"There. We're all settled," I declared, yanking away and walking as quickly as I could without it looking like I was running away.
When I got back home, I unleashed the dog who ran as far as fast as he could, locked my doors, put my usual bookshelf in front of the front one, grabbed my laptop, and went upstairs to my bedroom. I pulled the not as scary as I imagined gun out of my waistband and put it carefully down on my bed. It was black with a stainless steel slider and little grippy spots on the handle and near the trigger. I pulled out the bullets as well, climbed into bed, and did what I was told; I researched. I researched until I knew there wasn't even a margin for error in the technical details. Until I had loaded and unloaded and reloaded and slid on and off the safety a dozen times, getting comfortable with the weight and where everything was located.
As I sat on my bed though, the house eerily quiet as night fell, my stomach twisted into knots. I had maybe a moment or twenty of absolute weakness where I wondered if maybe whoring myself out to a badass arms-dealing biker in exchange for protection wasn't an all-together bad idea.
He was hot at least.
Alas, I wasn't a whoring myself out kind of girl.
Then again, I didn't exactly think I was a 'buy an illegal gun from a biker and use it to scare off an attacker' kind of girl either.
It was amazing the things you learned about yourself when you found yourself backed into a corner.
Hours passed. Long, exhausting hours of paranoia that turned to a genuine concern that I was losing it. Because nothing happened. No banging on my windows. No peeping. No dog barking.
No nothing.
My stomach slowly unclenched as the latest part of the night passed me by, convincing me that I was just letting my imagination run away with me.
Gut feeling, my ass.
What was wrong with me?
I put the gun down on the nightstand, took my first deep breath that day, changed into my usual nightgown because I couldn't sleep when my legs were in pants; I always felt stuck, then I scooted back against the pillows.
Then fell asleep.
A flash woke me up some indeterminate time later, making my heart fly into my throat as I jolted awake, confused. A flash? Power surge? Lightening?
"Gonna have that pretty cunt tonight," a voice said, different somehow than I had been expecting. I guess you always kind of figured bad guys had those deep, gravel-filled voices. My stalker sounded nasal, like he had a pesky sinus infection or a deviated septum.
But no matter the tone used, the word 'cunt' almost universally sounded God-awful and threatening. Especially so when it was coming from a man who had been stalking you for months and was suddenly in your freaking bedroom... taking pictures of you.
Hence the flash.
I shot up, momentarily too stunned to remember my purchase from earlier as the camera flew onto the mattress beside my body and his dark form moved toward me, face twisted up into an ugly sneer that had my blood running cold and my stomach dropping hard enough to make me seriously wonder if I was going to be sick all over myself.
My feet hit the floor a split second before a hand closed around my throat, squeezing hard enough to immediately cut off air, pushing until I was flat on my back, his body looming over me. My hands went up, clawing, slapping, trying to punch anything close enough as my head started to go light, my lips tingling, my chest unbearably tight from the need for oxygen.
I was sure I was going to pass out, was going to have sickening things done to me. At that moment, knowing it was going to happen whether I was awake or not, I almost preferred the blissful oblivion of unconsciousness.
But then his grip lessened, stayed, but allowed me to take a frantic, gasping breath, effectively clearing my mind, giving me clarity. And I remembered that while I wasn't overly extraordinary, had no real world-changing skills to speak of, I was absolutely not the kind of woman who would lay there and take it; who didn't try to fight even when her back was against the wall. Or, in my case, against the mattress.
I hadn't spent months trying to keep myself safe the only ways my budget would allow only to give up in the final round.
Hell no.
His hand pressed down hard again, cutting off air, as his other hand reached down and squeezed my breast hard enough to make me arch up.
And that was just about friggen enough.
I pulled my arm as far back as the mattress would allow, balled up my fist, and slammed forward with everything in my decidedly smaller than his, body. My punch landed square in his already-hard dick, making him release my throat and breast simultaneously as he let out a loud cry, hands cupping his crotch.
"You stupid fucking bitch!" he roared, reaching out with one hand and slamming his own fist into the highest point of my cheekbone, making my eyes immediately water and pain ricochet out until the entire left side of my face was throbbing with pain. "You are going to pay for that," he hissed, reaching for his fly and starting to undo it.
I scooted back frantically on the mattress, the only thing I could think was getting away from him. My shoulder brushed the camera, and I reached for it, heart beating so fast I swear I was choking on it. My hand closed around it, and I hurled it at his head, feeling no relief when it whacked him in the nose, making him let out another loud roar.
Because the fact of the matter was, he had gotten his hard dick out of his pants, and I knew, I freaking knew how he was going to make me pay for hurting him.
So there was no relief from the momentary pain I caused him, knowing that if he got his hands on me, I would pay for it in a much longer, more painful way.
I rolled off onto the floor on the far end of the bed, getting up in a blink, inching around my bedroom, trying to make it to the door. There were windows behind me, but I would never be able to get one open before he got to me. They were old and got stuck on good days, stayed stubbornly in place on others, no matter how much I pounded on them.
The only way out was the door.
Screaming wouldn't help me either.
The house to the left of mine was bank owned. The one to the right had a pipe burst a week before, and the owners were staying with family as the place got gutted. Behind, there was a small patch of woods that butted up to an elementary school. There was a quiet road out front and not a living soul for a good mile in any direction.
I was completely and utterly alone in the world.
No one would hear me.
"I like me a little fight," he said, still smiling, still sure he was going to have me eventually.
Chances were, he was right.
I was under no delusions.
His body was blocking the nightstand where my gun was situated. Even if I made it to the door, he would probably catch me halfway down the stairs or before I could get across the house to the front door where I would be barricaded in anyway.
I needed that gun.
It was the only way.
So I did what I really, really didn't want to do - I started inching away from the door, away from unlikely escape. And I inched closer to the side of the bed I had thrown myself off just seconds before.
"Stupid bitch," he mumbled under his breath, but was smiling like he was delighted by my supposed stupidity as he moved away from the side of the bed where my salvation was located and went to sort-of block my escape route to the door as he reached down and stroked himself once, making me have to fight back the urge to heave as my knee hit the side of my bed and I tried to take a deep breath, still my frantic heart before I did the final thing I needed to.
I threw myself across my bed, landing hard on the ground on the other side, my ass hurting more than I thought I should have been able to experience given the adrenaline shooting through my entire system.
Across from me, he snickered.
I looked up to see him advancing me, a promise of awfulness in his eyes as he kept stroking himself.
My hand went up and closed around the cold metal, dragging it down, sliding off the safety, and r
aising both my hands.
Thanks to my research, I knew all about guns.
But I had no idea how my aim was.
"That don't scare me, whore," he growled, but he had stopped stroking himself.
Then he lunged.
And my finger found the trigger and squeezed.
One.
Missed.
Two.
Hit to his shoulder, making him stagger and curse but keep advancing.
Three.
Miss.
Four.
Stomach.
Five.
Chest.
Six, seven, eight...
TWO
Quin
Ten-hour flight.
Ten. Fucking. Hours.
The guy to my left had a hacking, wet cough all ten hours of that, and the woman to my right had a screaming baby that she apparently was trying to teach to self-soothe because she didn't even try to quiet the damn kid down.
Needless to say, I was not in a great mood as I walked into the office, holding my hand up to my receptionist, Jules, as I made my way into my office, pulling at my tie and falling down into my seat. What I really wanted was to be in my own fucking house where I could take a shower, and slip into fresh clothes, and maybe get some ever-loving sleep.
But I hadn't been in the office in four days, and they needed me in to sign off on jobs and approve budgets and all that fun shit that being the boss brought with it.
There was a knock, and I looked up to see Jules stubbornly walking in, her chin raised, her almost see-through blue eyes defiant. That was why I hired her. I had almost kicked her out when she came in for an interview two years before, being all of twenty-years-old, coming in wearing some pantsuit that must have belonged to her mother 'cause it did nothing to show off her good figure, her red hair tied back severely into a bun, with nothing decent on her resume even remotely related to office work. But when I tried to dismiss her, she had lifted that chin, raised a brow, and tore fucking into me.
Were she older, it would have been hot.
But given that she was way too young, really, it was just impressive.
I wasn't generally the kind of man who other grown ass men would launch into. But there she was, tiny slip of a young thing in hand-me-downs, giving me a fucking ear-lashing.
I hired her on the spot and gave her way too high of a salary, telling her that she'd better the hell not let me or any of the men in the office walk all over her.
She promised she wouldn't and, thus far, had made good on that.
I admired it, but at that moment, I wanted to send her ass packing.
"You have a four o'clock with Finn, Smith, and Lincoln. You have ten files to sign off on," she said, dropping said files down. "You have thirteen viable call-backs to possible clients. Immediately. And you have two call-backs to people who Smith decided weren't our kind of cases, but said he would pass them by you before he gave them loss of all hope," she said, putting down two notes with names and numbers.
One was to a man named Willy. Yes, fucking Willy. He wanted me to fix some business shit he got himself into. It seemed low level.
The other was to a woman named Aven Armstrong. It had her number and simply 'stalker' written beside it.
"Stalker?" I asked, exhaling, waving a hand to tell her I needed more than that.
"Right. She said she's had a peeping Tom for months. He has gradually escalated."
"To and from?" I growled, impatient.
"From just peeping and occasionally taking pictures to, ah..." Jules trailed off, her cheeks going a little pink. In our field, there was a lot of crazy shit. Jules had always handled it all with a cool, calm, collected maturity of a person twice her age. Seeing her blush, well, some of my sour mood slipped away, and I had to fight a lip-twitch I felt coming on.
"To what, Jules?"
She took an exaggeratedly long breath and lifted her chin even higher. "To masturbating and rubbing the, ah, ejaculate all over her windows. Banging on her windows. Trying to get in."
Coming on her windows.
He sounded like a real prince.
"Cops?"
"She said she called every time. They never got there fast enough to catch him, and she got the feeling they thought she was just trying to get attention and started being deliberately slower."
"Alright," I said, shrugging. We didn't do stalkers. If I did stalkers, I'd be fucking swimming in stalker cases. "I'll call her and tell her to contact a PI or a private security firm. Not our kinda thing. That it?"
"Yeah," she said, giving me a nod and starting away before stopping suddenly and turning back, a finger raised. "Just one thing..."
"What thing?" I asked, brows drawn low. Jules did her job, no more, no less. She didn't get involved in cases. It was strange that she seemed to be trying to.
"It's just... she said she knew," she said, shrugging a dainty shoulder.
"Knew what?"
"She said she knew that last night was the night."
"The night?" I prompted.
"The night he was going to get in finally and rape or kill her. She said she never believed in something like a gut instinct, but she woke up with one, and she knew."
I sat back, looking at her for a long second, wondering if she was yanking my chain or not. Because she, like everyone I worked with, knew all about how I trusted my gut. The majority of the time, things needed to be dealt with rationally, needed to be thought through. But sometimes, yeah, it was all about that fucking gut instinct. Mine had never steered me wrong before.
Deciding Jules wasn't the type to do that, I nodded.
"Alright, I'll call her now."
She nodded and turned to leave again, then turned back suddenly. "Hey, Quin?"
"Yeah, babe?" I asked distractedly as I reached for the note with this Aven Armstrong's number on it.
"Can you maybe just... go over?" she asked, almost a little shyly.
"Go over?" I repeated, watching her.
"You didn't hear her. She just... sounded so hopeless, Quin," she said, sounding almost a little emotional which was, yet again, not like her.
If this Aven woman's gut was telling her shit was going to go down, and Jules' gut was telling her shit might already have... yeah, maybe all my reports could wait. Maybe I did need to head over.
I stood, nodding. "Alright. Her address isn't on this paper," I said, picking it up and stuffing it into my pocket.
"I will text it to you," she said, seeming at once both more relaxed and somehow more tense all at the same time.
With that, I nodded and passed her and made my way back outside toward my car, dropping in, exhaling hard, and turning it over. My phone bleeped, and I looked down at the address, then plugged it into my GPS. I had moved to Navesink Bank a couple years back, but not long enough for me to know every damn side street of the sprawling town yet.
I drove out, noticing the For Sale sign on one neighbor's yard and the boarded-up windows on the other house.
Perfect situation for a stalker.
Then there were the fucking woods behind her house too.
It was like she was asking for the least amount of protection possible. That being said, it was in a shit area, and it was a tiny little shack of a house that needed serious work. She probably got it on a song and had, at one time, had neighbors within yelling distance.
No wonder shit had escalated, I decided, parking my car beside what must have been her busted up silver sedan, a good twenty years old and one that had probably been a lemon to begin with.
She wouldn't have been able to afford my firm. That was just the plain truth. And she, so long as she wasn't a complete idiot, must have known it.
She had been desperate. I walked up the front path to the front door, finding the screen closed, but the solid door open.
Maybe anyone else might have missed it, but I saw them - the tiny scratches that said someone had tried (maybe successfully) to pick the lock.
Feeling my stomach clench, th
e unmistakable feeling I got when I knew shit hit the fan, I reached into my chest-holster for my gun, pulling it out and holding it only halfway up as I pushed the door open and silently stepped inside. There was a bookshelf sitting awkwardly in the middle of the floor; it was a place no one in their right mind would put a bookshelf. So chances were, it had been in front of the door, and it had been pushed open.
Yep.
The Aven woman must have been right about her gut instinct.
I steeled myself for what I might find, knowing that a stalker, once they escalated to breaking in, yeah, they didn't want to sit and chat over tea and cookies. No, they wanted to get what they thought was their man or woman, take what they felt was rightfully theirs. And seeing as it wasn't rightfully theirs, they took it by force.
Nothing, fucking nothing worse than rape.
Last goddamn thing in the world I wanted to walk into the aftermath of.
A low, threatening growl stopped me dead, freezing my heart in my chest for a moment. Dogs were a wildcard. Sometimes they just growled because they knew they were supposed to but were never the kind who could lunge. But you couldn't count on that. Many would charge.
I turned slowly to see a Pitbull standing in the kitchen doorway, shoulders hunched, but head lowered, letting out the growl again. Seeing me look at him, he whined slightly and moved a step back.
Deciding he was likely not a threat, I looked around the small space before setting my sights on the stairs, going up them sideways so I could see below me in case the dog decided to find his balls when I wasn't facing him as I made my way up to the second floor where, I imagined, the bedroom was located.
I could smell it.
That was how long I had been in the fucking business. Before I was even halfway up the stairs, I smelled blood.
Reminding myself to breathe, not to be pissed that a situation like this had slipped through our fingers even though it wasn't our usual kind of case.
I stepped into the doorway, and I heard it. Again, I had been in my line of work for too fucking long. I heard the slide of the safety.
My arm raised fully as I took the last stair, aiming in the direction where I heard the sound.
The Fixer Page 2