Slow Ride
Page 30
Cupping a hand to her face, Jack said, “I’m glad you like being with us.”
Oh no. Did he think she was laying heavy hints? That she wanted an invitation to stick around? She, more than anyone else, knew the impossibility of that dream.
So she tried to joke it off. “What’s not to like, right?” It wasn’t her business, and she was uniquely unqualified to give advice on family, but she couldn’t resist saying, “I think you should forgive him.”
With a level look, Jack asked, “Do you?”
Now that she’d brought it up, Ronnie rushed ahead, determined to have it said. “I think when he does come around, if you remember everything he’s lost, everything he’s stupidly given up, it’ll be easier to feel... I don’t know. Pity? Compassion? Something combined?”
He leaned in and kissed her. “I love my dad, Ronnie, faults and all. If I didn’t, he couldn’t piss me off so much. I’d just forget about him.”
Yeah, that made sense. “Well...good.” She hated the idea that his dad could hurt him.
Jack stroked back her hair. “Do you still love yours?”
The question hit like a snowball to the face. She reared back. “We’re not talking about me. Besides, I don’t even know who my dad is.”
“You don’t, huh? Well, I do. He’s the man who raised you. The man who put his wife ahead of everything else, including his pride. A sad, lonely, drunken fool who, like my father, screwed up the best thing he ever had.”
Ronnie’s eyes flared and her heart jumped against her ribs. She wanted to act indignant, maybe laugh it off, but the words caught behind a well of emotion.
Jack moved closer, his gaze warm on her face, his smile tender. “In case you don’t get it, babe, I mean you.”
Ronnie swallowed. Yeah, she’d figured that out on her own. It had the power to level her, that much faith.
“Nowhere else,” Jack continued, “is he going to find a stronger, more principled or caring daughter, and now, when it might be too late, he finally knows it.”
“I...” That sounded like a squeak, making her scowl. She cleared her throat and managed to summon up some attitude. “It’s not at all the same thing.”
“The same thing as my dad? No, it’s not. But maybe the advice should be the same. Forgive, move on, stop letting it hurt you.” He lifted one shoulder. “I’ll try if you will.”
If Jack hadn’t witnessed her on the phone with her dad, she could claim she’d already done that. But he didn’t miss much, so Ronnie knew he’d seen everything she felt—years of betrayal and upset. Denial wouldn’t work, so instead she said, “Let’s deal with one thing at a time.” Opening her door, she stepped out to the sunny morning. A bright sun had already done its work against the frosting of snow, turning the walkways damp instead of icy.
Jack caught up to her, his tall body casting a long shadow ahead of them. He adjusted his long-legged stride to match hers so that they reached the front door together.
Suddenly he paused, and Ronnie felt him sharpen with awareness. “The door is open.”
“Not open, just ajar. They do that.” She started to step around him, but he held her back.
Fury gathered in his expression. “What do you mean, they do that?”
Okay, so she got it. A lot had happened, enough that she shouldn’t take anything for granted.
How the hell had she forgotten that?
Because Jack was waiting, she explained, “They sometimes leave it open for me when they know I’m coming over. They’re probably in the basement, going through their records for you.”
Still Jack didn’t move, and Ronnie didn’t press him, didn’t step around him as she might have done a few weeks ago.
Glancing around the area, he backed up a step, taking her with him. “Maybe you should wait in the car while I—”
“No, that I won’t do.” Ronnie wasn’t about to let him walk into possible danger while she cowered away. “Safety in numbers, right? We can both check it out together.” His wariness was starting to wear off on her, and now the fine hairs on her neck seemed to tingle.
Reluctantly, Jack started forward. “Will you at least stay behind me?”
“For now.”
With a small push, the front door silently swung open, allowing in a rush of cold air and sunlight. The entry was the same as always, and beyond that, the familiar living room. Nothing seemed out of place to indicate a problem.
“What the hell is that?” Jack tilted his head to listen.
The faint screech of an electric guitar drifted from the general direction of the kitchen, and Ronnie started to relax.
“That’s their music, and I’m pretty sure it’s coming from the basement.” She smirked. “They’re metalheads, you know.”
“Why am I not surprised?” With his gaze searching everywhere, Jack eased toward the kitchen. He stayed alert, which made her alert as well.
The basement door was wide open, the stair light on.
One chair was moved out from under the small table, as if someone had recently vacated it. A pot of coffee, along with four cups, waited on the counter. Clearly, Drake and Drew anticipated their visit.
Jack paused near the stairs, listening.
Feeling some vague sense of unease, Ronnie hovered nearby, her gaze darting everywhere. What if something had happened? What if the twin brothers had become targets because of her? Despite their fascination with oddities and their exaggerated Goth appearances, they were sweethearts through and through. They were important to her...
And she was important to them.
The music was too loud for them to hear her if she yelled down, and she couldn’t bear to wait a second more. When she started forward, Jack said, “Let me go first.”
She glanced up at him, and her automatic protest stalled. Jack looked so torn, his breathing deeper, his gaze hard, his mouth firm.
It was the expression of a man who cared. Not just a little...but a lot.
“Jack.” Ronnie touched his arm. Did he not understand how much he meant to her, too? Why hadn’t she ever made that clear?
She’d been a coward, holding back her feelings, afraid of what might happen if she opened up too much. But she did care, far too much to let him take risks for her.
“Just this once,” he growled, “can you be agreeable?”
She should have been offended, but at the moment, she didn’t have it in her. “I’m agreeable all the damn time.”
“Good. Glad to hear it.” Jack moved to the first step. “So let me check it out and once I know it’s fine, you can join us.”
She threw up her hands. “Fine. Play the hero.” Afterward, they could work out the details of who cared the most. “But if you see even a shadow, tell me.”
Looking over his shoulder at her, he said firmly, “And you’ll call the cops.”
Ronnie patted her purse. “Maybe. After I shoot someone.”
Grinning, he turned back to the stairs. “It’s no wonder I’m so crazy about you.”
What? The way her heart floated and flipped, of course Ronnie couldn’t form a reply, but the happiness she couldn’t contain curved her lips into a smile. Dangerous hope carried her forward, just so she could watch him descend.
What he said might just be a saying; he didn’t necessarily mean it the way she took it. But it sounded pretty awesome all the same.
Suddenly the basement door slammed shut hard, shoving Jack forward. Ronnie heard him falling down the steps as a stranger—who’d been standing in the kitchen behind the open door the whole time—slapped the deadbolt into place.
“Jack!” It took all of two seconds for her to realize what had happened, and then the man was on her, snatching her purse away and clutching her close with an arm around her throat.
“Bastard,” she shouted as she flailed to escape. She kicked his shin, stompe
d his foot. If only I can get to my knife. Whoever he was, she’d happily kill him...
It was her last thought before a syringe viciously stabbed into her thigh.
She lost her breath for one startling second. Son of a bitch, that hurt.
“Shh, now,” he whispered, his lips touching her ear, his arm tightening around her throat so that she couldn’t draw in air. “You’ll relax in just a moment. It’ll make it easier.” His crooning voice raised every hair on her body, especially when he added, “For now.”
Furious pounding started on the basement door.
Jack?
An odd confusion swamped her. She vaguely heard other voices. Maybe the twins but they sounded so far away.
The stranger let her go and, crazy enough, her legs had gone numb and wouldn’t support her. Yet rather than fall, she sank slowly to the floor.
“Ronnie!”
The shout and furious rattling of the door roused her. Struggling to focus, Ronnie looked around, but God, she was suddenly tired. As if outside herself, apart from her own body, she saw the man paw through her purse.
“Ah, yes. A gun. How enterprising.” He smiled at her, his eyes completely devoid of humanity. Flat. Dead. She knew she should be afraid, but she wasn’t sure why.
As if sharing good news, he said, “Isn’t it ironic that I’ll use your own weapon to murder him?”
Murder...him?
“Ronnie, answer me!” What sounded like a kick jarred the doorframe.
Jack.
Some deep instinct desperately stirred, prompting Ronnie to remove the knife from her boot. She held it against her leg, hiding it as she swayed and struggled to stay awake.
The reasons were no longer clear, but she knew she didn’t want to fall asleep.
The room darkened around her, turning colorless, and the sounds were horrific. Loud clashes that reverberated through her brain, through her entire body.
After a pat on her head, the man took a stance, aiming the gun at the basement door.
Jack.
Ronnie stared at the man’s foot, planted near her. He wore only loafers, and they were damned offensive. The ugliest loafers she’d ever seen. She fucking hated those loafers—and all of a sudden, before her hand told her brain what it planned to do, she buried her knife in his foot.
Completely through. Savagely.
Pressure mounted behind her eyes and she felt nauseous, yet she held on to that knife, still pressing with both hands, using all her strength. It occurred to her that she heard screaming, and that something pounded against her head and shoulders. A gun went off, once, twice.
Darkness circled her vision, a tornado of storm clouds that blocked out the kitchen and everything in it. She saw only that loafer, now slick and red.
Then she saw nothing at all.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
WITH ONE MORE HEAVE, Jack splintered the door from its frame and it crashed open, revealing a grisly scene.
Ronnie sprawled on the floor, face down, blood stark in her fair hair. Her small body, utterly limp, was draped around an intruder’s feet.
A screaming intruder—whom Jack recognized.
The man from the hotel.
The gunshot had come from the weapon in the bastard’s hand.
Volcanic rage carried Jack forward in one powerful lunge to smash his fist into the man’s pain-contorted face.
The screams stopped and the man swayed, but Jack held on to him. Standing over Ronnie, belatedly giving the protection she should have had from the start, Jack struck out, hitting the man’s jaw, his gut, his temple.
Brodie charged into the kitchen, then drew up short. Drake and Drew scrambled up the steps behind Jack.
He barely noted any of them. Not with Ronnie down. Not with her so still, her...blood. Jesus, no. His chest heaved with pain, and each hollow beat of his heart brought his fist into contact with the bastard’s face again.
“Move,” Brodie said, kneeling down at Ronnie’s shoulder. “He’s no longer feeling it and I don’t want to get trampled.”
While Drake and Drew keened in hysterics, and Jack stood there praying, Brodie gently turned her and touched her throat.
He looked up at Jack. “She’s alive.”
Dragging in a great, shuddering breath, Jack released the man with a small shove, watching him collapse back in a heap made more awkward by the fact that his foot was skewered to the floor.
With Ronnie’s knife.
White and shaking, Drake rushed forward and pointed. “Look.”
A needle lay on the counter, empty.
“Dear God,” Drew cried. “He gave her something.”
As carefully as he could, Jack lifted her, and still she gave a fretful moan.
“Police are called,” Brodie calmly informed him as he looked around. “Bullet holes in the ceiling and wall. I heard the shots and got in here as quick as I could.”
Drew ran ahead of Jack and shoved the coffee table away from the couch so roughly that it overturned. “Put her here.”
Hands shaking, Drake positioned a throw pillow for her head. “The blood...”
Jack didn’t want to let her go, but he had to check her so he lowered her to the couch. Her hand dropped off the side, lifeless, stalling his heart.
“I don’t think the blood is hers.” Brodie held the gun in his hand. “The bullets missed her. I think that’s the blood from his foot.” Briefly, he clasped Jack’s shoulder. “Stay with her. I’ll go secure the prick in the kitchen, just in case you didn’t kill him.”
Jack didn’t care if the man died or not. He feathered his fingers into Ronnie’s hair, sticky now with blood. He felt along her scalp, around her ears. He found a few swollen spots but no breaks in her skin.
“Will she be all right?”
Looking up, he found Drake and Drew, both white as sheets and trembling, staring at Ronnie with liquid eyes.
“Yes.” Jack said it, meant it...because it had to be true. “She’ll be okay.”
Not more than five minutes passed before they heard the sirens.
Though Jack didn’t look away from Ronnie’s face, he was aware of Brodie striding back in.
“He’s hanging on, but he’s not going anywhere. I left the blade in his foot.”
“Fuck him.” Jack lifted Ronnie’s hand in both of his. “Come on, sweetheart. I need you.”
Her lashes fluttered and her lips worked.
“Police are here.” Drake moved away, and Jack heard the door open. Drew followed his brother, frantic explanations tripping out without a single nuance of dark mystique shading his tone. For Ronnie, the twins were just...themselves.
Jack bent closer to her, his nose touching hers. “I love you, Ronnie Ashford. Please don’t leave me.”
He felt her breath and then she groaned. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
Hearing her speak, regardless of the words, gave him hope.
“Come on, Jack.” Brodie clasped his arm and pulled him away as police and paramedics stepped in. “Give them some room.”
The next ninety minutes were the longest of Jack’s life. The ride to the hospital behind the ambulance, finding out Ronnie was awake when they got there, only to be told she didn’t remember much. Of anything.
She was disoriented and afraid.
Having doctors explain she’d been given a drug that could cause drowsiness, confusion, and even hallucinations made Jack want to put his fist through the wall.
His knuckles were already split but he had little patience for the way his mother tried to cover them with ice. When she was in the room, Charlotte watched him with worried eyes. Whenever he saw Brodie, he had Mary tight in his embrace. Drake and Drew sat huddled together, heads down in misery.
They were all there.
Because they all loved her.
The man who’d done this to her was also at the hospital. Police had already identified him as a serial killer, a crazed lunatic, a man who had focused on Ronnie as his next victim. Although he’d taken a beating, the bastard would recover. And spend the rest of his life in jail.
Jack was stewing on that, thinking dark things when finally a doctor emerged. He glanced at each of them. “Family?”
“All of us,” Jack said, and immediately they were there, clustered around him, standing as one, Drake and Drew included.
Jack didn’t waste time contacting her blood family. Far as he was concerned, they could all rot. If Ronnie wanted to reach out to them, then and only then would he bother.
For now, he concentrated on what the doctor had to say, and thank God, the news was all good, far as it went. Ronnie was still agitated, and yes, nauseous, but the effects of the drug had mostly worn off and she was finally lucid.
Jack jogged to the room, pushing through the doors and pausing only when he found her sitting up in a bed, most of the blood now washed from her hair, but some sections stained pink.
She’d been scowling in that familiar way, her slim brows down, her mouth drawn—but seeing him, her expression went blank, then crumpled.
His heart crumpled, too.
In two big strides he reached her, bending over the bed, holding her close with his face in her neck. “I thought you were gone.” Jesus, his voice sounded like gravel, but it was all he could do not to break. “Ronnie.” He held her back, kissed her mouth, her forehead, then crushed her close again.
Clinging to him, her voice a whisper of sound, she said, “I don’t remember.”
“It’s okay, baby. All you need to know is that I have you and I’m never letting you go.” She went still, but Jack didn’t care. He kissed her neck and repeated, “Never.”
Maybe she didn’t believe him, maybe she thought he was just upset, but she nodded against his shoulder. “Will you tell me what happened?”
Jack got it together enough to sit up. “The bastard was already in the house, hiding behind the kitchen door. Drake and Drew had no idea.” He touched her face with a shaking hand. “After he knocked me down the steps and locked the door, he gave you a drug. But still, you saved the day.”