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I went gladly.

He smelled like soap and the coffee he drank all afternoon at work. Familiar. I could feel how carefully he was keeping his hands away from my arms.

“Broke his hold with your move,” I told him against his shirt. “The first time, anyway. He grabbed me again.”

Dad’s hand tightened at the back of my head.

“I heard you gave him something to think about.”

“I wasn’t trying to give him a thought. I was trying to hurt him.”

“That’s fine, babygirl,” he said. “You were trying to get away.”

He didn’t ask why I hadn’t hit harder. Why I’d let the man get close. Why I hadn’t done any of a dozen things that seemed obvious now that I was sitting safely behind a counter.

The employee told him what she’d seen. He thanked her, and she gave him the same impatient nod she’d given me, as though nobody needed to make a ceremony of it.

The young officer asked her about the store’s cameras.

I stopped looking outside.

There were people dealing with the man. There was nothing else I needed from him.

One of the patrol cars pulled out with the man still in the back seat. The young officer stayed behind to finish with the employee and the store cameras.

Dad took me to his car.

“We’ll go to the station,” he told me. “Finish your account somewhere quieter. Your mom’s meeting us there.”

I got into the front passenger seat with my water and my phone.

Dad called Riot before we pulled out.

“Tell the boys she’s okay before you tell them anything else,” he said.

I closed my eyes briefly.

There it was.

The part where everybody came. The part where I was in danger again.

The police station was cold and smelled faintly of burnt coffee.

I had spent enough time there to know which chairs were uncomfortable and which desk drawers usually contained something to eat.

Being brought in by Dad in running clothes didn’t feel particularly dramatic until the woman behind the front desk saw my arms.

Then she stood up.

Dad spoke to her quietly before taking me down the short hall behind reception. He put me in the little room across from his office, with a square table and four chairs that didn’t match.

The door stayed open.

He made another call from just outside it.

I heard an older officer near the front desk mutter, “What kind of suicidal maniac puts his hands on Buck Piper’s daughter?”

I looked down at my phone.