“10-4,” a relieved Blake said over the airwaves.

A flash of green caught my eye, and I realized that what the man was wearing was a near exact match to what the teenager had described over the phone not even ten minutes before was dashing through the apartment complex.

“All units be advised,” I said quickly. “A male subject fitting the description of the attacker just ran East through the woods behind the Royal Oaks Complex. Heading towards Main Street.”

An hour later, pumped up on adrenaline and spoiling for a fight, I pulled into the Waffle House for my lunch break.

I took a seat at the bar, ordering myself a meal before I acknowledged the firefighters who’d had the same thought as I had.

“How’s it going, Tai?” I asked the man beside me.

Tai was one of the responding medics to the scene. He was also the one to call me to let me know that all three children would be making a recovery. The two elder ones would have a rockier road than the youngest, but they’d all recover.

“I’m pissed. I can’t fucking believe he got away,” Tai said, shaking his head in denial.

I grimaced.

They’d caught one of the attackers. The one that’d been described, yet the other one was still at bay.

Still out there to do the same thing to another unsuspecting family.

The fucker we’d caught, Bruce Brenton, had refused to give up his partner.

Had also refused to talk without his lawyer, which meant we didn’t get jack shit.

The good thing, though, was that he’d be getting a really nice prison sentence. Assaulting a child was a felony, and he’d be spending a lot of time up close and personal with his fellow inmates for the next thirty years, if I had anything say about it.

I knew a lot of people, and I’d make damn sure that the man never saw another peaceful day in his life.

“I agree,” I said.

Tai’s food was placed down in front of him, followed by mine a few minutes later.

The other firemen sat at three booths at our backs, but we didn’t join in on their conversations. Both of our minds on what we’d heard and seen today.

Sometimes, the job of a police officer, firefighter, and hell, even a dispatcher, was a hard pill to swallow. A lot of times the good guy didn’t win.

A lot of times, we were the ones to pick up the pieces, and that wasn’t a very fun job.

But there were those times where the rewards outweighed the benefits. Times when the good times outweigh the bad.

Those times were what kept us going.

Kept us sane and happy. Doing the job that was every bit as rewarding as it was exhausting.

“Your dispatcher. She did well,” Tai said after he finished his food.

“She’s not my dispatcher,” I muttered, not bothering to look up from my food.

“That’s not what I heard you say to her after you got those kids to the hospital. ‘They’re gonna be alright, baby’ over the airwaves shouts ‘MINE!’ to me,” Tai said.

I shrugged. “Whatever.”

I hadn’t meant to say that.

It’d just happened, and I’d heard it from everybody that was on tonight.

Fuck me, but I didn’t know why my mouth said the things it did.

I just felt like she’d want to hear it.

Next time, though, I’d make a point of actually calling her instead of saying it over the radio.***“Have you ever seen Final Destination?” Blake asked as I was driving her home later that night.

How I’d been the one to end up with her in my car, I didn’t know. But it was the last thing I wanted to do. Especially with my mind in the state it was in.

What I really wanted to go do was go for a nice long run. A run where I tried to outpace my troubles.

I shook my head. “No, why?”

She pointed to the log truck in front of us.

The man was trying his hardest to stay on the road, but the wind from the impending storm was really throwing him all over the place.

“That,” she pointed. “That right there. Every time I see a log truck, I think of that movie. The whole point of the movie is a couple of kids trying to cheat death. There was an order to it, and death went in that particular order. If it couldn’t, fate found a way to make it happen. This particular scene is showing a couple driving with a log truck in front of them. It keeps zooming in on the chains holding the logs down, and suddenly they just snap.”

I could tell where she was going with the story before she even made the snapping gesture with her hand.

“Anyway, the logs start falling off the truck, and it’s like a chain reaction. Person after person dies. A brutal, horrible death,” she whispered.

My eyes moved to her face quickly before returning to the log truck.

“I don’t like thunderstorms,” she said after a while.

Since I didn’t know what to say to that, I stayed quiet.

Was that why she had a phobia of driving in the rain?

When we’d gone to pick her up the other day for dinner, I’d thought it weird that the chief had asked us to ride together. Now, though, I knew it was for Blake’s benefit, it made a little more sense.

David had point blank asked the chief if Blake needed a ride, and the chief had purposefully told us to ride together so Blake didn’t have to ride with David alone, and so she didn’t have to drive herself in the rain.

The man was thoughtful, watching out for her left and right.

The curiosity, though, was killing me.

“Why don’t you like storms?” I asked finally, not able to stand not knowing anymore.

She sighed.

“When I first got my license, I was driving home from a friend’s house during a really bad storm and I wrecked my car. I ended up nose first in a ditch that was filled to the brim with flowing water, and stayed trapped in it for over six hours,” she explained. “My car was the color of the water. A deep hunter green. I blended in, and I was in a part of the town that no one could hear my yells. Freaking lightening was touching down all around me, and I was so scared it’d hit the water and travel down towards me. It was the worst experience of my life.”

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