Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 73192 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73192 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Luckily, before he died, I was at a really impressionable age where I watched everything my father did because I wanted to do everything exactly like he did to be the kind of man that he was.
Hence my joining the Marines and then becoming a peace officer for a bit—I wanted to be just like him.
Once she was settled, I shut her door and rounded the hood of the truck, keeping my eyes out for her loser ex.
After not seeing any sign of him, I climbed into my truck and started it up as I slammed the door.
Pulling out of the parking lot, I went in the opposite direction from the way that we needed to go in case the ex was watching and I just hadn’t seen him.
“I met Theo when I interviewed for my job. Other than spending some time with him once every few weeks as we’re riding the lake, I don’t really know him all that well,” she explained. “And I’m sorry to hear about your father. How did he die?”
I processed what she’d said about Theo and then moved on.
I wasn’t sure why it made me so irrationally happy to know that she didn’t know him well and wasn’t spending that much time with him, but it did.
And I didn’t like the way it felt like relief spread through my chest, so I changed the subject.
“My dad died in the line of duty,” I said. “When I was eleven, he was shot while pulling over a man with an outstanding warrant. The passenger also had an outstanding warrant, but he was also carrying enough meth on him to share with half the damn town. They got scared and when my dad walked up to the window, the passenger shot him in the face.”
Reagan was silent. “That’s awful.”
It was awful.
I agreed wholeheartedly.
I’d gone through roadside bombs, insurgents and random attacks from the Taliban while deployed. But once I was a full-blown officer of the law, I could barely walk up to a window and hand out a ticket because all I kept seeing was my father’s head being blown apart while at police academy.
The administrators had no clue that the video they’d shown of the traffic stop was of my father.
We were in a different state, eight hundred miles away and our name had changed because my mother’s husband had adopted us—Alana and me.
How were they supposed to know that the video they’d shown was the very one of my father being shot?
“When I was at the police academy,” I found myself saying. “They showed an instructional video on the importance of knowing what’s going on around you. It was a dashcam video from an officer’s camera. It shows him walking up to the vehicle where they’d pulled over on a two-lane road. There were cars passing by slowly.” I cleared my throat, unaware that I’d frozen at a red light and it’d been green for over thirty seconds.
The light turned from green to yellow to red again and I still hadn’t moved.
“Since the officer was watching the driver, he didn’t see the passenger reach for his gun. The dashcam caught the whole scene from there, though. Two seconds after the driver’s side window rolls down, the passenger extends his arm across the driver’s face and shoots the officer when he bends down to ask for the man’s license.”
I didn’t know why I was telling her this.
It wasn’t like she’d asked anything about me or my father.
But for some reason, I felt compelled to tell her.
“It was your dad, wasn’t it?” she asked. “They showed you a video of your dad while you were attending the police academy, didn’t they?”
I nodded. “I walked out of the room and threw up. They gave me shit about it afterward until someone from the back of the room remarked that I had a stunning resemblance to the man that was shot. Then, I think, it all started to fall into place for them.”
“I’m surprised you were even able to go the police route,” she admitted.
The light turned green again and an angry driver honked behind me before I’d even had time to process the change.
I went, slowly and waited for the car to zoom around me—which they did a few moments later.
When they shot past me, I picked up the mic next to Reagan’s knees and called the license plate into dispatch.
Ramirez, my newest officer, pulled out of the Quick Stop moments later and pulled the car over.
Reagan snorted. “You’re bad.”
I shrugged. “I sat through that light. They were allowed to honk. What they’re not allowed to do is drive recklessly because they’re pissed.”
Reagan sighed. “I’ll go home with you under one condition.”
I looked over at her. “What?”
“You tell me why you won’t date me.”
Chapter 11
My last words will probably be “fuck it.”