Page 100 of Life To My Flight

His arms loosened some, but just enough that I wasn’t in danger of losing my midnight snack all over his chest.

“What’s going on?” I asked awkwardly.

My arms were down straight at my sides, and my head was bent at an unnatural angle due to Cleo’s face buried deep into my neck.

He was shaking so bad that I started to get really scared, even more so when it took him nearly five more minutes of standing like that before he answered.

“Thought you were gone,” he rumbled into my skin.

Shivers raced up my spine. “I was…but your sister came over drunk and falling over, and there was no way I was spending the night with her whining about no air when I could just take her home.”

He laughed.

Not just a chuckle, either.

No, it was an all-out, body shake, throw your head back, kind of laugh.

One that you felt from down deep in the pit of your stomach.

I wiggled until I got one arm loose, and then smacked him on the shoulder. “What the hell, Cleo?”

He let me loose, allowing me to take my first full breath in ten minutes.

“I got a call from Dante Hail. He’d gone out to recover the vehicle that took out the power line out by my road. The man that did it was moaning about seeing a man dressed in black running across the road towards my property,” Cleo explained harshly.

I looked at him like he was crazy. “And? And anyway, why would you know him well enough for him to call you? You only met him a few months ago.”

He shrugged. “Seen him around. We’ve made nice. He uses my boat ramp now when he goes fishing.”

I blinked. “The power company said it was a drunk. Maybe he just hallucinated that he saw something.”

Cleo shook his head and took my hand, leading me through the multiple vehicles, past the scary looking men of The Dixie Wardens MC, around the front of his house, and up the back porch steps.

That was when I gasped, and felt bile running up the back of my throat.

“When did that happen?” I asked quietly.

He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into his chest. “Within the last two hours. My guess was as soon as the lights went out. The power company said they’ve been out for two hours and five minutes now. The guy that hit the power pole only did this guy a favor by taking out all the lights.”

“It was my fault, wasn’t it?” I asked quietly. “She was raped because of me.”

Cleo didn’t give any false platitudes. He knew it just as well as I did. Oh, God. Oh, my God. Audrey.

“Audrey must hate me,” I said on a deep inhale.

I didn’t want to cry, but I could feel the ball of sadness welling in my throat, and my eyes were filling up with tears.

“She doesn’t hate you, honey. She knows you didn’t want this,” Cleo rasped.

I read the words that were splashed across Cleo’s deck in white, bold letters.

I told you what would happen. Back off the case, or this’ll happen to someone else.

“What happens if I don’t testify?” I asked as I surveyed the hundreds and hundreds of pictures that were laid out all over the deck.

Some of them weren’t too bad.

One of me leaving the grocery store. Another of me walking out of my apartment. One talking with Cody as I left the hospital.

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