Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 74315 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74315 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
I winced as my brother’s voice went from soft and deadly to an all-out roar.
“They got her, though. She was caught red handed,” Luke said tiredly from behind me.
We’d all been here all night. Me because I’d been with Mercy. Luke and the rest of them had split their time with Foster and Mercy, going back and forth to hand off updates on the other.
“And what was her reasoning?” Foster shot back.
“Revenge,” I said, walking tiredly into the room. “She hated Mercy so much, from the first time she met her, that she took it upon herself to ruin Mercy’s life. She killed Faris Blue after he went into the bathroom after Mercy. Her only reasoning was that she ‘couldn’t let another man have what was her son’s.’”
Foster snarled a curse. “That fucking bitch!”
I nodded, looking down at the bed. At the empty spot where my brother’s leg was supposed to be.
“You ready to talk to the doctor?” I asked.
“Fuck the doctor,” Foster growled. “Where’s Mercy?”
I smiled. “The maternity ward. They had to monitor the baby while you were having your foot chopped off.”
He blinked, then threw the covers off the bed.
“Get me some crutches,” he ordered.
I blinked. “You can’t move.”
“I had a leg amputated; I’m not a cripple,” he snapped.
“Let me go ask the doctor,” I hesitated.
Turning around, I walked out to the nurse’s station to the first doctor I saw.
“I need you to come talk to my brother. Now,” I said hurriedly.
The man and his bushy eyebrows looked at me in surprise. “Who’s this?”
Nonetheless, he came with me, picking up the chart when I told him the room number.
“I’m a cardiologist, not an orthopedic surgeon, but I’ll try my best. Where is he?”
He accompanied me into Foster’s room, but it was empty.
“Motherfucker,” I sighed, and then said, “Never mind. I know where he is.”
I found him exactly where I thought he’d be.
In bed, directly next to my wife.
His wounded leg propped up on a pillow in the middle of the bed.
All his cords and drains hooked on the bed and hanging in a jumbled mess at his side.
How he’d even managed to get in the bed was beyond me, let alone get down here.
He was always a stubborn one, our Foster. If anyone could tackle this hurdle, it’d be him.
Mercy sat crying on Foster’s shoulder, her eyes pouring tears as she apologized to him over and over again for ‘bringing that monster into his life.’
“It’s okay, Mercy Me. We’ll kick life’s ass, you and me together. Linda’s not even a player in our game anymore. I’m just glad you’re alright,” Foster said, leaning his head against hers.
She didn’t see the revenge in his eyes, though. Didn’t see the rage burning deep.
A rage so pure and all encompassing, that I knew it’d explode.
It was just a matter of time.
***
Miller
Three months later
“Foster’s developed a bit of a reputation around town,” Mercy said, eyeing Foster as he limped up to the front of the restaurant.
He staggered inside, and not one single person got into his way. He literally had everyone, and I do mean everyone, move out of his way.
That was because people had a fine-tuned instinct to avoid danger, and Foster was that in a nutshell.
One hundred percent dangerous. He was a live wire of built up aggression and resentment.
He didn’t blame anyone, except Linda, for his condition, but he wasn’t giving anybody anything anymore.
Gone was the carefree Foster who had a laugh for absolutely everyone, and it his place was a man that was so mad at the world that he could barely function.
He was now known on the force as Crush.
We’d all seen the video.
Foster had, impossibly, been the one to apprehend Linda.
She’d hit us, and then thrown her car into reverse, hitting Foster in her attempt to get away.
Although he’d been taken down, he was most certainly not out.
In the video you can see him get up, using only one leg, and take out the car’s tires.
Linda overcorrects and spins into a tree all in the span of thirty seconds.
Foster had saved the day, but he’d also lost his leg to a crush injury.
Hence the nickname ‘Crush,’ and the entire community of Kilgore now looked out for ‘The Crush.’ In fact, he was very well known, as well as the ‘hot cop’ who gave tickets to everyone. Even old ladies.
“What are you smiling about?” Mercy asked me.
“You see that girl over there?” I asked, pointing towards the booth by the door.
“Yes,” Mercy said, turning her gaze to the old man and the young woman eating lunch together.
The girl was a spitfire.
Something half the department had witnessed when she’d come in to protest a ticket that Foster had written her grandfather.
“Foster wrote that old man a ticket yesterday morning, and the granddaughter came in to protest it. She lit into Foster like I’d never seen before, and I thought Foster was going to lose his new-found cool.” I laughed, thinking about his reaction he’d had to her. “But he held on to it, just barely, and then she knocked into his shoulder on her way out.”
Mercy nodded, enraptured with the story.
Foster was her hero and she loved him to pieces.
Sometimes I had the distinct feeling that she favored Foster over me at times, but I’d figured out that it was just a special bond that the two had.
He was now living with us full time.
We’d moved him out of the apartment the day after he’d been released from the hospital, after his amputation, paying the rent even though nobody was there.
This week had been his first week back on the force, but he still hadn’t re-qualified to be on the SWAT team.
“He fell down, and she just sniffed at him, tossing a laugh over her shoulder as she left. I’ve never, not in my life, seen him as mad as he was right then. Even after finding out that Linda wasn’t going to jail, but to a psych facility.”
Two months ago, the state of Texas had decided that prison wasn’t the right fit for Linda, and had sentenced her to a high security psychiatric ward where they’d be monitoring her for the rest of her life, never having the ability to leave for parole.