Authors: Jodi Thomas
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Lauren
April 2
O
N
F
RIDAY
L
AUREN
finished her last class, clicked on her cell, picked up her books and began the mile walk back to her dorm. The Texas Tech campus was beautiful. April green with the sun shining bright. She was almost finished, but she felt more fear than anticipation. In six weeks she'd graduate without a plan of what to do next.
Polly suggested they move to Dallas, still be roommates and have a wild time. She had a friend who owned a coffee shop. They could both work there.
As Lauren walked, she pounded out the reasons why that plan would never work. Her mother lived in Dallas, so it was not the place to be. Working in a coffee shop would be wasting her degree in history. And last, she hated coffee.
Her cell sounded about the time she passed the statue of Will Rogers riding his favorite horse, Soapsuds. Lauren smiled up at him as she pulled out her phone. There was a legend at Tech that if a virgin ever graduates, Will Rogers would get off his horse. “Get ready to step down, Will,” she mumbled as she flipped open her phone.
She thought it might be Lucas. Tomorrow would be a week since she'd seen him and she couldn't help wondering if he thought of her as much as she'd thought of him. Maybe she'd gone nuts in the back hallway of the Two Step, and maybe she didn't have much experience compared to most, but the man kissed like liquid passion.
Only the phone number wasn't Lucas'sâit was Pop's cell number. Knowing him, Pop probably wanted her to drive home this weekend. He'd been putting in extra hours lately.
“Hi, Pop,” she answered as she moved away from the statue and headed across the grass toward her dorm.
There was a long pause. “Lauren. This is Tim O'Grady. I'm calling on your dad's cell.” His words came slow. Sober. Rehearsed.
“Hi, Tim. Why don't you drive to Lubbock this weekend? We could haunt a few of the bad restaurants you hung out in while you were here.”
“No, Lauren. I'm heading toward Lubbock, but not to party.” Another pause, when he returned he sounded as if he was fighting back sobs. “I need to tell you about your father before you hear it on the news. He's been hurt, Lauren. He's been hurt bad.”
She froze, books tumbling around her. The call every person who loves a lawman fears, waits for, prays will never come. “An accident?”
“No, L, it wasn't an accident.”
“Give me the facts, Tim. All the facts.” If it wasn't an accident and the news might be involved, Lauren knew it was bad.
Her hand was shaking so hard she could barely hold the phone.
“All right. First, he's alive and on his way to the hospital in Lubbock.” Now Tim's words came fast and hard. “I'm right behind them. The EMT says he's stable but he'll need surgery as soon as possible. We've got a police escort and are going eighty out here on the open road. Our estimated time of arrival is less then thirty minutes. I've been calling you for over an hour.”
She'd turned her phone off for class. “I'll meet you in the emergency room.” She picked up her books and walked toward her car. “Talk to me, Tim. Tell me what's happening. Where was he? Was anyone else hurt?” She couldn't bring herself to ask if he'd been attacked. All her life she'd heard people talk about how lawmen are sometimes targeted just because of their badges. But not Pop. Not in a tiny place like Crossroads.
“I'll tell you all I know.” Tim's voice was high again. “None of this seems real yet. I can't get my head wrapped around it, L. I'm in the car following the ambulance and I still can't believe it.”
She waited for him to get control.
Finally, he began. “They think he was ambushed out on County Road 111 where the road winds in between shallow canyons. Thatcher found him. His patrol car had been shot up. Tires flat. Windshield shot out.”
Lauren knew exactly where Pop must have been. He'd taught her to drive on that winding road. The shallow box canyons had once been used as makeshift corrals during the cattle drives. The hills weren't more than twenty or thirty feet high.
Tim continued when she was silent for a while. “Thatcher said he found your dad lying flat in the dirt beside his car. The kid was loading the sheriff in the back of his pickup when he heard rounds that seemed to be coming from nowhere. He jumped in the truck and was a mile down the road before he realized he'd taken a bullet in his leg just above the knee. Somehow he drove to town with your dad bouncing around in the truck bed and his leg dripping blood.
“The clinic isn't open on Friday, so the kid took your dad to the school. The nurse started care while the principal called an ambulance. The last bell had sounded thirty minutes earlier so most of the students were gone, but I bet the main office was chaos.”
Lauren climbed into her car feeling cold inside. “Where is he hit? How deep? Are any bullets still inside?” She doubted she'd remember the details, but she had to keep talking or she'd start screaming.
“One shot to the left arm. Bullet may have broken his bone.” Tim's voice was calm again. “He was hit twice in his left leg and once in the shoulder, but that one looks like it might have grazed him or maybe the bullet passed though. Three of the bullets are still in him, I think.”
“Four times,” she whispered. “Pop has been shot four times.” She couldn't close her eyes now. If she did, she'd see the bullets going into Pop's body. See him jerking back and falling.
“One of the Lubbock deputies who is driving in with the ambulance said it looked like the shooter wasn't trying to kill him, just using him for target practice. If he'd been able to stand again and had tried to reach his car, the shooter probably would have shot him again.”
There was a long silence, then Tim added, “Lauren, he's lost a lot of blood, but your dad's strong. He'll pull through this. He called the office and I rushed to the school. Four holes in him and the sheriff was still giving orders.”
Lauren barked a laugh. That was her pop. Oddly, that gave her comfort.
“While he was bleeding all over the place, he handed me his cell and made me promise to let you know he was all right. Then they put a pressure wrap on him and the sheriff started cussing, wanting them to take care of Thatcher first. The boy would have none of it. He was hopping around on one leg, trailing blood everywhere and saying he was fine. I swear the two of them are just alike.”
She started her car. “I'll see you at the hospital, and thanks, Tim, for telling me the details.” Dropping the phone in her pocket, she pulled out of the parking lot, even though the hospital was almost close enough to walk to. The day was warm and bright, but she couldn't stop shivering.
Pop was shot. Why would anyone shoot him?
A hundred questions came to mind that she wished she'd asked Tim. Was her father awake when they loaded him for the drive? Did he know who shot him? What was he doing way out on the county road? How was Thatcher? Where was the kid now? In the ambulance with Pop or in the car with Tim?
She calculated the time. Thatcher would have been headed home from school. Or maybe he'd been home to pick up something and was headed toward Lone Heart Ranch. Either way, he was driving, something her father had caught him doing a dozen times. But, this time, this time...if he hadn't driven by, her father might have bled to death or taken that fifth bullet.
Lauren ran into the emergency room, expecting to see half the town of Crossroads there.
No one she recognized was waiting. She was early.
A nurse at the desk told her the ambulance from Crossroads wouldn't arrive for at least another ten minutes. “We've been in contact. We're ready and waiting.”
No one looked up at her as she paced. A couple holding two sick kids sat by the left set of doors. A half dozen middle-schoolers huddled around one boy who looked about Thatcher's age. He had a new cast on his leg. Skateboards were piled high in the chair next to him.
She just stared at them. If Thatcher had to be hurt, it should have happened like thisâhe should never have been shot. What kind of person shoots a kid?
The answer was simple. The same kind of person who'd shoot her father. Lauren tried to slow her breathing. There was nothing she could do now but wait for the ambulance.
Lauren plopped down on one of the hard plastic chairs as she mentally counted the seconds off in her head. Tim had called twenty minutes ago saying he was thirty minutes out. He'd be here in five minutes, ten at the most.
Hospital staffâdoctors, nurses, aidesâall seemed to be circling. Also waiting. Through the glass she saw a news truck pull up. The scene seemed as though it belonged in a movie, not in her life.
The nurse from the main desk took a call, then crossed the room and knelt in front of Lauren. “You the sheriff's daughter?” she asked.
Lauren nodded.
“We were told to expect you and to let you walk with him as far as you're allowed.” She smiled a sad smile. “The ambulance driver said they had to threaten to knock your father out if he didn't stop telling them how to do their jobs.”
“Thanks. Can you keep the reporters away? I don't think he'd want them to film him like this.”
“I'll see what I can do, but a county sheriff being shot is big news.”
Forcing herself to breathe, Lauren moved closer to the door and tried to remember everything Tim had said.
She held her cell in her hands, trying to think. Should she call her mother? Maybe Tim already had. If Pop was conscious, he'd probably told everyone not to call Margaret. They'd been divorced for most of Lauren's life. Would she come if she knew?
An argument they'd had once when they thought Lauren was asleep drifted through her mind. Her mother had screamed that she wouldn't watch him die. She'd wanted him to change jobs and he'd refused. She'd sworn that she wouldn't stand beside him if he got hurt. She wouldn't be there when they put him in the ground.
Margaret, who always got her way, didn't win that argument. She left and her pop stayed on as sheriff.
Putting her phone in her pocket, she decided not to call her mother. Not yet. Not until she knew something.
The Lubbock police must have brought the ambulance in because two uniformed officers passed through the sliding doors first.
She jumped up as four men running with the gurney rushed in. Before they were ten feet inside, a medical team was moving with them, giving orders.
Lauren pushed her way to the gurney. For a second, she couldn't even find her father amid all the tubes and machines and blankets and blood.
“Pop,” she said over all the shouting. She'd never seen her father like this. His uniform looked as if it had been ripped off and the white T-shirt, now spotted with red, was cut open. Tubes were running from the arm not covered in bandages. “Pop,” she said again as she grabbed his hand.
He tightened his fingers around hers and opened his eyes. “I'm going to be all right, baby. Don't worry. Don't cry.”
He hadn't called her baby since she was six.
No words came to her.
I love you
didn't seem enough. She held on as tight as she could, but his fingers relaxed and he closed his eyes.
The gurney hit a set of double doors that said No Admission. Lauren was shoved back out of the way. She lost her grip on his hand in a second and he vanished behind the doors.
“Miss, you have to wait out here,” one of the EMTs said in a kind voice as he hung back to block her from entering the last set of doors. “He's going right in to be prepped for surgery. You'll see him in a few hours.”
The tiny bit of logic still working in her brain knew the man was right, but she still shook her head and debated trying to bolt past him. Didn't they know she considered him the only family she had? The only one who'd loved her every minute of her life.
An arm gripped her shoulder, turning her into a hard chest. “Lauren. Let them do their job.”
She looked up at Tim. “Someone shot my pop,” she cried as though Tim didn't already know every detail.
His skin was ghost-white and tears dripped from his eyes unchecked, but he held her tight, as if knowing she was about to crumble. People moved around them in the middle of the hallway, but Tim didn't budge. He'd been her best friend forever. He could read her mind and he wasn't going anywhere. He'd stand in the storm with her.
Lauren didn't know if they were there for a few minutes or an hour. Finally, she asked, “Where is Thatcher?”
“He's back there with the patch-up team. Bullet went right through his leg. Someone said it didn't look like it hit a bone or an artery.”
“I need to see him. I need to know everything that happened. I need to thank him.” Details, she thought. Somewhere in the details I'll find the reason why and how all this could happen.
Tim agreed. “Some kids his age would have run when the bullets started flying. He said when he saw the cruiser, for a second he thought it was a trick your dad was pulling to get him to stop so the sheriff could yell at him for driving.”
They began walking back up the hallway to the main emergency room. Tim's arm was still around her shoulder as she talked. “While I'm waiting on Pop, I'll make notes of everything Thatcher remembers,” she said, thinking she sounded like her father. No matter what, he always wanted to know every detail as if he could figure out the logic of it all if he only had the facts.
“You do that, L. I think I'll find a comfortable chair and collapse. I've had an overload of reality today.” He kissed her cheek. “If you need me, I'm right out here in the lobby.”
She nodded and walked into the emergency area, totally ignoring a sign that said Staff and Patients Only Beyond this Point.
She had to do what her pop had taught her to do. Think of all the might-bes and then go down each road, considering what would need to be done. Then, no matter what happened next, she'd have at least the beginning of a plan.