Wanting the Detective

Chapter 6

Lucy placed both palms against the dashboard and shot Kurt a dirty look. "You're driving really fast." She hated being a passenger—too many close calls as a child with her father drunk behind the wheel.

"Sorry." He spoke through gritted teeth but eased-off the gas. "What a crock."

"Huh?"

"He doesn't know who sent him..." Kurt seemed to be talking to himself more than Lucy. "He knows something!" He hit the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. "I'm going to get it out of him. I'm going to drill him again tomorrow..."

"I don't know. I restrained him and threatened to blow his head off. He still didn't tell me anything."

Kurt turned his attention away from the road and glanced at Lucy, his mouth agape. "That was true? He told me you did that and I thought he was lying."

"It was the only way to be sure he'd tell me what he knew." Lucy searched her bag for her concealer. When she found it, she pulled the sun visor down and began covering the scratches on her face. Don't want to scare the kids.

"Man, you are something else. Don't tell another living soul about that. It's your word against his." Kurt shook his head and gripped the wheel harder.

"Was he still crying like a baby when you interviewed him?" Lucy put her concealer away and pulled out her lipstick.

"Yeah. That was his brother—the one you shot."

She put the lipstick away and blotted her lips with a tissue. "Oh? Their parents must be so proud."

There. She almost looked normal. Lucy arranged her hair so it covered the cut on her forehead and flipped the visor back into place.

"Look. You did what you did to survive and I'm glad, believe me. But taking another person's life—regardless of circumstance—does something to you. I think you should see someone."

"See someone? Like a shrink? They interrogated me for hours. I think that qualifies as intensive therapy, don't you?" Lucy stared out the window at the countryside as they sped past wishing she could tell him about her long history with therapists and social workers—about her tendency to endure pain by pretending it wasn't there. "Maybe I'll see a shrink when this is over. Right now, it's just time wasted."

Kurt nodded. Her answer seemed to satisfy him.

"What was his name?"

"Which one?"

"The man I shot..." Lucy didn't turn to face him. If she faced him, her happy façade might break.

"Joseph Morelli... The dirt bag you spared is Stan Morelli."

She wished she hadn't asked. A wave of guilt flooded her. It mingled with her anger. That guilt-anger combo, it was a feeling she knew well. It was an awful head-space to be in, a conflict that often threatened to tear her in two. "They were going to rape me before they killed me."

"They what?" Kurt swerved onto the shoulder of the highway and brought his Ford to a halt.

Trying to rationalize her actions—she could have done that just as well internally. She regretted mentioning it, already. She didn't want Kurt to see her as a victim, but part of her wanted him to know how she fought for her life. He had to know she wasn't just trigger-happy.

"Did they—"

Kurt didn't finish the sentence, so Lucy did it for him. "Sexually assault me? No. I stopped them." It felt so good to have that kind of power. She hadn't always been this strong. She hadn't always been able to fight back.