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“Did you see any injuries?” the operator asked.
I shook my head, even though she couldn’t see me. “No, he had clothes covering his body. Face looked okay. No blood apparent. I didn’t even see any…”
A bat—or something long and heavy—came down on my window that my face was only inches away from.
I screamed.
My eyes went to the man in the road, but he was no longer there.
And, without giving it much thought, I turned and surveyed the man that had now moved to the front of my car—this time taking out the windshield.
I felt my stomach drop as I recognized who it was.
Kelley.
“Fuck me. Jesus Christ, he’s beating my car with a bat!” I cried out.
I couldn’t move forward, or I’d run him over.
I couldn’t back up because my brain wasn’t functioning on all cylinders any longer.
Instead, I just sat there while he beat the shit out of my car and screamed obscenities at me. Not to mention he also told me, in exact detail, exactly what he was going to do to me.
“The cruiser is about thirty seconds out,” the operator said.
I heard the sirens and saw the moment Kelley realized that he wasn’t going to get me out of the car.
He sneered at me. “Next time, bitch.”
I felt my stomach sink as he ran away, down the road and into the woods that led back to the hospital.
My heart was pounding, and I felt bile start to leech up my throat.
“A cruiser is behind you,” the operator said, sounding shaken herself.
I looked up to find James, my uncle, hurrying toward me.
Why he was there and not in Kilgore, I didn’t know. I also didn’t care.
I bailed out of the car and threw myself at him.
He caught me, wrapped his arms around me, and took me to his cruiser in the next heartbeat.
“I heard the call over the radio,” he said. “Are you okay?”
I nodded, even though I was shaking like a leaf. “Yes. He ran that way.”
I pointed, and James looked in the direction I pointed. “Was he alone?”
I nodded. “He was in the middle of the street there. I passed him, pulled over here, and called 911. I don’t know when he got up, but apparently, I wasn’t paying that good of attention because the next thing I know the man in the road is gone and Kelley is slamming a bat into my glass.”
The bat in question was actually a black piece of pipe that was laying on the ground next to my car.
“He didn’t have gloves on or anything,” I told him. “That should have his prints on it.”
James gestured for me to put my feet inside the cruiser, and I did. “Stay here.”
Then he slammed the door on me and started reaching for his mic on his collar.
I heard his voice over the radio in the car and shivered as he told the operator to call a K-9 unit and also call my father.
Ten minutes later, not only was my father there, but half of my pseudo uncles as well as Bayou.
How Bayou had gotten there, I didn’t know, but I was thankful that he was.
Because eight minutes later, when Hoax rolled up on his bike looking like he’d ridden like a bat out of hell to get there, I knew Bayou needed to help get Hoax under control.
“Did you find him yet?” Hoax growled, marching up with his hands clenched.
I disentangled myself from my dad’s arms and went to Hoax.
The moment I was close enough, he pulled me into his arms.
“Are you okay?”
His whispered words into my hair had me releasing a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “Yes. I’m fine. Scared, but fine…I’m also hungry as hell.”
He squeezed me just a little bit tighter. “I’ll go buy you anything you want after you tell me what happened.”
“Here,” Jack, who’d somehow arrived without me being aware, said. “This is the call.”
What the hell were they all doing here?
Then I got to listen to the replay of what had just happened, only this time without the terror coursing through my veins, and a cool, calm head to really understand exactly what had almost just happened.
“I think he threatened to rape her at least eight times,” Downy, a family friend, said. “Threatened to beat the hell out of her six. There’s more, but I think we got him on enough counts to bring him in and keep him there for a while.”
“I fuckin’ hope so,” Dad said through clenched teeth.
Hoax stayed quiet throughout the replaying of the call, as well as the discussion of what would happen next.
It was only as everyone was dispersing, and my car had been loaded up onto a wrecker, that Hoax guided me to my dad’s truck. “You’ll need to ride with your pop.”
At first, I didn’t realize the implications of that statement.
