AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I slam the back of his head with my hand, pressing his face in the dirt.
“Call 911!” Chloe cries as she looks at her hands covered in blood. “Call 911!”
A shot rings out from somewhere, and we all hit the ground.
“I told you, not in my neighborhood.”
I look up and see Pastor B holding a shotgun, still aimed to the sky.
“Pastor B, call 911. Danny’s been shot,” Chloe sobs.
After checking on Nora—who, thank God, slept through all of this—Whitley set the alarm to the house and ran right back out. She’s on her knees beside Danny, who was shot in the side. The bullet went straight through.
“When he pulled the gun, Danny dived on him.” Chloe, who seemed unaware of her own injuries, sat with her back against Pastor B’s legs, shaking. “I had to help him. I set the alarm. Nora was safe. I promise Nora was?—”
“She’s safe,” Whit says calmly as she takes Danny’s pulse.
“You did good, Chloe. You did really good,” I assure her.
“I grabbed the bat. I got two really good swings in—home-run swings—and he-he grabbed it and threw me down and—” She stops. “I think my arm is broken. Maybe my face? Am I broken, Whit? Did he break me again?”
“No, Chloe, you beat him this time. You and Danny are going to heal, and he’s going to jail.”
“Promise?” She leans down and kisses Danny’s cheek. “I’m so sorry, Danny Aiken.”
One ambulance arrives, and Whit passes what information she has and looks at me. “The other one won’t be here until?—”
“You think Chloe and you can ride with Danny in this one? I’ll follow Marks with this steaming pile of shit in the back seat, and your grandparents have got Nora.”
“He has a gun,” she says, shocked.
She’s not alone.
“Yeah, I guess he does.”
“You two get along now. Nora, Millie, and I will be just fine. My friend Remington is here, too, if need be. Get Danny and Chloe fixed up. I expect them in church on Sunday.”
Whit made the decision that Danny was going to need more care than the Med Center could give him. She was confident she’d done everything they would have been able to at the Med Center, and the extra time driving some back roads to avoid the traffic jam would be no less than waiting for another helicopter to bring Danny to receive the best care he could get.
Marks continued to the Med Center so he could keep Spud under his jurisdiction. He was making calls to get state boys he trusted up here and on the case.
York was doing what she needed to and then would be going straight to our place.
I called Danny’s father and let him know what happened and which route to take to get to Dallas.
19
Tuesday
Curled up on Pope’s lap in the chair between Chloe and Danny’s beds, I whisper my fear. “He’s going to get away with this.”
“As much of a piece of shit her brother is, he is still her brother. Alice will talk. Spud is going to go one of two ways—he’ll talk, or he won’t—but he won’t get away with any of it.”
He pulls his phone out of his pocket and hits an app. “This is our security system.”
The screen lights up several different rectangle boxes, and he hits the one for the front door and then turns the volume all the way down. We both tense when we see the flash of the gun going off and Danny slumping over. It shows Spud pulling him down the stairs by his hair, forcing him to his knees and pointing the gun to the back of his head. Tears spill down my face because there is nothing that could ever prepare anyone to see someone they love like a brother in that situation.
And then Chloe appears, swinging once and knocking Spud to his knees, kicking the gun away before swinging again and hitting him across the back. The third time she swings, he grabs the end and shoves the other end into her stomach. Danny somehow kicks him in the face and pulls Chloe to him, and the other camera picks up as they both crawl across the yard. Spud comes into view again, and Danny sees the moment the bat is about to come down on the back of Chloe’s head. With a bullet having just gone through him, he finds the strength to push up enough to cover her body with his, taking the blow across the back. Spud then kicks both of them repeatedly—her in the face, him in the side. He stomps on her arm and her…
