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“Your daughter?”

“Yes, my daughter. The little girl you stole from her mother. I want her back and you are going to help me get her.”

“I don’t have your daughter, Detective.”

“But you know where she is.”

The pieces clicked together. Why he had come to my office. Why he refused to acknowledge my title and my authority. Henderson moved the gun between Danny and I, keeping us both from moving toward the house. With every swing of his arm holding the gun in my direction, Danny took a step closer to me.

“She is with a nice family. She is happy. She doesn’t need to be disrupted.”

“She’s mine!” he shouted.

“Then where the hell were you?” I yelled back at him. “Where were you when she was hungry and crying? Where were you when she was being touched by men her mother paraded through their home? You waited until she was beaten, bruised, and broken before you stepped up. You don’t deserve her! I would never help you get her back!”

“YOU FUCKING CUNT!”

“MELISSA!”

The detective focused his gun on me. I heard Danny yell, but I was frozen. They say your life flashes before your eyes when you’re about to die. All I saw was the barrel of a gun. I heard the shot just before I hit the ground.

My head hit the hard earth, and I groaned. Danny was on top of me, and when he rolled over, I saw the blood.

“DANNY!”

I patted my body, feeling for the hole. It wasn’t until Dante was on his knees beside us I heard Danny groan.

“Fuck, that hurts.”

Looking around frantically, I saw Detective Henderson on the ground a few feet away. He wasn’t moving. The gun he had held in his hand lay a foot away from his body.

“Danny, are you ok?” Dante asked, his voice filled with raw fear.

“Yea, it’s just a scratch,” he said as he held his arm, blood seeping between his fingers.

“What happened? Where’s Dani? Is she ok?” I asked, my eyes slipping from the detective to the house.

“Dani’s fine. She’s in the house.”

Getting up, I slowly made my way toward the detective.

“Melissa, what the fuck are you doing?”

“He might still be alive,” I said.

“Get your ass over here,” Danny yelled.

But I couldn’t. I needed to know what happened. He had shot at me. And he could do it again. Dante grabbed my arm, stopping my movement.

“We need to get the gun. It’s too close to his hand. I don’t know what happened, but if he wakes up—”

“He’s not waking up,” Danny said as he stood over the body.

Dante and I made our way over to Danny, and I looked down at Detective Andrew Henderson lying in the dirt. A bullet hole between his wide-open eyes.

“How?” I asked, looking around. “Did his gun backfire?”

“No, he shot Danny,” Dante said. “You can’t release two bullets at once in two different directions.”