I really don’t cook for myself often – I tend to err on the side of lazy when it comes to food, but I do enjoy a nice home cooked filet every now and again, and tonight is the night. It was a good fucking day, and I plan to celebrate that. I’ve got a juicy cut sitting in a cast iron pan, one side already seared to perfection. I carefully flip the steak before answering my phone ringing wildly on the counter.
“This is Colt Fowler,” I say, mostly out of habit, ignoring how late it is.
“Come get us,” Rowan begs, “please.” She’s crying. My spine stiffens and my heart hammers against my rib cage as I listen to her trembling voice. “I’m really scared.”
“Don’t move. I’m on my way.”
I grab the pan with a kitchen towel and toss it into the sink, shut off the heat, and barrel down to my garage in my slippers to jump into a car.
The drive to her house feels like it takes fucking forever, even speeding. If he hit her, I swear to god, I’ll tear his fucking throat out.
My mind floods with the worst case scenarios, anything that would make her callmeof all people. Instead of her friends, instead of family members. Instead of the police...unless they’re already at her house. Oh, fuck, what if she had to call the police? The thought of her having to call them on her own father makes me feel sick.
The car squeals to a stop in front her house and I have a split second to assess the scene playing out in front of me.
“Jesus,” I breathe.
Rowan’s car is on the driveway, the front and side of it completely destroyed by her father’s truck, which seems to have slammed into both her car and the door to the garage, bending it inward and lifting it off of the cement driveway beneath it.
I open the car door just as Macie’s tiny frame comes careening out of the front door, headed straight for me with her arms flailing out in front of her. With the door open, the sounds of shouting and glass breaking flow out of the house.
As I meet Macie, she throws her arms around my legs and lets out a wail. She’s completely terrified. I drop to the ground in front of her, glancing toward the door, looking for any sign of Rowan. She’s still in there somewhere.
“You’re safe, kiddo,” I assure her. “Wait in my car, I’m going to go get your sister.”
She runs for the passenger door of my of my car and Rowan exits the building as I move toward it. Tears are forcing her mascara down her face as she hefts a duffel bag over her shoulder and I catch the tail end of her shouts to her father, who follows behind her, his footsteps harsh and angry in spite of his drunken stumbling.
The man in front of me is almost unrecognizable from the one I saw in his employee file. Where his face was clean-shaven before, his jaw is now layered in thick, untidy hair. His neatly combed-back hair is now wiry and hangs just below his chin, a layer of grease coating the roots. His clear skin now mottled with splotches of red and purple, signaling that his body has likely been poisoned beyond repair.
Rowan is all but five feet from me when I hear her father shout to her, “It should have been you in that fucking car! Ungrateful little bitch!”
Time passes in slow motion as the words bury into her chest like a bullet fired at close range. Rowan’s face drops and her body goes slack, the bag dropping from her shoulder to the ground with a heavy thud, her arms left dangling at her sides. She’s completely deflated.
I watch as that tiny, fucking microscopic piece of hope that still lived in her, the one that she clung to that told her that maybe one day, she would get back the loving father she missed so badly, is stomped into nothingness.
And all I can see is fucking red.
In just a few long strides, I’m on him, letting out a growl as I press my forearm against his throat and I shove him backward, hard, until he’s pinned between me and the door of his beaten-down truck, gasping for air. I press harder, until his bloodshot, yellow-stained eyes widen and I can see real, genuine, sobering fear in them.
I lean in close to his ear, keeping my voice low enough that only he and I know what’s being said between us.
“Do you think I couldn’t make more important men thanyoudisappear?” I hiss. “Do you think anyone would question where some drunk, abusive bastard went?”
His hands fly up to claw at my arm while he chokes. I press harder against him.
“Answer the fucking question, Heath.”
The only response I get is a frantic shake of his head.
“If you ever – I meanever- try to contact your daughters, if you so much as have a passing thought about them, I will find out. And it will be the last fucking thought you ever have. Do you understand me?”
He nods his head.
I slam my arm against his throat one more time, hoping just a little bit that his windpipe will crack, before turning and making my way to Rowan, who is stuck in place. Frozen in her pain. I face her and put my hands on her shoulders.
“Are you hurt?”
Her eyes flick to mine, but she says nothing. She’s barely even breathing.
