“Please,” Tyler pushed, wanting to know if Austin was really okay. “She was fine. I got to her and she was fine, but she literally collapsed in my arms. I want to know if my wife is okay.”
As he watched them work, Tyler felt the helplessness take over. He stood up, listening to Tom to tell the medics what was going to happen and how, and he found himself pacing backwards with his hands on his head. He didn’t care about the station burning down behind him, his wife trumped anything. As he watched Tom thank the medics, he stopped pacing. He waited for him to stand up and walk towards him before he even began to think about dropping his hands down.
“Her blood pressure’s a little high, but we can take her home from here. I don’t think she’d appreciate waking up in a hospital, Ty. We just have to make sure she’s rested,” Tom told Tyler with a weak smile.
Tyler didn’t reply, he just rushed forward, forgetting everything for a moment as he scooped his wife up into his arms and carried her to the nearest car so he could take her home.
***
Coming too, Austin found she was staring up at the ceiling of her living room. She breathed in deeply, the clarity in her head disturbed by the pounding headache that was beating around her skull. She could hear talking in the distance and knew everyone was in the kitchen. She didn’t move; she just listened.
“Why weren’t you inside?” Tom asked confused. He had wanted to ask Tyler what happened, but between Austin fainting and getting home there had been a level of hysteria that no one managed a chance to ask the poignant question. “You said you were there.”
“We were. We got a tip literally right after you called,” Tyler told them as he looked to Michael and then back to them. “I thought you could just wait for us in my office. It was a dead lead so we didn’t have to wait long to get back. I didn’t expect this to happen. I didn’t know you had Aus with you.”
“Yeah, she took us all by surprise,” Jane joked, her tone mirthless. “If you had been in there, that would have killed her. She would have lost all her fight entirely unless we managed to get Gracie back.”
“We are getting our daughter back,” Tyler admitted, his voice hard and convicting.
As she heard that, Austin knew she couldn’t just linger on the sidelines any longer. Sitting up, Austin couldn’t resist the urge to groan in pain as her head fell into her hands.
“Aus?” Tyler asked gently as he advanced towards from the kitchen doorway. “Hey, Sunny,” he continued as he came to sit in front of her on the coffee table. “Tom thought you might have a headache so we got you some tablets ready.” He gently took one of her hands as she sat up a little and pushed the pain relief into her palm, reaching for a drink. “You okay?”
“I guess so,” she muttered, taking the pills appreciatively. She swallowed and looked to him, her eyes sore from the beating of tears earlier. “God, this is such a mess.” She sat up slowly, continuing back until she was against the back of the couch. She rubbed her hand to her shoulder, caressing the pain away with the warmth of her palm.
“We’ll sort it.” Tyler tried to remain optimistic for her, but he was gradually failing that small feat.
Austin sat forward again, taking her husband’s hand in hers. “I thought you died, Ty. Our last conversation was you angry with me. I thought you had died and I’d never get my chance to apologize. I watched that building burn and I had all this regret in me and all this horror.” She sniffed and looked down at her scarred arm. “I could feel it again,” she whispered, her hand running over the scarred skin. “I felt like I was back there. I thought you were suffering like that.”
“Hey now,” Tyler responded, he rose slightly, maneuvering to the couch with Austin. He sat beside her, taking her in his arms once more. “By some stroke of luck there was only myself, Michael and Steve in the building, and Natasha gave us a tip that she had left Grace somewhere close. She gave us the address and we left. It was a dead lead. We heard the explosion and rushed right back. I didn’t expect to find my wife on the ground sobbing when she should have been in the hospital.”
“I meant to discharge myself. I told a nurse I’d wait for a doctor, but I just left. Natasha called me, but this time she taunted me, telling me how she wanted you. She told me how she’s only doing this for you to notice her. I begged for Grace again, but she laughed me off. When she told me there was a surprise for me at the station I had to get there.” Austin’s speech began to pick up pace as she became frantic with the way today had become.
“Hey, I know,” Tyler tried to calm her again. “We’ve sorted it with the hospital and Tom’s going to look after you just in case. As for Natasha, she has my attention, but I don’t think she’ll want me for much longer.”
“She loves you,” Austin snorted.
“And by the time I’m through with her she’ll hate me,” Tyler spoke coldly, his tone turning callous and distant for a moment. “Hell will freeze over before I run off into the sunset with her, and if I find out she even harmed a hair on Grace’s head, she will regret the day she ever met me.”
“She’s got a lot of hate to fight through,” Austin scoffed, unable to stop the laughter. She hated to hear Tyler fired up in a demeaning way, but his daughter was gone too and she couldn’t dispute that he had a right to be like this, to act like this. He was losing everything too. He had to deal with her being shot as well as Grace missing. She had to deal with his potential death and Grace missing. They were equals in this just like they always were. “We will get our life back wont we?”
“Yes,” Tyler whispered. “Please believe we will.”
“I do,” she admitted to him softly. “After you left me, I was broken more than ever, but your words hit me. I’m letting her win by not fighting.”
Planting a kiss to his wife’s head, Tyler lingered a moment to absorb her scent, before he pulled back. “I acted how I did to break you down, Austin. I need you to find that fight in you. You need to find it and use it.”
“I’ve found it.” The statement was filled with clarity, no bouts of feebleness or loss because it wasn’t a lie. The moment she thought Tyler had died everything in her changed. She felt lost, on a downward spiral, but the moment he came to her, alive and well, she found herself looking at everything differently. Since Grace had disappeared she had felt a part of her lost, now she felt herself wanting to have it all back. She found the spark that had diminished, ignite brighter than ever.
“She’s not going to win,” Austin whispered, her gaze set on the family photo that sat by the big-screen TV. “Over my dead body will she win.”
Tyler didn’t want to smile, but hearing those words meant his wife was back with a fighting spirit.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
TYLER crept along the hallway towards his bedroom. He froze for a moment, lingering on the spot in the middle of the landing. He looked around at how normal everything was. Everything had been tidied up after Natasha’s attack. Nothing was broken, smashed, tarnished, or out of place. It was like she had never been there.
Austin had recounted her every step on this landing. How Grace had come out of the bedroom and caught her off guard which was how Natasha was able to give her one final shove to force her down the stairs. Closing his eyes, Tyler remembered helping wash Austin and he had traced every bruise that marred the entirety of her back. He knew the damage her body had suffered. He listened to her cry over Grace seeing her take a bullet and how she had told her to simply go to the cubby, which Tyler had built, between their rooms. He hated hearing how his wife fought, but he had never been more filled with pride over everything she told them.
Shaking himself from his haze, he pressed on and went over to the master bedroom. He was unknowingly thankful for Austin wanting to stay home and not at one of their parents’ houses. He opened the door, ready to climb onto the bed and wake Austin with kisses. “Oh,” he mastered as she stopped in the doorway. “I thought you were still asleep.”
Austin gave a small smile. “Sleepin
g doesn’t find our baby.”
With a sigh, Tyler went into the room, closing the door a little behind him. “I know I wanted you to find some fight, Aus, but I didn’t want you to go to the other end of the spectrum. You need to rest.”
“I can’t sit and relax,” Austin argued with him, her tone was soft, but she was exasperated nonetheless. “I can relax when Grace is home.”
Knowing he wouldn’t be able to tell her otherwise, he caved and allowed her this decision. He knew their families combined would force her to at least rest a little while they fought to get Gracie home and have Natasha forced back behind a cell. He walked over to her, kissed the crown of her head, and told her he would wait for her downstairs.
Appreciative to have some time alone, Austin took a moment to just breathe, before she attempted to get up and brush her teeth in the en suite. She had managed to get dressed alone; Tyler knew he couldn’t mollycoddle her and she loved how he didn’t push and make her feel like an invalid. He had made her feel loved and looked after without the suffocating heaviness.
Once she was done, she went to face the music. She was settled by the fact that the house didn’t cast her back to the night Grace was taken. The memories she had with Tyler and Grace were so much more vivid. The first time he came home to her being pregnant, their wedding night, the night she went into labor. She remembered the day Grace was brought home from the hospital and every milestone after. Austin remembered running after Grace in a game of catch, every tear spilt with her temper tantrums, every giggle she omitted when they baked or when Tyler came in and kissed her lovingly.
That was something even Natasha couldn’t take away from them.
Walking out of the bedroom, Austin began to march across the landing, ready to find her daughter and fight for her all over again. However, she caught a glimpse of something out of place in Grace’s room. Walking towards the door, her heart cramped at the sight of Tyler sitting in the room, quiet as a mouse, contemplative.
“Hey you,” Austin murmured from Grace’s doorway. “What you up to?”
Tyler looked up as his wife crossed the small space between his position and the door. He then looked back at the cubbyhole that he sat beside. “Remember how when there was a thunderstorm she used to make us come and sleep in here with her?”
Austin smiled at the memory as she slid down the wall next to Tyler. “Yeah, it always was a tight squeeze.” She gave a small laugh. “I think when she comes home it will be the perfect excuse for a sleepover in there. Just you, me, and Gracie.”
“I think so too,” Tyler agreed as he reached out and took her hand in his. “When I promise to bring her home, I mean it. I don’t care what it takes or what I have to say or do. Gracie will be back in our arms and away from that monster.”
“Remember,” Austin started, turning slightly onto her hip to face him, “You don’t need to make her a monster to me. You loved her; it’s a human feeling, Ty. I don’t hate you or blame you for loving her. It happened.”
“But look what it’s doing to us now,” Tyler began to fret. “She even told you she wanted my attention. She wanted me to see that she loves me. It’s all on me.”
“It’s all on us,” Austin fought a little harder for his rationality. “She’s doing it to get back at me as well. She’s doing it to ruin my life by getting you. Don’t think I’m going to allow you to just blame yourself. I won’t let you.”
Tyler looked down at their clasped hands. “This had made me value you more. I love you more than ever. I love Gracie more than I ever thought. I never thought it was possible to love you two more than life itself, but I really do.”
“I know,” Austin whispered, bringing their joined hands up so she could kiss his. “I wouldn’t be here without you and your fight.” She allowed their hands to drop, and then moved her body so she was crawling over his and going into the crawl space.
“What are you up to?” he asked her, his brow knitting together the more he watched her.
“You coming?” she asked him over her shoulder. She spun around and sat down. She knew he couldn’t see her head now as she sat in the cubbyhole, so all she did was pat the cushioned flooring in front of her. “In you come, Mr. Armstrong.”
He didn’t need to be told twice. He climbed in on all fours, and as he made it inside, he watched as Austin laid down. He copied her, settled beside her, and even pulled the door too, plunging them into total darkness. The only light was from the small crack around the doors on either side of the room. They knew the light in there worked, but neither moved to turn it on.
“I missed having you in my arms like this,” Tyler commented as he held onto her tightly. He felt like if he let her go then he’d lose her forever. “I hate seeing you in a hospital bed.”
“I hate being in them,” she replied with a small piece of sarcasm in her tone. She didn’t move; she just stared into the darkness. “I honestly thought she had left Grace at the station, Ty.”
“I know,” he admitted, having heard Tom’s account of what had happened. He knew how passionately Austin had believed their daughter was there. “Natasha will get bored soon. None of her plans have worked so far. She’s scared us, that’s it, but she’s no closer to getting what she wants out of any of this right now. She’ll start to panic and she’ll mess up.”
“You’ve been spending way too much time with Michael,” Austin joked, laughing at the similarities between the two. “You’re starting to think like they do.”
“Doesn’t mean I’m becoming one. He’s just helped me opened my mind to what drives Natasha,” Tyler told her, channeling his inner cop alongside what he had picked up from Michael.
“You,” Austin told Tyler. Her voice quaked, and it wasn’t the admittance she wanted to say, but it was the honest truth. “You and Grace are what she wants. You’re the biggest piece of bait we have.”
“If it comes to it I will step up as bait.” Tyler resigned himself to the fact.
Austin took a deep breath, closed her eyes and spoke, “I know.”
There was a moment of silence; just careful breathing and contemplative minds working. Austin laid against her husband’s chest and just enjoyed the feel of his arms around her. Tyler, however, was working up war plans. He was thinking of ways to bring Natasha out of hiding. He wondered if he could call her, or draw her out when she next phoned - if she phoned.
“Can you stop thinking so loudly?” Austin suddenly broke the silence between, and she sat up as he chuckled. “I want you to make a pact with me.”
“What’s that?” Tyler asked, looking up at the blackened mass that he could make out.
“When our life is back together, we seriously look at better security and we never look back,” Austin asked mirthfully, needing this moment of playfulness between them. “Once Natasha is caught that is it, she’s gone. She’s out of our lives forever after this.”
“Deal,” Tyler caved easily, liking her idea of a compromise. “I would have asked you the exact same thing.” Tyler pulled her back down to him and kissed her. “I also want baby number two. Grace needs a partner in crime like I have you.”
“Let’s get Grace back and then ask me about that last part,” Austin quipped, not ruling the idea out entirely. “We don’t feel complete without her anymore.”
“We really don’t,” Tyler agreed quickly, his heart clenching at how the void in him seemed to ache at the thought of not having Grace near. “I remember when it was always you and I. We were the pair, the inseparable ones. Now it’s always the three of us. I don’t want to be a pair again.”
“We won’t be.” Austin tried to calm Tyler’s woes. They were both fluctuating between emotions, both volatile to any sudden change in motion, but they were in it together. When one was up, the other was down. When one was calm, the other was fretting. They balanced each other out. As the silence settled, Austin forgot about all of her problems, all of the pains. “I wish we could stay here.”
“We can for a little while
,” Tyler told her, not willing to relent his hold on her for a moment. “Michael’s trying to pull some strings, so right now, we can just stay here until he has something for us.”
“Good,” she sighed heavenly, and just tried to forget the panic that resided in her.
“Stop hiding,” Tom said as he threw the door open. “Mom’s cooked breakfast.”
Tyler kissed his giggling wife before he crawled back out into the open of Grace’s room.
***
“He’s been outside a long time,” Austin worried as she looked out onto the back deck at Michael. She had watched his every step - back, forth, back, forth. It was incessant and concentrated. He was yet to put the phone down, and at times looked like he was in a heated conversation.
“He’s onto something,” Tyler suddenly added after a moment lapsed by. “He would have given up long ago if he wasn’t. He’s not a patient man unless it’s something important.”
Austin said nothing, but slid her hand across the table to take Tyler’s. It was a silent move of support, showing their togetherness and their willingness to share the pain and to not leave it alone. Austin did it more or less to help her new found state of strength. Without Tyler she wouldn’t have found her fight again. This time she wasn’t going to lose it.
“You’re too quiet,” Tom commented as he came into the room. He had noticed how after breakfast they were withdrawn towards everyone. He saw them both agree silently and set about what he needed to. “You sure you feeling okay?” Tom asked as he sat in front of Austin. He leaned in and began to peel the bandage from her shoulder, but he was also worried about her paleness. “You don’t look good.”
“I’m tired,” she admonished his worry quickly. “Tired, stressed, in pain, but I’m okay. I promise.”
“I worry,” Tom murmured as he set about cleaning her healing wound.
“I know you do and I love you for it, but really, Tom, I’m fine,” Austin appreciated her brother. In the years she had been back, she was always a number one priority. Even when Alice stepped onto the scene as something important to Tom, Austin remained a top priority to him. “I’ll just be happier when this is all over and we can move on.”
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