Part 5: The Trial
Courthouses smell like bleach and old secrets. The walls are too white, the floors too shiny, like they’re scrubbing out the truth before it even hits the air.
I hadn’t set foot in one since the day a judge sent me to Huntsville for eighteen months. Back then I wore chains on my wrists and a smirk to hide the fear. This time, I wore a clean shirt that didn’t fit right, Naomi at my side, and Diesel parked outside in my truck with Hank keeping watch.
Naomi’s hand shook inside mine. Fourteen years old and walking into the lion’s den. Her hair was brushed neat, her lip healing, but the bruise on her jaw hadn’t faded. I prayed the judge would see it before Crowley’s lies got loud enough to drown her.
Inside, the courtroom was half-full—neighbors, looky-loos, even a couple old club brothers who came out of curiosity. Crowley sat at the petitioner’s table in a stiff suit that didn’t belong to him. He’d shaved, combed, and painted himself respectable. The bastard even had the nerve to pin a little American flag on his lapel, like he stood for anything but his own fists.
His lawyer leaned in, whispering strategy. Mine was a woman named Carla Martinez, thirty-five, sharp eyes, sharper tongue. She owed me a favor from way back—one night I’d stopped a bar fight before it landed her in the ER. She’d made partner since then. I called it in.
The bailiff barked, “All rise.” The judge entered, robes heavy, expression unreadable. He looked like a man who hadn’t laughed in twenty years.
“This is a custody hearing regarding the minor, Naomi Thompson,” he said. “Petitioner: Mr. Crowley Thompson. Respondent: Mr. Rex Dalton.”
Respondent. I wasn’t family. Wasn’t blood. But I damn sure wasn’t going to let that bastard reclaim her like lost property.
Crowley’s Performance
Crowley’s lawyer stood first, pacing like a preacher. “Your Honor, this is a simple case. A father—widowed, hardworking—fears for his daughter’s safety after she fell into the company of a known felon. Mr. Dalton has a record: assault, gang activity, prison time. He’s an outlaw biker, not a guardian. My client only wants his child back where she belongs.”
Crowley nodded at every word, shoulders slumped just right, eyes wet enough to glisten. I wanted to break his jaw for the act alone.
Carla rose. “Your Honor, Naomi is not a piece of property. She is a child who fled an unsafe home. Mr. Dalton may not be perfect, but he did what others failed to—he listened. We will present evidence that Mr. Thompson is not the guardian he pretends to be.”
The judge scribbled something, unreadable. “Proceed.”
Naomi’s Turn
They called Naomi up. My chest clenched as she walked to the witness chair, skinny legs shaking, hands clenched tight. She swore the oath in a voice so small the clerk leaned closer to hear.
Crowley’s lawyer started easy. “Naomi, don’t you love your father?”
She flinched. “He’s not my dad. He married my mom. Then she died.”
A murmur rippled through the gallery. The lawyer recovered. “Still, he provided a roof, food, school. That’s care, isn’t it?”
Naomi’s eyes sharpened. “Food? Sometimes. Roof? When he wasn’t drunk and kicking holes in it. School? He told me not to bother. Said I wasn’t worth it.”
Gasps whispered. The lawyer frowned, glanced at Crowley. “And this Mr. Dalton… you ran off with him, didn’t you? In the middle of the night?”
“I ran from Crowley,” Naomi snapped. “Rex didn’t take me. He saved me.”
I swallowed hard, fighting the heat in my chest. That word—saved—cut deep.
Crowley’s lawyer leaned closer, voice oily. “Naomi, isn’t it true you’ve been… dramatic in the past? Running away, exaggerating bruises from accidents, even—”
Carla shot up. “Objection! Badgering a minor.”
“Sustained,” the judge said, but the damage was done. Some faces in the room turned doubtful.
My Turn
Then it was me. I swore the oath, sat down heavy in the chair.
“Mr. Dalton,” Carla began, “how did you come to be involved in Naomi’s situation?”
I told it plain. “Found her on the side of the road. Bruised, barefoot, bleeding. She asked me not to take her back. I didn’t. That’s all there is.”
“Do you have a criminal record?”
“Yes. Assault, ‘97. Time served. I’m not proud of it. I’ve spent the years since building a quiet life, away from trouble. Until trouble found her.”
“And do you consider yourself a guardian to Naomi now?”
I looked at Naomi. She stared back, eyes pleading. “Yeah,” I said. “Maybe not by law. But by choice. And choice means more than blood.”
Crowley’s lawyer pounced. “So you admit you harbor a runaway against the law? That you exposed her to outlaw culture, violence, and a dangerous animal?”
“Diesel ain’t dangerous unless you are,” I growled. The gallery chuckled before the judge’s gavel cracked.
The lawyer sneered. “Mr. Dalton, you’re not fit to raise a child. You couldn’t raise yourself.”
My fists itched. I wanted to show him just how raised I was. But Naomi’s eyes held me still.
Crowley’s Lies
Crowley took the stand. He wept on cue, voice trembling like he’d rehearsed it in the mirror.
“My wife died, and I… I did my best. Naomi’s a handful. She lies, she screams, she hurts herself sometimes just to blame me. I never struck her. Never. The bruises? She falls. She runs. And now this man—this criminal—wants to steal her from me.”
I nearly stood, but Carla gripped my arm. “Don’t.”
The judge leaned back, frowning. He saw the tears, the suit, the flag pin. He saw a respectable citizen, not the drunk who pulled a knife on me in the dark. And I knew—we were losing him.
Naomi Breaks
Then Naomi did something I didn’t expect. She stood. No lawyer told her to. No one called her name. She just rose, fists balled, voice sharp.
“You’re lying!” she shouted at Crowley. “You hit me! You broke Mom’s picture frame and told me to clean the glass out of my feet! You burned my drawings! You said nobody would believe me because you were the grown-up and I was nothing!”
The courtroom went silent. Even the judge leaned forward. Tears streamed down Naomi’s face, but her chin stayed high. “I’m not nothing,” she said. “Not anymore.”
I’d never been more proud of anyone in my life.
The Judge Wavers
The judge rapped his gavel. “Order. Sit down, young lady.”
Naomi sat, shaking, but her words lingered like smoke no one could clear. The judge rubbed his temples. “This case is… difficult. Allegations on both sides. Without evidence, I—”
The doors banged open.
All heads turned as an old man shuffled in, hat in hand. Hank Winters. His cane tapped the floor like a drumbeat.
“Beg pardon, Your Honor,” Hank said, voice gravel but steady. “But I’ve got something to say. I seen things. Heard things. And it’s time somebody stopped pretending not to.”
Crowley’s face drained white.
The judge stared. “And you are?”
“Hank Winters,” he said, standing tall despite the years. “Neighbor. And a witness.”
Part 6: The Breaking Point
Hank Winters didn’t walk so much as measure the floor with his cane—tap, tap—like each sound was a nail in a rotten board. He stopped at the witness chair and stared Crowley down until the bastard looked away.
The judge cleared his throat. “Mr. Winters, do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”
Hank lifted his palm. “On my good leg, Your Honor.”
A few folks chuckled. The judge didn’t. “Proceed.”
Carla stepped forward. “Mr. Winters, how long have you lived next to Mr. Dalton?”
“Sixteen years. Long enough to know the difference between trouble and a man tryin’ not to be it.”
“Did you witness anything relevant to Naomi Thompson’s safety?”
Hank’s eyes narrowed. “Relevant like the night two months back when the girl came home late from school and Crowley yelled loud enough to shake my picture frames? Relevant like when I heard glass break and that man—” he jabbed his cane at Crowley— “told her to ‘stop bleedin’ on the floor’?” A murmur rippled through the room. Hank didn’t slow. “Or the morning I saw her take the trash out barefoot in December, left heel cut open, and he stood on the step smokin’ like she was the ash?”
Carla kept it tight. “Did you ever report what you heard or saw?”
“Called the sheriff.” Hank’s mouth folded into a scowl. “Gent says he’ll send a deputy. Deputy Harlan shows up five hours later, talks to Crowley for six minutes, then tells me I should get my hearing checked. Didn’t ask to speak to the girl.”
Harlan wasn’t in the courtroom, but I could feel every eye that had seen him drinking with Crowley at the VFW. Crowley’s lawyer stood, all polish and offense. “Objection. Speculation and hearsay.”
“Overruled,” the judge said, surprising me.
Carla moved in for the finish. “Mr. Winters, do you have anything to corroborate your testimony?”
Hank reached into his coat and pulled out a spiral notebook, edges curled, pages bent. “My wife used to say grief makes you forget. So after she passed, I started writin’ everything down. Dates, times, what I heard, what I saw. Been doin’ it since ‘09.” He handed it to the bailiff. “Page sixty-eight to seventy-one. That’s all Crowley.”
The bailiff carried the notebook to the bench. The judge read. Slow at first. Then faster. The room held its breath while a year of nights crawled out of those pages.
Crowley’s lawyer sputtered. “Your Honor, this is an old man’s diary.”
The judge looked up, eyes harder than they’d been all morning. “This is contemporaneous documentation. It carries weight.” He turned to Hank. “Mr. Winters, you’re willing to testify to this under oath?”
“I came here in my good shirt to do exactly that.”
Carla nodded, satisfied. “No further questions.”
Crowley’s lawyer went in like a man swinging in the dark. “Mr. Winters, how old are you?”
“Eighty-five.”
“And your hearing?”
“Good enough to hear you smirkin’.”
Snickers broke out. The lawyer forced a smile. “Do you dislike my client?”
“I dislike men who make children afraid to sleep.” Hank’s stare didn’t waver. “If that answers your question, then yes.”
The lawyer backed off, muttering about bias. He sat. The judge closed the notebook and set it on the bench like it was heavy.
He folded his hands. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m issuing an emergency protective order. Mr. Thompson, you are to have no contact with the minor until a full investigation by Child Protective Services is complete. Violate it and you’ll be in a jail cell before the ink dries. Naomi will remain in temporary placement with Mr. Dalton pending CPS review, on the condition that she is enrolled in school and accessible to caseworkers. Next hearing in fourteen days.”
The room exploded—whispers, gasps, the clang of someone’s ring on the pew as they stood too fast. I didn’t realize I’d been grinding my teeth until my jaw loosened and the ache rushed in. Naomi squeezed my hand so tight my knuckles popped. “Thank you,” she breathed, not to me, not to the judge, but to some part of the sky that had finally tipped our way.
Crowley’s face went from red to white to a color that didn’t belong on a living man. He started to rise, mouth open with some new lie, but the bailiff’s hand on his shoulder settled him back down.
Bang. The gavel ended it.
Outside, the courthouse steps turned into a theater. Cameras—local station, two bloggers, and a woman with a phone that looked like it cost more than my truck—swarmed the exit. Crowley stormed out first, his lawyer shielding him. “No comment,” the lawyer snapped, which is lawyer for we just lost round one.
One reporter peeled off and came at us, mic forward like a spear. “Mr. Dalton, are you the girl’s boyfriend’s father? Are you grooming her? Is the dog a weapon?” Diesel, waiting with Hank by the truck, tilted his head and sneezed. The reporter recoiled like he’d pulled a pin.
Carla stepped in. “The child is safe. That’s the story.” She moved us along, efficient as a drill sergeant. Hank took my elbow with a grip that said keep walking, son.
Across the square, Deputy Harlan leaned against his cruiser, arms folded, chewing a toothpick into splinters. He didn’t look at me. He looked through me. The chill that went down my spine had nothing to do with the north wind.
By evening, the town had already split itself. The diner near the feed store turned us into a cautionary tale—“girl runs off with biker”—while the hardware owner slid a sack of motion lights across the counter and said, “Put ‘em on the house, Rex.” Two kids at the gas station asked to pet Diesel, and their mama pulled them back like we were contagious. When I checked my phone, a screenshot from some local Facebook group had my face under the caption convicted felon harbors runaway. The comments were what you’d expect: prayer hands and pitchforks.
Naomi didn’t look. I didn’t show her.
That night she dreamed hard. The kind of dream that shakes words loose. “No. Not the belt. Don’t, don’t, don’t—” Diesel was off the couch and on her chest before I could cross the room, his weight an anchor, his nose pushing into her palm until her breath steadied. When her eyes opened, they were glossy and ancient. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“For what?”
“For being a problem.”
I sat on the floor beside the couch so we were eye level. “You’re not a problem. You’re the point.”
She blinked like she wanted to believe that sentence so badly it hurt. “The judge believes me?”
“He believes enough to keep you safe while we prove the rest.”
She nodded, swallowed, nodded again. Diesel dropped his head into the crook of her arm and sighed the big sigh that fixes nothing and helps anyway.
The next three days were an ugly kind of busy. CPS showed up—Ms. Kline, forties, hair pulled back tight enough to raise her eyebrows, notebook sharper than any knife. She asked questions that made Naomi shake. She asked me for references, employment, medical records, the last time I’d had a drink. She walked my fence line and checked my smoke detectors. She poked at the window that stuck and wrote repair like that was the difference between safety and danger.
When she left, she petted Diesel once. He closed his eyes like the world had finally done something right.
Carla called that afternoon. “Good news: the protective order stands. Bad news: Crowley retained a PR firm.”
“A what?”
“A company that gets paid to make devils look like deacons. He’s pushing a story—you’re luring the girl, you’re using the dog as intimidation, you’re violating probation.”
“I don’t have probation.”
“Doesn’t matter. They fog the air, fewer people notice the fire.”
I stared at the motion light I was bolting to the eave. “So what do we do?”
“We get louder with the truth. And we document everything. Threats, damage, the works.”
“Damage?”
“You haven’t had any yet?” Carla exhaled. “Buckle up.”
It started small. A tire valve shoved full of gravel. A dead battery that wasn’t dead when I parked. A smear of something brown on my mailbox with THIEF scratched through it. Hank sat on his porch every evening, cane across his knees like a rifle he wished he still owned. When I waved, he pointed two fingers at his eyes and then at my place. Watching.
On the fourth night, I found the front gate open and a length of chain coiled beside it that hadn’t been there, like someone had practiced. Diesel’s fur stood up the second we turned down the drive. Naomi missed it—she was in the passenger seat, humming under her breath, a habit she’d picked up when silence felt too thin.
I didn’t say a word. I parked, put her inside, and double-checked every lock twice. Then I sat on the porch with my back to the door, a mug of coffee going cold in my hands, Diesel leaning into my shin, watching the tree line breathe.
I thought about leaving. About putting Naomi on the back of the bike, Diesel in the sidecar, and riding until the map turned to desert and the desert turned to ocean. I’d done it before. Run far, run fast, let the world disappear in the wind.
But running had never saved anyone I loved. It had only made the ghosts easier to ignore.
I took a breath that tasted like pine and rust and made my choice the way you make a hard turn on black ice—slow, deliberate, ready for the slide. “We stay,” I told the night. Diesel flicked an ear like he’d already decided.
The porch light buzzed. Out beyond the pines, an engine coughed awake, then died, then woke again. Headlights flared, then cut. My motion lights blinked on one by one around the cabin, turning the yard into a stuttering daylight.
That’s when the first rock hit.
It exploded the front window in a rain of glass that sounded like a scream. Naomi did scream—just once—then disappeared down the hall like I’d taught her, into the closet with the heavy door and the flashlight taped to the wall. Diesel launched forward, spinning on the shards like he didn’t feel them.
“Back!” I snapped, and he went, muscles trembling, wanting to be everywhere at once.
Another rock, this one through the side window. A shadow crossed the porch—hood up, boots heavy. Someone yanked at the knob and laughed when it didn’t give. Another shadow moved at the back, feet crunching on gravel we’d raked smooth that morning.
Three, maybe four. No plates on the truck if they had sense. Crowbars or bats from the sound of metal on wood. The cabin, for all its stubborn bones, shuddered.
“Call 911,” I whispered, phone already to my ear. A bored voice answered with the speed of a small town that’s seen too much and cares too little. I gave the address, the names I knew. “Tell Deputy Miller,” I added. “Not Harlan.” The dispatcher said something polite that meant we’ll send whoever’s closest.
The front door boomed under a boot. Hinges cried out. Diesel’s growl rose from the place dogs go when the people they love are in a house that ain’t a house anymore but a battlefield.
Another hit. The deadbolt held. The third one won’t.
I glanced down the hall. The closet light was on behind the crack in the door. Naomi’s shadow shivered but didn’t break. Good girl.
I put my hand on Diesel’s neck and felt the tremor in him, the coiled spring. “With me,” I said, and he settled, eyes on the door, every inch of him ready to write a promise in teeth.
The fourth kick split the jamb.
I stood into it, every scar on my knuckles humming like a tuning fork. The door sagged, the night breathed, and a boot shoved into the gap.
“That’s enough,” I said to the dark, and the dark laughed back.
The fifth kick was coming.
And then a bottle arced through the broken front window—a bottle with a rag tail and a bad idea.
It hit the floor.
The world took one sharp breath.
And everything caught fire.