Page 77 of Vengeance of Childhood Proportions (Till Death Do Us Part #7)

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Mal

I failed. I failed my little owl in so many ways, but two stood out higher than the rest. I’d failed to protect her, and I’d failed to stop her.

I was so entirely enamored by her as we left the pizza restaurant that I failed to see the danger literally lurking around the corner.

My thoughts were entirely about fucking her in the backseat of my car.

I hadn’t seen Dominique until she’d already struck.

And my little owl went down. Hard.

I wanted to go to her, but the gun had posed a new danger.

There was too much distance between Dominique and I for me to easily disarm her.

Worse, her finger was already on the trigger.

I knew from her stance and grip that she was an amateur at wielding a gun.

If I charged her, there was a high possibility that she could be startled enough to pull that trigger.

Bullets didn’t just miss their targets. They didn’t just stop.

They had to be stopped, hitting something or someone.

Bullets that went up, had to come down. The worst possible outcome of this already bad situation was for that gun to go off.

We were not the only ones in that parking lot and there was no guarantee a bullet would hit the brick building instead of the glass window of the restaurant.

I knew I needed to get Dominique to face away from my little owl and the population before I attempted to disarm her.

I thought my little owl was down, unconscious. I couldn’t contemplate even the idea that she was dead. I heard the crack of impact, and could only hope that Dominique wasn’t physically strong enough to have done permanent damage.

Then I failed again. My little owl wasn’t unconscious.

When she’d stood up, I’d seen the blood down the side of her neck under her wig, which had somehow stayed on her head.

The way she moved… It was so fluid, so natural.

There’d been no flare of dramatics or fancy posturing. Practiced, confident precision.

Like she’d done so before.

It took a lot of force to break someone’s neck. Hollywood exaggerated the ease in which it occurred, same with choking someone or how quickly Chloroform took effect. But there was no doubt in my mind that she’d succeeded in snapping Dominique’s neck.

My failure was not in not stopping her from killing Dominique, but not stopping her when she ran.

Not a lot surprised me after working in my job as long as I have.

People are creatures of habit, and I’d thought I’d seen it all.

So I would be the first to admit that I was frozen in shock that my little owl had killed the woman holding me at gunpoint.

“I’m so sorry. I never meant for you to find out like this.” There was utter shame in her quiet voice, but also an emotion that snapped me from my immobilization: self-loathing.

Anger overtook me. How dare she? Self. Loathing . I was her Master. She signed a contract giving me authority over her, and I damn well never gave her permission to hate herself. Shame, I could possibly understand—but hatred? No fucking way. I would not allow that.

I took a step forward, and something rattled on the ground. I looked down. By the toe of my boot was Dominique’s hand with her numerous rings. I’d accidentally kicked her hand, making the metal of the rings scrape on the blacktop.

My little owl had killed Dominique. A new instinct came forward, one far stronger than the need to comfort her.

I needed to protect her. I knew the law, and I knew what happened next.

There was a good chance my little owl was going to spend time in jail prior to a trial where she argued self-defense and the state argued murder.

I was considered a biased witness. The elderly couple that was across the parking lot would be considered unreliable witnesses due to their age and distance.

There were no cameras directly on us that I could see.

My little owl had a head injury from the gun, that might be enough to prove self-defense.

But that decision would not be up to me. It would be determined by a jury of her peers.

I was—or had been—a law enforcement officer.

I knew the odds. Juries were not as unbiased as television and the media made them out to be.

They were people, with their own opinions and predispositions.

As soon as the topic of BDSM was raised—and how could it not have been when Dominique was holding me at gunpoint as she demanded the key to her chastity belt I’d ordered her in for two months—it might not matter self-defense versus murder.

Religion, personal preferences and lifestyles… They would all come into play.

Everything about my little owl would be discovered and scrutinized. Her history, her attack, her life and personality, would be examined with a fine-toothed comb.

And she would be found wanting.

I loved my little owl. She was kind, sweet, gloriously submissive, and strong to the core.

But there was one thing I knew about her that was entirely undeniable: she was not normal.

She didn’t fit in with societal norms. I loved that about her, loved how she carved her own path and made her own future.

I loved that I was going to be a part of that future—or I would have been.

People were cruel and people assumed without checking the facts.

They would look at what happened here tonight, trace our steps from the pizzeria to the strip club to my house to the club, and they would judge her.

I didn’t care about me. If I never went back to work at the FBI, so be it. As I’d told my little owl two weeks ago prior to my suspension, I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to work there anymore. There had to be better ways to help people.

The fear taking over me was entirely for her .

One split-second decision would determine the rest of her life.

I did not want to see my little owl in an orange jumpsuit behind bars.

I did not want her to be contained in a six by eight cell, a bondage of a different making.

I did not want to see her in handcuffs or in the back of a police cruiser.

I didn’t know how I was going to spin this, how best to protect her. But I knew I needed to. I knew I had to.

I’d never in my life tried to cover up a crime.

The law was the law, and I vowed to enforce it long before I was given a badge.

I was known for being a hardass at work because I was relentless about finding out the truth.

It was one of the many reasons I was currently jobless.

I’d dug and dug until I’d discovered a truth that no one wanted to admit was possible, a truth that was now sitting unread in an email on my phone.

Dr. Robinson’s email had arrived minutes before I’d left my house to pick my little owl up for our date and I had not wanted it to distract me from tonight. But I would discover the truth.

“I’m so sorry. I never meant for you to find out like this.”

Find out what? My eyes landed on Dominique’s neck, and I knew. I knew exactly what this was. Dominique was not the first person my little owl had killed.

There was so much going through my mind, so many paths, alternatives, and options. Only seconds had passed.

And then she ran. A different fear swept through me the moment she turned her back on me because it felt more metaphorical than merely physical.

I ordered her to stop, but she continued. In the overhead streetlamp, I saw the blood that coated the back of her neck. Fuck! She was hurt.

“Stop! Little Owl!” Still, she did not stop and fuck was she fast. Even in those sexy as fuck heels. “Phoebe!”

Despite my training and daily runs, she was a lot faster than me. By the time I reached the end of the parking lot, she was already across the street and slipping into the alleyway diagonal from me.

Red, blue, and purple lights caught my attention and the blaring siren brought my feet to a halt seconds before a police cruiser skidded to a stop in front of me.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! My eyes stayed on the alleyway even as I raised my hands. There was a dead body behind me. I would appear guilty if I ran to pursue her. Fucking hell! I hadn’t even had a chance to come up with a way to help her, and now, I might be the one going down for murder.