A/N: I… can’t believe it, but this is the final chapter of this book. We finished a book, guys!! We wrote the final words and everything!
NOT EDITED
“Hello.”
Leaned back against Dallas’s rental car, Bo lifted his head until his eyes met Jamal’s. “Hello,” Bo echoed.
“Mind if I sit with you?” Jamal asked.
“If you don’t mind your butt getting wet.”
Jamal chuckled softly before turning to sit beside him in the light dusting of snow on the parking lot’s asphalt. “My ass has been parked in worse conditions, I assure you.”
Bo offered a nod in response, arms tightening around his knees to pull them closer to his chest, if that were even possible. “Did you call the FBI?”
“I did.”
“Did you go see it?”
“Which part?” Jamal asked.
“Inside the house. The… shrine, I suppose.”
“I did.”
“What’d… what’d you think?” Bo asked.
“That you guys were up against a bastard that was far, far more dangerous than we knew.” Gently, Jamal elbowed him in the side. “And you helped get everyone out alive.”
Bo dropped his forehead to his knees, closing his eyes. “These cops are never going to be the same. Rick and Jeff, anyone else who goes to Gerry’s house and sees Jeff’s blood down the drive or the shrine in the closet. And if photos of it ever get leaked, the people of this town—”
“What happens to the people in Ellepath isn’t something that should fall on your shoulders. It falls on Gerry’s shoulders.”
“If I hadn’t written down my suspicions in a notebook, plain as day for Baker to find—”
“Katherine would have torn that entire lab apart if it meant finding a single piece of information to pretend she came up with,” Jamal interrupted. “If either of us is responsible for Katherine’s actions, it’s me, not you. She isn’t yours to take the blame for.”
“Because that’s your responsibility, right?” Bo asked, finally lifting his head to look the man in the eye.
Jamal offered a smile. “I’m working on that. It’s a slow process.” He gave Bo’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze before resting his hand on the blonde’s back. “You did good here, kid, even if you don’t think you did. No one else could have come up with the information you did in the short time frame you did. Rick called me to ask for you for a reason. These cops, the town’s residents? How they do or don’t feel about life after this isn’t your fault. You didn’t choose what town Gerry came to. You didn’t help him decide who to kidnap or who to kill. He did that. The only responsibility to bear is that you helped them find the fucker, and now he’s gone for good. He’s dead, the kids are alive, and Rick didn’t get his head chopped off besides trying his damnedest to. You did good.”
***
It was well after visiting hours by the time Rick ended up in Des Moines, but Jamal had assured him that wouldn’t matter. If there was one thing Jamal was good at, it was keeping his word, and the ease with which the nurse behind the desk gave him Jeff’s room number proved Jamal had done just that.
Bridget was asleep in a chair pulled up next to the hospital bed, her hand resting on Jeff’s forearm. Jeff was propped up in the bed, eyes snapping up to Rick’s face the very moment he stepped into the room. “Hey,” Rick whispered. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”
Jeff shook his head. “I’m nowhere near sleep, man. I think my adrenaline’s still got me a little wired.”
Rick nodded as he closed the door. He crossed the room and gave Jeff’s free hand a tight squeeze before pulling up a second chair to the bed, opposite the side Bridget sat on. “You almost got yourself killed trying to find me.”
“And I’d do it again in a heartbeat.” A smile tugged at one corner of Jeff’s lips. “But please give me at least a week or two before you test that statement.”
Rick chuckled. “Deal.” He scanned the monitor next to the bed, though the only number he really knew much about was heart rate, which seemed normal. “What’s the damage, Jeff?”
Jeff cleared his throat, and Rick allowed him to hold the silence for as long as he wanted, though the longer it carried on, the more dread built in Rick’s gut. “Doc says I might never walk again.”
“Jesus Christ,” Rick whispered, closing his eyes. “I’m so fucking sorry, Jeff. If I—”
“Don’t. I put on my own big boy pants this morning and chose to go to that fucker’s house by myself. I did that.”
“I woulda been there with you if I hadn’t been on my own suicide mission.”
“Doubt we woulda been going to his house today at all if it hadn’t been in search of you. Kinda gave us the ‘I don’t care about the procedure’ we needed to just… do it.” Jeff lifted a shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “ ‘Sides, I stalled the fucker. If I hadn’t, who knows. Dallas and Bo might not have made it there in time to save you or the kids.” Jeff pointed a finger at Rick. “Saved your life, you bastard. You owe me.”
“Deal. Anything you need.”
“You’re gonna regret that when I’m living with you, Heidi, and the kids in my wheelchair.”
“You can bunk with Logan.”
Jeff chuckled. “I’ll hold you to that.”
***
It was strange, really, walking into Logan’s bedroom and seeing everything clean and normal and perfect and in its place. Even Logan was sound asleep in his bed, as though he hadn’t been ripped from it that morning and tied up in Gerry’s basement.
“Jamal sent someone to clean everything up.”
Rick leaned out of the room enough to find Heidi in the hall, arms crossed lightly over her chest. “It looks…”
“Like nothing ever happened?” Heidi asked. Rick nodded. “I know. I couldn’t believe it either.”
Rick backed out of Logan’s room, pulling the door closed. “How hard was it to get him to sleep in there?”
Heidi shook her head. “I tried to get him to sleep in our room, but he says our bed is harder than his, and he doesn’t like it. It was… a big day, and he was tired. He fell asleep basically before I even had a chance to tuck him in.”
“Thank God for that,” Rick whispered. He leaned back against the wall, shoving his hands into his pockets as he tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling rather than his wife. “Jamal wants to send me to therapy. Well… ‘wants’ is the wrong word. He said it’s a demand.” Rick couldn’t help but chuckle. “I don’t know what he’s planning on doing to make good on that demand, but I’m sure he’ll figure something out.”
“I don’t think it’d be a bad idea. The therapy, not whatever he’s thinking about doing to make you do it. You… I know it’s not what you want to hear, Rick, but you’ve never been the same after California. I don’t expect you to be the guy you were before that, but you lost pieces of yourself that night, and I don’t think you’ll be able to get them back yourself.” She hesitated a moment before adding, “Especially after all this happening here too.”
“Yeah,” Rick whispered. Head still pressed to the wall, he turned it enough to look at Heidi. “He wants you and the kids to all have at least one session with a therapist too. And Jeff. Jesus, he’s gonna need that.”
“Did you go see him? Jeff, I mean.”
“Yeah. Doctor says he might never walk again.”
“Oh,” Heidi breathed. “Oh, my God, Rick. W-we…”
“No,” Rick said with a shake of his head. “I already talked to Jeff, and against every damn fiber of my being, I promised him that I agree with him that we can’t take the blame for it.” He offered a smile. “We might have agreed to house him through his recovery if needed, though.”
“He can sleep in Logan’s room.”
Rick couldn’t help but chuckle. “I said the same thing. He’d be so excited to have Uncle Jeff around day and night.”
“He would. And even with that bastard dead, it’d… it’d still be a bit of a comfort to know Jeff was here to keep Logan safe.”
“And himself safe. We almost lost him today. I… I never even considered that a possibility when we moved here. The idea of one of the deputies here getting shot and…” He shook his head. “I never thought something like that would happen here. I never thought any of this would happen here. And now, in hindsight, that was always just so incredibly naive. I can’t believe I played right into the bullshit idea that stuff like that can’t happen in little towns like this. So fucking stupid.”
“I don’t think it’s stupid to expect a monster from California to stalk you to Iowa.”
“When you phrase it like that, maybe not stupid, but thinking I could escape anything like that ever happening again by moving to a small town was still naive.”
“Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. But thinking there’s no point in changing anything in life because there’s a chance it’ll stay the same doesn’t get you anywhere.”
“Yeah,” Rick mumbled. “Thank you.”
“It’s what I’m here for.” Heidi reached out and gave his arm a squeeze. “Come on, it’s been a long day. Let’s get you a belated supper, a shower, and a nice warm bed. Yeah?”
Rick’s shoulders relaxed just a hair as a smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. “Yeah, that sounds perfect.” He pushed himself away from the wall and grabbed her hand, allowing her to lead him back to the kitchen.
Heidi was right. Rick had lost pieces of himself after California, and even after he’d found them again, they hadn’t ever really fit back into the puzzle quite right. Now, the edges had been torn up and misshapen even more, and he wasn’t sure they’d ever even manage to get back to whatever ‘normal’ had been before Gerry had unleashed his ‘plan’ in Ellepath.
But he’d do his damnedest to try.
BOOK ONE: END
BOOK TWO: FIRES WILL BURN (coming soon!)
Thank you so much for reading HEADS WILL ROLL, and I hope you enjoyed! I know there are obviously things that need to be fixed in editing, but we finally finished a book again, and you got to be here for the ride! I hope you’ll join me for book two when it comes out (I’m hoping to start writing it this week), and Bo Austen book two will hopefully restart around the same time
Thank you for sticking with me ❤
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