Switch Blade Romance

We're Almost Done.

March 6th 2015.

Sneedville Tennessee

Andrew sat alone in the dim hotel room that smelled faintly of old cigarettes and industrial cleaner, the kind of place where the walls had heard too many secrets and kept every one of them. Next door his folks were probably arguing in low voices about when they could finally drag him back to Fort Wayne, or maybe Texas, or wherever the hell felt safe anymore. He was twenty-four hours out of the hospital, ribs still taped, head still foggy from whatever cocktail of painkillers they'd pumped into him. The TV flickered blue light across his face—some old cop show where everyone talked tough and nobody ever really bled. He waited for the delivery guy with the burger and fries, stomach growling like it hadn't heard the news that the world had gone sideways.
His mother, Helen, had damn near chained herself to him after the doctors signed the release papers. The night of the fifth, Sheriff Henry and Deputy Fredericks had come by with their notebooks and their careful questions, the kind that sounded polite but left you feeling peeled. The Feds had stepped in next, suits with flat eyes, saying Andrew wasn't going anywhere until they'd wrung every last drop of story out of him. Helen Grant wasn't having it. She'd made the mistake once before—let him stay behind after the first attack, thinking he was grown enough—and the guilt had eaten her like slow rot ever since. No sir, not this time. Her baby wasn't getting left in some Arkansas or Tennessee backwater to fend for himself. Andrew had tried to wave them off, told them to head home with Rachel, Dr. Anthony, and Lacey trailing behind like a sad little parade. But Helen's jaw had set the way it did when she was done negotiating with God Himself. The whole family stayed. She was going to be there, come hell or high water. Andrew couldn't blame her. Mothers were like that—stubborn as old nails, and twice as sharp when you needed protecting.
He sat at the little round table by the window, staring out at the parking lot where sodium lights buzzed like dying insects. La-Laurie lay beside him, head on paws, eyes never leaving his face. The dog hadn't left his side since she'd come bounding into the hospital room, tail wagging like she'd personally dragged him back from whatever edge he'd been teetering on. An hour earlier Anita had called, voice brighter than it had any right to be considering someone had stuck a knife in her gut not two months back.
"So I found something else the other day," she'd said.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. I'm pregnant. Barely eight weeks. It's Chris's."
Andrew had felt something crack open inside him, warm and bright in all the dark. "Oh Anita, that's... Jesus, that's wonderful. Amazing news."
She'd laughed, that old laugh, the one that used to light up rooms. "Excited about the baby. Won't bring him back, but it'll be a piece of him still walking around."
They'd talked longer, the way people do when the world's trying to kill them but hasn't quite managed it yet. Then the line went quiet, and Andrew just sat with the TV murmuring nonsense, waiting for the food that never seemed to come.
Around 3:30 the knock came. His family was out sightseeing—Dad and the cousin had already hightailed it back to Texas in the minivan, Mom and Olivia hunting a rental car to haul them all home day after tomorrow. Or whenever the cops stopped treating him like a crime scene. For a cold second his heart seized up. What if it was Aiden? What if the bastard wasn't as dead as everyone said, and he'd come to finish the job? Andrew's eyes flicked to the baseball bat leaning against the nightstand like an old friend. He grabbed it, wood smooth and heavy in his palm, tucked it behind his back, and approached the door like a man walking into a bad dream.
"Who is it?"
"Deputy Fredericks. Uh... just checking if you're okay."
Andrew let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. He propped the bat against the wall and opened the door.
Allen Fredericks stood there in a faded blue baseball tee and gray joggers, looking more like a guy who'd wandered off a Little League field than a cop. He smiled, easy and warm. "Hey, Mr. Grant. Just... wanted to see if you needed anything. Or someone to talk to."
Andrew blinked. "I'm... fine, Officer Fredericks."
"Allen. Call me Allen." The smile widened, showing teeth that looked too white for this tired world.
(Well, by God, Andrew thought, this boy's got a crush the size of Arkansas.)
"Well, Allen," Andrew said, "I'm actually bored out of my skull. Dad and my cousin lit out for Texas this morning. Mom and sis are off car-shopping. Cops keep wanting more interviews. Might be Christmas before I see home again."
Allen looked genuinely startled. "We gotta be thorough, Andrew. Cross-country killing spree and all."
Andrew felt the words land like cold fingers on his neck. He shuddered.
"Tell you what," Allen said. "Let me buy you a burger. Or pizza. Beer if you're up for it. My treat."
Andrew glanced at La-Laurie, who was watching Allen with the judgmental stare only a dog can manage—like she knew exactly what kind of trouble humans invited when they started smiling too much.
"Yeah," Andrew said. "Burger sounds good."
He asked Allen for a minute. The deputy nodded, said he'd wait by his truck.
Andrew knelt beside La-Laurie, cupped her face in both hands, looked into those deep, worried eyes. "Just a burger and some beer, girl. Nothing else. I swear on everything I love, nobody's hurting you—or anything else I care about—ever again."
She groaned, low and doubtful, but let him hug her. He grabbed his phone and jacket.
Allen drove him to Thelma and Pattie's, a roadhouse that looked like it'd been dropped from a plane and landed crooked. Outside: chipped paint and neon that flickered like it was on its last legs. Inside: warm wood paneling, country music low on the jukebox, the smell of grease and fried onions that made your stomach forget its manners. They took a corner table. Andrew insisted on facing the door. No more backs turned to entrances. Never again.
The place was half-empty—ten people, maybe, including them. Allen broke the quiet first.
"You're in college, right?"
"Was a senior. Missed so much school I doubt they'll let me walk in May. Probably December, or next spring."
Allen nodded. "Major?"
"Psychology." Andrew gave a dry laugh. "Wanted to be a psychiatrist. Work in a mental hospital. Help the broken ones. Now... I don't know. Might take a year or two off. Find the pieces of myself that got scattered."
"No shame in that," Allen said. "After what you've been through, nobody'd blame you for needing time to heal."
Andrew turned it back. "What about you? Why a cop?"
Allen chuckled, looked down at his Coke. "Classic small-town cliché. Jock—baseball, basketball, dated the cheerleader queen. Scholarship to Arkansas State. Tore my rotator cuff senior year. Game over."
"Jesus," Andrew said. "Stereotype city."
They both laughed, the sound thin but real.
"After that I drifted. Odd jobs, too much drinking. Married Paige right out of high school. Little Cynthia came along. Had to grow up fast."
"You got a kid?"
"Cynthia Marie. Almost eight. We share custody. She's with her mom in Helena this week. Got her this weekend."
"Not married anymore?"
"Nope. We weren't the same people. Thirty-year-old divorced single dad who's a cop." He grinned. "At least my boyfriends haven't turned out to be serial killers."
Andrew nearly choked on his burger. "Wait—you're gay?"
"Bi. Pan, really. See the person, not the parts." Allen's smile was easy, unashamed. "Shocked?"
"Little bit," Andrew admitted, grinning back. "Didn't see that coming."
"Most folks don't. Not in the closet, just... private."
They ate in comfortable quiet for a while. Then Allen leaned in. "Wanna come back to my place? Watch a movie, talk some more?"
Andrew hesitated only a second. "Sure. Let me text Mom about La-Laurie."
Back at the hotel, Helen and Olivia pulled into the lot in their rented Ford, arms full of bags. Helen was on the phone with her sister Martha Ellen, yammering about getting the hell out of Arkansas, back to Texas, promising a visit to Houston once the dust settled. She didn't hear Olivia's muffled scream from the bathroom, or the soft thump of a body hitting tile.
Ten minutes later Helen stepped inside. La-Laurie was barking next door like the devil himself was scratching at the wall.
"Andrew, hush that dog before they kick us out!"
No answer.
She pushed open the connecting door. Empty room. La-Laurie trotted over, whimpered, pressed against Helen's leg.
"Where's Andrew, girl?"
Helen checked her phone. A text from her son: Mama, went for a burger and movie with Officer Fredericks. Back before dark. Please walk La-Laurie.
Helen rolled her eyes. "Un-fucking-believable."
"Olivia? Honey, where are you?"
No answer.
Then a voice from behind her, calm and almost gentle.
"I'm right here, Mother."
Helen turned.
Charles Grady stood in the doorway, smiling the way a knife smiles when the light hits it just right.
She screamed, but only once.The scream tore out of Helen Grant once—high, ragged, the sound of a woman who has just seen the shape of her worst nightmare step out of the dark and call her by name. Then it choked off, as if someone had reached inside her chest and squeezed her lungs shut.
Grady stood in the doorway between the adjoining rooms, backlit by the sickly yellow hallway light that made everything look jaundiced and wrong. He wore no mask, no hood—just the same ordinary face the news cameras had loved so much: calm, almost handsome in an unremarkable way, the kind of face you pass in a grocery aisle and never remember. A thin line of fresh blood traced the inside of his left wrist, not his own. It dripped slowly, one deliberate drop at a time, onto the carpet where it soaked in like spilled ink.
Helen’s purse hit the floor. A tube of lipstick rolled free and came to rest against La-Laurie’s paw. The dog had frozen mid-step, every muscle locked, hackles raised in a black saw-tooth ridge from skull to tail. Her lips were peeled back in a snarl so silent it was louder than any bark. She knew. Dogs always know before the rest of us do.
Grady tilted his head, studying Helen the way a collector studies a butterfly pinned under glass—interested, patient, already deciding where it will go in the display case.
“Mother,” he said again, the word soft and wrong, like a prayer recited backward. “You really should have kept better watch.”
Helen took one stumbling step back. Her heel snagged the carpet edge; she caught herself on the dresser, fingers splayed white-knuckled against the cheap particleboard.
Grady advanced—one slow, deliberate step. His boots left faint red half-moons on the beige pile. He carried nothing. He didn’t need to. Whatever had happened in the bathroom had been quiet, precise, the work of hands that knew exactly how much pressure to apply and where.
La-Laurie’s growl finally broke—low, rolling, the kind that vibrates in your bones. Somewhere down the hall a TV blared louder, canned laughter swallowing the sound like it was nothing.
Helen’s eyes flicked to the bathroom door—ajar just enough to show a pale stripe of light across the tiles. A single bare foot lay visible in the gap, Olivia’s foot, toes curled as though she’d tried at the last instant to brace herself against being dragged.
Grady followed her gaze. His mouth curved, not quite a smile—more the ghost of one.
“She fought,” he said quietly. “Like her brother. Like you.”
Helen’s voice came out cracked and small. “What did you do to my girl?”
“I took her,” Grady answered, simple as that. “She’s sleeping now. In the trunk of a car two floors down. Wrapped in a blanket so she doesn’t get cold. I’m careful with the young ones.”
Helen’s knees gave. She slid down the dresser until she sat hard on the floor, legs splayed like a broken doll. Tears cut tracks through the dust on her face, but she didn’t sob. Not yet. The real crying would come later, when the shock wore off and the emptiness moved in.
From next door, La-Laurie lunged—black fury, jaws wide, going straight for Grady’s throat.
He didn’t flinch.
His left hand snapped out, faster than thought, and clamped around the dog’s muzzle in mid-air. Fingers like iron bands pinched shut. La-Laurie’s growl choked into a wet, muffled yelp. Grady lifted her—eighty pounds of muscle and rage—off the floor with one arm. Her hind legs kicked, claws scraping empty air, tail whipping like a lash.
Helen screamed again, raw and useless.
Grady turned his head toward her, still holding the thrashing dog aloft.
“Quiet now,” he murmured. “You’ll wake the neighbors.”
He didn’t break anything. He didn’t need to. He simply squeezed—just enough. La-Laurie’s body jerked once, hard, eyes rolling white with panic and pain. Then the fight went out of her like air from a punctured tire. Her limbs slackened. Grady opened his hand. The dog dropped to the carpet in a limp heap, chest heaving shallowly, tongue lolling, but alive. Barely. A thin whine leaked from her throat—more breath than sound.
Helen stared at the dog, then back at Grady.
He crouched in front of her, close enough that she could smell motor oil and copper on his skin.
“Your boy’s out there right now,” he said, voice low and almost conversational. “Eating a burger. Laughing at some small-town cop’s jokes. Thinking the worst is over because a nice deputy with a nice smile bought him dinner.” Grady reached out and tucked a strand of Helen’s hair behind her ear with the knuckle of one blood-smeared finger. The touch was gentle. That was the worst part. “He’s wrong.”
Helen’s lips trembled. “Please. Not my children. Not both of them.”
Grady’s eyes were calm, almost pitying.
“They stopped being just your children the night Andrew walked away from me the first time,” he said. “Now they’re mine. Both of them. And you’re going to help me collect the last piece.”
He stood slowly, joints popping like dry branches in a cold wind.
From the parking lot below came the soft beep of a car door unlocking. Headlights flashed once through the thin curtains—Allen’s truck, waiting like a patient hound.
Grady glanced toward the window, then back at Helen.
“Tell Andrew I said hello,” he said. “Tell him his sister and his mother are waiting for him. Tell him I’ll keep them warm until he comes home.”
He turned to  walk out, leaving the door standing open. He turned around better yet I'll just take you both with me. He moved towards Helen Grant enveloping her in his shadow, she screamed again and blacked out.