Page 41 of Daddy's Little Convict
She didn't like it… she loved it.
Chapter 11
They drove to the station in absolute silence, although halfway down the driveway, he reached across the seat and took her hand. She liked that too. Even now, he was trying to comfort her.
She squeezed his hand back. Saying goodbye was going to be brutal. She looked out the window, refusing to cry. She didn't want to make this any harder than it was destined to be already.
Daddy didn't take her report, one of his deputies did that. Before they were separated at the interrogation rooms, Daddy tapped her shoulder and said, "Gideon looks scary, but he's really just a teddy bear."
If he was talking about the giant Hispanic man coming down the hall towards them just then—and she assumed he was, judging by the affronted frown he gave the sheriff—then he was right. The man towered over her. Although not as tall as Daddy, he was every bit as broad in the chest and shoulders, and the scar that cut down the left side of his face, through his eyebrow and cheek, to the corner of his mouth, all the way to his chin made him look permanently angry.
"I am not a teddy bear," Gideon corrected mildly, startling Tabby because he didn't sound mad at all. "How's your house?"
"Shot to hell."
"So I heard." The deputy unlocked and opened the door, holding it for her to enter first. "It's your own fault."
Tabby swung around, looking swiftly between the two, in that instant afraid Daddy was about to catch all the blame. "No, it's not."
"It's all right," Daddy tried to soothe, but Gideon just laughed.
"Sure it is." He tossed her a wink. "Next time, try telling him what to aim at. He’s absolutely useless on his own."
Gideon laughed, Daddy rolled his eyes, and then rested his hand on her shoulder. “The truth, the whole truth, and you’ll be fine. Trust me, okay?”
She nodded, but she was so anxious, she felt sick.
The interrogation room was sparsely decorated and looked nothing like what she’d seen on TV. There was a small desk, three chairs, and a mirror directly across from where she sat. She stared at it, wondering who was watching from the other side and clasped her hands tight in her lap.
“I’ve got your file right here,” Gideon said, holding up the legal-length manila folder he’d brought with him. It was very thin, but she could see the half dozen or so pages stapled inside it, and she knew what those papers were going to say. “Give me a minute to get caught up, okay?”
Picking at the bandages on her hands, she nodded and settled in to wait. With nothing else to do, she stared at the papers he was reading from. She didn’t know how good she was at reading upside down until he got to the last page. A picture of human bones in a red-dirt grave was paperclipped to the top. She recognized in an instant the barbed wire and sheet metal coral where Travis had locked her up. They had found the missing girl, and it was in the same place where Travis had left her to die.
"Okay, I think I'm caught up now," Gideon said only minutes later. He flipped back and forth between two pages in the folder, and she was just gearing up the courage to see if she could read what was on them, when he closed the folder, took a sip of his coffee, and pulled out a pad of yellow paper and a pen. "In your own words, tell me what happened last night.”
She told him everything—well, except for everything that happened between her and Daddy, her breakdown, the bottle and binky, getting the tops of her thighs spanked with the spatula, and she especially avoided talking about diapers. She flushed, growing hot just thinking about it. Her pussy fluttered, but her stomach knew better. Ever the responsible one, it was a riot of knots.
“At what point did you and the sheriff meet up?” Gideon asked.
Her mind racing to delete the embarrassing things from last night’s timeline, Tabitha started over, and told him about having to go to work and not knowing what kind of farm it was until she got there. She told him about Bobby, and the call to Travis, the shed and the table and the thin length of cane that he’d used to beat her feet. He watched her, no trace of a smile anywhere on his face as she told him about having to walk home and not being able to make it. About lying down in the grass and waking up with Da—the sheriff's headlights on her.
"So, you got in his truck and let him take you home? To his place?"
“He wanted to take me to the doctor’s, but I didn’t want to.” She didn't want to talk about her feet. "So, yes," she said simply.
A knock at the door stopped everything. In hindsight, she probably shouldn't have been surprised to see Daddy standing outside when Gideon opened the door.
"Care to take a break?" he told the deputy, looking right past him and straight at her. It was not a question and none of them mistook it as one.
The two men traded places, and Daddy shut and locked the door.
Her heart sped up, thumping behind her ribcage until by the time he’d seated himself at the table across from her, the mirror at his back, she was picking at her bandages all over again.
Folding his hands on the table, he looked at her. He kind of smiled, but there was a sternness in his eyes that made it hard for her to believe he was anything close to amused. "How's it going?"
She swallowed hard, then nodded.
"Are you scared?"
