Vigilante

6. Ryder Armstrong

Six

In the living room of the Armstrong Manor, Ryder stood staring down at the driveway. He saw an unfamiliar car pulling up the drive. It paused, and a figure got out. "Patty," he breathed, stunned to see her standing there, covered in blood, looking like she had had a Carrie pulled on her.

He wasted no time. He ran through the house, all of the way down to the drive where Patty was slowly making her way to the door. Her face was void of any emotion, and she trudged, as if in a daze. Ryder grabbed her by the shoulders. "Patty. Parker. Patty. Are you okay? What the hell happened?"

Her eyes met his. She blinked, as if realizing that he was in front of her for the first time. "Ryder," she said.

He cupped her chin in his hands. "I'm here, Patty. I'm here. Tell me what happened."

"Teddy's been shot," she answered, "he was trying to rescue me, at the courthouse. I think I saw something that day that I wasn't supposed to see."

"What?" he asked.

He shouldn't have said that. He should have asked how Teddy was, if she was alright. But the only thing he could think of was that she was there, with him, back at his home as if no time had passed.

"The day of your accident," she said, "the news footage shows Trevor Nichols entering from the front of the building. But I was there, I saw it. The whole thing never happened."

Ryder locked eyes with her. "Nichols came down the elevator."

"No one even bothered to question me. But someone has tried to kill me twice, which means they don't want the knowledge of Nichols getting out. Nichols smiled at me in court today, and then there was a shooting that killed my boyfriend. This is personal, Ryder. And Danny fired me."

Ryder frowned. "One, quick phone call and I can have him fired."

She shook her head. "No. He did it for me, so that I could follow the story. I can't report on this while I'm working for them. I'm too much of a liability but there's nothing to stop me from going free-lance. I think we should work together to figure this out."

"Patty, your grandfather will kill me," said Ryder, "the only real reason I came back was because I was supposed to say goodbye. To get you out of my system. That was why he even let me announce that I was back in the first place, because he thought that it would get you out of my system."

She half-smiled. "That does sound like him. He never was very into the idea of us getting together."

"There are three things that man loves in this world. You, your mother, and his tea. If he finds out I interfered with any of those things, he will kill me."

"My grandpa?" she said, a look of skepticism on her face. "The man who used to read me Good Night Moon?"

"He's surprisingly very good at killing people," he said, "really, really good."

"Don't tell me no, Ryder. I lost my boyfriend tonight. Again. And this time, Teddy isn't coming back from the dead."

He kissed her forehead. Maybe it was wrong, but he didn't care. All he wanted to do was to make her feel better. If he couldn't do that, he could, at the very least, distract her. "Come on inside. We'll get you showered, get some food in you maybe. You look exhausted. Where's your car?"

"Still at the court house," said Patty.

"I'll send someone to pick it up."

"We can't stop. We need to find proof that Nichols was lying, that the whole thing was a cover up. I know that might expose you, but Ryder people need to know the truth. Someone is manipulating this city!"