Darryl was gone.
Her husband was dead!
And she saw his killer.
Life as she knew it, there was no doubt in her mind, would never be the same again.
BOONE’S PROLOGUE
“You took your pretty time.”
Robert “Boone” Ryan ignored his girlfriend as he buckled their baby girl into her car seat. Courtney, their daughter, was flapping her legs and smiling her fat pink cheeks up at her daddy as he positioned her on the backseat of his SUV.
But Monica, his girlfriend, was getting on his absolute last nerve.
“What took you so long?” she asked as she stood in her driveway with her arms folded, as if she was his drill sergeant. “I called your cell phone five times and you didn’t answer. Where were you, Boone?”
But Boone continued to ignore her. If he hadn’t, he knew he’d get into another big fight with her melodramatic butt. “Had a good day, sweetie pie?” he, instead, asked his two-year-old as she grinned up at him. “I was thinking about you all day long.”
“I thinking you, too, daddy,” his daughter said in her broken, still-developing speech. He laughed, kissed her on her little button nose, and then closed the door. He began heading around to the driver side of his vehicle.
But the fact that he was there, and they were about to leave, wasn’t enough for Monica. Oh no! She was still too upset to let it go. “You heard me, Boone Ryan,” she said. “Why are you acting like you don’t hear me?”
Boone got behind the wheel of his SUV. He wasn’t trying to get into it with that woman tonight. But Monica flung open the passenger-side door demanding an answer. Every man in this town wants me, her beautiful eyes seemed to be saying to him. How dare you treat me this way! “Where were you, Boone?” she asked him again.
Every muscle in Boone’s muscular body tightened. He knew he was only putting up with her crazy butt because of his daughter. But sometimes he wondered if even that was enough. “Get in the car,” he said to her.
“Why can’t you answer my question?” she said to him. “I could have had any man in Hemingway and I chose you. And you treat me like this?”
She was a rich, spoiled brat that Boone knew he should have never bedded. But he did. It was done now. “Get in, Monica,” he said with little patience. “The reservation is for eight. We only have fifteen minutes to get there.”
“If you would have been here on time that wouldn’t be an issue. Now would it?”
He looked at her with anger he could no longer suppress. “Get in,” he said to her with clenched teeth.
“But you weren’t on time, were you?” she said, ignoring him. “And we both know where you were, don’t we? We both know where you were!”
Boone rolled his eyes. That woman! “Monica, I’m not in the mood, okay? Get your ass in or close my door and keep your ass out. The choice is yours.”
“You were with one of your bitches,” she said as if it were a fact. “ But which one was it this time, Boone? Which one this time?”
Boone shook his head. That woman was going to be the death of him yet, he could feel it in his bones. Why he was even bothering with her ridiculous behind was the question. He pressed the Start button to crank up his SUV, and he put on his seatbelt.
But Monica would not let it go. “Which one was it, Boone?” she asked again.
“I have no idea,” he finally said. “There are so many I can’t keep count.” He knew that was what she wanted to hear. “Now you either get in or stay out because I’m leaving.”
He could see she was beyond angry, and hurt too, as her big blue eyes became filled with water. “You are such an asshole!” she screamed, wiping away tears. “I hate you!”
“Get in or stay out.”
Monica became even angrier because of his dismissiveness. “I’ll stay out, thank you. Me and Courtney will stay away from you forever, how about that?” And then she slammed the front passenger door. She hurried to open the back passenger door to get their child.
But Boone was fed up. She was always taking their daughter away from him as a way to punish him, when their daughter had nothing to do with it. But that was Monica’s M.O. Every time they got in an argument, it was the same thing. He had to kiss her ass just to see his daughter, or take her to court for a drawn-out custody battle.
But not this time.
Because as soon as Monica slammed his door, and was about to open the back passenger door, he flung his gear in Reverse, laid on the gas, and sped backwards down her driveway. Courtney was as much his as she was hers, and he was tired of that woman treating him as if her rights were superior to his. They were supposed to try and be civil and go out to dinner for a change, to talk through their problems, but instead she was going on and on about him being a little late. He was the chief of police for crying out loud. Sometimes stuff happened and he ran late. She knew that. He was tired of her nonsense!
But Drama Queen Monica was tired of his nonsense too. He could hear her screaming from the top of her lungs as he sped out of her driveway. And even when he shifted gear into Drive and sped down the street, through his rearview mirror he could see her running out into the street still screaming at him. And she had her cell phone out. She was probably calling 911, like she usually did, as if he was kidnapping his own child. As if he, the chief of police, didn’t know his own damn laws.
But she wasn’t calling 911 that time, he quickly realized. She was calling him. And as soon as he pressed the button on his steering wheel to answer the call, and before he could get a word in edgewise, she was screaming in his phone. “Bring my baby back, you bastard! Bring my baby back or I’m calling the FBI!”
Now Boone was as angry as she was. “Call’em then, bitch!” he yelled. “Call’em! Who do you think you are? Call’em!”
He was yelling so hard, and was filled with such rage, that he forgot about the stop sign. As he blew right through it, another SUV was blowing through the intersection too. Only that SUV had the right-of-way. Only that SUV slammed into the side of his SUV with such violence and force that before Boone knew what hit him, his SUV was flipping sideways over and over and hitting down so hard each and every time that he was knocked out long before the SUV slammed down for the final time.
Monica, who saw the crash, had dropped her cell phone and ran all the way to the end of her street. When she saw just how far that SUV had flipped, and just how mangled it was, her heart dropped through her shoe and she ran as fast as she could to the wreckage.
“My baby,” she kept crying as she ran. “My baby! My baby’s in there!”
The people jumping out of their cars to assist saw that the lady in the SUV that had hit Boone’s vehicle was wearing a seatbelt. She appeared dazed, but was alright. They, instead, ran with Monica to Boone’s SUV. But everything was so mangled, nobody could even begin to pry open any door or break any window. It was that bad.
It would take the arrival of cops and paramedics, and the Jaws of Life working feverishly to pry open the smallest part of Boone’s SUV. But even before anybody told her so, Monica knew the news couldn’t be good. Not in that mangled wreckage!
The rescue workers knew it too. Both father and daughter were in horrible shape, and the daughter more so than the father. And it was their chief of police too? They worked like mad to get them out of that wreckage.