Deployed (3 page)

She stood her ground in the middle of the impromptu battleground. Gravel popped and crunched under her boots. She took in a breath and let it out, relaxing a little, feeling her muscles loosen. And she waited on Buck to make his move, determined to end the fight.

3

BILLY ROY LOUNGED
on a nearby car hood. He’d pushed himself up and sat with his legs hanging over the side, like he was sitting at the drive-in waiting for the movie to start. A beer bottle dangled in his fingers. “You should have stayed home tonight, Rebecca Ann. What kind of momma are you to go off and leave your granny to watch your baby while you’re out on the town?”

Bekah hated the sanctimonious tone in Billy Roy’s voice. But she hated it even more because it touched on the guilt that had been bubbling around inside her all evening anyway. Her granny had insisted she go out with her friends, but Bekah hadn’t felt good about doing it. Still, she’d wanted to know how much of a normal life could exist for her outside of being a momma and serving with the Marines. She’d joined up to hang on to her life and get in a better financial situation, but lately she felt like she was just losing more
and more of her days. The two tours had chipped away six months each, and she’d come home to see Travis more grown-up every time.

That bothered her. She should have been there. A hard knot formed in her stomach, and she knew it was more fear. But it wasn’t fear of Buck. It was fear of her boy growing up without her because wars seemed to be breaking out all around the world, and the United States government appeared determined to get involved in all of them.

She hadn’t counted on being away from her son so much. It was just a part-time job. But the things she’d helped do were amazing. The lives she’d saved were precious. She hated being torn the way she was between the two.

Connie stood out in front of the bar and grill. “She’s a better momma than you’ll ever be a daddy, Billy Roy.”

Billy Roy scowled but didn’t even look in Connie’s direction. He sipped on his beer and stared at Bekah.

“I gotta warn you, Billy Roy.” Buck wiped at his face but only succeeded in smearing more blood. “I’m gonna mess up your old lady now.”

“She’s not my old lady.”

Bekah stared at Buck and waited for the big man to make a move. She had to wait. She couldn’t be the aggressor with all the weight and size she was giving away. She was surprised at the calm way she could stand there. But she’d always stood her ground. That was one of the most important things her grandpa and granny had taught her: to stand up for herself and to do what was right. She’d stood quietly at her daddy’s grave when they buried him, and she’d stood holding her
granny’s hand when her momma drove off in the rain two years later, fueled by alcohol and worn out by anger and betrayal and the need to be free of a child.

“C’mon.” Buck waved for Bekah to come closer. “Let’s see what you have.”

Bekah ignored him and kept her fists up. When Buck started circling her, she followed him with small steps of her own.

“Go on, Buck. Step in there and paste her one. Knock some sense into her.” That came from the other man who had followed Billy Roy into Darlton’s. He still stood guard by Bekah’s pickup.

At least two dozen onlookers stood out in front of the bar and grill, all of them up on the wooden boardwalk in front of the place. Shadows fell over them except for the soft light coming from their cell phones. Bekah would have bet none of them were calling the sheriff’s office and that all of them were texting neighbors and friends.

For a moment, Bekah detested them all. She’d always known Callum’s Creek was small, but she hadn’t truly realized how cold the town could be till she got ostracized by Billy Roy’s claims that Travis was someone else’s son. Until that time Bekah had been the lucky girl who had landed the town’s baseball hero.

Before that, she’d been a nobody, a kid who’d been orphaned by her parents and taken in by her grandparents. Now she was the girl who had gone off with the Marines and come back a stranger. Most of the people she’d known didn’t treat her the same anymore. They were too afraid that
she’d changed, that she now looked down on their small-town ways.

“What?” Buck kept moving. He feinted a couple punches, but Bekah didn’t react because his footwork gave away the fake efforts. “You ain’t got nothing to say now?”

Bekah kept moving as well, placing one foot at a time, never crossing a foot over the other, just like she’d been trained. Then, when Buck lunged at her, she gave ground, stepping back quickly, gliding her boots over the uneven surface and feeling the rocks shift. She set herself, ducked beneath his outstretched arms, spun, and stomped her right foot on the back of his right knee as he went past her.

Off balance, flailing wildly, Buck smashed into the side of a large Ford F-150. The pickup’s security system screamed to life, and the lights flashed in stunning syncopation. Buck recovered faster than Bekah would have thought, though. He pushed off the truck’s side and came at her again. His boots dug into the gravel.

Bekah tried to get away, but her left foot slid into one of the sludge-filled potholes. Buck was on her before she could slide out of his grasp. Triumphantly, he lifted her in a bear hug, threatening to crush her ribs. He rammed her back into a parked car and nearly bent her over it. Her head smacked into the hood. The breath went out of her in a rush as he roared victoriously.

“Now you’re gonna—”

Buck never got to finish. Bekah slammed the palms of both hands over his ears and sent shock waves through his eardrums. Head filled with exploding pain, Buck released her
and staggered backward. Bekah slid to her feet and drew in a painful breath. Her senses spun from the impact with the car. Double vision threw her depth perception off.

The crowd was yelling in a fever, but Bekah didn’t know whose name they were calling. She tried to focus and square herself up, but her legs felt rubbery. She rolled her hands into fists and watched in mixed disbelief and dismay as Buck reached for the knife at his belt. He brought the weapon out and flicked it open with a thumb. The blade gleamed sharp and strong in the red and blue lights streaming from the neon Darlton’s sign.

He’d lost all control. And nobody was stepping in to talk sense into him.

“I’m gonna kill you.” Buck advanced on her with more confidence. Blood leaked from one of his ears as well as his nose now.

Desperate, Bekah turned and clambered on top of the car because Buck was close enough to intercept her before she could get around it. Once atop the car, she took a step and vaulted into the back of a pickup parked nearby. When she landed, the L-shaped jack handle in the pickup bed bounced and clanged. Seizing the jack handle, she vaulted over the other side, toward her vehicle.

Her legs nearly collapsed beneath her as her knees threatened to give way. She remained standing through sheer determination and stubbornness. But Buck came around the vehicle from the rear and slashed at her with the knife.

Automatically, Bekah grasped the jack handle in both hands the way she would a baton. She blocked the knife
blow, and the clang of metal on metal rasped over the other sounds of the crowd. Moving forward, she snap-kicked Buck in the crotch like she was going for a fifty-yard field goal. He yelped in pain and sagged backward.

Mercilessly, Bekah let her Marine baton training take over, still dazed and only thinking that she wanted to make it home to her son that night. Stepping back again, she swept the jack handle down onto Buck’s knife wrist. The blade glinted as it spun free and dropped, and the crack of wrist bones sounded like gunshots.

She moved to the side and swung the jack handle again, hitting Buck in the side of the knee. Something crunched, and Buck fell sideways. He curled into a fetal position and held his injured knee, screaming in pain like an animal. Still on autopilot, Bekah stooped to deliver a final blow, then caught herself and kept the jack handle raised. With a fearful yelp, Buck covered his head with his hands. As she drew a shaky breath, the
whoop-whoop
of a police unit roared over the parking lot.

Still breathing rapidly, her legs feeling like spaghetti beneath her, Bekah stood and let the jack handle dangle at her side. She didn’t let it go. Buck might get up one more time, or someone else in the crowd might decide to take sides.

The sheriff’s department cruiser slid to a stop in the parking lot and emptied several potholes along the way. The whirling light splashed over the crowd, and they stepped back, unwilling to get caught up in the legal repercussions.

The deputy climbed out of the cruiser with his hand on his pistol. He was tall and lanky, with a dark crew cut and a
square jaw. His uniform was neat and pressed. Bekah recognized him as he came forward. He was one of the Trimble boys. She couldn’t remember which one other than it was the one who had played baseball with Billy Roy and Buck. Her hopes sank because she knew the deputy wouldn’t be inclined favorably toward her.

The deputy waved at her. “You put down that jack handle.”

Without a word, Bekah dropped the jack handle. All of a sudden, she felt incredibly tired. Adrenaline crash. She recognized the symptoms from her previous tours.

Buck still rocked in pain, but he no longer screamed hoarsely.

“How bad is it, Buck?” The deputy stood over the fallen man almost protectively.

“Feels like my knee’s broke. So’s my wrist.”

“Lemme call for an ambulance.” The deputy did that, speaking into the handi-talker pinned to his shoulder. When he was finished, he glanced back at Buck. “Want to tell me what happened?”

“She went crazy, Alvin. Plumb loco. Attacked me with that tire iron. Musta been one of them flashbacks from the war or something.”

“That’s not what happened.” Bekah took a step forward.

The deputy, Alvin Trimble, threw up a hand. “You stay right there.” His other hand eased his pistol from its holster. “Not another step.”

Bekah froze, but she couldn’t stop talking. She was going to be heard, and the record was going to be set straight.
“Buck attacked Connie Hiller in Darlton’s. I was just defending her.”

“With a tire iron?”

“Yes. Buck had a knife.”

“A knife?” Alvin took a mini Maglite from his utility belt, flicked it on, and shined it around the parking lot. “I don’t see no knife.”

Bekah didn’t either. The blade had been there only a moment ago. “It was here. Somebody picked it up.” That was the only answer she could come up with.

“Yeah. Well, we’ll see about that. In the meantime, you’re under arrest.”

“For what?”

“Drunk and disorderly. Assault and battery. Disturbing the peace. I’ll think of some more along the way.” The deputy put the flashlight away and took a pair of handcuffs from his belt.

“I was defending myself. I was defending Connie Hiller. Take a look at her. Buck beat her before I stepped into it.”

“We’ll let the judge figure that out. Now you just turn around and don’t start nothing.”

Bekah almost ran. She’d never been in trouble with the law before outside of a speeding ticket when she was seventeen. She’d always lived her life quiet and small and never got in anybody’s way. Billy Roy, on the other hand, had been arrested a number of times—for speeding and fighting and drinking. He hadn’t been quite that way when she’d married him, but he’d turned on the trouble afterward. She’d had to bail him out of jail three times, and it had taken her grandpa’s money to do it.

Silently, she steeled herself, turned around, and stuck out her left hand when she was instructed to. The narrow, cold steel clamped around her wrist just short of biting into the flesh. Several of Darlton’s clientele had their phones out now and were taking her picture. In minutes the news would be up all over Facebook and Twitter. Callum’s Creek had embraced the technology that enabled faster gossip with pictures.

Alvin wheeled her around so that her back was to him while he clamped the open cuff around her other wrist. Her hands were now secured behind her, and she had to squelch the immediate claustrophobic feeling that snaked up from her belly. All she could think about was what this was going to do to her granny and to her son. Granny would understand, but there was no telling what kind of stories Travis would hear.

Alvin grabbed her by one arm and pulled her away from the vehicle. “Let’s go.”

Bekah nearly tripped because her legs weren’t quite keeping up with her thoughts. She made a quickstep to keep up, and the deputy shook her irritably.

“Don’t you try nothing, missy, or I’ll clock you.”

Holding in her anger and a scathing retort, Bekah marched resolutely toward the waiting cruiser. The Marines had taught her to march, and she did it now with all the skill she had. Just kept putting one foot in front of the other. And she held her head high.

Phone flashes went off around her, bright sparks against the neon-threaded night.

Alvin opened the back door of the cruiser, put a hand on
top of her head, and shoved her in. Sitting with her hands cuffed behind her was hard and uncomfortable. She leaned back and tried to keep herself calm. The mesh that separated her from the front seats was a constant reminder of where she was and how much trouble she was in.
Just breathe. Keep breathing. That’s all you can do right now.

Leaning her head to the side, she peered out the window and watched as the crowd closed in around Buck. They acted like they were concerned and worried, but Bekah knew from experience that most of them just wanted to see what had been done to him. The deputy tried to keep them back, but everybody had a story to tell. Hands gestured and called for attention. Alvin shook his head and talked, but nobody was listening.

Finally, after fifteen minutes according to the dashboard clock, an ambulance pulled into the parking lot. Two EMTs, both guys she recognized from high school, got out of the vehicle and brought out a stretcher. They worked quickly, putting Buck on a backboard and strapping him to the gurney. When everything was in place, they pushed Buck into the ambulance.

A shadow fell across the window an instant before Billy Roy stepped into view. He flashed a mocking smile at her. “Appears you got some bad trouble on your hands, Rebecca Ann. I would say I’m sorry . . . but I’m not. This may be better than watching Buck take your head off. I figure you’re gonna get some county time out of this. You and your son have caused me plenty of grief these past few years.”