She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,212

her badge again. “I’m with Homicide. You said you’d find someone for me.”

The woman’s mouth fell open. “Homicide? Has there been a murder?”

The blood rushed to Fogel’s face as she tried to keep her temper in check. “Get your supervisor on the phone right now.”

The woman smiled and picked up her phone. “Do you have an appointment?”

Fogel leaned in closer. “Get your boss on the phone right now.”

The receptionist huffed in a breath and dialed a number.

Fogel heard the click as someone picked up.

“There is a rather rude woman at reception claiming to be a police officer of some sort, and she’s demanding to speak to my supervisor. Should I instruct security to escort her off the premises?”

Fogel wanted to snatch up the receiver and beat little blondie over the head with it.

The receptionist glanced at a door toward the back of the room. A security keypad of some sort was embedded in the wall to the right. “Are you sure? She really is quite rude. A horrid dresser, too.”

Fogel’s brow furrowed as she involuntarily looked down at her brown leather jacket, gray sweater, and jeans.

The receptionist hung up the phone. “Someone will be with you shortly. Please take a seat. Help yourself to coffee or pastries. The baklava is simply delightful.” She smiled, revealing perfectly white teeth.

“You’ve got one minute to get someone out here, or I’m blowing a hole through that door back there and letting myself in.”

The receptionist glanced down at her nails, then smiled up at Fogel. “May I help you?”

7

“What does she mean, not enough? What’s happening to her?”

With my hand still wrapped in the tail of my shirt, I carefully placed Stella’s arm across her chest. I felt utterly defeated.

“You’re Jeffery Dalton.” I forced myself to draw in a breath, long and deep. I couldn’t look at him.

“Preacher. Nobody calls me Dalton.” He was staring at the dead man between us.

“If this isn’t my father, who is he?”

I heard a woman scream, then.

Loud.

Outside.

“Shit, that’s Cammie,” Preacher said, scrambling to his feet.

“Cammie Brotherton is here?”

“I picked her and her daughter up in California,” he shouted back at me, racing for the door, his gun out again.

I quickly glanced around before chasing after him—Dewey Hobson was no longer in the house.

“Dewey, no!” I shouted, barreling out the front door.

He didn’t hear me. His fist pistoned through the passenger window of the GTO, shattering the glass. He grabbed the woman sitting there by collar of her denim jacket and pulled her toward him, blood running from his split knuckles.

Preacher got to him first.

Hobson had the woman I could only assume was Cammie Brotherton halfway out the window, when Preacher slammed into him with the force of a truck, sending both men to the pavement. Hobson’s head cracked against the concrete. This should have knocked him out, but only dazed him for a moment—he slammed the palms of his hands into Preacher’s ears, then brought his knee up into Preacher’s groin. The angle was all wrong and the blow glanced off, catching Preacher in the thigh instead.

Hobson twisted, somehow managed to plant both his feet on the ground, and pushed up. Preacher had been about to deliver a punch, but the movement threw off his balance. Hobson used the momentum to roll, taking Preacher with him, somehow ending up on top. Hobson’s hands were around Preacher’s neck in an instant, squeezing the life from him.

I grabbed Hobson around the waist and tried to pull him back, but he wouldn’t release his grip. His arms were like lead.

In the middle of all this, Cammie had scrambled out of the car with a pump action shotgun. She chambered a shell and pointed the barrel at Hobson’s head.

Hobson’s head swiveled, following the sound. When he saw Cammie holding the shotgun, he released his grip on Preacher’s neck, shrugged me off, and lunged at her. If I hadn’t grabbed his leg, he surely would have reached her, but instead he lost his balance and cracked into the concrete.

“What am I doing here, Preacher?” Cammie took two steps back, the barrel again pointing at Hobson’s head.

“Shoot him!” Preacher tried to shout this out, but the words came in a gravelly whisper, his throat still fighting for air.

I pulled Hobson back, grabbed his other leg. “He doesn’t understand! David did something to him!”

I had no idea if Cammie knew David Pickford, but she did know Dewey Hobson, and I think that was the only thing that prevented her from pulling the trigger. She spun