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“Yeah,” she agreed, as she looked down at her hand. “People never seem to realize how much hand strength a vet needs to wrangle some of the animals that we work with,” she explained. “I guess I’m stronger than I look.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, ma’am,” he added, as he tilted his hat her way and then walked slightly off to the side to join the others.

She looked up at Timber, who was smiling down at her.

“This isn’t exactly how I thought the evening would go,” he muttered.

“Oh my God,” she cried out. “What about Andy? Where’s Andy?”

Timber stiffened, bolting to his feet, and turned to find Andy, looking down at his son, tears in his eyes.

Tiffany stepped away from the others and walked over to give Andy a gentle hug.

He looked up at her and nodded. “I’m so grateful he didn’t hurt you.” And then he looked at her closely, tears streaming down his face. “Or did he?”

“No,” she replied, “you got here in time.”

His shoulders sagged, and he nodded. “I was hoping I could do something, but…” His voice trailed off as he looked back at Timber. “You were right. Max didn’t even put up that much of a fuss, did he?”

“No, he was definitely looking to go,” Timber confirmed. “He could have shot her many times. I think he was just done and didn’t want to face a tribunal, didn’t want to face any investigations, didn’t want to sit in the brig or some jail in the meantime. He just wanted this over with.”

Andy nodded slowly. “It won’t be easy to recover from this though,” he admitted, his shoulders shaking.

“Do you have family in town?” Tiffany asked him.

“I don’t know,” he muttered. “It seems as if I don’t even know what family means anymore.”

“Where is Brian?” Tiffany asked.

“Right here,” a shrill voice shrieked harshly from nearby. “You fucking shot him. You shot my father.”

Andy turned and looked at him. “Now you just calm down here, son.”

“Calm down? Fucking calm down? You let them shoot him. They just gunned him down right in front of you. Did you see how many bullets hit him?” Brian held a rifle even now aimed directly at Timber, but it wavered between Timber, Tiffany, and his grandfather.

Andy looked at him and added, “This is really not the time to decide that you need to do this, son.”

“No? I should have decided it a long time ago. He was a mean son of a bitch, but he was still my father.”

“Yes, he was, and he was also my son, but he was damaged, and he had been damaged a long time ago. He came that way. I swear to God, he just never seemed to care about anything or anyone.”

“He was still my father,” Brian cried out in pain.

Tiffany walked toward him, her hands out, and said, “I’m so sorry. I know he was your father, and nobody needs to see that.”

He just looked at her and snapped, “You’re the bitch he was after but why? Why you?”

“Because she’s friends with me,” Timber declared, catching up with her, not letting her get too close to Brian. “That’s all your dad wanted. He was holding her captive in order to hurt me.”

“Yeah,… I can see why. I’ve got my own beef with you too.”

“Maybe you do,” Timber stated, “but you’re also heading for a whole lot of misery if you don’t put down that gun right now.”

“Yeah? And what will you do about it?” Brian snapped, staring at him and refusing to move the rifle.

Another voice came from the shadows, and soon Richard appeared. “We missed a large part of this obviously,” he noted, “but I know exactly what I’m seeing right now, and damn it, Brian. Put down that rifle right now.”

“No,” he snapped, “I will not. He needs to pay for what he did. He shot my father.”

“Technically he didn’t. I think probably a dozen of us did,” Toby admitted, keeping his own gun aimed at Brian. “But I can see that you don’t care about the fact that Max was trying to shoot an innocent woman.”

“Women aren’t innocent. They’re just toys, things to be used.”

Tiffany stared at him and asked, “Is that really what you think? Do you believe all the gibberish that’s coming out of your mouth right now?”

He just glared at her, furious that she would talk to him like that.

“Maybe you are like your father. Maybe you’re a lost cause, just like Max was,” she declared. “You are sure breaking your granddaddy’s heart right now.”

“So what? He’s just a loser too.”

Andy looked at him and said, “That’s enough of that talk out of you, young man.”

“What will you do?” he snarled. “You already let them kill your own son.”

“I didn’t let them kill my son. My son got killed due to his own actions,” Andy snapped. “Don’t you even think about talking to me like that.”

At that, Brian turned the rifle on him and yelled, “Don’t you even talk to me, old man.” And he pulled the lever action back.

Toby stepped forward, but his grandfather was there ahead of him.

Andy stepped up to the gun pointed right at his chest and taunted Brian.

“Then you go ahead and pull that trigger. If you think your father didn’t deserve what he just got, and you think the whole world is out to get you, then maybe you better go ahead and pull that trigger right now.

Then you’ll spend the rest of your life behind bars as some nasty sidepiece for an inmate, but that’s okay because you’re something special, aren’t you? ”

Andy was on fire, red in the face, with tears flowing freely down his cheeks.

“You think that everybody else is out to get you and that you’re suffering so much?

” he snapped. “You don’t even want to acknowledge the problems that your father had, or the military tribunal that was coming up for him to address the various war crimes he committed while he was in the service. ”

“That’s what the service is for,” Brian snapped. “He already told me, if I wanted to go in, he could give me some pointers on how to make the most out of killing people.”

“Is that what you really want to do?” Toby asked, staring at him. “Just kill people the way you like to hurt animals? Is that all you really want for your life?”

Brian shrugged, his gaze on Tiffany, who stared at him with such accusation in her gaze that he flushed.

Tiffany asked, “Starting with all the girls in town? Like Kelly?”

“I already heard about that. I heard she quit. It’s kind of funny actually.”

“Why? Aren’t you sweet on her?”

“No, I’m not sweet on her, God no. She’s definitely not my style.”

“No, of course not, she’s on two legs, not four.”

He stared at her in shock. “You didn’t just say that.”

“It’s what you like, right? What you’re doing is hurting four-legged animals because you’re too scared and haven’t yet figured out how to hurt the two-legged variety yet,” she declared, her tone beyond angry, “but you know it’s coming because I can see that you want to.”

“No, I don’t fucking want to.”

“No? But you do want to hurt the animals?”

“No, I don’t want to hurt animals.”

“So why do you do it then?” she asked.

“It was my father. He told me it would make a man out of me.”

“It didn’t work. It just made an ass out of you—an ass who hurts other asses.”

He just blinked at her, missing the reference to the donkey. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

“Yes, it does to the rest of us. You’ll finally understand once you’re in prison.

Meanwhile I’m looking after the donkey you tortured, and, believe me that I will never let you live that down.

” He stiffened, then glared at her. “Yeah, I know it was probably just to prove to your daddy that you were something special. But he just wanted you to be a sick son of a bitch like he was.”

Andy still stood in front of Brian and asked him, “So, have you decided what you’re doing? Will I die today too?”

“Granddad, it didn’t have to be like this. You didn’t have to let them shoot him.”

“I didn’t let them shoot Max,” Andy reiterated, frustrated now.

“He got himself killed through his own actions. What were we supposed to do? Stand by and let him kill Tiffany? I get that you don’t want to believe these things about your dad, and I can’t help you come to terms with it.

I have my hands full dealing with it myself right now. ”

“What happened to your face?” Brian asked. He was looking at Andy now, as if seeing him clearly for the first time. He was all bruised and swollen, and one eye had a big purple mark.

“What do you think happened to my face? Your father beat the crap out of me,” Andy spat. “Just like he used to beat you, he also beat me.”

Brian’s bottom jaw started to quiver.

Timber noted the change. “That’s what happens when you live with abusers,” Timber explained. “They beat you up, and that twists you up inside because you love them, and you’ll do anything you can to have them in your life. Both of you were Max’s victims, but you don’t have to stay that way.”

At that, Andy opened his arms and said, “Come on, son. Let’s not go down that pathway if we don’t have to. We’re all we have left.”

“You’re trying to send me off to the military,” Brian cried out.

“Maybe there’s another answer.… I don’t know,” Andy muttered. “Lord knows after what happened to your father, I’m not sure I want you in the military either,” he admitted. “But you can’t keep going the way you are.”

Brian’s bottom lip started to tremble, and Tiffany stepped forward and added, “You need therapy, and you need to get the hell away from here where all these bad memories are. You need a better life, but first you have an awful lot of owning up to do. You’ve hurt a lot of people, a lot of animals, and nobody around here has any goodwill toward you.

So, you need to make some decisions about your life, and you need to make them soon. ”

At that, Richard stepped closer and repeated, “Put the gun down now, son. You put it down and keep it down. Otherwise you’ll pay the consequences.”

Brian looked at him and then at the rifle in his hands, throwing it to the ground. Then he snagged up his grandfather and just hugged him tight. “Why did he do all that stuff?” he cried out.