Chapter 224
Summer's POV
The police station smelled like burnt coffee and industrial cleaner, nothing like the acrid smoke that still clung to my clothes and hair. I sat in a hard plastic chair in the detective's office, a blanket wrapped around my shoulders even though I wasn't cold, watching Kieran give his statement to a different officer across the hall. His head was bandaged, white gauze stark against his dark hair, and there were butterfly stitches closing a cut above his eyebrow. Every time he shifted in his seat, I could see him wince, and my chest tightened with guilt even though the EMTs had assured me his injuries weren't life-threatening—mostly superficial cuts, a mild concussion, bruised ribs where Drake had kicked him.
Drake Cross was dead. The officers had fired three shots, and two of them had found their mark. He'd died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, and now there would be investigations, paperwork, inquiries into whether the use of force had been justified. But the detective interviewing me—a tired-looking woman in her forties named Detective Martinez—had already told me what the outcome would be. Drake had been armed, had set the warehouse on fire with us inside, had charged at us even after police ordered him to drop his weapon. It was textbook self-defense on the officers' part, and both Kieran and I would likely face no charges for our involvement in the altercation.
"You did the right thing calling 911 when you did," Detective Martinez said, her voice gentle as she closed her notebook. "If you'd arrived even five minutes later, or if you hadn't brought that pipe..." She didn't finish the sentence, but I understood what she meant. Kieran might have died in that warehouse, and I would have been too late to stop it.
I nodded, unable to speak past the lump in my throat. My hands were still shaking, and every time I closed my eyes I saw Drake's face in the firelight, saw the knife in his hand, saw Kieran's blood spreading across the concrete floor. The detective must have noticed because she reached across the desk and squeezed my shoulder briefly before standing up.
"You're free to go," she said. "We'll be in touch if we need anything else, but for now, get some rest. Both of you have been through hell tonight."
I walked out of the office on legs that felt like they might give out at any moment, and immediately Kieran was there, his good arm coming around my shoulders to steady me even though he was the one who should have been leaning on someone. We stood like that in the middle of the police station hallway, holding each other up, neither of us quite ready to let go.
That was when the automatic doors slid open and Catherine walked in, Lily's small hand clasped tightly in hers. Catherine's face was pale and drawn, her eyes red-rimmed, and she was still wearing her work uniform from The Happy Patty with a winter coat thrown over it. The moment she saw Kieran, something broke in her expression—relief and grief and a mother's desperate love all tangled together.
"Kieran," she breathed, and then she was crossing the space between them, her free hand reaching up to touch his bandaged head with infinite gentleness, as if she was afraid he might shatter under her fingers. "Oh, my boy, what did he do to you? What did he—" Her voice cracked, and she pulled him into a fierce hug that made him grunt in pain but he didn't pull away, just buried his face in her shoulder like he was a child again.
Lily was crying, her small arms wrapped around both of them, and I felt my own tears start to fall as I watched them hold each other in the harsh fluorescent light of the police station. Catherine's shoulders were shaking, and when she finally pulled back to look at Kieran's face, I could see the tracks of her tears cutting through the flour dust still clinging to her cheeks from her shift.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered, her hands cupping his face. "I should have protected you from him, should have gotten you both away from him years ago, but I was too scared, too weak—"
"Mom, no," Kieran said, his voice rough. "None of this is your fault. He made his choices."
Catherine's gaze shifted to me then. She reached out and pulled me into the embrace too, and I found myself wrapped in the warmth of their family circle, Catherine's work-worn hands gentle as she smoothed my hair back from my face.
"Thank you," she said, and her voice was thick with emotion. "Thank you for saving my son. Thank you for calling the police, for being brave enough to—" She couldn't finish, just held me tighter, and I felt Lily's small hand slip into mine, squeezing with surprising strength for a ten-year-old.
"Is Dad really gone?" Lily asked, her voice barely a whisper. She was looking up at Kieran with wide, frightened eyes, and I realized she'd understood more than any of us had given her credit for. "Is he really not coming back?"
Kieran knelt down so he was at her eye level, ignoring the way the movement made him wince. His hands were steady as he signed while he spoke, making sure she could understand every word. "He's gone, Lily. He can't hurt us anymore."
"Good," Lily said, and there was no hesitation in her voice, no childish confusion. "I'm glad. Is that bad? That I'm glad?"
Catherine made a choked sound and pulled Lily close, pressing kisses to the top of her head. "No, sweetheart. It's not bad. It's okay to feel however you feel."
We stood there for a long moment, the four of us holding each other in the middle of the police station while officers and clerks moved around us with practiced indifference. I thought about Drake lying dead in the morgue, about the man who'd terrorized his family for years finally being stopped, and I couldn't find it in myself to feel anything but relief. Catherine had started crying again, quiet tears that she tried to hide by turning her face away, and I understood what she was feeling—grief not for the man Drake had been, but for the man she'd once hoped he could become, for the father her children had deserved and never had.
"We're going to be okay," Kieran said, his arm tightening around his mother's shoulders. "All of us. I promise."
The automatic doors opened again, and this time it was my mother who came through them, her designer coat and heels looking wildly out of place in the institutional setting. Her face was ashen, her perfectly applied makeup smudged, and the moment she saw me she crossed the distance between us in three strides and pulled me into her arms with a desperation that took my breath away.