Yolo (Carter Brothers #7)

Chapter 12

I hope you fall down with your hands in your pockets.

— Garrett to Atlas

GARRETT

I missed seeing her every day.

I knew Boss missed seeing her every day.

He looked at the door longingly every morning, as if he could stare at it and it might morph him back out to the balcony where she would slip him pieces of bacon from the balcony below him.

So of course, when I saw her with a brick in her hand, across the parking lot from the car that I was in, at first I thought I was seeing things.

But then the woman lifted up the brick and brought it down hard on the passenger window.

My mouth fell open as she did it again and again, eventually breaking through the glass.

“ What the hell?” I wondered as I said, “ Come on, Boss .”

Boss followed as I loped across the parking lot.

She moved from the passenger window around to the driver’s window and started to go to town on that one next by the time I finally got to her.

“ Bindi , stop!”

She didn’t.

“ What the hell?” I heard yelled.

Delphine .

The alarm on the cruiser she was breaking into started to sound, yet she didn’t stop.

“ Bindi , put the brick down,” I ordered.

She didn’t, instead reaching into the door and searching for the lock.

I caught her hand before she could scrape her hand against some glass and said, “ Bindi , what the fuck? Stop !”

She struggled to get away from me, and I held her in place, hard and unforgiving.

“ Calm the fuck down!” I ordered.

“ Let me go! There’s a dog dying in here!”

I was so stunned that I did let her go.

I heard Delphine arrive just as she unlocked the back door and reached for the back door handle.

I was reaching my hand out to stop her when she got the door open and I saw the dog lying on the seat.

Rufus .

He was lying on the bench seat, barely breathing, and he had vomit all around him.

He was also lathered at the mouth, and my stomach instantly dropped.

“ Help me get him out and under the shade,” she urged.

I did, picking the dog up and carrying him to the shade.

“ You got a bottle of water?” she asked.

“ No ,” I grumbled as I placed Rufus down onto the grass underneath the one shady tree in the entire area.

“ Find some,” she urged.

Just then, two homeless men came running up from the gas station across the street, and my belly tensed.

“ Got some water!” he called out, holding up the two cold bottles. “ You have to go back and pay for them, though. I just had to grab them. You might want to tell them I’m not stealing, too.”

I would.

I caught the bottle up with two fingers, then turned swiftly to Rufus .

“ Me ,” she said as she held out her hand to me, almost as if she knew he’d come straight to her. “ I’ll use one to let him drink, and you use the other to pour on his head. Maybe that’ll help cool him down.”

The dog didn’t pick his head up from her lap, and my stomach sank even further.

When she wouldn’t even look at me, I knew that she was still riding her anger, so I backed away and walked to the cruiser to inspect it.

“ Keys ,” I said to Delphine .

She gave them to me with a glare.

I started the cruiser and frowned, noticing the check engine light that popped up onto the dash.

A light bulb dawned, and I realized what had happened at once.

“ What the heck is going on here?” my mother asked as she and a few other officers came out from between two cruisers.

“ This woman just smashed my cruiser open with a damn brick!” Delphine yelled, throwing up her hands and imploring my mother to take her side.

Now , I didn’t normally have a problem with Delphine . I didn’t necessarily like her, but I didn’t dislike her, either. She was just a fellow officer.

But I didn’t like what she was implying, as if Bindi was in the wrong for what she did.

Sure , she’d broken the windows on the cruiser, but she’d done it for a damn good reason.

“ Just because you’re a police officer doesn’t excuse the fact that you locked your dog in a hot car!” she cried, gesturing wildly as a whole, but likely directed at Delphine .

“ She didn’t know,” I promised. “ She didn’t know that the dog was in here when the car turned off. There’s a check engine light on in the car, and when that turned on, the remote start turned off.”

“ The remote start lasts for fifteen minutes, max,” she countered. “ She fuckin’ knew it wouldn’t last that long!”

Delphine bowed up at Bindi’s words.

“ I’ve been coming out here every fifteen minutes and starting it back up. I truly didn’t know.” Delphine tried to defend herself, but Bindi wasn’t having any of it.

She turned to where the two homeless men hovered. “ How long have you been standing out here by this car?”

“ An hour,” he answered. “ We heard the dog from our shade over there.”

He pointed to the shade that was next to the gas station they’d just taken the water from.

I tried not to get mad that they knew that there was a dog suffering in a hot car and they didn’t want to come up and tell a police officer the problem.

We would’ve listened.

“ Ahh ,” Bindi said. “ And did you ever hear a honk that indicated that the car was trying to start?”

Homeless man one looked at homeless man two, and they both turned back as one and said, “ No , ma’am.”

“ You can’t trust them!” Delphine said. “ They’re breaking the law every day. We’ve kicked them off of this patch four times this week. What makes you think they’re just not bitter or lying?”

“ How close do you have to be to get that remote start to work?” Bindi asked.

“ Hundred feet or so?” another officer guessed.

“ Will it start all the way from the front door?” Bindi continued.

“ Certainly not,” my mother said.

“ Then she had to have come out into the parking lot, which y’all’s cameras will show,” Bindi said simply.

She was right.

If Delphine was lying, we could tell.

“ Could get a code reader to see how many times the remote start was canceled, too.” The skinnier of the two homeless men added his credentials when everyone just stared at him. “ Used to work on cars before I lost my house and decided to say fuck it to everything.”

“ You know, she’s right,” Quincy offered up as he crossed his arms over his chest. When he’d gotten there, I didn’t know. He didn’t even work here anymore. “ Remote start works for fifteen minutes before it turns off and you can restart it. She had to be gone for a while, and the air conditioning not work for more than fifteen minutes, for the dog to get that hot in here.”

“ It was in the police department parking lot,” Delphine said. “ I wasn’t gone that long, but it’s a black top.”

That was true. Black tops seemed to retain more heat than most…

“ Your dog is lethargic and needs to go to the vet,” Bindi disregarded her. “ His nose isn’t wet, either, indicating dehydration.”

I looked over at where Rufus had his head resting in Bindi’s lap while she slowly poured capfuls of water into his mouth.

Fuck , what a mess.

“ Media’s gonna have a heyday with this,” I heard my mom mutter. “ Goddammit .”

“ Are you going to arrest her for destruction of government property?” Delphine grumbled.

I narrowed my eyes at her.

“ If this is the type of bullshit police department that lets things like this slide, then perhaps I might want to rethink my job acceptance, Mrs . Carter ,” Bindi snarled.

My mom’s eyes narrowed on Delphine , though, and not Bindi .

As she should have.

“ Delphine ,” my mom said. “ We’ll be taking over care for Rufus for now, pending review on the matter. No , we will not be arresting Ms . Howe for doing her civic duty to protect the innocent. Bindi , would you like to ride with me to the vet?”

“ Obviously ,” Bindi replied angrily.

“ We’re not going to ruin whatever plans you had today?” Mom asked.

“ No ,” Bindi said. “ You tend to have no life when you can’t see.”

I felt something inside of my chest start to thicken.

“ You should go with them,” Gable suggested. “ I’ll take Boss . You’re off shift, anyway.”

I looked at my brother. “ She’s pissed.”

“ You left her behind when you thought you were protecting everyone from Baron Harper . Can you really blame her for being mad, though?” he asked.

“ No .” I felt a tingle at the base of my spine, just like I always did when I thought about Baron Harper .

I was right to be afraid of him.

The asshole had shot my brother, thinking he was me.

And though it’d been months now, I still felt that weight on my shoulders every fucking day.

I might never get over it.

I walked over and picked Rufus up, hauling him with me to the closest cruiser that was running.

The air conditioner felt like it slapped me in the face when I sat the dog on the bench seat in the back.

“ Are you getting in, or are you just going to stand there?” Bindi asked tightly.

My lips twitched.

“ See ,” Gable whispered. “ It’s all these crazy women working at this police department.”

“ I’m not crazy,” Bindi pointed out. “ And I haven’t even started working here yet.”

“ Just give it time,” Gable teased. “ I’m sure it won’t take more than a few days.”

Bindi got inside and shut the door on Gable’s reply.

I hurried around and got into the driver’s seat, accepted the keys from the cop, and drove my mom, Bindi , Rooster , Rufus , and myself to the closest vet hospital.