“Maybe a shower instead. After all those….maybe just a shower.”
“Come on. I’ll help you.”
I followed him into the bathroom and he started to undress me, much like the first day I met him. It was so strange to me that when we met, I was falling down a rabbit hole and Cole was able to pull me out and help me. Now I’m right back in that hole, only I felt less and less like a survivor every minute of the day.
Cole slid the glass door open and I stepped under the spray. I felt the gnawing need to be clean, but the water water wasn’t hot enough to wash away the feel of the rats and spiders. I cranked the heat up, grabbed a washcloth, and started scrubbing at my skin. My skin was turning red from the scalding, hot water and rubbing my skin raw. Cole was just stepping into the shower and yelped at the temperature of the water.
“Fuck, that’s hot. Alex, what are you trying to do?” He reached around me and shut the water off, then grabbed me by the shoulders. “Alex, look at me.”
I couldn’t though. I could see the spiders on me, crawling all over my body. There were big, furry ones that were crawling up my legs and small ones that scurried closer and closer to my face as I tried to brush them away. I wasn’t fast enough and they kept coming. I screamed as I tried to brush them off me, terror ripping through my body. I saw one fall to the ground and then I saw the rats all around me. They surrounded my feet and were starting to bite my toes. In my panic to get out of the shower, I shoved Cole out of the shower and he slipped and fell, hitting his head on the sink and falling to the ground. He wasn’t moving and now he couldn’t help me.
Spiders started to come down from the shower frame with their shimmery, spider silk. There must be fifty of them covering the entry I had just shoved Cole through. My only hope of getting out of here was to smash through the glass on the other side and get out or go through the curtain of spiders. All I could think about at this point was getting out of the bathroom and away from this horror. I picked up the metal hook hanging over the shower door and started swinging it at the glass. The first one splintered the glass, but the second one put a nice, baseball sized hole in the door. On the third swing, the glass shattered and started to fall to the floor. I still had to get through the sliding door, so I swung a few more times until there was a hole there also. There was still glass sticking out in sharp pieces from the sides of the door, but I couldn’t care less about them right now. I was so close to getting out of the bathroom and away from everything.
I distantly heard someone banging on the door and shouting. My heart was pounding in my chest, knowing my attacker was on the other side of the door trying to get in. I needed to find a way to protect myself so I grabbed a shard of glass out of the door and gripped it tight in my hand. It was biting into my skin and blood started to trickle down my arm, but I had to defend myself. I stepped out of the shower and felt the glass dig into my feet. A piece of glass in the door made a jagged cut in my waist as I step out of the shower. I gasped in pain, but continued to step out. The rats were now running around Cole’s unconscious body and the spiders had started to follow. My head was spinning, wondering how to get out of this bathroom and get Cole help. I wasn’t even sure he was alive anymore. He skin was extremely pale and he hadn’t moved once. There was a large pool of blood spreading around his head and I almost heaved knowing I did that to him.
The shouting grew louder and soon I heard someone kicking at the door. I crouched down next to Cole’s body holding the glass out in front of me. On the third kick the door flew open and there were men in black and one woman. They stood there and stared at me and reality started to seep back into my brain. These people were not my attacker, but my security. As I glanced back around the room I saw that there were no spiders or rats. It was just me sitting next to Cole’s unconscious body surrounded by glass.
The guilt of what I had done was overwhelming and I hung my head and cried. I had no idea what was happening to me. It all felt so real. I had seen them and felt their furry legs crawling all over my skin. I’d seen them climbing on the shower wall and hanging from the shower door. They were there, weren’t they? How did they just disappear?
I felt a hand on my shoulder and startled, looking up into the warm, brown eyes of Lola. She had a sympathetic look on her face, which made me cry harder. I didn’t deserve anyones sympathy. One of the guys handed her a towel and she wrapped it around me, then helped me stand. I was too shaken to be embarrassed at my nudity. I did my best to stop crying as she took the glass from my hand. We walked into the bedroom and she guided me to the bed where I sat down. My crying had subsided and I stared at the floor numbly. The other men had entered the bathroom, probably trying to help Cole.
Lola went back into the living room and returned with a couple of bags. She dumped the first bag on the bed and I looked over to see medical supplies spread out. She laid a towel over my lap and gently took my hand. She had a squirt bottle of something and started to rinse the gash on my hand. It stung a little, but I relished in the pain, needing to feel pain after I hurt the very person that was trying to help me. After she cleaned it out, she inspected it for any slivers of glass, then placed a large bandage over it and wrapped my hand to keep it in place.
“May I look at the cut on your waist?” She pointed towards my waist and I unwrapped the towel, allowing her access. She repeated the process of cleaning the wound and wrapped it with a bandage. “Is there anywhere else you have cuts?”
“My feet.”
She nodded and moved down to the floor, taking to towel and spreading it under my feet. She cleaned up my feet, but had to take tweezers to get all the small pieces out. As I sat waiting for her to finish, I heard Cole in the other room. He was talking with the other men about me.
“Is she alright?”
“I think so. Lola’s cleaning her up right now. She has some pretty nasty cuts that I could see, but I don’t know the extent of it. What happened?”
I heard Cole sigh. “I don’t know. She had the water on scalding and she was scrubbing her skin. She started freaking out and then she shoved me out of the shower. I must have slipped and the next thing I remember is waking up to your ugly face.”
“We had to break down the door to get in here. She was screaming and gripping a piece of glass in her hand when we came in. It’s like she was waiting for someone to attack her.”
“She probably had a flashback.”
“Cole, I hate to say this, but maybe she’s beyond your help. Maybe you need to check her into a mental facility.”
My breath constricted in my throat. It was hard to hear about what had happened, how I had basically lost touch with reality and hurt Cole. To hear someone tell him that I needed to go to a mental institution was too much. I would rather run away and take my chances with the psychopath.
Lola must have been paying attention to their conversations because she looked up with a pissed off look on her face and stood, swiftly walking over to the door. Cole was in the middle of talking when she entered the doorway.
“Don’t even talk about sending her-“
“Do you two want to shut the fuck up? She is right in the bedroom and can hear every word you say. You think this hasn’t been traumatic enough for her?”
With that, she turned and stormed away from the bathroom and back to me. She didn’t say anything else, just continued cleaning up my feet. I heard Hunter and Cole come out of the bathroom, but I couldn’t look up at them. They just made me feel like the biggest lunatic on the face of the earth. I didn’t think I would ever be able to look at Cole again. The bed dipped next to me and Cole put his arm around me, but still I stared at Lola cleaning my feet. He leaned into me and kissed my temple. The action made my eyes prick with tears and I couldn’t hold back when he whispered that he loved me. How could anyone love someone as damaged as me? I was a mess and as long as that guy was out there, all my nightmares would continue. Even if he was caught, would they ever go away?
At some point, Lola had finished cleaning my feet a
nd left the room. Cole pulled me back against the headboard and held me in his arms as I cried. When my tears were all dried up and I was left with hiccuping snuffles, I finally gained the courage to look at him. He had a look of concern on his face. I felt the tears come again, but he just lifted his hands to cup my jaw and wiped the tears away with his thumbs. Then he leaned in and kissed both my cheeks, under my eyes, where my tears were falling. He trailed kisses down my face to my lips and kissed me lovingly. The kiss grew into something more passionate and he moved a hand behind my head to grip my hair. He pulled away suddenly and looked at me fiercely.
“I will NEVER allow anyone to take you away from me. That includes idiots that think you need mental help. You have been through something traumatic and you’re bound to have some snags along the road to recovery. I had them too. Just because Sean and my parents are the only ones that witnessed them doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. Not everyone realizes what goes on with someone with PTSD. I won’t have you thinking that you need help because you had a freak out. If you want, I can find a therapist you can talk to, but there is no way I will ever send you to a mental facility.”
“I was going out of my mind. I saw spiders crawling on me and all over the shower. There were rats on the shower floor. I shoved you out the door to get away from them. You can’t tell me I’m not crazy. I hurt you because I didn’t know the difference between my imagination and reality.”
“Do you think that never happened to me? There was one time that I could swear Sean was an insurgent in my home. He was wearing the garb and holding a rifle. All I could think about was getting to my weapon and taking him out, but I didn’t have one close by. I grabbed a floor lamp to defend myself and I almost knocked Sean unconscious with it. He was bringing me some fresh towels, trying to get me to take a shower. My mind couldn’t tell the difference.”
“How did you get past it?”
“I’m not sure. I started to work on some breathing techniques when I felt myself losing control. If it didn’t seem like a reality, I learned to talk myself through the terror. I closed my eyes and kept telling myself it wasn’t real. Eventually, my mind must have caught on because it didn’t happen quite so often. Now it’s been close to a year since my last episode. Or, maybe it was my friends and family pulling me out of the house to do normal things. I don’t know if any one solution works for everybody. You just have to find the one that works for you. I’ll help you with that. I promise you won’t go through this alone.”
I wanted so badly to believe him, but I wasn’t sure I could. We lay there for the longest time not speaking until my stomach started growling. I got up and dressed and noticed for the first time that Cole had a bandage on his head. I tried not to let it bother me. He wouldn’t want that, but I couldn’t look him in the eye after I saw that. It was a painful reminder of what had happened. We went into the living room and looked at the room service menus. After we placed our orders, Derek called us all over to sit in the living room to discuss what was going to happen.
“We’re going to be leaving tonight around midnight. Lola has some bags packed for both of you. We’re going to a safe house that we have set up and Hunter, Lola, and I will be taking care of protection inside, while John’s crew will be taking care of the perimeter. They were the ones that secured your house earlier today.”
“How long will we be staying there?” I was glad to be someplace else after what happened today, but I really wanted this over. I didn’t know how much more I could take.
“We’ll be in contact with Sebastian and he’ll let us know when it’s safe to come home. Sean and Sebastian are working together to get the crime scene processed and looking into some ideas you two discussed this morning.” The last part was directed at Cole and I had no idea what they were talking about. I’d have to remember to talk to him later about it.
“Who knows where we’re going?” Cole asked.
“Just our team, John’s team, and Sebastian. No one else will be privy to any information regarding your case.”
“Have you found out how he got past the security in the house?”
“They have the tech guys working on that and hopefully it will give a location that they can check out. Maybe where this guy is staying or where he’s working from. I’ll keep you up to date on that. For now, why don’t you two get some sleep. We’ll wake you a half hour before we leave.”
He stood and walked over to talk to Hunter about something, so I stood and made my way to the bedroom, leaning on Cole because my feet hurt. I glanced at the bed, but thoughts of the last bed I was in took over. Cole came up and wrapped his arms around me and I relaxed back into him. He guided me over to the bed and laid down next to me. I couldn’t escape the nightmares, but hopefully having Cole with me would keep them at bay.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Cole
We had been at this cabin for three days. Alex was spending a lot of time in the living room. She never seemed to want to be in the bedroom. I imagined it was because of what happened at the house. She reluctantly came to bed with me at night and would fall asleep after a few hours of me holding her. She’d had nightmares every night, screaming and kicking to get away. The first night, Derek came running into the room with his gun in hand, ready to kill someone. Alex had freaked out and it took me ten minutes to calm her down. The second night, he knocked on the door to see if we were alright. The third night was the same.
The cabin was a deceptive word for where we were staying. The cabin had six large bedrooms, four bathrooms, a living room, kitchen, mud room, sunroom, and study. The staircase to the second floor was at the back of the living room and split at the top of the stairs. To the left was the master bedroom with a king size bed and an en suite bathroom. To the right were two other rooms, each with two queen beds and an adjoining bathroom between them. To the left of the living room was a hallway that led down to the other three bedrooms. They were set up the same as the other two upstairs and they all shared one bathroom. The sunroom was behind the living room and took up most of the back porch. It was a good and bad element. It was good because people could sit in there at night and stay on the lookout for intruders. It was bad because it had many windows that would make them more vulnerable to attack. The study was off to the right as you entered the house and the kitchen was at the back of the house, behind the study. The mudroom was off the kitchen. There was plenty of space for everyone that was there.
The outside crew took turns standing watch and the inside crew also did surveillance, watching through the windows and keeping an eye on the monitors. They still set up cameras and perimeter sensors even though this guy had managed to hack into the last ones. The tech team at the office had found the point of entry in the software and closed the gap, adding additional layers of security in the programming. Before they had arrived, John and his team had come to set up all the equipment and they also installed heat signature cameras. Every person was given a tracker upon arrival so they would know who was walking around the property and where. So far, there had been no sign of anyone in the area.
Sean called us last night and said they triangulated the position of the computer that had hacked the security software and they would be checking it out today. It was in the middle of the forest and there wasn’t easy access, so they needed to put a plan in place for going in. He said that the detective running the case was holding things up, coming up with different reasons that they needed to wait, saying there wasn’t enough evidence for a search warrant. He didn’t know when they would get the search warrant, but he would keep me up to date.
I got up early because the anticipation was killing me. I paced around the cabin until Alex got up, but then I sat with her and drank coffee so she wouldn’t know how amped up I was. We weren’t allowed to go outside because it was harder to keep Alex secure out there. If this guy couldn’t access her, he may decide to take extreme measures and just take her out.
I decided that I needed to get Alex out of her head so I
planned a special dinner for us tonight and asked everyone to eat in the sunroom to give us some privacy. I wasn’t a great cook, but I could make a chicken dish or two. I decided on Chicken Alfredo and made some asparagus on the side. We didn’t have wine at the house because nobody could drink when they could be brought into action at any time. I turned on the radio to play in the background. It took some work, but I found a station that played oldies. I set out some glasses of water for us and set the steaming plates on the table. I made my way to the living room and told her dinner was ready. She was surprised that I had cooked and eagerly followed me.
“Wow. You made this? Your mom said you couldn’t cook.”
“I can’t cook, but there are a few dishes I can make somewhat well. This is one of them.”
She took a bite, closing her eyes and moaning. “Oh my gosh, Cole. This is fantastic.”
“I’m glad you like it.”
“Where did you learn to make this?”
“Jack’s wife, Harper, loves to cook and she made this for me once. It was fantastic so I asked her to teach me.”
“Sorry, who’s Jack?”
“He’s a friend of mine. There’s a group of us that all went to school together and we stayed friends. Jack’s a mechanic and has his own shop in town. You’ve met Sebastian. He owns the security firm. He’s been trying to get me to join for a long time, but I don’t really have any desire to join.”
She nodded. We had been over my reasons for not using guns, so I’m pretty sure she understood.
“You’ve also met Sean. He’s working his way up to detective. Logan and Ryan own a construction company. They have an architectural design division, an interior design division, and then the construction division. Logan is the architectural designer and Ryan is the construction engineer. Then there’s Drew. He’s pretty new to our group of friends. He moved to town a while back and nobody really knows a lot about him. We know he’s been through some stuff, but he hasn’t talked about it yet. Harper is the closest to him and I don’t think she knows anymore than the rest of us.”
Cole: A Romantic Thriller Novel (For The Love Of A Good Woman Book 2) Page 11