“So now what?” We were leaning against the hood of my truck. The girls stood in a loose cluster, watching us from just outside the church doors. None of them had spoken since Ciera executed Saint John.
“The girls said that Hannah was here two nights ago. She rode up on a bicycle and was going to spend the night in the building, then grab a car and come on home. The goons found her first. Samantha said they both tried to rape her, but she kicked them both in the balls a couple of times, so they kinda lost interest.”
My daughter was a badass. Who knew? “Okay, but where is she now?”
“Apparently they were going to stone her yesterday. Like literally gather up a bunch of rocks and throw them at her. But there was another person, Samantha said an older girl, who disappeared too. She thinks that other girl let Hannah loose.”
I stared at Ciera, unsure of what I’d heard. “Stone her.”

She nodded. “Just like in the good ole days. Stone the sinners. Stone the gays. Meriah said there was another half a dozen people here that night, and Saint John told them to come back today with five rocks each.”
“Anybody ever show up?”
“The girls say no, but they don’t know why.”
I stretched, still not quite believing everything that had happened today. “Back to my original question. What do we do next?”
She sighed. “Shit. I don’t know. She could be anywhere. The girls said there was one other black guy here, a friend of Dawson’s, and when they realized Hannah was missing, Dawson and the other guy went looking for them. Dawson came back and said the other dude was still looking.”
“But this was all yesterday morning.” I rubbed my face. Dawson was still staring at me. “Damn it. What the hell was Monica thinking?”
Ciera scoffed. “You’re assuming she was thinking. From what I’ve seen, she’s got a problem with understanding the consequences of her actions. It’s like she can’t look five minutes into the future. It’s not like I know her that well, right? But she’s told some stories and you can just see that’s the way she is.”
We stood there in the silence. We had Hannah’s phone, which meant we couldn’t track her anymore, and we had no idea where she’d gone. We didn’t even know if she was still alive. The other guy could have caught her and killed her, thinking he was fulfilling the deacon’s twisted directions.
And every time I closed my eyes, I saw Dawson’s face. That was getting old. I mentioned it to Ciera.
She nodded. “I could give you all the psych crap they gave me when I shot a guy a few years ago. But the fact is, you killed a guy, and it’s gonna eat at you for a while. I’m no head-shrink, but I picked up a few things when I did see one, so you can pick my brain if you want. I mean, there’s not really a right way to deal with it.” She looked at the ground for a moment. “No, I guess there is. You’ve got to get to the point where it’s kind of locked away, where you can control how and when you let those thoughts out. Everybody does that in their own way, and some get there sooner than others. I know one state cop who shot a kid twenty years ago, like a kid-kid, maybe seventeen. He still visits the kid’s grave.” She shrugged. “From what Hannah’s told me about you, you’ve got your head on pretty straight. I think you’ll get through this okay.”
I nodded after a minute. “When does his face go away?”
She sighed. “I’ll let you know.”
“What about the girls?”
“That’s an excellent question. What about them?”
I snickered just a little. “We can’t just leave them here, especially if we don’t know where that other goon is, or the other people from the church.”
“You really want to take them back with us?”
“No, not really. Probably not very practical, either. We don’t have the space or the supplies for them.”
Ciera smiled. “Here’s a crazy thought. We could ask them what they want.”
We were in the middle of talking to the girls when my phone rang. The number didn’t really register in my mind. “Hello?”
“Daddy? It’s Hannah. I’m—” She broke down in sobs.
“Hannah? Where are you? Are you okay? Ciera’s with me. Talk to me.” I peppered her faster than she could possibly reply. Ciera’s hands went to her head as she started bawling. As I switched the phone to speaker, I realized the kids with us were looking pretty weepy right along with us. “Hey, I’ve got you on speaker.”
“Hannahbear? Are you okay, baby? Where are you?”
All I heard from anyone for a minute was weeping and sniffles. Hannah finally answered. “Yeah, We’re okay. Just got back to the apartment. This is Monica’s niece’s phone. We’re good.”
We? “Wait, who’s with you besides Monica and her niece?” I couldn’t remember the girl’s name just then, and thought “whats-her-name” probably wouldn’t go over well.
“Jada, the girl who cut me loose the other night. Crap, you probably don’t even know about that.” The kids with us squealed for joy when they heard their friend’s name. “Who’s there with you?”
“Three girls from the church. Everyone’s okay.” Everyone around me was grinning through their tears.
“The church? Wait, what do you mean everyone’s okay? What happened?” Just like that, her tone switched from teary to angry.
“Just what I meant. Everyone’s fine. Too much stuff to get into over the phone. For now, we were talking to the girls to see what they wanted to do next.”
“You’re bringing them up here, right? What else can you do?”
I laughed to myself. She’d always been pretty confident, a very take-charge person. “Well, we wanted to at least ask them what they wanted. And until two minutes ago, we didn’t know where you were, so it didn’t necessarily make sense to bring them back. We weren’t even sure we were coming back tonight.”
That seemed to placate her. “When are youse gonna be back?” Her voice was almost a whisper now.
“As soon as you get off the phone and let us grab everything we need, love.” Ciera smiled when she said it and the girls giggled.
We hung up a minute later after a round of “I love yous” then I turned to the kids. “Is it safe to assume y’all want to come with us now? Be a little cramped on the way up, and we’ll have to sort out bedrooms. I don’t know that it’s going to be that much better, but it should be safer.”
Samantha looked at the other two, nodding. After a minute, all three girls were smiling and nodding. We went by their houses and picked up some clothes and personal items. While we waited for them at Renee’s house, Ciera went to the back of the truck for a minute, coming back with two .45 rounds. “If this happened a week ago to a real cop” – and here she winked at me – “youse’d had your weapon confiscated and been sent to a desk for a couple of weeks. Welcome to the real world. We need to get in the habit of topping off the magazine any time we shoot. From a tactical standpoint, you probably should have just swapped mags when we knew the shooting was over. Anyway, here.” She dropped the rounds into my hand.
They were surprisingly heavy. “It’s been a hell of a week, ain’t it?”
It took us fifteen minutes to get everyone in the door when we got home. After all of the hugs and kisses, Paige announced that dinner would be ready soon. “Once we knew you guys were coming, we went shopping. Pizza tonight. Hope you like deluxe.”
Dinner impressed me. They had made the crusts from scratch instead of grabbing premade stuff from the freezer. We talked late into the night about what we’d seen and done over the last week. Hannah and Monica seemed to have come to some sort of understanding about what had happened, and I didn’t see any bruises, so I assumed no violence was involved. They just breezed right over those parts. Likewise, we didn’t go into detail about Saint John or Dawson. Monica seemed to not understand what we weren’t saying until Paige elbowed her.
Somewhere around midnight, Hannah and Ciera begged out of the discussion, which led to Monica and Paige heading back to their apartment. Meriah and Renee had dozed off on one of the couches, so Samantha and Jada settled into the other one. It would do for now, but we were going to have to have a real discussion about everyone’s future very soon.
I grabbed the notebook I’d been journaling in and poured my heart out for two hours and twenty-five pages. It had indeed been a long week.
Copyright © 2019 Bob Mueller
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