Snuggling my body, she strolled her fingers up my quivering forearms, knitting them behind my neck. Making this big man shake like a leaf caught in a hurricane wasn’t easy to do. Interlacing my fingers at her spine, I watched her fall into a peaceful sleep. I, however, did not. Chad was still roaming free.
The next morning, I left Cherise sleeping and went downstairs to get something to drink. Andre sat on the sofa shirtless in the midst of a bunched sheet around his hips and wrinkled pillow. Pants and boots still on, he tinkered with his phone. “Cherise okay?”
“I think so.” I went through the opened doorway at the rear of the living area to the fridge. “She’s resilient, but I don’t know how long that’s going to last. This shit is taking its toll on her. We have to find Chad and put him down soon. I will not lose her to him in any way, but I’ve got to find him first before he finds us again. How long have you been up?”
“About thirty minutes.” He twisted his head, getting a better view of his phone. “The keys to your new ride while yours is being repaired are on the kitchen table. One of my cousins in IT hacked into the area cams of the city, and found an area that Chad’s been doing a lot of back and forth in while you and Cherise were not sleeping last night.”
Jetting over to Andre nearly cost me the glass of orange juice in my hand. “Why the hell are you just now telling me?”
Squinting, Andre towed the phone closer to his face. “Because he’s just now telling me. He sent me a screenshot taken by the last camera on what looks to be Chad’s regular route going out past the carnival grounds. It’s mainly countryside out there, therefore, no mounted cameras and a dead end. He could be anywhere out there. You can risk trying to follow him, but I advise we make him come to us.”
“We won’t have to make him.” I accepted the grainy photo of a truck that certainly looked like Chad’s even pixelated. “We just need to be ready when he comes on his own. He still doesn’t have what he wants.”
“And he’s not getting it,” Cherise supplied from the top of the stairs.
Malaysia appeared beside her, yawning. “Damn right, he’s not getting it because we’re going to make a plan today to be ready or no one leaves.”
“I’m in,” Andre provided.
“In that case,” Malaysia added, “Cherise will get breakfast started. If I cook, you won’t have to worry about anything ever again on this planet.”
Andre was horrified. “You can’t cook?”
She grinned. “Can’t even boil water, and I’m proud of it.”
The ladies descended the stairs. We quickly started swapping suggestions and propositions of Chad’s next move, tactics we’d use to counteract them. Cherise had dealt with him the most, and she predicted he’d called to gloat about the literal run-in with us that he got away with yesterday. No sooner than she said that, her phone rang in her terry-cloth robe’s pocket. It was a strange number. She had a business, so strange was the norm.
Cherise
Midway to forking fluffy scrambled eggs in my mouth, the stupid phone rang. Almost one hundred percent sure it was someone calling the office, I picked up though I had no intention of going to work. “Johnston Psychiat—”
“Cut the shit, Cherise,” Chad barked. “How did you like my first lesson I taught yesterday?”
I wondered how he’d like being recorded by the cops. Not about to ask, I activated the speakerphone and put it in the center of the round, glass table. The others leaned over their plates to hear clearly. Andre sent out a text, likely to Detective Cortez, who I hoped was already listening in from the bug he placed on my phone lines already. Hopefully, he was up as well at nine in the morning.
Tobin rubbed my back, giving me just a little more courage to face my demon. “I’m not sure exactly what you were trying to teach me, Chad. Why don’t you be clear about it?”
“Don’t question me. Don’t disobey me. Don’t date other men, or there are dire consequences. I told you don’t make me get rid of him. Yesterday, was to scare him off. Next time, it might be a bullet coming through the back of his truck. Save his life and put him out of your home now.”
Alarmed, I looked Tobin’s way. He was struggling to stay quiet and thumping the side of his fist on a knee bouncing harder than a basketball. I tried calming him by running my hand over his back while entertaining Chad.
“How do you know he’s with me?” I stalled.
A shuffling sound ignited in the background. “Because when I’m not with your friend Eva.” A muffled scream aired through the line then was cut off abruptly.
I screamed, “Eva! Let her speak to me, Chad!”
“You haven’t learned that you don’t tell me what to do, have you?”
Another muffled scream blasted from God knew where into the kitchen. Somehow, it was louder. He was hurting Eva because of me.
I rocketed to my feet. “Chad, dammit—”
Tobin grabbed me, towing my face into his neck, cutting off my next unpleasant words before I made the situation worse. So many emotions crowded me—fear, anger, but most of all, retaliation. This monster would get what was coming to him one way or the other. I couldn’t wait until the moment that he was on the receiving end of what he dished out.
“I’m watching you, Cherise. I guess you know I’m not watching you right this moment, but I was. Your date from the carnival never came out those gates last night or this morning. If you don’t come to me, then well, I guess I’ll have to take my frustrations with you out on Eva again.”
Eva’s muted terror filled the line again. I shuddered when it stopped as fast as it happened, biting into my knuckles to keep from screaming myself. Tobin waved his hand for me to continue to play my role; get Chad out of his comfort zone into ours. It took everything within me to hold it together.
“Okay! Okay!” I wiped wearily at my forehead. Malaysia navigated the table, coming to my side to pick up my chair and invite me to sit in it. As wobbly as my knees were, I really needed that seat. She kneeled at my side, stroking my arm. I resumed my end of the most terrible conversation ever. “Okay, Chad, but you can’t keep Eva. I don’t share. You keep her, she’s all you’ll have.”
“You’re making demands? You have no power here,” boomed back at me.
“I have all the power if I have what you want. Eva and I were never great friends. You took a wild chance on using her against me. Ask yourself, who’d I rather keep safe more, me or her?”
“If you’ve learned your lesson, you’d stop trying to tell me what to do.”
“You want me, you can have only me. That’s my final answer, and you can keep attempting and failing to kidnap me too.”
A cemetery-quiet reigned over the line for half a minute.
“I think you’re up to something, Cherise.”
“What can I be up to? No one knows when you’re coming until you show up. What is there to plan for?”
“You’re right.” Stroking this man’s ego should be a sin. “I am the best at what I do, and I’ve bested your soldiers too. The better man is me.”
A look passed between Andre and Tobin. They were not loving the insult of being bested or called a mere soldier when they were Marines. They were more fierce than any other military branch, according to them.
“What do you want me to do, Chad?” I asked warily. We came to the conclusion that adapting to whatever he wanted was best.
The distinctive crunch of a chair giving beneath a body reclining in it sounded off. “You know I never really got to see your office here. How about meet me there alone, and I can get to know the place?” He had to figuratively piss on that site too, marking it as his.
“When?” ejected from me on a desperate note.
Malaysia squeezed her eyes tight and shook her head. I was being too eager.
“When I fucking tell you to!” thundered from Chad. “You think I’m going to give your boy time to set up and prevent me from getting what’s mine?” It was more like he wanted to set up and prevent them from stopp
ing him. Even if he thought there was a setup, it wouldn’t stop him from trying to take me. That was narcissism at its worst.
With a definite location of the next confrontation with Chad, Andre ran out of the kitchen. He wouldn’t be coming back, he had work to do.
Chad was still rambling, “I thought you were smart, Cherise, but I’m guessing not.”
“I’m sorry?” I didn’t know what the hell to say to that.
“You should be sorry. Chad and Cherise has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? It was fate we were named that.” He was grasping at straws to make us seem destined. Doomed was more like it.
I nearly gagged at the simple link of two letters in our names. “If you think so.”
His chair creaked again as if he sat up quickly. “You better think so too, or it’s going to be a tough road for you when you’re where you belong with me. Get that bastard out of your home within the hour, or Eva will pay the price, and so will you. Come one minute later than when I tell you to, and you and Eva both will pay the price. Wait for my call.”
Those ominous last words haunted me for ten hours straight. Every hour on the hour, I thought that would be the hour he called. It wasn’t. My nerves were raw. I couldn’t eat or watch television. Malaysia hovered, the only other in the condo with me. Tobin left as soon as he could to not provoke the monster. He checked in often with info from the calls he made. The cops couldn’t help much. With no direct time of when Chad would show up, nobody could really prepare for what lay ahead. Exactly how Chad wanted it. Doesn’t mean we didn’t try.
At ten o’five, my cell rang. Praying it was Tobin and his voice of calming reason and promise to be there when I need him, I glanced at the phone on my thigh. It was another strange number. Having had it up to my eyeballs with strange numbers lately, I swiped the accept icon only because another life was on the line. Malaysia eased onto the cushion next to me to listen in.
“Hello.”
“Why so down, Cherise?” He was unusually chipper. “It’s about to be the best night of your life. Don’t you want to know what I have planned?”
Not particularly, but I indulged him anyway. “What will make it the best night?”
“Me.” As if.
“What’s the next step, Chad?”
“I’ll tell you step by step on the phone, so you don’t have time to call your savior. Now, go to your car.”
“Let me get my keys and purse.”
Malaysia handed them to me from the side table, mouthing, “Be careful’ and dialing out on her phone. She was calling me. I had to answer her call and conference her in without Chad being any the wiser. She was tasked with reporting my steps to the guys as I sent her my location whenever I could over our iPhones.
I nodded at her, walking outside with my nerves on edge. Every dark shadow and parked car held the promise of danger until I got in my car. I was instructed to drive up and down my street outside the gate three times before heading to the heart of town. Each time, I rode down the street, a black sedan with blacked-out windows passed by.
While I wasted my gas, I figured out it had to be Chad in his secondary car, making sure I was doing as told and hadn’t picked a tail. I didn’t call him out on it. He was oddly quiet until he issued his next instruction; drive to the restaurant behind the bus stop Athena used religiously. He wanted me to park and wait. With a clear line of sight all the way to my office building, I sent Malaysia my location swiftly with one hand while putting my car in park with the other.
Traffic was moderate even at this time of night in the business district. The fastest route to the nightclubs was this way. Nothing could hide the black sedan driving by ten minutes later when I had hawk eyes out for it. It went into the empty lot of my business, circling around the building twice. He was looking for anything out of place. Brown-skinned Andre in all black was going to be hard to spot.
The sedan parked sideways in front of my business. Chad was notorious for quick getaways. If luck was a generous lady tonight, his habits would backfire on him. “You may come to your office. Park with your back to me. Turn the engine off. Wait until I tell you to get out.”
It irked me that I had to get permission to drive to my own establishment. Fuming mad, I obeyed. More anxious than a cat on a hot tin roof, I sat in my car with his headlights shining brightly throughout my car. He could see me, but I couldn’t get a beam on him with the light in my eyes. I tried, squinting to lessen the rays reflecting off my mirrors. This son of a bitch planned for everything.
“Get out the car, Cherise, go in your building slowly. Turn the alarm off quickly. Trigger it, and Eva will never see the light of day again.”
Feeling the heavy burden of his eyes on me, it was all I could do to not rush inside. I got out as told with the phone and heard a low thump on his end. He muttered to himself, “Stupid bitch better be glad I brought her with me. Maybe, I should leave her back there.”
‘Back there’ as in the trunk? I pondered that, sure he didn’t think I heard him, but he probably didn’t care if I did. Keeping it casual, I obeyed his orders, opening the office.
“Turn on the lights in there,” he mandated.
I went to flipping switches through the building, skipping the one behind Athena’s desk.
“Go into your office and wait for me with the door open.”
I had to bite my tongue to keep from asking if he would bring Eva in. It was consolation that I had a good idea where she was. Within the walls of my office blocking Chad’s view, I texted Andre that Eva may be in Chad’s trunk. With no need to send Malaysia my location, I sat down at my desk, patiently. The newly-installed buzzer went off at the front door. I didn’t bother to tell Chad about it, he’d find out about it the hard way.
I got up to answer his summons. Through the glass, I peered at Chad. Eva was nowhere in sight. He grinned. I leered back at him, which caught him off guard. He wasn’t ready for my defiance or when Tobin jumped down from the roof behind him. Chad spun around right into Tobin’s fist. I winced. Chad stumbled into the glass window.
“This is where you lock the door behind me and call the cops while I search Chad’s car, Cherise,” Andre coached from behind me. He’d been here the entire time since Chad’s first call, laying low behind Athena’s desk in case Chad made it inside the building. We had no plans for him to get that far. When darkness had fallen, Tobin climbed the roof, anticipating this moment of meeting Chad fist to face.
“I’m going to check for Eva.” Dialing 911, I placed the phone to my ear and escorted Andre to the exit, locking it when he was on the other side.
God, please let her be alive, I prayed as the emergency line rang. Only one person was supposed to die here tonight. Tobin leaned to the side and kicked Chad square in the jaw. He fell flat on his back. A dispatcher picked up as Andre reached Chad’s car, opening the driver’s door.
“Send Detective Cortez to Johnston Psychiatric Services. We have his corpse thief and kidnapper here.” I hung up.
Tobin roaring, “Get up!” snagged my sole interest.
Chad rolled sideways onto all fours. One hand edged to his right side in my line of vision, not Tobin’s. Chad had a hunting knife clipped to his belt. Panicking, I fumbled with the lock to get out.
“Stay in, Cherise!” he directed, sidetracked.
“Boy, you’ve crossed a line you can’t come back from now! She’s fucking mine!” Chad shouted then lunged up on his feet to stab Tobin, who jumped back too late. I screamed. Chad’s downswing had caught Tobin in the thigh, splitting his pants. Blood welled up on his exposed skin, which only seemed to piss Tobin off. Successfully getting the door unlock, I stayed put. I was a bigger detriment to Tobin than assistance. Then, the most beautiful thing in the world happened. Tobin charged Chad, delivering a knee to his chin. Chad lost the knife as he tumbled back into the door, half unconscious. Tobin kicked the weapon away then grabbed Chad by the back of the shirt, hauling him up on his knees as if he was going to execute him. He was, all a par
t of the plan.
Chad wasn’t fit to breathe air. But first, Tobin nodded once at me. I imitated him and closed my eyes. I didn’t hear or see Chad’s neck snap, but I imagined how it took place, and I had never been more glad of a death to happen before that night. The door opened before me. Arms enclosed me.
“It’s over, love,” Tobin whispered to me, “He can’t or won’t hurt anyone else again.”
It was over. Three words had never brought me such peace. Happy, my waterworks’ button failed. I bawled like a baby into his shoulder.
“Can I please have a glass of water?” a woman croaked, shuffling into the building. Eva was alive.
Tobin moved aside. I took in Eva in a wrinkled, brown skirt and sleeveless blouse that she must’ve been in for days at least. Red splotches were all over her pale face, wrists, and arms as if she’d been duck taped and maybe poked with a cattle prod. Her shoes were gone, her hair a strawberry blond mess. Still, she was a sight for sore eyes.
Eva pulled a face. “Cherise!”
“It’s me, Eva.” I ran to her, hugging her tight. “Everything’s alright.”
She embraced me back, sighing. “I have never been so glad to see a familiar face in all my life. That fucking Chad was absolutely crazy. Not even Ambien could help that son of a bitch.”
For a moment, nothing or no one moved. Then, we all laughed.
Cherise
“This is my shit, Cherise! Come dance with me!” Malaysia scooted out of the booth, heading to the dance floor.
I didn’t follow her lead even if the fast tune was hitting my dancing buttons. Embarrassing myself in public with cutting a rug hadn’t been my thing in years. In Tobin’s arm, draped snugly around me in the booth, was where I wanted to be. He kissed my jaw and took a swig from his beer. Smiling like a loon, I took a sip of my white wine, tapping my feet to the beat under the table crammed with plates of half-eaten food. Browsing the bar we’d started to frequent in the last three months, I noticed a big man lurking in a dark corner. He only had eyes for the crowd on the dance floor.
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