Dark Needs(7)

At least, that's what Abby kept telling me.

"Jacob Francis Dunn?" the deputy asked, slowly approaching the work bay. Sheriff Fletcher stood his ground by his car, gun at the ready.

Fucking coward.

"Griff, put that thing down," I said, gesturing with my cigarette to the gun he had aimed at my chest. "You know me. Don't pretend like you f*cking don't." I put out my cigarette on the heel of my boot. "You've know me since the ninth grade when I fingered your girlfriend in the back of the room during English Lit while you gave that presentation on Jane Austen." Griff's face dropped. "Don't worry though. I only made her come once."

"Not exactly the thing to say to someone holding a gun to your head," Griffin spat, his face turned red with irritation. "And it was Shakespeare, *."

"So you do remember. It was so long ago, man. You remember the name of that whore you used to date?" I goaded. I already knew the answer.

"Kristy, her name was and is Kristy. And if you say one more word about my f*cking wife I'm going to squeeze this here trigger," he warned. "Now put your f*cking hands up." He redirected his gun from my chest to my head.

"Everything all right over there?" Sheriff Fletcher called out, still hiding behind his car door.

"I got this, Boss." Griff called back without taking his eyes off me.

"What exactly do you f*ckers want?" I asked, irritated that they'd interrupted me while I was resuscitating the Shelby. I'd just started Mustang CPR on her when they'd pulled in.

"Jacob Dunn, we have a warrant for your arrest. We came to take you on in," Griff said, proudly.

"You gonna arrest me?" I asked. "What the f*ck for?"

Griff reached behind his back with the hand that didn't have a finger on the trigger and produced a pair of handcuffs from his back pocket. Just about then I noticed that the good sheriff was no longer hiding by his patrol car. Then, I was slammed into from the side, and my chest smashed up against the hood of the Shelby. Cold metal cuffs were slapped tightly around my wrists.

"What am I being charged with?" I asked again as they both yanked me up to my feet, shoving me toward the cars. Sheriff Fletcher planted his hand firmly on the chain connecting the cuffs. "You are under arrest for the murder of Owen Fletcher," He finally answered, before leaning into my ear and whispering so only I could hear. "You messed with the wrong f*cking family, boy." His breath hot on my neck, I fought to contain my gag reflex. There was no way I was going to let that f*cker know he'd gotten to me in any way, and that included cringing because of his hot garbage breath.

At that moment, Bee pulled her truck into the lot. When she saw what was happening, she jumped down from the drivers seat, leaving the door wide open, the engine still running.

"Jake!" she yelled, her little legs blurring together as she sprinted across the lot.

I planted my feet in the dirt and locked up my knees in an attempt to hold my ground so I could talk to my wife, but the sheriff pushed on the cuffs and I had to again move forward so I wouldn't wind up face first in the dirt.

"Baby, call a lawyer," I told Bee when she came running up, the idiot lawmen pushing me right passed her.

"Jake! No!" Abby shouted. I was shoved onto the sticky back seat of a patrol car.

"You're gonna need more than a lawyer, boy," Sheriff Fletcher said, slamming the door behind me. He then plopped himself into the driver’s seat. "Jesus Christ himself isn't going to get you out of this."

"Lawyer," I mouthed to Abby, who stood with her mouth agape next to the patrol car.

She nodded, crossing her arms protectively over her chest. In what was only the time span of a few short seconds, the look on Bee's face changed from an expression of concern one would expect to see from the wife of a man being dragged away in cuffs, to completely unreadable.

Her eyes glazed over.

Her mouth formed a straight line.

Bee was shutting down.

Fuck no.

No. No. No.

I'll take my girl angry. In fact, I liked getting her riled up from time to time. The way her eyebrows scrunched together when she's trying to yell at me for throwing my smelly fishing shirts in with the regular laundry is f*cking adorable, and has resulted in me bending her over the washing machine on more than one occasion.

I'll take my girl sad. I'm a f*cked up individual, and for reasons I'll never understand, the taste of her tears made me rock hard. Besides, when Bee was sad, which wasn't often, I could always crack a few inappropriate jokes and make her laugh her way back to happy.