“Hey, the police are here. I’m just letting you down so the police can handcuff me,” I tell her so she doesn’t worry. She winks at me before she starts freaking out, yanking herself up, throwing herself in my arms, making it impossible to comply with the cops’ instructions.
“No, don’t leave me. They tried to kill me, Kruger. They tried to kill our boy,” she yells before dissolving into sobs. Everyone freezes as they take in the scene. Toot’s lips twitch, and I have to fight the urge to do the same. Delphi might be a lot of things, but overly dramatic isn’t one of them.
“Calm down, Miss. Nobody is going anywhere. I’m just trying to secure the scene. Do any of you have weapons on you?”
“I have a gun at my back and I have a license to carry, which is in my wallet,” I reply.
“Same here. Want me to slide them over?” Toot asks politely.
I don’t hear the response as I pull Delphi’s face from mine. “I need to hand the police my gun and wallet. I need you to hold it together for a little while. I’m not going anywhere, I promise.”
She lets out a shaky breath and nods. I gently ease my gun out before placing it on the ground and sliding it toward the cop. I grab my wallet next and toss that over too.
“Ma’am, are you armed?” another cop says. I’m about to grab her bag, which I notice is looped over her shoulder, when she shakes her head.
“I have a license to carry, and I usually do, but I didn’t think I’d need it here, so I left it at home. The judge said it was safe. CPS said it was safe. I didn’t expect to walk into…this.”
“Ma’am, I’m going to let the paramedics take a look at you real quick while I talk to Mr. Kruger and Mr. Toot.”
She grips my cut and whimpers.
“I’ll stay right where you can see me, but your arm needs looking at, and I’m worried you might have hit your head when you started seizing. Let them check you over for me.”
She reluctantly lets me go, and two paramedics move in as I get to my feet and walk over to Toot.
“I’m Officer Fresco. This is Officer Dean. Can you explain what happened here?”
I look at the cop who spoke and shrug. “I’m still trying to figure that out myself.” I fill him in on my meeting with Jack. “And that was when I found out he had paid the bond money for Josh.”
“Josh?”
“The guy on the sofa, I’m assuming. Though it’s hard to tell with half his face missing. His name is Josh Milton. The woman in the kitchen is Diane Milton. Josh isn’t supposed to be here. He viciously attacked Diane’s fifteen-year-old son. Me and Delphi were his foster parents up until two weeks ago, when Diane got out of rehab and a judge decided it was safe for him to come home.” My voice hardens at the last part, making the cop look up from the note he’s taking.
“And CPS signed off on that?”
“CPS suggested Theo stay with us, where he was safe and happy, but the judge said he needed his mother,” I replysarcastically. The cop curses under his breath, and his quiet outrage helps settle me.
“After Jack made the comment about Josh making bail, I had a bad feeling he’d come here for Theo. I had zero proof, though, so I started heading over to check it out. I had no idea when I got here, I’d find my woman on the floor bleeding from a gunshot wound.”
“Where is Theo now?”
“Delphi said he was at the clubhouse before she passed out. He’d know it was safe there. I came here not knowing that, though, so the door is on me. I didn’t even bother knocking. I just kicked the door in.”
I rub a hand over my face, glancing back at Delphi, who is talking quietly to the paramedics.
“I saw Josh first, knew he was dead. Then I saw Diane and Delphi. I won’t lie, I didn’t give Diane a second thought. All I saw was Delphi lying in a puddle of vomit and blood, and I panicked. I went straight to her, and she slowly came around.”
“I checked Diane, saw she had a pulse, and called you guys. I didn’t touch her other than that. Know that makes me sound like a dick, but it took me seconds to see the gun next to her and two victims with gunshot wounds. I wasn’t willing to put my prints on her or get her blood on me. My cut already makes a whole bunch of you guys prejudiced toward us,” Toot adds, keeping the hostility out of his voice. But there is no denying the truth, and the guy taking the notes doesn’t refute that, though the cop next to him bristles with indignation.
“So you’d let her die to save your own ass?”
Toot blinks and looks at him coldly. “If she was awake and holding a gun to the door when you got here, would you have walked in if Delphi was bleeding out? Or waited until someone could come and talk her down, knowing Delphi likely wouldn’t make it?”
“That’s not the same?—”
“No, it’s not, but then your badge offers you protection. My cut offers me none. I’ve served my country, and I’ve never been charged with a crime, yet that doesn’t seem to matter. Funny, because I never see the boys in blue doing toy runs for kids’ charities or raising money for the hospital oncology ward. Your legal system threw a fifteen-year-old boy back into a hell he had barely even recovered from. But yeah, I’m the problem.”
“Toot,” I warn before they arrest him for being combative.
