“Oh, sweetie! Let me get you some ice,” said Granny Liz.

Wyatt grabbed Dale by the back of his jacket and shoved him toward the door. “He’ll be fine. Let’s go, son.”

Dale’s hand screamed with pain, but he ignored it. All he wanted to do was get out of here before someone got hurt. The police could catch up with Wyatt farther up the road, where there was no Granny Liz around to become a target.

“It will only take me a second,” said Granny Liz.

Wyatt wasn’t waiting. He grabbed Dale’s arm and pulled him toward the door.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” growled Wyatt in Dale’s ear.

The radios the patrolmen were wearing squawked to life. Dale couldn’t understand the codes the dispatcher used, but he did catch his father’s name come over the static-y line.

Wyatt came to a dead stop. It lasted only a second. Maybe the cops hadn’t even seen it.

“Excuse me, sir,” said one of the cops. “Can you please hold on a minute?”

“We’re in a hurry, officer,” said Wyatt.

“This will just take a moment.”

Dale looked over his shoulder. One of the policemen was speaking into the radio. The only word Dale caught was “backup.”

This was going to end badly, and from the tension quivering through Wyatt’s body, he knew it, too.

“Sir,” said the cop, this time more firmly. “I need you to put your hands where I can see them and turn around slowly.”

Wyatt let go of Dale’s arm long enough to spin him so he was facing the cops and loop a thick arm around his neck. Dale was too shocked to react. He’d known for a long time that his father was a worthless waste of oxygen. Dale had been beaten and smacked around more times than he could count, but never in his most disgusted imaginings had he thought that Wyatt would use his only son as a human shield.

Dale staggered under the betrayal. It ran so deep he was sure his very soul bled out the last hope he had that his Dad cared for him even a little. He only wanted Dale back because he was Wyatt’s possession. His property.

“We’re leaving,” said Wyatt to the police. “Get out of the way and no one will get hurt.”

“I’m sorry, sir. We can’t let you leave with the boy.”

Liz came back out from the storage room carrying a dish towel for the ice pack she was going to make him. She froze in place when she saw what was going on.

Neither one of the patrolmen so much as glanced her way. Their eyes were fixed on the threat.

Dale felt Wyatt reach for his weapon with his free hand. There were three targets in the room, and Wyatt wouldn’t hesitate to take out all of them. Even Granny Liz.

No way was Dale going to let that happen.

“He’s got a gun!” shouted Dale.

Wyatt’s grip on his neck tightened until Dale could no longer breathe. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the gun in Wyatt’s hand shining in the fluorescent lighting.

Both officers pulled their weapons. They’d spread out enough that Wyatt couldn’t possibly keep his eye on both of them.

Liz cowered on the floor near the donut display, repeating a low, terrified mantra of “God, no.”

Wyatt pulled his gun free and alternated pointing it at the two men. “I’m going to walk out that door. If you try to follow me, I’ll kill the boy.”

Another slice of Dale’s soul shriveled and died. He was amazed by how much it hurt. Even more amazed that he was still alive and breathing after suffering a blow like that from his own father.

“That’s not going to happen,” said one of the officers. “Put the gun down. There’s nowhere for you to go. Every road is blocked.”

“He’s my son. He belongs to me. You have no right to take him away,” growled Wyatt.

Dale clawed at his arm, struggling to get enough air into his lungs to breathe.

“You’re hurting the boy,” said the second officer in a calm tone.

“I’ll do a hell of a lot more than hurt him if you don’t get the fuck out of my way.” Even as he said it, Wyatt’s arm tightened.

Dale’s vision filled with spots, and he tried not to panic. Maybe he should just give in and pass out. Wyatt wouldn’t be able to hold him up and keep an eye on both policemen. It was worth a shot. At this point, he didn’t have a lot to lose.

Dale went limp, and Wyatt staggered under the sudden shift of weight.

His gun went off. Dale’s vision gave out, and the deafening noise combined with his sudden blindness was enough to send Dale headlong into panic. He forgot all about his plan and started fighting like his life depended on it. He landed one or two solid blows before all he was hitting was air.

Somewhere to his right, he heard a frantic scrambling sound, a sickening thud, then another, and finally, the sound of something hard crunching.

Slowly, as Dale gasped for air, his vision started to come back. He sat up and surveyed the scene.

Granny Liz was crouched over one of the policemen, whose skull was grotesquely sunken on one side. He wasn’t moving.

The second officer lay twitching in a puddle of his own blood. He struggled to operate the radio at his shoulder, but his body wasn’t cooperating. His bloody fingers slipped on the plastic.

Wyatt stood there, the butt of his gun smeared with blood and bits of skin. He was breathing hard and looked pale and terrified. “We gotta go, boy.”

Dale wasn’t about to leave that policeman here to bleed to death. Even if the whole mess hadn’t been his fault, he still couldn’t have left him. “I’m staying.”

Wyatt grabbed a fistful of Dale’s hair and jerked him up to his feet. “You’re coming with me.”

Dale felt a blind rage take hold of him, and he let it. He was tired of being afraid. Tired of being pushed around by the one man who should have been willing to do anything to take care of him. He balled up his fist and slammed it hard against the side of Wyatt’s head, knocking him down.

Pain shot through his hand and up his arm, but he ignored it.

Wyatt pushed himself to his feet and aimed the gun at Dale’s chest. “Get in the fucking car, boy. This is your last warning.”

No. Dale was not going to be pushed around any longer. He was nearly a man himself. It was time he started acting like one.

He planted his feet and gave his dad a hard stare. “Shoot me if you want, but I’m staying here.”

Sirens wailed in the distance, getting closer.

“You might as well stay, too. There’s no way you’ll be able to outrun the police in that crappy car of yours.”

“Fuck!” shouted Wyatt.

“It would be best if you turned yourself in.”

Wyatt’s face darkened to an angry red. “I’m not going back to jail.”

Dale shrugged. “We’ll see.” He truly didn’t care. Either way, Wyatt was out of his life for good. He wouldn’t let it be any other way. All the fear he’d carried around for seventeen years evaporated. Wyatt no longer held any power over him.

“You’re no fucking son of mine.”

Dale nodded slowly and allowed himself a little smile. “That’s the only good thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Wyatt sneered, then raced out of the store and fled across the parking lot, toward a neighborhood. Dale wanted to watch him so he could tell the police where he’d gone, but the bleeding man needed his help more.

Dale scrambled to his side. The bullet Wyatt fired had gone into the man’s neck. Blood seemed to be gushing out of the wound with every beat of his heart. He pressed a hand to the wound, praying he could slow the bleeding enough to keep him alive until help arrived.

“Dale!” he heard Grant’s voice faintly, as if coming from a long distance.

It took Dale a moment to remember the phone in his pocket. He pulled it out with one bloody hand. “Grant, two policemen have been hurt. Bad. Send help.”

“It’s already on the way. Just hang on.”

Blood was still pooling on the floor despite Dale’s efforts. Liz was breathing into the body of the second man, but with a head wound like that, Dale was pretty sure he was already gone. “Tell them to hurry. He doesn’t have long.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Grant felt helpless as he listened to Detective Mathews give orders over the phone. The state troopers and local police in Rolla were all closing in on Dale’s location.

At least Wyatt had left Dale alive. Grant would never have been able to live with himself if anything had happened to Dale.

For the first time in his life, he had an idea of what it must have been like for David to lose his wife and why he’d chosen to go into isolation. The pain of almost losing Dale on top of Isabelle’s close call was enough to make Grant want to crawl away and lick his wounds. He felt sore inside, like his organs had all taken a beating. But it wasn’t a physical kind of soreness. It was deeper than that. Much worse.

And it wasn’t over yet. He still had to face Isabelle and tell her what had happened to Dale. Tell her that he’d hidden the danger to her son from her.

He was pretty sure she’d never forgive him, but he’d done what he thought was right. He couldn’t help himself when it came to protecting her. It was like it was part of his genetic code or something, and no matter what he did, he couldn’t change it, any more than he could grow taller or make his eyes turn blue.

“The ambulance is here, and police are looking for Wyatt,” said Dale over the phone. “I’m gonna clean all this . . . blood off.”

Grant gripped the phone so hard his hand cramped. “Blood? Are you hurt?”

“Not my blood.” Dale sounded like he was trying not to throw up or cry or both. “I’ll call you back later.”

“Can I come get you?”

“No. The police said they’d bring me home after they take my statement.”

“Stay safe. See you home soon.”

Grant hung up the phone and looked to where Mathews was on one of the hospital phones. There hadn’t been time to go back to his office, so they’d taken over an empty room. Mathews was still speaking with dispatch or whoever it was he’d used to convey information to the officers on the scene. After another couple of minutes, he, too, hung up the phone.

“They’ve secured the scene,” he said. “Wyatt’s still missing, but Dale’s fine. A little shaken, but they’ll bring him back soon.”

“I need to go to him.”

“You’re not legally connected to him. After tonight, I don’t think they’d let a strange man anywhere near him.”

“Isabelle can’t go.”

“They’re not going to charge Dale with anything. He’s not in any kind of trouble. They know he was an innocent victim.”

“Someone should still be with him,” said Grant.

“They’ll have him home in about the same amount of time you could drive there and get him. Just let them bring him back. I promise you that since he tried to stop that cop’s bleeding, no one will mistreat him in any way.”

“How are the patrolmen?”