A/N: Okay, we're gonna have a few sappy chapters for a while to break away from the angsty stuff, so just read and enjoy, hopefully :)

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Deliver Us From Evil

Chapter Nine: One Last Night, Part One

Rosco was making Eve worried. He'd never been so quiet on a ride home before. Normally he'd break any hint of silence with some sort of stupid joke that he'd heard from someone around town, but tonight he didn't do anything but stare at the road and drive. He'd glance over at her every now and then but he still wouldn't say anything. She was so tempted to turn the radio on, anything to make the quiet go away. She'd noticed that Bo and Luke looked rather dreary themselves. She didn't know if Ali had noticed it in Luke or not, but she knew something was up the minute they walked in the door.

Truth was, he was trying to think of a way to tell her real easy like about her having to leave town. He knew that she wouldn't like the idea, not one bit. It killed him that she'd have to go—he didn't know if he'd be able to handle being apart from her for so long. Ever since he'd met her, life had seemed to take a turn for the better for him. She always had a knack at explaining things to him and making things more simple.

"All right, what's wrong?" Eve asked, ending the silence that had only lasted five minutes but felt like an eternity.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when she spoke. "Nothin's wrong," he said rather quickly. "What makes ya think anything's wrong? There ain't nothin' wrong—"

She placed her hand on his shoulder to calm him down. "Yes, there is. So just tell me." He seemed to be a little uncomfortable. "Rosco?"

He looked about ready to cry. His eyes twitched a little trying to control himself in front of her. "Well . . . honey . . . it's like this. Um . . . the boys an' I . . . we think it'd be best if—if you took Ali an' Chelsea out of Hazzard until this all blows over." He saw out of the corner of his eye that she was staring at him blankly. "Y'know, for y'alls own safety."

"Our safety!" she exclaimed. "What about you, I ain't leavin' you here alone to get killed!"

"Eve, ya have to go," he told her in a calm voice. "Look what happened to your sisters. I don't want that happenin' to you."

"Well I don't want the next time I see you to be in a funeral home!" she argued, tears squirting out of her eyes. "I'm not goin'!"

"Evie, look—if anythin' does happen to me, well----you're still young, you can always find someone to look after ya----if somethin' happened to you, I couldn't do that." The word "mistake" flashed in his mind as soon as he said that.

Her eyes widened. She couldn't believe she just heard him say that. "Rosco Pervus—how dare you say such a hateful thing to me!"

"Mistake" was an understatement. "Darlin'—"

"Don't you Darlin' me, Rosco Coltrane!" she interrupted, tears rolling down her face. "If anything ever happened to you, I'd die myself. I'd die a thousand times over. I'd never be able to crawl into bed or walk outside without thinkin' about you. An' here you are implyin' that I'll get over it an' move on! I've never been so insulted in my life, I can't believe you'd say such a thing about me!" She turned and faced her own window, wrapped her arms around herself and cried—out of anger and sadness.

Rosco's heart felt like it had just been scuffed. Horrendously scuffed, too. He'd never meant to hurt her feelings. He sure never meant to imply that she wouldn't miss him if he were to die—he knew that she'd miss him terribly.

He forced himself not to cry, even though she wasn't looking at him at the moment. "Evie—sweetheart, don't . . . don't cry, please. Don't do that. Evelyn?"

They were almost home. Dammit, he couldn't go in the house with her like this—with himself like this. At this rate, she was acting like she'd never forgive him for this. Not knowing what else to do, Rosco suddenly jerked the car onto a side road that led away from the town and towards the wood.

Eve felt the jerk and heard him gun the engine. She shot up and looked out the window, wiping her eyes the whole while. "This ain't the way home, where are we goin'? Rosco?"

He didn't answer. He just made the car go faster, zipping around the curves and going further into the middle of nowhere. If there had been another car involved, it would have appeared that he was in the middle of a chase, except that he was the only one on the road at this time of night.

Eve was beginning to wonder if the events of the past week had finally succeeded in making her husband lose his mind. It certainly seemed that way, what with him almost wrapping his patrol car around a tree every time he went around a curve. She was too scared to say anything to him, as if it would disrupt his train of thought and they really would crash into something.

After a few minutes of this crazy torture, he turned down another small road that led deeper into the woods and at the end of it was a little old barn that used to be used to house cattle in the winter. It hadn't been used since the settlers' days. The field that it used to sit in was now a giant forest that belonged to no one in particular. Kids used to come out here and fool around, but it was too cold for any of that tonight.

Rosco parked and shut down the engine once they were up under the roof and out of sight. As soon as the headlights deadened, the entire place was pitch black, save for the small beams of moonlight shining down through the holes in the roof of the barn. Eve was terrified. She hadn't any idea where her husband had dragged them, nor his intentions, and the only sound she could hear was her own heavy breathing.

"You gonna listen to me now?" Rosco finally asked her.

The sudden sound of his voice scared her slightly, her heart ramming in her chest. She gulped and nodded, although he couldn't very well see it. He simply took her silence as a "yes".

"As I was tryin' to tell you—me an' the boys came to the conclusion that it was too dangerous for you girls to stay in town. We think that—that someone is after us and has been usin' y'all to rip us apart. We don't think anything that's happened were accidents . . . Flash included." He rubbed a hand across his brow. "That's why we need y'all to leave Hazzard. To protect y'all."

His voice started cracking with emotion. "Evie . . . if anyone ever hurt you . . . in any way . . . I'd-----I'd never forgive myself." He choked back a sob. He couldn't lose control of himself in front of her. "I'd feel like—like I failed to keep ya safe. Like I allowed someone to harm ya." He was shaking now, trying his absolute hardest to hold back from crying but he still felt small drops coming from the corners of his eyes. "I love you so much that it hurts me sometimes----like now. I don't want you to go—I'd rather ya stay with me, but if it means that you might get hurt, I want you to go."

Eve had giant tears dropping from her face. "Oh, darlin' . . . but I can't just go away an' worry for hours on end whether or not you're alive. I'd lose my mind if I came home without you here to come back to."

"I know you would," he said softly, reaching out with his hand and feeling around for hers, which he found and gave a tight squeeze to. "I'd go with ya if I could, but I can't. I'm the sheriff. I have a responsibility to protect not only you but everybody else in Hazzard from whoever is causin' all this pain." He lifted her hand up and gave it a kiss. "Please go, Eve. If not for me, then for Ali or Chelsea. They need someone like you to keep things together for 'em through this."

Eve took the hand that he wasn't holding and felt the side of his face. She felt wetness from tears he'd been shedding the entire time he had been talking to her. It killed her that she'd been the one to put them there. She wrapped her hand around the back of his head and pulled herself close to him, placing a gentle yet firm kiss on his lips.

She pulled away just a hair, her eyelids half closed. "All right, I'll go," she whispered, letting her lips barely touch his as she said it. "But the minute I hear you're in trouble, I'm comin' straight back here an' gettin' you out of it." She kissed him again. "That's a promise."

Rosco had thought he couldn't love her anymore than he already did, but at that moment he stood corrected. Hell, he'd fallen in love with her all over again. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close to him, situating her to where she was straddling his lap in the driver's seat. He drew her head down to his and intensified their kiss. Damn, it had been a long time—too long—since they'd last . . .

"Eve?" he asked her in a hoarse voice.

"Hmm?" she replied, undoing the buttons of his jacket.

"I don't think—it's a good idea—to be doin' this—out here," he told her, every three or four words getting interrupted with a kiss.

"Tiddly-tuddly," she murmured, borrowing one of his little sayings. "It's too cold out for anyone to be lurkin' about." She finished with the jacket buttons and moved her hands lower to his gun belt. "'Sides, we have to make the most of tonight. We won't be seein' each other for a while, hmmm?"

A smile tugged at his lips. "Make the most of it, huh?."

Before Eve knew what was happening, she felt her hands going back and the slap of cold metal around her wrists. She heard a snapping noise following the cold metal feel. She tried to move her hands but found that she had been . . . oh . . .

Rosco had that look in his eyes. She could see the sparkle even in the dark.

"You're a little overdue for a cuffin' an' stuffin'," he told her, taking his hands off her wrists from where he had handcuffed her to the steering wheel.

She gave him a lopsided smile. "Maybe, but I'm waiving the right to remain silent . . . and if I find out you don't have the keys to these . . ."