by Shandi Boyes
27
The clatter of a chair scraping across the floor awakens me from my restless sleep. Rubbing my tiredness from my eyes with the back of my hand, I crank my neck to peer at the clock on my bedside table. It's 4:17 AM. I’ve been lying in bed the past six hours, but have barely slept two. I slump back onto my pillow, hoping to block out the world long enough to ease the thumping of my temples.
My endeavor to get more sleep fails when the softest tickle of fur brushes my forearm. I jackknife to a half-seated position, sending a flurry of dizziness to my head. My hands shoot up to my temples, circulating them to soothe the nausea roaring to my throat.
Once the desire to vomit has eased, I drift my eyes to the cause for my startled response. Mr. Bunny is lying at my side, tucked into the blankets. He wasn’t there when I went to sleep. I’m certain of it. I stop staring at Mr. Bunny when a second scuff-like noise booms into my ears.
Slipping out of bed, I pad to the door. My footing is unsteady, shocked by Lexi’s early awakening. She hasn’t seen the sun come up since the day Jackson dragged her to Fosterfields Living Historical Farm.
I lighten the tap of my feet when a male moan breaks through the sound of my pulse shrilling in my ears. I clutch at my chest, equally revolted and relieved. My darn sister and her propensity to get naughty in any spot other than her bedroom nearly gave me a heart attack.
Not wanting to bust Jackson and Lexi in a compromising position, I tiptoe backward. “Shit,” I grumble when I crash into something halfway down the hall.
“Cleo, what the hell are you doing sneaking around so early?” Lexi’s voice is groggy as if she has just woken up.
Lexi’s drooping eyelids pop open when a painful grunt echoes down the corridor.
“Where’s Jackson?” I don’t know why I whisper my question, but my intuition is screaming at me to remain quiet.
“He was called into surgery a few hours ago,” Lexi answers, her voice as shallow as mine. “Something about a mass casualty. . .” She ends her sentence with a shrug.
Our eyes rocket to the kitchen entrance when a second groan resonates into the corridor, this one sounding like a man in pain.
“Go into Mom and Dad’s room and lock the door,” I instruct, shoving Lexi down the hall.
“No, Cleo. I’m—” The rest of her sentence is drowned out when I cup my hand over her mouth.
My desire to keep her safe fuels me with so much strength, I drag her down the hall without breaking into a sweat. Throwing open our parents’ bedroom door, I roughly push her inside. With adrenaline thickening my veins, my shove is more powerful than I anticipated. Lexi lands on her backside with a sickening thud. I grimace, hating that I've hurt her, but determined to keep her safe, I tuck away that flare of emotion.
Lifting my finger to my lips, requesting she remain quiet, I quickly scamper out of my parents’ room, shutting their thick wood door behind me.
My hand rattles out of control when I twist the key, locking Lexi inside. She bangs on the door, her hits loud enough for me to hear, but not sufficient enough to stop the man in our kitchen from groaning once more.
"Cleo, let me out," Lexi begs, her voice breaking into a sob.
I place my hand over the area her banging is coming from before whispering. “Call the police. Tell them we have an intruder and stay on the phone with them until they arrive. Do not come out of this room for anything. Do you understand me?” My last sentence is laced with worry.
“Cleo, please.”
“I love you, Lexi the Leech.” So much so, I’ll never let anything bad happen to you.
With my stomach lodged in my throat, I spin on my heels and head toward the man groaning. My heart thrashes against my chest with every step I take down the eerily black corridor. I keep the lights off, knowing the floorplan well enough to use it to my advantage. The hairs on my arms stand to attention when I stop at my bedroom door to collect the stainless steel baseball bat I keep hidden behind my door.
You know that feeling you get when someone is watching you? It’s overwhelming me right now. I freeze, paralyzed with fear when I lean on my bedroom door too hard, hurtling its loud creak down the hall.
Straightening my spine, I pull the bat behind my back when a large shadow fills the entrance to my kitchen. From the build alone, I can tell it's a male, much less the overpowering testosterone sucking oxygen from the air.
“Cleo,” gargles a voice I’ve heard many times before—of one who plunged to his death weeks ago.
I take a step backward, crashing into my door when Richard steps out of the alcove, allowing the street lights beaming in the living room to illuminate half of his face.
“It was you? At the gala tonight?” I ask, hating that my quivering voice exposes the nerves making my skin a sticky, clammy mess.
“Yes.” Richard nods weakly. “And the pizzeria. And Toloache. And the fundraising gala--”
“And the notes in my room,” I interrupt, my words as bewildered as my facial expression.
Richard locks his eyes with mine before shaking his head. “No, those notes were not from me. I only left you one note. The one Andy gave you.”
I gingerly shake my head when he steps closer to me, bringing the knife he is clutching to within striking distance. My fear could be unwarranted since he is fisting the knife at his side, but the fact he is approaching me in my house, armed, and weeks after his supposed death has my panic surging to an alarming level.
He lowers his eyes to my stomach. “Are you pregnant like the reports said?” he questions as his Adam’s apple bobs up and down.
A tear falls from my eye when I timidly nod. Is that what caused his sudden reappearance? News of my pregnancy?
Richard returns his eyes to mine, the worry in them uncontainable. “Why didn’t you read my note, Cleo?” he asks as his massively dilated gaze bounces between mine.
“I did,” I reply, pulling the bat out from behind my back to display I’m armed.
Although his eyes are tainted with dread, there is a gleam in them warning me of impending danger. He looks more fearful now than when I was dangling precariously off a cliff months ago, but instead of looking like a man who is seconds away from rescuing me, his composure is exuding a man who is about to wreak havoc on another.
A ghost of a smile cracks onto Richard's mouth when he spots the bat clutched in my hand. "Good girl," he murmurs, sounding pleased. "I've got you. We’ll get out of this together. You've just got to trust me. Do you trust me, Cleo?" Half of his confident declaration is lost to a wheezy bout of coughing.
He stumbles down the hall, bracing himself against the wall as if he can't walk without support. My panic surges to an all-time high when my vision clears enough to see large droplets of blood on his chin and the neckline of his shirt.
“Do you trust me, Cleo?” Fear clutches my throat when I notice his teeth are smeared with blood. “We won’t get out of this alive if you don’t trust me.”
My head instinctively nods, causing tears to roll down my cheeks. I don’t know if it's panic forcing me to cowardly nod, or the plea in his massively dilated gaze. Just like the minutes leading up to his death, his eyes are open and raw, exposing he is a man I should trust, not fear.
“Good. Then run!” Richard roars, startling Lexi so much she furiously bangs on our parents’ bedroom door over and over again. “Run, Cleo, and don’t look back!”
He pivots on his heels and charges down the hall with the large knife held out in front of his blood-stained body. His steps are more furious than the ones he used mere seconds ago.
Paralyzed with fear, I watch him tackle a second man I didn’t see hiding in the shadows. The concealed man grunts when he crashes into the entranceway table; Richard’s hit was so firm, he knocked him nearly twelve feet.
“Run, Cleo, Run!” Lexi screams at the top of her lungs.
Her frantic scream pushes me into survival mode.
Spinning, I race down the hall as fast as my shuddering legs can t
ake me. I fumble over my feet when a loud boom echoes down the hall two seconds later. “That one was in his stomach; the next one will be in his head.”
The audible click of a gun’s hammer freezes my heart. "What do you want? I don't have much, but I'll give you everything I have."
A chill of dread runs down my spine when a familiar voice replies, “I want you. I’ve always wanted you.”
Through a wobbly pair of knees, I turn around to face a man who just became a stranger to me. Even cloaked in darkness, I am confident my rattled brain has identified the man standing before me. I'm so sure, I'll boldly confirm he is the man I was dancing with mere hours ago without even seeing his face.
“Dexter, what are you doing?” I lower my panicked eyes to Richard, who is slumped on the floor. Although he is motionless, I seek comfort in the fact his chest is rising and falling.
“No,” I plead when Dexter emerges from the shadow to yank the knife out of Richard’s grasp, not caring that he slices his hand in the process. “He isn’t a part of this, Dexter. He has nothing to do with anything happening between us.”
My chin quivers when Dexter lifts his eyes to me. They’re almost lifeless, black and hollow. “No? Then why did he give you this?” A piece of crumpled paper floats across the floor before landing at my bare feet. It's the slip of paper Andy handed me at the gala three weeks ago. He must have stolen it out of my purse when he gathered our belongings off the floor in the storage room.
“It’s just a riddle; it doesn’t mean anything.”
Dexter laughs. It's the laugh of an evil man. “A riddle with my love’s address and phone number on it means nothing?! Don’t treat me like an idiot!” he roars before backhanding me.
The bat falls to the floor with a clatter when I raise my hands to protect my face from another blow. My first instinct is to fight back, but the lights beaming through the glass paneling on the side of my entranceway door ensures I can’t mistake what Dexter is aiming at me. He has a gun pointed at my stomach.
“I know Richard went to Florida to show you want he found. I know he’s been sending you sneaky messages.” My roots pull from my scalp when he fists my hair and yanks me to within an inch of his face. “And I know he wants to make you his.” His sneer covers my throbbing cheek with spit.
I painfully hit the wall when he throws me backward as if I am as light as a feather. "The only thing he hasn't worked out is, you don't belong to anyone but me. I suffered the loss. I endured the pain. I get the reward for years of heartache. Not Richard. Not Marcus. Not the fucking man who stole the love of my life. Me! I get it! He took the woman I love, so, in return, I get to take his."
I flinch when he crouches down in front of me to curl his hand around my throat. “An eye for an eye. A death for a death. A love for a love. That’s how life works, isn’t it?” He drags the barrel of the gun down my cheek, his pressure so firm, a trail of blood follows its wake. “Now there’s just one problem I must take care of first. If he had just followed the rules as I had instructed, all of this could have been avoided.”
His eyes stray to Richard, who is gagging on his own blood. “But since he is too pathetic to do as asked, I must take care of business myself. You think Stephen’s death would have warned him I do not appreciate being double-crossed. Richard was supposed to fix the error made while I watched from the wings like I did the night you were attacked in the alley.”
My chin quivers when he returns his evil eyes to me. They’re dark and lifeless, but also display what he is saying is true. “Stephen was supposed to rattle you until I arrived as your savior. I didn’t give him permission to touch you the way he did. But be assured, my sweet Cleo, your face was the last thing Stephen saw before I sent him to hell for touching what is mine. Nobody touches what is mine! Nobody!” he roars through gritted teeth.
His nostrils flare as anger lines his face. “He should have walked away as instructed, then I wouldn’t be forced to fix his mistakes.” I assume he is still talking about Richard until he replaces his gun with the knife he took from Richard as mumbling, "If my research on the female anatomy is correct, right about here will fix the errors Marcus made while keeping your vital organs intact."
My eyes widen when the coolness of a blade digs into my lower stomach. My pleas for clemency trap in my throat when he tightens his grip, stealing my ability to breathe, much less talk.
As his eyes frolic between mine, the evil in them grows. "Sit still. I don't want too much damage done, as you never know, one day we may want children of our own."
I spit in his face, my last fighting defense since his hold on my neck has me drifting in and out of consciousness. My vision blurs as white spots dance in front of my eyes. I slump against the wall, floating into darkness when he tightens his hold around my neck even more.
My eyes bulge when the searing pain of a knife slicing my skin forces me back into consciousness. The pain is intense, ten times worse than anything I’ve experienced. I don’t just feel the pain in my stomach, but in my heart as well.
Dexter stares into my eyes, enjoying watching the life inside me vanish with every inch of the blade he painstakingly slants into my stomach. My hands wrap around his, willfully fighting to stop him harming my unborn baby, but I’m too weak to compete against a man his size. I’m barely conscious, much less lucid enough to comprehend that the more I fight, the further his knife inches in.
I wheeze uncontrollably as sticky, warm liquid covers my hands. I drift between blackness and light as Dexter whispers in my ear, updating me on all the places we’ll visit during our relationship, and how happy I’ll be now that I’ve stopped fighting him. He apologizes for hurting me before expressing his undying love for me, and how in time, I’ll understand why he went to such lengths for our relationship.
"When you love someone, no one stands in your way. In time, Cleo, you'll thank me for what I did. I've saved your bastard child from a lifetime of misery, like my parents should have done for me."
My head slumps forward when he releases my neck from his grip. My lungs fight to fill with oxygen but the blood oozing out of my stomach hinders their efforts. Feeling the blackness rolling in, I lift my head and stare into Dexter’s eyes. My first lot of words are garbled by the bile sitting in the back of my throat. They are incoherent and breathless.
Realizing I’m trying to talk, Dexter tilts his head to the side. My blood-stained lips tickle his earlobe when I whisper, “I’ll never be yours.”
He rears back suddenly, stunned by the callousness of my sneered words.
Wanting him to feel the pain searing my heart in half, I add on, “I hate you.”
Happy my Garcia stubbornness has reigned supreme, I allow the blackness to take over.
28
“Requesting assistance to 160 Valley Road, Montclair. We need a trauma unit and multiple first responders. Officer down. I repeat, officer down.”
A ragged groan expels from my lips when someone pushes hard on my stomach. My eyes pop open as a furious pain scorches my veins. I thought having my wisdom tooth extracted without anesthesia was painful. This is ten times worse. It’s not just the pain of the knife still stabbing my stomach causing tears; it's wondering if my baby and sister are safe.
Seeking an update, my lips move. Nothing but painful grunts escape my blood-stained mouth. Fear clutches my heart, stricken with grief my unborn baby has been seriously injured by the knife still stabbed in my stomach.
Suddenly panicked I’m still in Dexter’s presence, I attempt to sit up, my desire to protect my sister and unborn baby more dire than dealing with the pain swallowing me whole.
“Stay down, baby, an ambulance is on its way.”
I slump back onto the floor where I’m sprawled, certain I’m dreaming, as that voice sounded remarkably like Marcus.
I’m not dreaming. The ashen face of Marcus enters my peripheral vision not even two seconds later. “Stay awake, baby. Keep your eyes open and on me,” he pleads, staring at me with hollow
, black eyes. “You’re going to be okay. Both of you. Just stay with me. Alright?”
Weakly nodding, I do as requested, gasping through the pain striving to overwhelm me. My breathing is garbled, weakened by the panic curled around my throat, and my vision is hazy from an incalculable number of tears swamping my eyes. The pain in my heart is as horrendous as the stab wound to my stomach. I can’t believe this is happening. Nothing makes any sense. Other than foolishly kissing Dexter two weeks ago, I haven’t done anything to warrant this type of retaliation, much less my innocent unborn baby.
Seemingly reading my inner monologue, Marcus mumbles, “The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man; some just aren’t capable of ignoring the temptation.” The pain in his words cut me raw. They are tinged with regret, sorrow, and remorse. His voice is the most devastated I’ve ever heard.
Before I can issue him silent comfort with my eyes, Shian drops at his side. "How is she?" Her gaze dances between Marcus and me. Her dark eyes are as wide as Marcus's, and they are also brimming with as many tears.
“Losing too much blood; where are the paramedics?” Marcus’s voice is laced with uncontrollable worry.
“They’re on their way.” The sound of sirens wailing in the distance strengthens Shian’s assurance.
“Brodie?”
I feel like an angel floating on a cloud, both woozy and free. Attacks of dizziness are as regular as breathing for me the past three weeks, but this feels different; it almost seems unreal.
Shian swallows harshly before replying, “He got shot three times. One in the arm, one in the spleen, and one in the chest. Fellow agents are working on him. He is still with us—barely.”
I swallow the horrid taste in the back of my throat before forcing out, “Lexi?” My one word is so garbled I can hardly understand what I said.
Thankfully, Marcus can read the silent plea in my eyes. “Lexi is okay; she is safe and uninjured,” he assures me.