The phone clicked and scratched, making me think she dropped it. I could still hear the dog barking and Poppy screaming but now it all sounded muffled, kind of like it was underwater and far away.

“Poppy!” I screamed her name so loudly every single head in the shop turned to look at me as I bolted out one of the open bays and jumped down to the snowy ground below. My boots hit the asphalt with a thud as I ran toward my truck. “Honey, where are you?” I knew she couldn’t answer me because I could hear her struggling and choking on the other end of the phone.

“Give me your keys, kid. You don’t look like you have it together enough to get behind the wheel in this weather.” I didn’t think, just tossed the keys to Zak and kept calling Poppy’s name into the phone. I could hear Happy growling and getting more agitated by the minute.

“D-ad … st-o-pppp.” Her wail was cut off and I could hear her trying desperately to suck air in. I screamed her name again and jumped into the truck. Knowing I couldn’t listen to her die over the phone without doing something to try and save her. I hung up and called 911. The dispatcher had to ask me to repeat myself three times because I was talking so fast and barking out orders to her and to my grandfather at the same time.

“My girlfriend is being attacked by her father. You need to send help.” I was breathing hard and I felt light-headed. I couldn’t see straight.

“Where is the attack taking place sir? I need an address to give the responders.”

I was blindly guiding Zak toward her apartment assuming she was home after work but the reality was she could be anywhere and I wouldn’t be able to get to her in time. Nobody would. I narrowed it down to the veterinary clinic where she worked, her apartment, and my house because those were the only places she typically brought Happy with her.

I rattled off her address and also told the dispatcher to send someone to the vet clinic in case her crazy father had jumped her when she was leaving work for the afternoon. I pleaded with her to also send someone over to my place. The woman stayed calm and assured me she would get units to all the locations but I didn’t know if they would arrive in time. Poppy had sounded like she was slipping away as she begged her father for her life. I couldn’t believe she had come all this way, done everything in her power to escape, only to end up back in his breaking hands.

“We’ll find her, Hudson.” The stranger sitting next to me suddenly became my only grounding point in a world that was spinning too fast and totally off center.

I knew we would find her. It was the condition she was going to be in when I got to her that I was worried about.

Poppy

I was distracted, and like always …

I should have known better.

Distracted was dangerous.

Distracted could be deadly.

When I left work, Happy had found something dead and decaying buried in the snow in the parking lot and he already had it in his mouth and was chewing on it by the time I realized it wasn’t just a stick or rock. Of course, his adventure led to him getting sick all over the backseat of my car, which was gross enough as it was, but the silly dog had to go and turn the disaster into even more of a horror show by trying to lick up his vomit. I couldn’t get to my apartment fast enough, and when I pulled up to the curb out front, instead of checking my surroundings and making sure I had a clear path from my car to the front door, I was preoccupied getting the dog out of the backseat while trying not to get puke all over my coat.

I was bent over at the waist, clipping the dog’s leash on his monogrammed and studded collar, his Christmas gift from Wheeler, when the first blow landed on the back of my head. Immediately I went to my knees, the puppy blurring into a brown blob as red started rolling over my face and staining the snow scarlet in front of me. I went to lift a hand to the burning, bleeding ache at the back of my skull when my wrist was grasped in a grip so tight and painful it made me cry out. Another hand fisted in my swinging ponytail and jerked my head backward.

Even though my vision was fuzzy there was no mistaking the man that was dragging me backward so that he could sit on my chest while he repeatedly banged the back of my head into the icy, unforgiving sidewalk in front of my apartment.

My father had found me and he wasn’t going to leave until I was dead. I should have known this was coming and I should have been prepared for it. Wheeler made me feel safe, made me feel bulletproof and invincible. I forgot I was nothing more than thin skin and breakable bone.

“Dad!” I screamed the word like it would have some effect on the madman that slapped me across the face and furiously ground his knees into my shoulders so I couldn’t hit him back. My heels were kicking uselessly into the ground and I could feel the puddle of blood underneath my head spreading, soaking into my hair and running warm down the back of my neck.

“I’ve been waiting outside of every single veterinary clinic in Denver until I found the one you worked at.” His hands flexed around my throat and I started to choke. I felt my eyes bug in my face as my oxygen supply dwindled down to nothing. I couldn’t get my hands free to push at him or to pry at his fingers, but I could get them into the pocket of my coat where my cell phone was. They were starting to tingle and go numb and he continued to put pressure on my airway but I managed to tap the screen and find the home button so I could redial the last number I called. Of course, it was Wheeler. “You stupid bitch. You and your whore sister were never worth anything. You think I’m stupid, that I don’t know it was you calling the house, that it was you who had that nosy sheriff showing up on my doorstep day after day, demanding to see your mother? You were dead to me, Poppy, dead.” His hands tightened more and more as he spoke and vaguely I heard Happy whining and his nails nervously tapping on the sidewalk as he danced around my struggling body.

I heard Wheeler scream my name from the phone in the pocket, and since I could hear it, so could my father, which had him letting go of my throat just long enough for me to sputter out a raspy “D-ad … st-o-pppp.” It was a plea that went unanswered.

When he leaned over to pull my phone out of my pocket, he lifted up just enough that I managed to flip myself over, my hands hitting the cement hard, palms sliding and skidding as the skin tore. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a bloody rock the size of a man’s fist that had bits of my hair still clinging to it. He’d tried to cave my skull in, and from the amount of blood that was splashed across the snow I scrambled across, he had done a pretty good job of it.