Radioman (A 2/19th Spinoff) - Complete

Daddy's Girls

Daylight streamed in through the gap in the curtains, bathing the front room, which smelled of cleaning products from where I'd mopped up all the blood, in golden light. I sat on the couch, staring at the phone as if I could get it to ring on pure willpower. I was hoping Brianna or the doctor would call me soon.

Before the police arrived to take me into custody.

After I left Gail to die I'd walked down to the Trans-Am, which had been covered with snow, and pulled the mini-bike out of the trunk. I'd siphoned fuel out of the car to fill the tank, took their little half-gallon gas can and bungee'd it to the back of the mini-bike.

It'd been snowy and dark as I rode it home. I'd had to stop and use the gas can after almost twenty miles, and the tank was almost empty when I'd gotten home and put it in the garage.

Why shouldn't I keep it? It was mine. I'd bought it.

I had showered, taking the time to scrub the blood out from under and around my fingernails. I had a few nicks and cuts on my fingers, but nothing compared to a day working out at Atlas when the work had piled up and even I had to set down my radio and pitch in. Afterwards I dressed in sweats then slept on the couch, covering myself with the patterned quilt that Aine had added to my bed. I hadn't bothered making breakfast, just sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee.

I knew that the police would arrive sooner or later. There were a lot of dead people scattered around and that meant I was more than likely going to get the death penalty.

I was still trying to figure out why it had all happened. Dave had said I was wrong. That the Sheriff hadn't been moving heroin out of the Golden Triangle, that Dave's family wasn't using the logging trucks to move it to the mill, and Gail's family wasn't using the mill as a distribution center. I mean, it made sense, when you added the heroin problem that seemed to have grown over the years.

But, according to Dave and Gail, that wasn't why all this had happened. I still couldn't understand why it had all happened.

Gail had wanted the house and felt she should always get what she wanted.

How could that be how all this happened?

People were dead.

Just because Gail wanted the house?

How?

I couldn't understand all of it. When I thought about it, it made the emptiness inside of me shiver. Like black frost from a roof eave.

I made myself a new cup of coffee, adding sugar to it, and sat back down on the couch, staring at where the coffee cup now sat on a coaster on the coffee table.

Now there were people dead. People from my past, who had hurt me when I was little, before I had moved out of my parents house when I was fourteen, had gotten involved.

And now they were dead or severely injured.

I mean, it was my house. How could everything had come apart on everyone like this over a house?

Was this what had happened to Stillwater last summer? He had just wanted to take care of his injured sister and everyone kept dragging them into their own drama? Trying to use him for their own desire, tried to take things from him, and that's why he left a trail a bodies over south-western Washington?

Why had they been so willing to die to try to give my house to Gail? Why had Gail been so willing to send people to die over a house?

I couldn't understand it.

Sipping my coffee I thought about last two nights. Why couldn't they understand that once they'd hit Aine with that rock, I had no choice but to take revenge? Didn't they understand that if you hurt a man's wife or children, he had to avenge them?