Walking Disaster

is what?”
    “The look on your face.”
    Her eyes shifted between me and the road, extremely curious. I imagined it was a new expression, but I couldn’t begin to explain what it might look like.
    “I’m just happy, baby.”
    Abby half hummed, half laughed. “Me, too.”
    Admittedly I was a little nervous about telling my dad about our eventful getaway to Vegas, but not because he would be mad. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but the butterflies in my
stomach swirled faster and harder with every block closer that we came to Dad’s house.
    Abby pulled into the gravel driveway, soggy from the rain, and stopped beside the house.
    “What do you think he’ll say?” she asked.
    “I don’t know. He’ll be happy, I know that.”
    “You think so?” Abby asked, reaching for my hand.
    I squeezed her fingers between mine. “I know so.”
    Before we could make it to the front door, Dad stepped out onto the porch.
    “Well, hello there, kids” he said, smiling. His eyes scrunched as his cheeks pushed up the puffy bags under his eyes. “I wasn’t sure who was out here. Did you get a new
car, Abby? It’s nice.”
    “Hey, Jim.” Abby smiled. “Travis did.”
    “It’s ours,” I said, pulling off my ball cap. “We thought we’d stop by.”
    “I’m glad you did . . . glad you did. We’re getting some rain, I guess.”
    “I guess,” I said, my nerves stifling any ability I had for small talk. What I thought were nerves was really just excitement to share the news with my father.
    Dad knew something was amiss. “You had a good spring break?”
    “It was . . . interesting,” Abby said, leaning into my side.
    “Oh?”
    “We took a trip, Dad. We skipped on over to Vegas for a couple of days. We decided to uh . . . we decided to get married.”
    Dad paused for a few seconds, and then his eyes quickly searched for Abby’s left hand. When he found the validation he was looking for, he looked to Abby, and then to me.
    “Dad?” I said, surprised by the blank expression on his face.
    My father’s eyes glossed a bit, and then the corners of his mouth slowly turned up. He outstretched his arms, and enveloped me and Abby at the same time.
    Smiling, Abby peeked over at me. I winked back at her.
    “I wonder what Mom would say if she were here,” I said.
    Dad pulled back, his eyes wet with happy tears. “She’d say you did good, son.” He looked at Abby. “She’d say thank you for giving her boy back something that left
him when she did.”
    “I don’t know about that,” Abby said, wiping her eyes. She was clearly overwhelmed by Dad’s sentiment.
    He hugged us again, laughing and squeezing at the same time. “You wanna bet?”

EPILOGUE
    T HE WALLS DRIPPED WITH RAINWATER FROM THE streets above. The droplets plopped down into deepening puddles, as if they were
crying for him, the bastard lying in the middle of the basement in a pool of his own blood.
    I breathed hard, looking down at him, but not for long. Both of my Glocks were pointed in opposite directions, holding Benny’s men in place until the rest of my team arrived.
    The earpiece buried deep in my ear buzzed. “ETA ten seconds, Maddox. Good work.” The head of my team, Henry Givens, spoke quietly, knowing as well as I did that with Benny dead, it
was all over.
    A dozen men with automatic rifles and dressed in black from head to toe rushed in, and I lowered my weapons. “They’re just bag men. Get ’em the hell out of here.”
    After holstering my pistols, I pulled the remaining tape from my wrists and trudged up the basement stairs. Thomas waited for me at the top, his khaki coat and hair drenched from the storm.
    “You did what you had to do,” he said, following me to the car. “You all right?” he said, reaching for the cut on my eyebrow.
    I’d been sitting in that wooden chair for two hours, getting my ass kicked while Benny questioned me. They’d figured me out that morning—all part of the plan, of
course—but the end of his interrogation was supposed to result in his arrest, not his death.
    My jaws worked violently under the skin. I had come a long way from losing my temper and beating the hell out of anyone that sparked my rage. But in just a few seconds, all of my training had
been rendered worthless, and it just took Benny speaking her name for that to happen.
    “I’ve gotta get home, Tommy. I’ve been away for weeks, and it’s our anniversary . . . or what’s left of it.”
    I yanked open the car