Protective Order

by Rita Herron

  Mitzi.

  Her heart jumped to her throat, and she took off running toward the house. She’d come here to save Mitzi and she wouldn’t back down now.

  She crossed the grass and climbed the steps to the porch, her eyes trained for Robert. But he was nowhere in sight. Probably skulking in the shadows like a coward.

  She twisted the doorknob, and it creaked open. The interior was dark and dank, and wind whistled through the eaves of the old boards of the house. One step in and the wooden floor squeaked. She paused to listen for Mitzi again. A noise sounded from a back room to the right.

  Scuffling? Mitzi crying?

  Her heart wrenched.

  She slowly eased toward the hallway, her hand over her gun in her jacket pocket, ready to pull it when Robert appeared. Another step and Mitzi’s cry grew louder. She passed a small room that appeared empty, then a bathroom that was dirty and hadn’t seen paint in a decade or more. Then a second bedroom. Just as she was about to enter it, the floor creaked behind her.

  Her fingers wrapped around the handle of her gun. Before she could pull it from her pocket Robert wrapped his arms around her neck in a choke hold and dragged her into the room.

  * * *

  BY THE TIME Griff met Jacob at the sheriff’s office, Liam had a trace on Ginny’s phone. Jacob peeled from the parking lot and sped through town, siren blaring.

  Griff’s stomach knotted every time he imagined what Robert might do to Ginny.

  She was tough and strong and a survivor. She deserved to be treated with love and respect. He had the desperate urge to be the one who showed her how a man should love a woman.

  How could he have fallen for her in such a short time?

  Especially when she’d lied to him.

  Had she simply used him the night before to distract him so she could confront Robert on her own?

  He didn’t want to believe she would do that. She’d been abused and stalked to the point he’d worried she wouldn’t want a physical relationship. Yet she’d come apart in his arms.

  The connection he’d felt with her had to be real, didn’t it?

  “How did she get away from you?” Jacob asked.

  Humiliation shot through Griff. “She pulled a gun.”

  “Dammit. Why didn’t she call me?” Jacob asked.

  Griff remembered the fear haunting her eyes. And the guilt lacing her voice. “She’s afraid,” he said.

  “All the more reason not to go off alone.”

  “I know, but this bastard murdered her sister and she blames herself. She believes it’s her fault he killed Joy and kidnapped Mitzi.”

  Jacob pressed his lips into a thin line. “Guilt is pretty powerful, isn’t it?”

  Griff studied his brother’s deep scowl. They’d never really talked about their father’s death. “It wasn’t your fault that Dad didn’t survive the hospital fire,” Griff said. “I’m the firefighter. I should have insisted he stay outside.”

  Jacob made a low sound in his throat. “Don’t do that, Griff. It wasn’t your fault either. Dad did what Dad did, his job. That scene was chaotic, and lives were at stake. We needed manpower. None of us could have just stood by and watched without helping.”

  Griff’s throat felt thick with emotions. Jacob was right. He’d blamed himself, but the only way he could have stopped his father from running into the hospital to help save lives was to have knocked him unconscious.

  The Maverick men were protectors. That instinct had been bred into their blood when they were born.

  Jacob swerved onto a graveled road that appeared to lead nowhere, and he sped around the winding curves as he followed the GPS coordinates Liam had sent. The storm clouds disappeared beneath the thick overhanging trees, casting the road into such darkness that Jacob had to turn on his headlights.

  Three miles down the winding road, they finally broke into a clearing. Griff’s heart stuttered at the sight of Ginny’s car.

  “She’s here,” he said.

  “Stay in the car and let me handle this,” Jacob said. “He might be armed.”

  “No way.” Griff reached for the door handle.

  Jacob held up a warning hand. “Then stay behind me and follow my lead. The last thing I want is for you to get shot by a stray bullet if Ginny fires at Bouldercrest.”

  Griff nodded, then said a silent prayer that Ginny was all right as they eased their way toward the house.

  * * *

  THE SOUND OF crying roused Ginny from unconsciousness. Reality crashed back with the force of a tornado, infuriating her. Robert had gotten the best of her.

  After all her training and armed with a weapon, he’d won.

  She blinked and tried to focus on her vision. No...she refused to give up. She had to think.

  She felt something along her arm, then her cheek and opened her eyes. Robert. He was stroking her face with his fingers.

  Her skin crawled.

  For a moment, she considered spitting in his face, but that would do nothing except incite his anger. She had to outsmart him.

  Think, Ginny, think.

  Mitzi’s muffled cry echoed nearby, and she glanced sideways. The young woman was tied and gagged, curled on a cot in the corner, her hands secured to the bedpost.

  She’d left Griff the same way. Except she’d done it to protect him, not hold him hostage.

  “Robert,” she murmured.

  “I’m here, love. I told you we’d be together soon.”

  Emotions threatened to make her ill, but she swallowed back the bile. Use what you know about him. Get inside his head. “I know why you were so upset when I left,” she said softly. “I understand now.”

  His fingers stopped moving across her cheek. “What do you mean? You know?”

  She feigned a smile. “Your father hit your mother, so she decided to leave him, didn’t she? But he wanted her to stay.”

  Robert’s jaw tightened, eyes flickering with a myriad of emotions.

  “You watched him beat her, didn’t you? He told you mothers and wives weren’t supposed to leave. Then he killed her.”

  Razor-sharp anger blazed on his face. “They’re not supposed to leave. They’re supposed to be faithful and love you forever.”

  “That’s the reason you tried so hard to hold on to me,” she said in a low whisper. “I realize that now. Now that I understand, I think we can make it work.”

  His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, his eyes shifting as if he was debating whether or not to believe her.

  “We’ll talk things through,” she continued softly. “Everything will be different between us this time.”

  “How different?” he asked, his voice rough with emotions.

  “We’ll be together, and we’ll talk. And I won’t leave.” She smiled at him again, although her stomach was heaving in protest. “Please untie me and I’ll show you how much I’ve missed you.”

  He trailed his fingers over her throat, then around her breast, and she choked back a cry of revulsion.

  “Please,” she whispered. “I want to touch you and give you pleasure.”

  Desire sparked in his ugly gray eyes, and he slipped his fingers up and began to untie her while he kissed her neck and throat. Ginny closed her eyes and willed herself to play along, but hatred, deep and dark, bloomed like a cancer inside her.

  Finally, he freed the last knot around her hands, then he held them above her head and crawled on top of her. Panic threatened. She had to reverse the situation.

  She gripped his hands with her own, then flipped him over to his back. He looked startled, but she lowered her head and kissed his cheek to assuage his alarm. “I told you, I want to show you how much I missed you. Let me pleasure you first, then you can have your way with me just like you did when we first met.”

  Excitement and lust. A chuckle rumbled
from him and he rubbed himself against her. “I like the new Reese. Maybe I’ll start calling you Ginny, too.”

  She smiled, clenched his hands and straddled him.

  “You wanna play rough?” he asked.

  “Just like you like it.” She held his hands tightly, pushed her knee between his legs then suddenly kicked upward with her knee and jabbed him in the groin. He bellowed in pain and grabbed at his sex.

  “What the hell?”

  Taking advantage of the moment, she spotted her gun on the table across the room then dove for it.

  He recovered and grabbed at her leg, but she kicked at his face and scrambled away. He chased her, caught her arm and flung her against the wall. Her head snapped backward, and she tasted blood, but she called on the skills she’d learned in self-defense and swung her arm up to deflect his assault when he came at her.

  A swift thrust into his belly, and he doubled over. She kicked him in the groin again, then raced for the gun.

  Breath panting out, she closed her fingers around it, turned and aimed it at his chest as he bellowed his rage.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Griff heard noises from the rear of the house the minute he entered the front door. Jacob had circled around the side of the house to the back to scope out the situation.

  But Griff forged on. If Bouldercrest was armed, he’d deal with it.

  The floor creaked as he eased down the hallway toward the source of the noise. He’d heard sounds that indicated a fight. A woman’s muffled sobbing. Then Bouldercrest bellowing in rage.

  He couldn’t afford to waste a minute.

  He crept to the door and peered inside to assess the situation. Mitzi lay on a cot in the corner, tied and gagged. He visually swept the room and found Bouldercrest against the far wall, his hands up in surrender as Ginny pointed a gun at him.

  Instead of looking afraid though, Bouldercrest looked excited. The crazed look in his eyes indicated he was planning his next move. Twice Ginny’s size, he could take her down in a minute.

  “You deserve to die, Robert,” Ginny said. “You killed Tess, the only person in the world I loved.”

  “That was your fault,” Bouldercrest barked. “I told you you’d be sorry if you left me.”

  “I was not your possession.” Ginny’s hand trembled, the gun bobbing up and down. “And I never will be.”

  “You’re such a liar,” Bouldercrest said. “A few minutes ago, you said you missed me and that you’d do whatever I said.”

  “I said I’d show you how much I missed you and I’m going to.” She took a step closer to Bouldercrest and aimed the gun at the man’s chest.

  “You won’t shoot me,” the bastard said calmly. “You don’t have what it takes to pull that trigger.”

  The damn fool was taunting her, practically challenging her. “You’re wrong,” Ginny said, her voice calm but filled with a deep-seated hatred. “You changed me, Robert. I’m not that sweet, meek person you first met.”

  Her finger moved to the trigger, and Griff’s breath stalled in his chest. He stepped to the doorway. “Don’t do it, Ginny,” he murmured.

  Footsteps echoed on the wood floor, and Griff knew Jacob was behind him. “Let me handle it,” Jacob said in a low voice.

  Griff threw up a warning hand. “I’ve got it, Jacob.”

  “Go away,” Ginny told Griff and Jacob. “He deserves to die.”

  “That may be true,” Griff said. “And maybe he changed you in some ways. He made you tougher and more wary of people. But don’t let him turn you into a killer.”

  Ginny made a strangled sound. “He has to pay for what he did. I need justice for my sister and all the other lives he destroyed.”

  “He’ll get justice,” Griff said. “I promise. He’ll go to prison for the rest of his life.”

  “But my sister is gone forever,” Ginny cried.

  Griff barely breathed out. “I know, and I’m sorry. I understand what it’s like to lose someone you loved. You know I do.”

  A tear trickled down her cheek. “What about Joy? And the deputy? They died because of me.”

  “No, Ginny,” Griff said. “They died because this man is a sadistic cold-blooded killer. But you’re not. You have love and goodness in you.”

  Bouldercrest released a sarcastic laugh. “You don’t know anything about me. Only a man who can’t get his own woman tries to steal another man’s.”

  “I’m not your woman,” Ginny shouted. “Griff is ten times the man you are. Real men don’t have to bully women into being with them.”

  Bouldercrest stepped toward her, his hands clenched as if he wanted to choke her, and Ginny pulled the trigger. Bouldercrest froze as the bullet pinged the floor beside his feet.

  “Move again and you’re dead,” Ginny snapped.

  Jacob cleared his throat. “Ginny, let me have the gun. I’ll arrest him and haul him to jail myself.”

  Her eyes darted toward Griff and Jacob, but she shook her head. “I came here to get justice for Tess. And I won’t leave without it.”

  “Then think about your sister,” Griff murmured. “What kind of person was she? What would she want you to do? Would she want you to commit murder in her name?”

  * * *

  EMOTIONS CHOKED GINNY as Griff’s words hacked at her thirst for revenge. Her sister loved people, animals, children. She was an artist and saw the world through hopeful eyes, through her love of nature and its wonders.

  Would Tess want her to destroy her life for revenge? To live with anger and hatred?

  Her hand wavered. She couldn’t breathe. Her sister was gone, and all the beautiful colors died with her.

  “I understand what it feels like to want revenge,” Griff said. “For a while after my father died, I wanted the same thing. I thought if I found the person who’d set that fire, I’d beat the hell out of him. But then one day when I looked at his picture, I heard his voice talking to me. Telling me to respect women and children and to protect others. That day I realized if I sought revenge, it would eat away at my soul. And I would be desecrating his memory.”

  Ginny clamped her teeth over her bottom lip, her hand shaking.

  “So, I decided to honor his memory by being the kind of man he’d want me to be.” He inched closer to her. “I never met your sister, but I can’t imagine she’d want you to throw away your life by going to prison for murder. Would she?”

  Pain and grief twisted at Ginny. “No, she wouldn’t.”

  “I think she’d want you to live your life and be happy. To show this bastard that he didn’t break you.”

  “He has to be punished,” Ginny said.

  “Yes, he does.” Griff took another step closer to her. “He deserves to rot in prison. To have to face the people he hurt and live with that every day.”

  Emotions tore at Ginny, pulling her in different directions. Griff was right. But could she let Robert live? She’d wanted revenge for so long, she didn’t know what to do with herself without it.

  She heaved a wary breath. “How did you get past the anger?”

  “I still get angry,” Griff admitted. “But I have my brothers.”

  “That’s just it,” Ginny said in a pained whisper. “I have no one.”

  Griff placed a hand on her shoulder. “You’re not alone, Ginny. You have me.”

  His soothing words helped heal her battered soul, and her rage dissipated. Griff was right. Her sister would want her to live her life for her.

  She lowered the gun, but just as she did, Robert lunged toward her.

  “Very touching, you tramp,” he snarled.

  Griff gripped Ginny’s arm to pull her out of the way, then a gunshot sounded.

  Jacob. Robert went down with a loud shout of pain, hugging his leg. Griff eased the gun from Ginny and covered Jacob while Jacob handcuffed Bouldercrest. Th
en he pulled Ginny into his arms.

  When the bastard was secure, Jacob hurried to the cot where Mitzi lay, tied and gagged, her eyes wide in shock. He quickly untied her, then phoned for an ambulance.

  Ginny pulled away from Griff, ran over to Mitzi and sank onto the bed beside her. “I’m so sorry, Mitzi. So sorry,” Ginny whispered.

  Mitzi was trembling, her cheeks red with tears, eyes swollen, her face pale. “He...was crazy.”

  “I know.” She hugged Mitzi and held her, comforting her while they waited for the ambulance.

  * * *

  TWO HOURS LATER, after Mitzi was transported to the hospital, examined, and doctors reported that she was fine physically, she was released and sent home.

  Bouldercrest underwent surgery to have the bullet removed from his leg and was moved to a prison facility with medical care to await his trial.

  Jacob went home to his pregnant wife and stepdaughter, and Griff drove Ginny back to the inn. She’d been quiet and withdrawn ever since they left the hospital.

  Griff walked her to her room and escorted her inside. “It’s over now, Ginny,” he murmured.

  “I know. It’s hard to believe. Thinking about what he did and wanting to catch him has consumed me for three years.”

  He feathered a strand of hair from her cheek. “Maybe you can start to heal now.”

  She looked up into his eyes, but instead of peace, turmoil still streaked her face.

  “I meant what I said back there,” Griff said. “You’re not alone. I’m here for you.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I...appreciate you saying that, Griff. But you don’t have to protect me anymore.”

  His pulse jumped. “What if I want to be part of your life?”

  A wave of sadness tinged her eyes. “I need time.”

  Emotions roughened his voice. “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what I need to figure out.”

  He offered her a tender smile. “I could help you do that.”

  She shook her head. “Thank you for everything you’ve done, Griff. But I need to be alone for a while.” She rose on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek, then walked him to the door.