Page 32 of SnapShot

“I’m supposed to meet with Detective Martin at four.”

“He’ll come get you. Take a seat over there,” she points to the single row of chairs lining the far wall before she returns her attention to whatever she has playing on her phone. Real charmer, that one. I guess you would need to be pretty closed off to work in law enforcement.

It’s not like being particularly nice to the criminals would gain you many points anyway. Still, though. Not so helpful to those of us who haven’t broken the law, recently.

There were the few occasions of underage drinking and trespassing, but that’s different. It’s basically a rite of passage growing up in BFE with nothing else to entertain the youth.

“Haedyn, you ready?”

I look up to find Detective Martin walking toward me from behind the main desk.

“Mhm,” I give a small nod as I follow him through the doorway to the right.

He leads me through a large room of roughly a dozen mostly empty desks and into a small interrogation room.

I assume he wants me to sit in one of the two chairs at the only table present, so I do without him saying so.

“I don’t really know what else I can say about it,” I start, looking up to him as he takes the seat across from me.

“That’s okay. It’s nothing serious. I just need to get your side of the story on recording for the hearing next month. We just want to make sure we have all the necessary details to put this guy away. Let’s start from the beginning, if you don’t mind. How do you know Brad Higgins?”

“We met several years ago at the annual Camp Robinson trail ride. I was in high school, and he was recently graduated. We hooked up a few times, but we never saw each other away from the campsite. I moved away for college and thought everything between us was ancient history,” I explain, feeling the drop of my stomach and the sweat gathering along my spine.

I know that it doesn’t look good to admit that we have a connected past. I fiddle with the stacked bracelets on my wrist to distract from the uncomfortableness in the room.

As I finish the rest of the story and meet his eyes, there’s no trace of malice or disbelief in his face. He looks at me with a mixture of leashed anger and sympathy before he finally speaks.

“Look, I know this is hard. I can’t begin to know how you’re really feeling, but I’m on your side. I’ll do everything I can to make sure this bastard gets put away. I shouldn’t need anything else from you until court day.”

He slides a business card across the table. “Don’t hesitate to call me if you need anything between now and then, though.”

“Thanks,” I toss over my shoulder on my way out of the drab little room. The draw to get the fuck away from here and back home to my safe place is overwhelming.

The slide of my tires across the gravel of my driveway brings such raw satisfaction to my chest that I yank the wheel to the right with one hand, heading to the trail beside the pasture that leads to an empty hay field where I’ve been known to blow off some steam.

Hell, that’s half the reason I fixed this old Bronco up in the first place; she’s a beast to play with. The stereo blasts my moody playlist mixed with rock, country, pop, and everything in between that makes me feel like the bad bitch I’m used to being.

Slinging dirt in every direction as the engine revs beneath the hood brings me the sadistic feeling of control that I’m desperately craving. A powerful machine doing my bidding is addictive. Tight rings form on the ground the more circles we turn. I can’t contain the smile taking over my face or the laugh that bubbles up as I spin out.

With the slight drizzle that came through yesterday, the ground has the perfect amount of moisture to make sliding across the top of the mud perfect without causing deep ruts.

I used to get in trouble with Grams for tearing up the field, but coming out here to fuck shit up was the only thing that kept me sane some days. Sure, I could’ve rolled over and gotten hurt, but that was half the fun. Everyone knows that.

There was one time I came out here to do donuts, but the ground was sopping wet. Naturally, my poor Bronco’s tires sank too deep into the mud to keep going. I had it buried almost to the top of the tires. Of course, I kept trying to get it out myself to avoid the tongue lashing I was sure to get when I told Grams.

Eventually, after both the truck and myself were thoroughly covered in mud, I had to fetch the tractor to pull the truck out. The entire rest of the summer I had to spend countless hours fixing the ruts I made. Worth it. Now that there’s no one here to stop me, and we don’t use the field to plant hay and sell it, I can do what I damn well please out here. Tearing up the ground out here is a better alternative to crying my eyes out, again. I’m tired of crying. These little moments of joy found with my horses, my man, or my truck are the only things holding me together at this point.

Harder, Little Brat

seventeen

Harder, Little Brat

Haedyn

I toss my keys on the counter before grabbing a beer from the fridge. My chest feels a thousand times lighter than when I left the station. The pop and sizzle echoes throughout the room as I open my beer. The sound latches onto my leftover anxiety as the bottlecap and the feeling both fall to the floor. There’s no urge to retrieve either one. The darkness throughout the old house isn’t unwelcome, but intrusive thoughts are a real bitch.

What if there’s someone waiting for me around the corner or in my room?

---