HER BUYER

by Evelyn Glass

  “Jazz!”

  I looked up at the sound of my name, and saw Addison sending the gun skittering towards me across the tiles—his eyes were wide and full of fear, but he was trying to help me. Ian twisted his body around to see what had happened, and I took his moment of distraction and lunged beneath him to grab for the weapon. I stood up, cocked it, and pointed it squarely at his head. The dusters slid out of his hand, all but useless now. I was breathing heavily, my brain too focused on keeping him in my sights to come up with a zinger line now I had him under my control.

  To my surprise, a few seconds later, Addison strode forward and caught Ian’s hands, pulling them behind his back and holding them there. I furrowed my brow at him. If he hadn’t been on Ian’s side, why had he taken so long to react in the first place?

  “I’m so sorry,” he blurted over his brother’s shoulder. “I just… I couldn’t…”

  Before he could get another word out, the sound of police sirens busted through the air. I jumped—usually, when I heard the cops coming, it meant bad news for me. But this time, I realized they were here to take away the man who had been threatening my family for what seemed like an eternity. And this time, I knew they would make damn sure that he didn’t go anywhere. Because if they did, they would have me to contend with.

  Soon, the cars were close enough that the diner filled with flash of red and blue light, and half a dozen cops burst through the door; I put the gun down at once, not wanting them to get the wrong idea, and stepped aside to show them that Ian was here, and that he had been restrained. He was quickly cuffed and led out, without saying another word to me or anyone else. Appropriately, the look on his face was one of a petulant child who had been denied the toy he wanted most in the world. I felt a swell of relief as he was led out of the diner and into one of the cop cars waiting outside. He was gone. At last. Finally.

  I slumped against the counter, inches from where I had placed down the gun—and realized that Ian had managed to let off a shot while I was freeing Mona. I swiveled around on my heel, and saw a neat bullet hole in the wall above the booth. There was no blood, no injuries—he had missed completely. Scott, Mary, and Paul were being tended to by a couple of medics who had arrived with the police, and they appeared to be shaken but unharmed. Declan and Lucy were conversing intently next to the door and I could have sworn I saw a little flirting go on if I wasn’t very much mistaken.

  Addison was still standing next to me—the look on his face told me that he hadn’t expected any of this. He looked more shell-shocked than any of us.

  “Jazz?” he asked, his voice small and fearful. I turned to face him. “I’m sorry I didn’t do more,” he muttered, looking at his feet. “I didn’t know… If I’d known that he was going to try and pull something like this, I never would have gone with him.”

  “How much did you know?” I demanded. “Did you know he took Ella?”

  “Not until he turned up at the house earlier this evening. I guess he wanted some back-up and assumed that because I’m his brother…” He shook his head, as if trying to put the pieces together in a way that made sense to him. It would be a long time before any of us were able to do that. “I was so scared. I didn’t want to get anyone killed,” he confessed. “But…I was never on his side. Just so you know.”

  “I know.” I nodded. Honestly, no matter how much anger I felt towards Addison for not doing more—I didn’t have it in me to hate him. If someone had died, the story would be very different. But we had our happy ending. Well, almost.

  “Will you excuse me?” I glanced at Addison, and he bowed his head agreeably. I turned, finally, and went to be with the two people I loved most in the world.

  Mona and Ella were sitting in a booth at the opposite end of the diner; a police officer was sitting with them when I approached, but she backed off when she saw me coming. I smiled at her gratefully, and slid into the booth next to Ella. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her onto my lap, unable to restrain myself any longer.

  “I’m so glad you’re alright,” I murmured into her hair. I wanted to say more, but I knew that I couldn’t possibly verbalize it right now—couldn’t find a way to say that if she had died I never would have forgiven myself, that I loved her more than anything in the world. I just had to hope she knew all of that. She squeezed me tight, and, as the adrenaline wore off, I could have fallen asleep right there and then; it felt as though a weight that had been pushing down on my shoulders for the last few months had finally lifted. I didn’t want the moment to end, but she extracted herself from me and looked very intently at my face for a moment.

  “What is it, honey?” I asked gently. I knew that for the foreseeable future, we would have to treat Ella with kid gloves. I mean, we didn’t even know the full extent of what he had done to her yet; I wasn’t sure if I ever wanted to truly know, but I couldn’t help her through this if I didn’t.

  “You have blood on you,” she remarked, reaching out to touch the spot on my chin where Ian had caught me with the dusters. I winced, and she drew her hand back at once. “Sorry!” she exclaimed, looking immediately guilty. I took her hand and squeezed it gently.

  “I’m fine,” I assured her. “Nothing wrong with me.”

  “You should probably go get that looked at,” Mona suggested. “You don’t want to go home with a concussion or something.”

  “We all should,” I suggested. “Make sure nothing’s…wrong?”

  I glanced down at Mona’s stomach meaningfully, and her hand flew to it protectively. I knew we would have to tell Ella about the baby at some point, but now didn’t feel like the time. Still, I wanted to make sure it was okay—that had been a whole hell of a lot of stress that Mona had been through along with the rest of us, and I needed to be sure that all four of us had come out of it unscathed.

  I hefted Ella up into my arms and carried her over to the impromptu medical station that had been set up to deal with everyone. Mary and Paul were wrapped in blankets and holding steaming cups of something, while Scott was already on the phone—probably letting his colleagues know what had happened. One of the nurses turned her attention to me, and started cleaning up the wounds on my face and the back of my head.

  “What happens now?” I asked. I had no idea what to expect in this kind of situation—one where I was on the right side of the law instead of the wrong one.

  She shrugged. “They’ll probably take witness statements from all of you, and I know for a fact that they’re going to want to interview your daughter a whole lot more to get the full run-down of what happened with that guy. But they’ll do that later. She looks exhausted, she probably just needs her own bed and a good night’s rest more than anything.”

  “Right,” I sighed. I knew that this didn’t end here—that we would have to put Ian away before this was truly over. But still, this was a start. And I could relax in knowing that with so many witnesses, there was no way he was getting away with this.

  “You’ll be fine, though,” the nurse assured me. Even though it was more sentiment than authority, I couldn’t help but smile. I looked over at Ella, my daughter, being quietly attended to by another one of the nurses. She was sitting still so they could examine her, and she laughed periodically at their jokes. Seeing her smile again, after such a long time of convincing myself that it would never happen—there weren’t words to express the joy of that moment. This nurse was right; we would be fine, because we were all together again. And no matter what, we would find a way to work through everything that had happened, and come together as a family like we were always meant to.

  Epilogue

  “Oh, Ella, you look so lovely!”

  I tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and smiled down at her, and she beamed back up at me. She was wearing her favorite dress and clutching a bouquet of flowers she’d picked out specially for the occasion—a beautiful, bright mix, just like her.

  “So do you!” she replied, and tried to wrap her arms around me, but I was getting t
oo big for that now. She stopped short with her head pressed into my belly, and I had to gently peel her off.

  “Hey, hey, careful now.” I shooed her away. “You don’t want to hurt your little sister!”

  “I can’t wait to meet her,” she said excitedly. Ever since we had broken the news of the baby to Ella a few months ago, she had been planning for her sister’s birth—drawing pictures, making models, and picking out the toys that she would hand down. It was a relief to see—we had been worried she wouldn’t take it so well, what with the news of the wedding on top of that, but she had thrown herself into everything, happy to be part of a fully-fledged family unit again.

  I couldn’t believe that the wedding was already here; Jazz and I had agreed to get married a month or so after the whole Ian thing was put to bed, and it had seemed so far in the future then. But here we were, about to walk down the aisle already. I guess with all the baby planning and the wedding planning and everything else, the time had just slipped away from us.

  Doubly so because we were dealing with assisting the police along with everything else. I didn’t mind, because it meant that we could put Ian behind bars—but I had never realized just how much bureaucracy went into cases like this one. I had assumed that since he had been arrested on the scene, identified by multiple people, and that there was heaps of evidence against him, it would be easy to get a conviction—but apparently I had been wrong. It seemed like we were in and out of the station constantly, giving statements, clarifying them, giving them again to make sure that we weren’t colluding with anyone else.

  It was worst for Ella, who had to relive the details of her kidnapping, but we found a great child therapist for her to visit who made it all easier for her to get through. Jazz was initially against the idea, but in my line of work, I knew that this sort of stuff could come back to haunt kids later in life if you didn’t take the opportunity to deal with it there and then. I knew she would always suffer for what that monster had done to her—and make no mistake, that filled me with the kind of burning rage that a prison sentence could never satisfactorily address—but we would help her through it. Having the wedding and the baby to plan for seemed to give her something to focus on, which was a relief—even if it meant working her opinion into every little detail, which was endearing but often exhausting.

  Well, not to mention the fact that even aside from my personal life, this had been the busiest few months of my entire life. I had gone back to work as a social worker, doing more office-based stuff now; after what happened with Ian, I needed time to get back on my feet before going into the field. It was funny, though, because my colleagues seemed to treat me with this bizarre kind of awe—I’d been part of one of the most high-profile child abduction cases the city had ever seen, and I’d been a part of getting the kid back safe and sound. When it came to that, I seemed to have earned an almost automatic bounty of respect from everyone around me, which was satisfying, and made my job a hell of a lot easier.

  I had stepped up into what used to be Amanda’s position after she retired—she had recommended me specifically, which I was ridiculously flattered by. So I mentored and supported the new social workers and did my best to give them the start Amanda gave me. It wasn’t what I’d seen myself doing, but I loved it—and the office hours gave me plenty of time to spend at home with Ella, as well. I could get back to a home-cooked dinner from Jazz, and the three of us would eat together and discuss our days before Jazz took off to his Marauders meetings in the evening.

  He had grappled for a long time about what he was going to do about the Marauders. I knew he felt guilty for still being involved with them, what with having Ella and the new baby on the way—but it was a decent source of income for us, and we didn’t want to give that up. Besides, he was good at it, and almost all of his friends he knew through the club. And now that I had moved in permanently, he didn’t have to worry about hiring a babysitter anymore. He would go out every weeknight to the club to get things in order, and then we would spend the weekends together as a family.

  He lavished attention on Ella and I: days out, meals in the city, trips wherever she wanted to go. I always knew that this Jazz was in there somewhere, that the pained man I had lived with for a while was thanks to the horrendous stress of the situation we were all under. He was electric, alight, and I had never been in love with someone the way I was in love with him. It was that simple; he made me feel safe at the same time that he made me feel alive. I had never been able to find a man who could do both, but here he was. I had never pictured myself with a man like Jazz, never thought that I would fall for the head of a motorcycle club, never thought I’d marry a single dad—but I didn’t care. When it was right, it was right, and there was no denying that this was so, so right.

  “Hey,” a voice came from behind me, pulling me from my little romantic segue. “Are you almost ready? That’s pretty much everyone in the church now.”

  I turned, and found myself looking at Lucy. She was, of course, my maid of honor—who else? She looked awesome, in a knee-length teal tea dress with her hair piled on top of her head.

  “I’m ready.” I nodded. I hadn’t been that sold on the idea of a church wedding, but Jazz’s family had insisted and I had no intention of causing waves where I didn’t have to. Everything else had been by my book, though—I had picked the dresses, the flowers, the food, and tried to make it all as laidback as possible. The only thing I went all-out on was the cake, which Ella helped me pick out, because, well, cake.

  “You look amazing,” she remarked, looking me up and down and grinning. I knew she wasn’t the type of woman who’d tell me that if she didn’t mean it, and I was touched by her compliment. From her, it meant something.

  “Not so bad yourself,” I shot back, gesturing at her dress. “Declan won’t be able to keep his hands off of you.”

  Declan and Lucy had, in the grand tradition of great wedding clichés, ended up dating a few months previously. I had seen the spark of a connection the very first night they encountered each other, despite the circumstances, and when Jazz picked him as his best man, I knew that he was partially doing it to set the two of them up. It worked—they seemed deliriously happy together, Lucy’s no-nonsense attitude blending perfectly with Declan’s playful demeanor. I could see them going all the way, and I knew Lucy felt the same way too—even if she never would have admitted something so romantic without a few glasses of wine in her.

  “Oh, I know, he’s already let me know that.” She flashed me a smile and I raised my eyebrows.

  “Lucy Anderson, you flirt,” I teased. I felt a flutter of nervousness in my chest as I smoothed down my dress and looked in the mirror—this was it. I was more worried about having everyone looking at me than I was about getting married; it would be just typical for me to fall over and break my nose in a church full of my friends and family and have that be all anyone remembered about the day.

  The dress had been my mother’s, and she had been just as unconventional as I was when she got married—and just as pregnant, too. As soon as I had seen it hanging in her cupboard, I knew I’d found the dress. It was a pale lavender with thick straps and a sweetheart neckline, landing in a floaty hem around my knees. I loved the way it made me look, but I loved the way it made me feel more—romantic and loved and hopeful. She had cried a little the first time she saw me in it, and I felt the same way. She had taken the news of Jazz, the pregnancy, and the engagement pretty well—Dad had taken some convincing, but he came around once he actually met my future husband.

  “I might be, but you’re about to be someone’s wife,” Lucy reminded me. “Shall we get out there? I think it’s time to get this show on the road.”

  “Yeah, I guess we should.” My heart up-ticked slightly in my chest, but it wasn’t nerves—it was excitement. I was looking forward to being his wife. To being Ella’s mother. All of this just felt so obvious that I couldn’t believe it wasn’t already over with yet.

  “Come on.” Lucy li
nked her arm through mine and led me to the door of the little dressing room that hid in the space above the church—a narrow set of stairs led us down to where we needed to be.

  I paused outside the door, and glanced at Lucy again.

  “Do I look alright?” I whispered hurriedly, patting at my hair.

  She brushed my hand away and nodded. “Gorgeous. Now, come on, you’ve got a wedding to go to.”

  I opened the door, and the organ started up as though surprised by my entrance; everyone turned around with a great rustling of clothes and ripple of whispers as I entered, and I felt myself flush red. Okay, now don’t fall. Don’t. Fall. Ella darted out in front of me and bounced up the aisle, distracting attention from my careful footsteps.