by Carl Weber
“I don’t care how late it is, just call me back. There’s so much that I need to tell you, and I really need your help,” was the message he left when he got the attorney’s voice mail.
Kasen ended the call, wondering who else he could reach out to. Patrice definitely knew more than she had been willing to admit. Her behavior in his office had been crazy, but she was his only hope at this point, so he decided to call her to see if she would tell him anything else. He went to his home office and checked his online patient files to get her phone number. There were two numbers listed, but after trying to call each one, he discovered that they were both non-working numbers. This just deepened the mystery for him. Who the hell was Patrice really?
Since Voncile handled all patient files, he wondered if she would know why Patrice had provided fake numbers. It didn’t really matter, though, because it wasn’t like he could call Voncile and ask her. After being in her creepy-ass house, he knew he wouldn’t be able to have a normal conversation with her. He wouldn’t be able to hold back from asking about Omar’s phone, and the way she’d been acting lately, she just might call the cops on him for breaking into her house. The last thing Kasen needed was to be arrested on some bullshit charge while Raine was still missing and probably in need of help.
Kasen couldn’t believe the brick walls he’d been running into. He paced the floor, racking his brain for an idea on how to proceed now that everywhere he’d turned wound up being a dead end.
When the doorbell rang, he felt a moment of relief, thinking maybe the fat cop had sent a detective over after all. Then again, what if they were sending someone over to charge him with breaking and entering? He headed to the door nervous, with his stomach in knots. What he saw when he opened the door nearly caused him to collapse from shock.
Raine was standing in front of him with tears rolling down her face, snot dripping from her nose. Her hair was wild and matted, her face appeared swollen, and her clothes were completely disheveled. Her bare feet were so ashy it looked like she had been dancing in flour. She could barely get her dry lips to open, but Kasen didn’t care what she looked like or what she had to say. He snatched her into his arms and held her tightly.
“Oh my God. Baby, where have you been?”
Her body trembled as she sobbed against his chest, unable to speak. Kasen softly rubbed her back, comforting her and also feeling comforted himself by her presence. Until now, he had worried that he would never see her again.
He was so caught up in the moment that he hadn’t noticed the white man parked in a truck in front of his house, watching the whole scene. Now as Kasen looked at him, the man hurried to brush away a tear. Kasen narrowed his eyes at the man as he lifted Raine away from his chest.
“Who is that man?” he asked, angrily recalling her letter that said she was leaving him for another man. Kasen felt totally confused. He loved Raine with all his heart, but he also hated her for leaving him the way she had.
Raine finally found her voice. “That man saved me. He found me on the side of the road outside the house where I was being held. A woman named Patrice—”
“Patrice?” Kasen shouted.
Raine nodded her head, looking at Kasen through wide, frightened eyes.
His anger scared her, but as Kasen started to put the pieces together, his anger wasn’t directed at her. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was starting to put the pieces together, and his subconscious mind told him that Raine had never left him for another man.
“Tell me how you know Patrice,” he said.
“Your secretary Voncile brought me to her house,” Raine explained. “Voncile kidnapped me.”
Kasen’s whole body felt weak, and he had to sit down on the front steps to keep from falling over. He reached out for Raine’s hand, and she sat down next to him. With his chest heaving, his heart pounding, and tears in his eyes, he said, “Tell me everything.”
As Raine launched into her tragic story about the day she had answered the door at their house to find Kasen’s secretary standing there, the white man in the truck drove away. Now it was just Kasen and Raine alone, trying to make sense of the nightmare that had unfolded to disrupt their lives.
“Kidnapped,” Kasen said incredulously when Raine finished telling him about how she had let Voncile in, was hit over the head, and later woke up to find herself in Voncile’s house. Now he knew for sure who had scratched the word HELP into the wall. “I am so sorry this happened to you, baby. I had no idea Voncile was this kind of person.”
Now it was Raine’s turn to be angry. She looked at him with fire in her eyes. “Yeah, I guess you were too busy fucking her to notice what kind of a person she was.”
Kasen opened his mouth to speak, but she shut him down before he even got started.
“Don’t you dare try to deny it, Kasen. She set up a TV in the room where I was being held. I had to watch you having sex with her.” Once the words left her mouth, she was sobbing again because the memory brought back the pain of the betrayal.
Kasen wiped away a tear as it rolled down his cheek. “You’re right. I did it, and I am so sorry for that. I know I made the wrong choice, but I thought you were gone with another man, and I was hurting. I was devastated to think that you left me on the same day that I proposed to you.”
“Why would you think that?” she asked.
“The letter that I found at the house,” he answered. “You said there was another man.”
She shook her head wildly. “There was no other man, and I didn’t write any letter. I just told you what happened that day. Voncile was here.”
As she said the words, everything suddenly made sense to him. “Oh my God. It’s all my fault. She knew I was going to propose to you that day—I told her I was going to buy a ring—and that’s why she kidnapped you. Now it’s so obvious that Voncile wrote that letter. Why didn’t I see all of the signs sooner?” he said, berating himself.
He reached out to hold Raine, feeling relieved when she didn’t push him away. They had been through the worst possible nightmare, and he had betrayed her by sleeping with Voncile, but she wasn’t rejecting him. Kasen had faith that their relationship could be healed.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you inside and clean you up, and then you can tell me the rest of the story. We will have to decide what to do about Voncile, but first I want to make sure you’re okay physically.”
Raine leaned on Kasen as he helped her into the house and filled the bath with soothing jasmine-scented oils for her. As she sat in the tub and he washed her back, Raine started crying again.
“I thought you were never going to come for us, Kasen. I was so scared.”
“Us? Who else was with you?” he asked, then deciding he knew what she meant, he added, “Was Omar there with you? I found his phone in Voncile’s basement.”
This caused Raine to sob loudly. Kasen didn’t know what he’d said that upset her so much, until she finally calmed down enough to say, “Omar is dead. She killed him and threw his body down the basement stairs.”
Kasen felt like someone had just punched him in the gut. His body started shaking as he came to the realization that if Voncile was capable of killing Omar, then she most likely would have killed Raine, too, if she hadn’t escaped.
“Baby, we have to call the police,” he said, certain that they would have to listen to him now.
She nodded sadly, still crying profusely.
“Come on. Let me help you out of the bath,” he said.
As Raine stood up, she put a protective hand over her belly, and that was the first time Kasen noticed that her body had changed. Her once perfectly flat stomach now had a small bump growing.
He looked into Raine’s eyes. “Baby, are you—”
His question was interrupted by the sound of someone pounding at the door.
Chapter 27
Kasen and Raine looked at each other, both of them knowing in their hearts that whoever was pounding on the door like that wasn’t there
for a friendly visit. Although neither one said it, they both had the same idea of who it might be.
“Stay right here,” Kasen said, handing Raine a robe. “If anything happens, call the cops.”
Raine put on the robe and nodded her head nervously. “Please be careful,” she said.
Kasen walked to the door with every fiber of his being on high alert. Just as he had expected, he pulled open the door and saw Voncile, looking wild. Her clothes were dotted with specks of blood, her hair stuck out in twenty different directions, and her eyes were fire red.
There was no mistaking the anger in Kasen’s expression, but she still tried to act as if everything was normal. “Hi, baby,” she said with a crazy-looking smile. “We need to talk.”
“The only things we need to talk about are you kidnapping Raine and killing Omar.”
Her smile vanished as she eased her hand into her pocket. Before Kasen could react, she had pulled out a gun and was aiming at him. She spoke through gritted teeth. “I suspect that bitch told you all those lies about me, and that must mean her rusty ass is hiding in here. She couldn’t wait to get back to you, could she?” She jabbed the gun in his direction and ordered, “Get inside.”
Kasen hesitated for a second, not wanting to let her get near Raine with that weapon, but she waved the gun threateningly, screaming, “Now, Kasen, I mean it! I will kill you!”
She left him no choice, so he slowly backed away from the door and into the living room.
Voncile stepped inside, where she immediately spotted Raine standing on the bottom of the stairs in a bathrobe, with her arms folded over her belly. “You bitch,” Voncile spat. “I see you’re already took your clothes off, huh? Just couldn’t wait to get back here and fuck my man, could you? I ought to shoot you right now.”
Kasen tried to divert her attention back to him. “You don’t have to do this, Voncile. Put the gun away and we can sit down and talk. I can get you some help.” Inside, he was praying that Raine had called the police before coming down the stairs, but he had no way of being sure. Besides, by the time the cops showed up, Voncile could have already killed both of them. He would have to do something to get them out of this situation.
Voncile screamed at him, waving the gun around wildly. “Shut the hell up! If you really want to help me, tell this ho to get out of here! She’d be dead already if she wasn’t pregnant, but that baby is supposed to be for you and me! Everything would have been perfect for us if she had just stayed put at Patrice’s house. I could have taken the baby, and then you and I could have raised the child as ours.”
Kasen couldn’t believe what he was hearing. All this time he thought Voncile was carrying a child he didn’t want, and now he was learning that she wasn’t pregnant at all, but Raine was. It was almost more than he could comprehend.
She whipped her head around and started yelling at Raine. “You dumb bitch, you done fucked things up for everybody. It’s your fault I had to beat Patrice’s ass the way I did. It’s your fault she’s dead, you know.”
Raine’s hand flew to her mouth in shock, which just made Voncile rant louder.
“Oh, please. Don’t try to act all innocent like you cared about my friend,” she yelled. “You just want to take away everything that’s mine, don’t you? First you take Kasen; then you force me to hurt Patrice.”
Kasen noticed that the more Voncile was yelling, the more unsteady she seemed to be. Her eyelids were twitching and her hands were shaking. She looked like she was on the verge of totally losing control. If he was going to stop her, now was the time.
He charged at her like a raging bull, slamming his body against hers so that she fell to the ground. The gun flew out of her hands and slid across the floor.
Voncile was caught off guard, but she was no lightweight. She knew where to hurt Kasen—right between his legs. She lifted her leg, kneeing him in the groin.
“Aaaaargh!” he screeched, rolling onto his back as he held his throbbing sac. He had never felt pain so intense.
Voncile took advantage of the vulnerable position he was in, jumping on top of him and pounding his chest wildly with her fists. “How could you do me so wrong, Kasen? Don’t you know I love you? That bitch could never love you like I do!”
“That’s where you’re wrong, bitch.” Raine’s voice was deadly calm as she stepped up to the two of them with the gun in her hands, steady as can be, pointed at Voncile’s head. “I love him. He’s mine, and you’re about to be dead.”
“Raine, no!” Kasen yelled, pushing Voncile off of him and getting up off the floor. He approached Raine carefully and put a hand on her shoulder, but she refused to lower the gun.
“Don’t tell me no,” Raine said. “She deserves to die for everything she’s done.”
Voncile sat on the floor, shaking and crying. “Don’t let her hurt me, Kasen. Please don’t let me die.”
Kasen spoke calmly to Raine. “Baby, don’t shoot. If you kill her, you will regret it for the rest of your life. You are not that person, Raine. You’re not a killer.” He was determined to keep talking until he convinced her to put down the gun. As a doctor, he knew what pulling the trigger would do to her. It might feel good in the moment, but she would live with guilt forever, and he wanted to protect her from that.
“I promise she can’t hurt you anymore, Raine. Look,” he said, stepping carefully over to the coffee table to pick up his cell phone, “I’m going to call the cops. We’ll let them take care of her, okay? It’s over, Raine. She can’t hurt you anymore.”
He dialed 911, and Raine listened to him report the incident to the emergency operator. “They’re on the way,” he said when he hung up.
Raine lowered her gun an inch or two but refused to put it down. She kept it steadily aimed at Voncile. “This bitch better hope they get here soon,” she mumbled.
As they waited for the police to arrive, the only sound in the room was Voncile’s uncontrollable sobbing.
Epilogue
Kasen was on his way to the hospital after receiving an urgent phone call. As he drove through the rainy night, he thought about how much his life had changed since that dreadful day at his house eight months earlier. If he hadn’t acted when he did, Voncile would have killed Raine, and he would be in mourning now. Instead, he was a proud husband, and a loving father to the perfect, healthy baby boy that Raine had delivered. Now the outcome of this trip to the hospital might change their lives yet again.
Parking his car in front of the hospital, Kasen lifted his jacket over his head and rushed inside, heading up to the floor where he’d been told Dr. Whitmore would be waiting for him.
“Glad you came,” Dr. Whitmore said when Kasen arrived.
“How is she?” Kasen asked. Ever since the police had arrested Voncile, he had felt like his family was safe. Now he was slightly nervous, knowing that she was not behind bars. What if she escaped from the hospital?
“She’s pretty agitated,” the doctor answered, which didn’t help Kasen’s nerves.
“Can’t you give her something? She’s a sick woman, Doctor. I’m sure you’re aware of her history.”
Dr. Whitmore looked slightly offended that Kasen was questioning his judgment. “Of course I do, Dr. Phillips. Don’t worry. We have dealt with patients in custody before, and we’ve never had one escape,” he joked. Kasen did not laugh, and Dr. Whitmore noticed it. He straightened up his demeanor.
“We’d like to give her stronger psychiatric drugs,” he went on to explain, “but we can’t do that just yet. As soon as she delivers the baby, we’ll be able to give her the appropriate medications.”
Kasen thought back to the day, shortly after Voncile’s arrest, when he received the news that Voncile was in fact pregnant with his child. At first he didn’t want to believe it, but he knew that the timeline added up. She was in the first few weeks of pregnancy, and given the date that Omar had been murdered, Kasen knew the baby couldn’t be Omar’s. This was no game, and Voncile had finally gotten her wish.
“It is not that baby’s fault that it has a psycho for a mother,” she had told him. “We can’t let that child go into the system and be passed around from foster home to foster home for the rest of its life. That baby will come home with us, and be raised with our son.”
There were still nights when Kasen would lay awake, worrying that the baby might inherit its mother’s mental illness, but in the end, he had to come to terms with it. They were doing the right thing by taking the child, and as long as he and Raine were together, they could handle anything that came their way. Of course, he would still do everything in his power to make sure that Voncile would never see a day outside of prison walls for the rest of her life, for everyone’s safety.
“Do you mind if I go in and see her?” Kasen asked Dr. Whitmore.
“Sure. Go right in, but be prepared. She’s not—”
“I know. I’ll take it easy on her.”
Kasen entered the cold room, where Voncile lay in labor, her arms and legs tied to the hospital bed. She had been moaning and groaning, but when she saw Kasen, her moans turned to harsh words.