I’d called the police when I’d first heard the sounds in the kitchen.
I knew it wouldn’t be long before someone showed.
In the meantime, I could feel the blood running down my arm. Could also feel it dripping down and falling onto Tara.
I hated that she was getting anything that belonged to me anywhere near her, even if it was my blood and it wasn’t by conscious thought.
But before I could put much more thought into it, my front door slammed against the wall in my living room, and I heard the sound of running feet heading our way.
“Last door on the right,” I called out, just in case the police officers that were announcing themselves weren’t ones that’d been in my house ever before.
I shouldn’t have bothered. It was Wade, and he looked rough.
His hair was all a mess, and his eyes were half closed.
But he was brandishing a weapon and it was aimed at Tara’s face seeing as the majority of my body was covering hers.
He took one look at the situation, kicked the gun out of her hand without care that it would hurt, and gestured for me to get off of her.
“If I get off, she’s going to go crazy,” I admitted.
Wade shrugged, and I could see that we were on the same page.
“Just get the gun off the floor and stand up,” he ordered.
I reached for the gun and did as he asked, making sure not to put my back to the bitch and risk serious bodily harm.
She did exactly what we both thought she’d do. She went fuckin’ nuts.
For the third time Monster tried to intervene, and I called him off. Again.
He was so getting a steak dinner after this bullshit was through.
Wade didn’t even flinch when Tara decided to change her targets, and I found myself wishing he was dressed in uniform instead of looking like he just rolled out of bed. That way he would’ve had his bodycam and would’ve been able to record every single fucked up thing she did.
Like reach for the goddamn closest object—my steel-toed boots—and brandish it as a weapon as she went after Wade.
Wade let her get close, then stepped out of the way just as she sailed past him. Tara’s momentum carried her past and slammed her face first into the wall. She went down hard but rolled back to her feet only to have another go at him.
It was as this was happening that a patrol officer arrived, this one with a bodycam.
Wade re-holstered his weapon and tried to catch Tara on this pass, but Tara elbowed and punched her way out of his grip, moving so that her face was only inches away from his arm.
Realizing her intention, Wade wrapped his hand around her hair and pulled, stopping her from biting him only inches before she would’ve sunk those teeth home.
“Cas,” Wade barked. “Are you going to help, or are you going to fucking watch the whole time?”
Castiel came in at a sedate walk moments later, his eyes taking everything in at once.
“Well, I see I’m late to the party,” he surmised as he crossed his arms over his chest and watched Wade struggle.
Eventually, Wade became uncaring that he’d hurt her and used a pressure point on her wrist to cause her to let go of him. Then he moved fast and brought her down to the ground and had her face first in the carpet before anyone else could decide to help.
“Medics are outside,” Castiel said. “Head on out there.”
I rolled my eyes and reached for my phone, shoving it into the waistband of my underwear.
The next thing I got was my sweatpants that were hanging on the end of the bed, draped loosely over the right post that would be closest to my feet.
“Before y’all leave, will you do me a favor and grab me a change of clothes and my boots?” I asked as I headed out of the room.
It was Castiel who said, “Yep.”
I stopped and looked at my dog, giving him a good scratch on the head before I turned to Castiel.
“I’ll go drop the dog off with Turner,” Castiel said, understanding the unanswered question. “Then meet you at the hospital.”
I gave him a nod of thanks and headed outside to the medic so he could look at my arm.
It hurt like a motherfucker.
In fact, it hurt so badly that I was convinced that I’d done the stupid thing and allowed Tara to shoot me for no reason.
Walking up to the medic and wondering if I’d made the right decision in the heat of the moment, I nodded my head at him.
“Hey,” I said. “They sent me out here.”
The medic nodded for me to climb into the back of the ambulance and then said, “Have a seat. Mi casa is yours and all that fun jazz.”
I rolled my eyes and took a seat on the gurney, which he then followed suit but on the bench in front of me.
I cursed at the medic who had the nerve to poke my wound.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered darkly. “Careful there.”
The medic grinned. “Sorry, man. Just wanted to see if the wound was through and through.”
I rolled my eyes. “It is.”
He nodded his head in confirmation. “I know.”
Then he started wrapping it up and applying even more pressure, making my belly dip as pain raced its way through my system.
“Hurt?” he asked.
I rolled my eyes. “Not in the least.”
Chapter 19
I like to send notes to school in Linnie’s lunchbox that say ‘sorry the Cheez-Its are stale. That’s what happens when you leave the box open.’
-Theo’s secret thoughts
Theo
“I swear to God.” I looked at my coworker. “I put that on auto-draft the moment that you showed me the ropes. What is going on?”
In a funny twist of fate, my job that I’d received was also for a company that had a special place in my heart—Ampere Electric.
Well, Ampere was the parent company, anyway. The company that I actually worked for was a branch off of Ampere Electric and went by the name Amp Electric. I wasn’t sure why they didn’t just keep the Ampere name, but I chose to ignore it and not ask questions, which would bring light to the fact that I knew more than I probably should as a new employee.
“We found a glitch in the system,” she said. “There are a few individuals—which usually only affects the owners—that have to pay the system manually. There’s just something in the system that doesn’t allow them to use the auto-draft feature. Like the auto-draft refuses to be paid by a card that has the company’s name on it? I don’t know. We’ve actually been trying to figure it out ourselves for six months now. You’ll just have to pay by check or call over the phone. I’m sorry.”
I wondered if Liner had the same problem, then berated myself for thinking about him.
Thinking about Liner was a dangerous game and one that I tried really hard not to play.
But, it was a game I usually lost and was forced to participate whether I wanted to or not.
It’d been just a few short months since I’d left him, and it felt like a lifetime. A lifetime of staying awake, thinking about him at night.
Thinking about what he was doing, where he was at, who he was with.
I knew without a shadow of a doubt that he wasn’t with anyone in that aspect. He was with people that he worked with or his club.
A club that hadn’t been very happy with him after everything that had gone down with me and him.
Poor guy. He was definitely between a rock and a hard place.
“How are you liking it so far?” my coworker, Jennie, asked.
I shrugged. “I’m liking it okay. It’s definitely a place where I can see myself working for a while. My only problem at this point are the weird hours.”
She laughed. “Welcome to my life. I have to get my husband to get home before the school bus lets off otherwise my kids are all by themselves. I’m honestly surprised the owners worked so well with your hours. It was a miracle that
you got them to agree to let you off at three-fifteen.”
Was it?
I’d had those hours when I started, and I had a feeling it had a lot to do with the man that had likely pulled a few strings to get me here in the first place.
Liner.
God, everything just circled back to him one way or the other, didn’t it?
I had a sneaking suspicion he was also the reason for my card not working as well. In a roundabout way, I was certain he was paying my way…
“Hey, wow. Look at that!”
I turned to see the television in the corner of the room displaying what looked like a shooting scene.
My heart started to pound as I reached for the remote at the corner of my desk and turned the volume up.
Normally we weren’t allowed to listen to it seeing as it would affect our calls if we got one, but I couldn’t stop myself from looking at the screen. Not in a million years. Not if the building was on fire around me.
“What is it?” Jennie asked worriedly.
Oh, holy shit.
I stared at first, not quite comprehending what I was seeing.
The news reporter was standing in a neighborhood. She was a pretty little thing, but she was wearing too much makeup.
Not that I was really an expert on makeup, but that girl was a beautiful girl, she likely didn’t need the tons that was slapped on her face.
But, when I finally looked behind the reporter, a little niggle started to tease the back of my brain.
Something about the place was familiar.
Why was it familiar?
Then I realized that I’d seen that house before—the one in the background.
I also realized rather quickly that the town that was splashed against the bottom of the screen in the ticker was familiar, too. The banner at the bottom of the page read, “Attempted murder in Bear Bottom, Texas of Ampere Electric Millionaire.”
My heart started to beat a thousand miles an hour, and my palms began to sweat.
“Wow,” Jennie said in surprise. “Did you hear that?”
It was then that I realized that despite turning the volume up, I hadn’t heard a word that the news reporter was saying.
“No, what?” I croaked.
“That’s the owner of our business!” Jennie said. “I mean the big, big owner.”
I nodded hard, feeling my hands start to go numb, as I listened closer to what the reporter was now saying.
“…entered the location while the Ampere Electric owner was still asleep. The owner’s dog, a beautiful Standard Poodle, alerted the gentleman of his intruder.” The screen panned over to where Castiel was standing, holding Monster’s leash while he gestured for the dog to get inside the back of his police cruiser. “The woman had a gun and shot the owner once.”
That was all I was able to hear before I was reaching for my phone.
“I’ll be right back.” I placed the remote on the desk in front of me, trying to appear calm. “I have to use the restroom.”
With my phone in my hand, I walked as sedately as I could toward the door. Once it was closed behind me, I practically sprinted out of the office and straight outside, my phone already to my ear.
***
I was a quivering mess as I waited for somebody to call me back.
The only number I’d been given by Hoax in case I needed to contact them was an emergency line. One that went through a series of operators to ‘get to the right person’ according to the woman that I had on the line.
So there I waited, working but not really putting my all into my work, for what felt like days but only ended up being a couple of hours.
Eventually, it turned three-fifteen, and I started gathering my things. I clocked out at three-twenty every single day so I could make it to school pick-up by three-thirty to get Linnie from school.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Jennie,” I said softly to the woman at my side.
Jennie looked over with a tired smile. “I love your hours.”
I smiled back. I did have good hours. I needed to thank Liner for that.
There was no doubt about that.
Liner, who might very well be dead, and I was still here, twiddling my thumbs.
God, I wanted to leave so badly that my foot was twitching on the gas pedal twenty minutes later as I waited in the school pick-up line for Linnie.
And when Linnie finally made it into my car, I had to remind myself of Liner’s words as I’d left him.
Of his certainty that I should forget about him and keep myself safe.
I just hated that he was right.
“Mommy, can we go straight home?” Linnie asked softly. “I’m tired.”
I looked at my daughter in the back seat, strapping herself into her car seat, and nodded my head.
“Yeah, baby. We can go straight home.”
My eyes closed, and I told myself that if I didn’t hear from them by tomorrow morning, I’d go.
I couldn’t help myself.
I’d go, and God help us all then.
Chapter 20
Welcome to the South where ‘who made this tea?’ means the tea is nasty.
-Liner’s secret thoughts
Liner
“You have a minute and a half.” Hoax tossed me the phone. “Call her, make sure she’s going to stay where she is, and then hang up. No longer than a minute and a half or it can be traced.”
I nodded my head and immediately flipped open the phone—and yes, you heard that right. Flipped open.
The phone was one of the oldest phones I’d ever seen, and honestly, I wasn’t even sure that they made the likes of these anymore.
Regardless, I dialed the one number that was saved in the phone, then pressed it to my ear, not bothering to leave the room where I had at least six of my club members now crowded around me.
Slate—the newest member—was leaning against the wall next to the door, glaring down the hallway at where I suspected Tara sat still handcuffed to her hospital gurney.
When I’d arrived eight hours ago, Tara had been hot on my heels, via police escort, because she’d been ‘freaking out.’ Meaning they feared for her psychiatric health and stashed her in a goddamn psych room a few doors down from my own.
She hadn’t been freaking out. She’d been putting on a show.
Regardless of what it was, there was now a psych evaluation being run on her, and if we were lucky she’d be taken to jail shortly after the test was administered. Or hell, I’d even be happy with her going straight to a psych ward—one that wasn’t going to be influenced by Daddy’s money.
The phone rang once if you could even call it once since it rang for half of one, and a frantic Theo was on the other end of the line.
“Is he okay?” she asked, sounding sick to her stomach.
I smiled as I said, “Yeah, baby. I’m fine.”
Then she burst into tears, and I would’ve much rather been holding her when I told her that news.
“Are you okay?” I asked softly.
She sniffled. “I am now.”
I felt like the lowest pile of shit when she said that.
“I can’t stay on the phone long,” I explained. “But I wanted you to know that I’m okay and that Tara is in police custody.”
There was a long, drawn-out pause before she spoke. “It was Tara?”
I could practically feel her outrage over the distance separating us. “Yes. It was Ta—”
“I’m sorry, sir,” a female nurse said loudly, bringing all of our attention to the hallway where a commotion was in progress. “You can’t go in there. She’s in police custody…”
There was a gasp, and suddenly that woman lay on the floor. The x-ray technician that’d been in the hall. The one I’d heard talking to the nurse earlier about taking me down to x-ray.
That woman being a tiny little hobbit of a female who was adorably cute but honestly looked like Tinkerbell in scrubs.
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Her hair was in a long braid that went to the top of her ass, and she was now lying on the floor holding her cheek.
Andy, who’d been the cause of the commotion, caught everyone on the floor by surprise. I.e., the young cop that’d been assigned to cover Tara, but was busy talking up a nurse at the nurses’ station instead of being where he was supposed to be.
“Oh, fuck,” Hoax murmured as he started out the door. “That’s Max Tremaine’s daughter, Harleigh. Be back.”
Then he was gone…but Slate had beat him to the punch, literally.
Before Andy, who’d been the one to backhand Harleigh and send her to the ground in his effort to get to his sister, Slate was taking him out with a single punch to the face.
Only, the moment that Andy hit the ground, he popped back up like one of those plastic clowns, up-righting himself and going after Slate all over again.
I pushed Wade, who was sitting on the edge of the bed. “Go get him to shoot you.”
Wade looked at me incredulously. “I’m not going to allow anyone to shoot me like you did last night.”
I turned to Castiel. “How about you? It would look better if he attempted to murder a cop.”
Castiel rolled his eyes but walked toward the door, looking out at the commotion in the hallway.
Hoax was standing there, allowing Slate to handle Andy who just kept popping back up, running at him like he wasn’t going to get knocked down like the last time.
And Slate, who didn’t look like he was even winded or hurting in the least, continued to pop him with a punch to the face.
When Andy would try to get around Slate to his sister, who was watching it all with a blank expression—which I assumed was her usual expression when she wasn’t trying to act like she had a conscience—Slate would just knock him away again.
But then he made a mistake.
He tried to go to Harleigh, who’d only managed to back up and push herself against the nurses’ station in her haste to get out of the way.
Slate shifted, trying to draw the fight away from the entrance to Tara’s room, and Andy pulled a gun and aimed it directly at Harleigh.
Slate froze.
Hoax, who’d been creeping around to Andy’s back, froze.
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