared. “I didn't see you at first. All I could see was a man with a gun pointed at a woman's skull. She looked so scared.”

“Yeah, she did.” The story had become hers again, and tears rushed to fill her eyes. Daisy clenched her teeth to try to hold them back, but there were too many, and they flowed over her cheeks and dripped off her jaw. Chris's eyes focused on her face, bringing him back from that convenience store eight years ago, and he tugged his hands free from her grip.

“I'm sorry, Dais.” He wiped at her cheeks with the backs of his fingers, but tears just kept coming.

“Not your fault,” she said, hating the hiccup that interrupted her words.

Apparently giving up on drying her face, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into him. Daisy rested her forehead against his shoulder and tried to concentrate on how good Chris smelled, like wood smoke and brownies, rather than remembering the acrid tang of urine when she'd wet herself in fear. Even dumb and useless movie-Taylor hadn't peed her pants like a baby.

“It was, though.” It took a moment for Daisy to figure out what he was referring to. When she finally did, she shook her head against his shirt. Before she could protest, he continued. “When I was in law-enforcement training, we were required to take a basic firearms class. It was the same drills, over and over, and I got bored. Instead of aiming for center mass like we were supposed to, I'd pick some other body part, like the forehead or the crotch, and I'd see how tight I could make the pattern.”

Since she wasn't sure how to respond to that, Daisy stayed quiet, waiting for him to continue.

“Your mom was small, smaller than you, even,” he eventually said. “He had his arm around her neck and had pulled her up on her toes, and the top of her head still only reached his collarbone.”

As she listened, Daisy grabbed his shirt with both hands, wadding the material in her fists. She'd been focused on the gun, her mother's sobs, her own terror. That's what came back to her night after night. The details he'd remembered were different, changing the scene in her head for the first time in eight years. Daisy wasn't sure if that made it more terrifying or less, but she did know that she had to hold on to something, and Chris's shirt was the closest grabable thing.

“I aimed at his head. It's funny that you remember me yelling at him to drop his weapon, since I didn't even realize I was saying it. It was really quiet for me—quiet and slow and clear. He looked at me, and I saw him decide. I saw it in his eyes that he was going to kill this woman. I saw that, recognized it, and I still hesitated.”

Daisy stopped breathing, her fingers clenching so tightly around the flannel fabric that her hands went numb.

“He pulled the trigger, and she just…dropped. Her expression was so surprised. It wasn't until then that I shot him. I waited until it was too late, and then I finally acted—no.” Chris blew out a hard breath. “I
re
acted. And action beats reaction every time.”

“No. No, no, no.” When she realized she was chanting the word over and over, she clamped her teeth together. Even though hearing about it, talking about it, was as painful as having her guts scooped out with an ice-cream spoon, Daisy didn't want to stop. She had to know, had to have those details, and she was positive Chris would stop talking about it if she got hysterical on him. She forced herself to breathe. “It was me. I screamed. It was my fault.”