I wanted to assess her more closely, but I could hear movement in the living room. I knew if I didn’t secure that weapon before Mateo did that both Cristina and I would be dead. Fighting my desire to go to her, I crawled back out to where Mateo was slowly pulling himself up off the ground. The room was clearer now, and I could see blood trickling down his face as he turned to pin his cold, dead eyes on me. How she could have ever loved a man that looked like evil incarnate was beyond me, but that was hardly the time to judge. I needed to find that gun.
“I hope she was worth dying for,” he sneered, spitting the blood that had run into his mouth out onto the carpet.
“I hope you like prison, because I’m pretty sure that’s where you’ll be heading soon. Maybe you can find a new girlfriend there.”
“Funny guy . . . we’ll see how funny you find me when I’m crushing your throat with my bare hands.”
“I’ll be laughing on the inside,” I countered, slowly searching the room for the gun while I kept Mateo in my sight. The damn thing was nowhere to be found. And neither were the cops for that matter. It seemed like it had been at least twenty minutes since I’d made the 9-1-1 call. Maybe they weren’t too excited to roll up on a hostage situation with a known felon. Having squared off against Satan himself, I couldn’t really blame them.
Apparently having had enough talk for the evening, Mateo lunged at me and sacked me football style. We crashed through the coffee table, shattering both the glass and the frame. The fall hurt, and I knew I was cut, but there was no time to worry about that. With his hands wrapped around my throat, Mateo was trying to make good on his promise. He had a solid fifty pound weight advantage on me. Combined with his body position, things were not looking good for me. I was naturally strong from working on the decks of crabbing boats for my entire adult life, and adrenaline was giving me an added edge, but he had rage and a raw craziness behind him.
And there ain’t nothing more lethal than crazy.
I struggled to remove his iron grip from my throat, but I was losing that battle. Already, I was seeing spots and gasping for air like a fish out of water. I knew I didn’t have much longer.
I prayed for the sound of sirens. As my consciousness waned, I found comfort in the knowledge that at least someone would find Cristina before he could hurt her any more than he already had, and maybe, just maybe, they could save her. Instead of the sirens I so desperately hoped to hear, I heard a voice. A soft, weak, frightened voice.
“Let him go, Mateo,” she said faintly. Surprisingly, he did just that. I think I wasn’t the only one shocked by the sound of her voice. “I’ll go with you. I promise. Just leave him be. He means nothing to me. Let’s just leave before the cops show up.”
“Baby, you’re hurt,” he replied, standing to assess her while I pressed my chest rhythmically in an effort to manually force air in and out of my lungs. They just weren’t working fast enough for my liking.
“It’s not that bad.” Her words were a lie. I had seen the blood. There was no way she was going to just walk out the door and leave with him. She needed a hospital. I let my head loll to the side in order to look in her direction, seeking confirmation of what I already knew to be true. There was an expanding pool of blood on her abdomen. She’d been shot in the gut.
Finally, I heard the sirens. They were distant, but I heard them, and, judging by the look that overtook Mateo’s face, he heard them, too.
“Time to go,” he ordered, walking over to get her. As he did, she shot me a panicked look that told me everything I needed to know. She didn’t want to leave with him, and it was up to me to prevent it. She’d bought me the tiniest window of time to find that gun, and that’s precisely what I was going to do.
With Mateo distracted, my eyes darted all over the room until they fell upon the object of my desire. It was barely sticking out from under the sofa, its shiny barrel taunting me. Knowing that we were running out of time, I mustered my last bit of energy and shot across the floor on my stomach, extending my hand in front of me for the gun as I did. The shards of glass littering the floor ground into my chest and arm as I did, and the crunching sound that resulted instantly garnered Mateo’s attention. The look he pinned on me was murderous. Making matters worse, my initial burst came up short, leaving me a few critical inches shy of the gun. That gave Mateo all the opportunity he needed to crush me—which appeared to be exactly what he intended to do.
He stormed the five steps necessary to make up the distance between us like a bull seeing red. I fumbled against the side of the couch, trying to push myself up, but he was upon me before I had a chance. His burning brown eyes were the last thing I was ever going to see before my life was snuffed out, Mateo making good on his promise of death.
The second gunshot of the night then rang out.
My ears rang violently while I watched Mateo’s limp form fall on top of me. I immediately heaved his body away from me and looked down at his lifeless eyes, which stared up at the heavens. A place he was surely never to see.
Another two shots popped off in rapid succession.
I looked up to see a pale and shaking Cristina, leaning against the wall for support, the gun dangling loosely in her hand before it fell to the ground. Then she collapsed on top of it.
“NO!” I screamed, scrambling over to her. By the look of her shirt, she’d lost a large amount of blood. I’d seen some gnarly injuries from my time aboard crabbing vessels, but I’d never seen that much blood before. She couldn’t have had much longer before she lost consciousness—or worse. “Talk to me, Cris. Just talk to me. Don’t go to sleep, okay? I need you to stay awake.”
“I’m sleepy,” she whispered to me, and I felt my grip on her tighten reflexively, trying to keep her with me, physically and figuratively. I couldn’t lose her.
I could hear the Anchorage PD shouting as they entered the apartment building, but I didn’t care. All I cared about was the woman bleeding out in my arms.
“Don’t go,” I whispered to her, pressing my forehead against her temple. “Please don’t go.”
“I got him.” Her words were faint and distant, her lucidity waning. “He’ll never hurt me again.”
“No, he won’t.”
“So sleepy,” she slurred, her eyes rolling back into her head. Then her body went limp.
“Cristina!” I shouted just as the police announced themselves, rushing into the apartment. I could hear them talking hurriedly, asking urgent questions, wanting to see my hands, but I didn’t move. I wouldn’t let go of her.
“We need an ambulance!” one of them shouted, the other relaying on the radio how many victims there were and how many ambulances they would need. I could feel one of them beside me, asking if I needed medical attention, but I didn’t answer. I just held Cristina’s body in my arms and rocked her gently, still holding my hand over her wound as though that would help in some way.
Finally, one of the officers―a woman―bent down, lowering her face to be level mine, and told me they needed to take me to the hospital to be checked out. I fought the notion at first, but her kind eyes told me what she wasn’t willing to say. My job was done. There was nothing more I could do. It was time to go.
So I did.
With the aid of one of the other officers, I placed Cristina down, kissed her on the forehead as the tears rolled down my face, and stood up, leaving her behind with the female officer. As I walked out of the apartment, grief settled around me like a blanket, enveloping me in sadness and disbelief. It consumed my being and clouded my thoughts. Everything around me was reduced to a buzzing background noise. My mind was breaking down.
And, because of that, I almost didn’t hear the words that would forever change my life.
Standing in the hallway, I heard that female cop shout four simple words that were sweeter than any I’d ever heard.
“She has a pulse!”
chapter 9
Cristina
“I feel like shit,” I said as I woke up, groggy
and disoriented. I couldn’t seem to force my eyes open.
“Well, getting shot will do that to a person.”
That voice. I knew that voice.
“Robbie? Is that you?”
“Your personal barnacle is here. I’m hard to shake, but I did warn you about that,” he joked, laughing nervously afterward.
“Is he—”
“Dead? Yes, he is.”
“I thought I dreamt it . . . dreamt of shooting him.”
“No, I’m pretty sure you took him down like a pro. Remind me to never make you angry.”
I managed to open my eyes a crack, and I saw him sitting beside me, his expression masking nothing. He was raw emotion. When he realized I was looking at him, he leaned forward and kissed my forehead gently, taking my hands in his.
“I can’t believe he’s dead,” I whispered. “I’ve been running for so long.”
“I can’t imagine how you feel right now, but I know that, once you sort through it all, he will no longer have a hold on your life.” I found the ferocity expressed in his baby blue eyes oddly comforting. “And I’ll help you, if you want me to.”
I squeezed his hand lightly.
“That sounds perfect.”
I tried to sit up a bit and winced at the pain in my stomach.
“You should lie still,” Robbie ordered, doing the best he could to reassemble the pillows behind me. “They had to do some serious surgery. You lost a lot of blood.”
“How long will I be here?” I asked, thinking that I wanted to return home and see the family that had long ago accepted my assumed death.
“I’m not certain. The doctors won’t really tell me much, but it’ll be a while I’m sure. Maybe a week or two.”
“So, I’ll be here when you leave?” I couldn’t hide the disappointment in my voice.
“I’m not leaving any time soon, so I don’t think there’s anything to worry about just yet.”
I eyed him strangely, wondering if the pain medication I was undoubtedly on was making my brain process information inaccurately.
“But your season starts soon.”
“The next season is going to start without me,” he explained, grinning. “I agreed to surgery on my arm so I could stay. Your favorite surgeon wrote a rather extensive letter to the owners of the ship, and, for whatever reason, it convinced them to give me until next season to heal up. They’re letting me come back again as captain then.”
“What will you do in the meantime?”
“Hang out. Take care of you. Maybe get you to go for that date you stood me up on.”
“I don’t think being kidnapped counts as standing someone up,” I argued weakly.
“Excuses, excuses. I expect full sexual compensation, when you’re up to it, of course.”
“Of course,” I smiled, doing my best to stifle the giggle I felt making its way up my throat. I was pretty certain it would have done little to help my healing abdomen.
“So who’s going to take care of you after your surgery?” I asked.
“Maybe your mom can help me out,” he said with a widening smile. “Your family was contacted once the authorities put together who Mateo was. They contacted the state police down in Florida, and they followed the paper trail back to your disappearance, Cristina Jimenez. Your mother and sister should be here by the end of the week.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered, tears streaming down my face. “I can’t believe I get to see them. I never thought it would be safe enough to contact them again.”
“They’ll be here soon. Very soon. But, until then, you’re stuck with me.”
“I think I can deal with that,” I said softly.
“Good, because I’m pretty sure Pam will never let you get rid of me now. She thinks I’m a hero.”
“You kinda are, Robbie.”
“And ladies do love a man in uniform . . . even if it is a cape.”
“That we do,” I laughed, regretting it instantly. “That we do.”
We bantered on in what would prove to be our standard mode of conversation: lighthearted and easy. It was a refreshing change, and one I was in desperate need of. My life on the run was over. My isolation ended. From that moment on, I would choose my path based not on what I needed to avoid, but instead on what I wanted to pursue. And it seemed like that cocky fisherman, who had swaggered his way into my life, was exactly that. The day we had met, I had caught myself a bright future with Robbie.
And I wasn’t about to look back.
About the Author
If you’re dying to know more about me, allow me to put you at ease. I’m a sharp-tongued, sarcastic Cancer who loves vegetable smoothies, winter storms, and the word portfolio. I should never be caffeinated, and require at least eight hours of sleep to even resemble a human being. At thirty-six, I just now feel like I can keep a straight face while saying the word “rectum” (which is actually a huge lie because I just laughed out loud while reading this to my husband). I live with my iPod firmly affixed to my body, drive too fast, and laugh/cry at inappropriate times.
Amber may be found on social media at:
Facebook: Amber Lynn Natusch
Twitter: @AmberLNatusch
Website: www.amberlynnnatusch.com
Books by Amber Lynn Natusch include:
Other Books
Undertow
Light and Shadow Trilogy
Tempted by Evil
The Caged Series
Caged
Haunted
Framed
Scarred
Fractured
Tarnished (novella)
The Caged Box Set
Unleashed
by Erin Noelle
A young shifter who has been captured and abused is eventually unleashed in more ways than she could imagine.
Images of that day play through my mind like it was yesterday.
Momma was working in the garden, tending the herbs she used to not only cook with, but to make homeopathic remedies for the pack. Pop was with some of the other men, gathered in the middle of the street that ran down the center of the homes in our camp, as they whispered about something that had everyone on alert for a few weeks.
I remember sitting outside in the front yard drawing in the dirt, waiting for my brothers and Olivia, who we called Livi, to get back from their fun in the adjacent forest. I had been allowed to join them a few times before, but because I was the youngest female in the pack, and something had obviously gotten the hair standing up on my father’s back, I had been restricted to staying in the village.
I remember hoping that Livi hadn’t shifted that day; I knew she was getting close to her awakening, which usually occurred around the age of twelve or thirteen, and I wanted to be there to witness it. I had no doubt her wolf would be every bit as beautiful as her human, and as her closest friend, I was just as anxious as she was for it. I had heard my brother, Blake, telling his friends that he sensed it was close, and that once Livi did change, he was claiming her as his for good. I wasn’t sure what all that meant exactly, but I knew having Livi around more made me happy, and that was all I cared about.
Seconds after I heard the first cry of alarm, the sound of shots pierced the air. Men who had been huddled together broke apart instantly, each rushing for his own home. Howls from our family members and friends in the forest alternated with more gunshots, much closer now, as everyone around me quickly shifted into their wolf and assembled in the middle of our village, prepared to attack as the slayers got closer.
“Lelah! Get in the house! Now!” my mother screamed at me, but I couldn’t move. I sat in the yard, frozen in time, watching the activity around me almost as if I were in a dream.
Within minutes the men—slayers—stormed our camp, and despite the strength of our wolves, our pack was no match for the guns these men carried. I watched as Pop charged the men, trying to fight for us, but he was quickly shot in the back of the head. With a pained howl, he collapsed in a heap to the ground. Seeing her mate
murdered sent Momma into a blind rage, but as she rushed the tall, light-skinned man, he lifted his shotgun and blasted her between the eyes.
The entire time, I just sat there. I didn’t stand up, I didn’t run, and I didn’t scream . . . I just sat there and watched them decimate my pack.
A sudden silence suffocated the village—no more howling, no more yelling, no more bullets; a silence so deafening I actually had to cover my ears. That was when the man’s gaze caught mine; I could see the glint of excitement in his eyes from a hundred yards away.
He stalked toward me with long, purposeful strides. Grabbing me by my long chocolate-brown hair, he dragged me to my feet and called out to his friends, “J’ai la jeune fille. Où est la plus ancienne?”
The others ransacked and pillaged our cottages, looking for something or someone, but the leader never left my side. He kept staring at me and saying things in French that I was just as happy I couldn’t understand. His smell made my skin crawl, and for the first time in my young life, I had the urge to growl.
His companions all returned, seemingly displeased, and from the tone in their voices I thought they were arguing with one another. One of the men, the short, bald one, grabbed my face and asked me in English, “Where is your whore wolf friend?”
Refusing to answer him, I just stared into his black eyes, my lips clenched in a tight line. I hoped he was speaking of Livi, and the thought that she was still alive made me smile slightly.
An evil laugh escaped the bald man’s mouth. “You think this is funny, you filthy little slut? We’ll see who’s smiling tonight, wolf girl, as I’m tearing apart—”
Before he could finish his thought, the leader slapped him across the face and scolded, “Elle est à moi!”
Looking at me one last time before walking away, the bald man spit in my face and confirmed my assumption. “I’m going to find your friend, bitch. I will make her pay for eluding me, and I’m going to make you watch when I do.”
Moments In Time: A Collection of Short Fiction Page 52