Chapter Thirty-Three
The front door to the trailer was wide open. The motorcycle Zane rode was dumped in the yard, the lights blared along with a TV, and Blaze’s cries rose above the screaming from inside.
Zoe hit the door at a run.
Zane and Ziggy rolled on the floor, fists flying.
Zanya stood in the hall, Blaze in her arms, yelling, “Stop!”
Zoe’s eyes landed on her mom, who was picking herself up from the floor. Her face was bloody, one of her eyes already swelling shut.
Ziggy managed to get his feet under him, pulling Zane with him. “You wanna fight me?” His hand pulled back, sending a fist into Zane’s face with a horrifying crunch.
When Zane fell, he tripped over a chair and into Zoe.
They both crashed to the floor.
That’s when Ziggy noticed her. “Look who’s here to join the party.”
He wiped the back of his hand across his lips—it came up bloody.
Blaze screamed louder.
“Get him out of here, Zanya!” Zoe yelled as she attempted to get to her feet.
Ziggy lifted a hand. “You stay right there.”
Zanya cowered back, and Sheryl scrambled to her side.
Before Sheryl could get there, Ziggy shot a foot out, tripping her.
Zane shot up again and rushed.
Zoe rolled to her feet as Sheryl pulled Zanya back down the hall.
Ziggy’s blows to Zane looked like a rabid dog on the attack, each blow harder, faster than the last.
Zane fought, catching Ziggy a few times, but as Zoe knew, her father was a vicious man who lived without rules.
The grunts and fists started to slow, until only Ziggy was fighting.
“Stop it! You’re killing him.”
Another hit and Zoe had to do something.
She rushed in, knowing the blow would come to her. But her little brother was hardly moving. Standing by and watching her father beat one of them, any of them, was something she vowed she’d never do again without a fight.
Ziggy laughed like a sick man on the edge of a complete breakdown and grabbed a fallen lamp.
Zoe charged before he could deliver a final blow to her brother.
She caught part of the lamp with her shoulder, but stopped it from hitting its mark.
First came a fist to her face, and when she fell, Ziggy’s foot met her ribs.
Coughing hard, she rolled over beside Zane and covered her face when Ziggy lifted the lamp over his head.
Then the room exploded.
Jo saw blinders. Her speedometer shot past one hundred on the straights and sixty-five on the corners.
Luke white-knuckled it in the passenger seat, neither of them saying a thing.
The rain threatened their safety on more than one turn. The final stretch to the Brown home was open road.
Lights from the trailer spilled into the rain, cars were everywhere.
Their seat belts were off before they skidded to a stop.
“I go in first!” Her gun was already out, her feet running.
She heard Zoe scream, saw through the door when Zoe lifted her arms as Ziggy stood over her with something in his hands.
Before Jo could fire off a round, an explosion from inside the home stopped her feet at the door.
Luke ran into her back.
Ziggy dropped the lamp and looked down at his chest.
Blood pooled in the center.
Ziggy turned white, his face tilted up. “You bitch.” He attempted a step, and another round caught him as he took his last breath and fell on top of Zoe and Zane.
Sheryl stood there, her eyes glossed over, her face void of expression.
“Zoe?”
Jo kept an arm out, keeping Luke back.
“Sheryl?” Jo kept her gun in her hand until Sheryl lowered hers.
Jo moved quickly, capturing Sheryl before she collapsed and removing the revolver from her hand.
Behind her, Zoe screamed, “Get him off me.”
Luke pushed Ziggy’s body away and pulled Zoe into his arms. “I’ve got you, Zoe. It’s okay. It’s over.”
She moved to Ziggy’s sprawled body, checked his neck for a pulse. Not that she needed to, his dead stare told her it was over.
Jo met Luke’s horrified gaze then reached for the radio pinned to her chest. “Glynis, you there?”
“That’s a big ten-four, Sheriff.”
Glynis’s jovial voice stood in stark contrast to the scene in front of her. “We need an ambulance at the Brown residence.”
“An ambulance?”
Jo turned her stare to the unmoving bastard in the room. “And the coroner.”
Zoe didn’t want the attention, or the cameras.
It appeared she wasn’t going to get what she wanted, so she moved through the days that followed Ziggy’s death, ignoring everyone that wasn’t part of her core family.
Sheryl sat in a temporary cell in Eugene pending second-degree murder charges. While she may have been trying to protect her adult children, her life at the time of Ziggy’s shooting wasn’t a cut-and-dried case of self-defense. She’d purchased the gun before Ziggy was put away the first time. He didn’t know she had it hidden in a heating vent in her bedroom.
Zoe was confident that in time, her mother would be free.
Or would she?
The image of Ziggy falling on Zoe in a bloody heap woke her up every night. If it wasn’t for Luke being there, holding her, she would probably need inpatient therapy. Zoe could only imagine what her mother was going through.
Zane spent three days in ICU and the next few on an orthopedic unit, nursing a broken collarbone and wrist, and a concussion.