WHAT the hell was that rope for?
My head spun, and the icy air started biting into my skin savagely. The bark of the tree was so cold that I felt aching in my bones. My fingers and toes turned numb, and my ears pang with sharp stabbing pains that shot across my jaw.
The rope dropped out of his hands the instant he saw the bright flames escaping, reaching, and clawing their way out of the windows. His voice screamed out in anger with some unintelligible words and I watched as he opened the front door to a roaring inferno.
“Samantha!” he screamed, as he backed away and ran around the cabin.
Nothing but the swoosh and crackle of the fire answered him back, as the roof of the cabin burst into brilliant sparks of fire. Dark leaves of the smallest tree closest to the cabin started bursting into flames, creating a domino effect. It spread quickly across the top of the tree, which caused a larger tree to catch fire. Along the far side of the cabin, a half dozen old cars lined the perimeter, all instantly lighting up and three large dark red barrels that were positioned next to the cars, exploded in succession, rocking the ground. The tree vibrated and trembled and I wrapped my arms around it, so I wouldn’t fall. My luck, I’d fall right at his damn feet.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
“Samantha!” David taunted from below, laughing. “What do you think will come out of this, pet? Do you think you’ll get to walk away from me?” With the bright blaze of the burning fire, the forest was eerily lit up, and the shadows of flames danced before him. He held his arms outstretched and slowly twirled in a circle. He looked bronzed and utterly evil in the harsh glow of the fire. “Do you think I’d let you get away, my love? Buy yourself a new life with all the money you stole from me? Give it to your new little boy toy? Think he’s with you because he loves you? No one can love you, pet. You’re just a slut. A dirty whole to warm a dick for a few moments, not a particularly pleasurable one, either. A useless little fuckhole.”
Another tree started burning, and another, until the woods that surrounded the cabin were engulfed in flames. The heat of the fire warmed my skin, almost to the point of singeing the fine hairs on my arm. The snapping and crackling of the trees being devoured by flames became deafening. Shit. I was going to have to climb down and get the hell out of this forest.
Snapping off a decent sized stick, I hurled it into a pile of fallen branches just behind David. He spun quickly, his back towards me and lunged into the area like a crazed animal. I climbed down the branches, sweat bursting from my pores and my heart slamming against my chest. Losing my footing on the last fucking branch, my body collapsed against the ground, burning tree limbs fell beside me, and a monsoon of fiery debris came raining down. A hot spike of adrenaline thundered across my chest and I was up and running through the trees, not looking back at all.
“Sa…maaaannnnnn…thaaaaa!” David’s voice sang over the crunch and swooshes of the flames. Then, just to my right, about a hundred yards away, I don’t know, fuck I have no clue about distance and measurements, just not so close and not so far away, a huge mass of branches moved, snapped, hissed, and sizzled.
“Hello, Samantha,” his voice said, tainted with rage and anger.
Then I heard them. The pops and sharp savage cracks of explosions. P-taff! P-taff! P-taff-taff-taff-taff-taff! Sadistic eruptions of gunpowder sounded as they ignited the inside of a round of bullets.
He’s got a gun, I think to myself.
As the ground…
…slammed into my face.
Chapter 15
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
SLAM.
Back and forth.
That was me, pacing. Wearing a hole through the carpet. Storm raging, stewing, bubbling, boiling, breathing in savage, vicious breaths.
SLAM. SLAM. SLAM.
That was my fist punching walls as if they were Stanton’s face.
I could do nothing. I was being detained. Confined to my own home under the watchful eyes of Deputy George Tatum. Dylan, Jen, Mum and I, all babysat under hawk-like eyes. He stepped aside to let me expand my pace, watching me sharply. He must have recognized the sparks of my barbarity igniting just from the haunted look in my eyes. My family knew better and stayed well out of punching range.
Like a bear out of hibernation, I was raw and famished, ravenous for answers, for action. All my senses exploded. My thoughts twisted into my own personal volcano, surging, bubbling, and detonating into white-hot noise. So palpable I could taste the molten rock inside my mouth, and the stench of putrid gases that boiled inside my mind. My muscles coiled tighter and tighter until the ache under my skin was so agonizing, I wanted to scream. Just before the pressure blew my heart right from my chest, George’s police radio crackled and buzzed to life. “Check and advise on a 10-59 working fire. Got a Fire Tower saying trees are burning and there’s been an explosion.”
I watched his expression closely, the pulled brow and pursed lips. “Deputy Tatum, Copy.” Loud static ripped through the line. “Fire en route, we’re going to need all units. Over.”
George immediately jumped to his feet, mouth against his radio, fingers pressing down the buttons. “Copy, this is unit 4052. Exact location?” As he asked the question, his eyes fixed on mine. Beads of sweat formed above his brow. His jaw ticked at its hinge. A small tight squeeze of his loose hand against his gun belt. He knows this has something to do with Sam.
The radio chirped to life again, “Behind Forest Home Road, above Lily Pad Pond. We have a fully involved fire. Need all units…”
George blinked once and answered, “Unit 4052 en route.”
I grabbed my jacket and shoved my arms through the sleeves. He’d have to handcuff me to something to keep me here, and then I’d just saw my arms off, no bloody problem. Grasping the keys in my coat pocket, I dragged out my hand and ran to my safe. Dylan was behind me instantly. So was George. When I pulled out my firearms, George’s eyes went wide. “What are you doing, Grayson?”
“Can’t just stay here and go to sleep. I have be prepared in case Stanton comes here,” I snapped, handing Dylan a gun.
“Grayson, I can’t let you just pull out guns in front of me,” he hissed.
I sprang up at his face like a cobra. He was a good four inches shorter than I was, so I menacingly looked down on him. I had nothing more to lose. “Piss off, George, I have a bloody license for every one of them. Last, I checked, I lived in America, and that gives me the Second Amendment, the motherfucking right to bear arms. I’m just going to sit here with my guns, just in case I need to protect myself.”
“I’m not stupid, Kade, you’re going to look for her. Now we have a fire to deal with. You can’t come with me and you can’t go out on your own,” he stated, eyes locked on mine.
I offered him a wink, shifted my gaze to my gun, checked the fully loaded magazine, and slammed it in. “Try to stop me.”
“You’re crazy. You’re going to get yourself killed, Grayson.”
The most primitive part of my brain was telling me to shoot him, dead center in the chest, pull a Thomas on him, but experience has taught me that I have to think this through clearly, not give in to my urges, so I could keep my goal of getting Sam.
His brows pulled down, lips tightened and pinched to an almost white. “You are fucking insane. I can’t let you do anything stupid, Kade.”
“Right now,” I growled, “the only stupid thing I find myself contemplating is not shooting a friend. I’m not insane, George, but I have to find her.”
I know. I know…at this point, I wouldn’t trust my sanity either, but what would you do? What would you really do? Observing it all together, my ideas point to only her defense, the logic being that I needed to keep her safe from then on. I had fucked up royally with her; because of my idiosyncrasies and my issues. I was easily swayed to believe that she would just walk the bloody hell out of my life. I lacked faith in us, and I guarantee for those last seven days, she paid for it. I was getting my woman back.
/> “Grayson, I repeat, you’re going to get yourself fucking killed,” George said under his breath as he walked toward my front entrance.
“George, I don’t have much to live for if she’s not here anyway. Just go, let’s pretend you have no idea what I have planned after you leave. I’m no longer your responsibility,” I smiled, as I nicely shoved him out of the door.
I watched the weight of my words against his radio cackling emergency, sway his emotions. “Kade, this isn’t a good idea…”
Then I slammed the door in his face.
Turning on my heels, I snapped, “Mum, you and Jen stay here. Dylan let’s go.”
Immediately, Jen’s red blotchy face was in mine, spitting and snarling like a rabid animal, “Fuck you, Kade. I’m not staying. It’s all of us here that doubted her, not just you. You don’t get to be selfish now, I’m fucking coming too. What if you need a fucking nurse, huh? I’m getting her aid-pack and then we go!”
What do you mean if we need her aid-pack?
WHY the FUCK did Jen have to enlighten my already stressed brain with overload? It was a given she’d be hurt, but the heaviness of having to use her aid-pack on her left me breathless. My mind whirled with images so real and disturbing that I had to clutch onto the closest piece of furniture to stay standing. The images weren’t flashbacks of my friends in a high school; they were of my Samantha, beaten and bloody, her beautiful body riddled with bullet holes. Her blood in my imagery stunned me. Made me feel the weight of her absence. How it stretched down my limbs, melting them heavily to the floor. Feet encased in concrete, I thought I was immovable, untouchable. I was so bloody wrong. Toxic. Vengeful. Rage. Pure and hot. Destruction decay. Rip my twisted thoughts from my brain, physically claw and scrape them out until my head was fucking hollow, and I couldn’t remember these thoughts.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried rubbing away the visuals. I couldn’t catch my breath, and my muscles knotted and ached to bathe in David Stanton’s blood. I needed to find her voice. I needed to remember the way it sounded and calm the bloody fuck down.
My thoughts shift and move, blur and hum. And I’m standing in her trailer again; she’s leaning against her counter with barely anything on, mop in her hand. I smile at the memory, but it burns my eyes, and makes the bridge of my nose sting and tingle. God, she was so beautiful. The mop slipped from her grasp, and clinked against the counter. Her eyes looked away, as if it hurt to look at me. “Beautiful,” her soft voice whispered.
My body was against hers instantly, soft skin, hot flesh, and those fucking delicious cinnamon apples. “Yes. Beautiful. Stunning. Bewitching. Ravishing. Fucking angelic.” Then her lips, moist wet, open against mine. Hands tangled, fists in hair, skin on skin.
And then she’s gone. Faded away as her soft voice echoed, “Beautiful” in my head.
I needed to find her. I shook my head of images, and blinked out the thoughts. “Let’s fucking go, I need to find her. It’s cold out there and she’s mine. I have to go get her back,” I snapped.
Reaching back into the safe, I grabbed two more magazines full of bullets, and stuffed them in the pockets of my jacket. Every one of them planned for a piece of real estate on Stanton’s flesh.
“Got it,” Jen’s voice panted. “I got her aid-pack,” she repeated as she slung it over her shoulder, wildly.
“Jen, have you ever shot a gun?” I asked.
“Kade, really? I’ve never even held a gun.”
Handing her the firearm, I rolled my eyes. She held it between her thumb and index finger as if it were a dirty diaper. I raked my hand impatiently through my hair, “Look, if you see David, just point it in his general direction and keep pulling back the trigger. The safety is on. That little button right there.”
Dylan turned to Mum and jerked his chin in her direction. “Kade, do you think we should arm Mum, in case Stanton makes an appearance?”
“Did your brain seep out your ass? Why would he come here? Why would I give Mum a gun?” I looked at our mother and shrugged, “Just stay here near the phone. We’re just going to drive around and look, okay? I’ll put the bloody alarm on.”
The three of us storm through the door and run to my truck. “Let’s go. Let’s go,” I yelled, climbing into the driver’s seat. Turning the key, the engine roared to life and the heavy cords of a Mad World song blasted through my speakers. Bloody hell, Samantha’s favorite band. I slammed the off button immediately. Silence exploded and stung at my ears.
Dylan jumped into the passenger seat and looked at me through narrowed eyes. A white mist of breath puffed out of his lips as he spoke, “What are you thinking?”
I looked at him deadpan, “Mate, I’ve lived here for sixteen fucking years. Forest fires don’t start by themselves in the dead icy frost of winter, not unless someone fucking started it.”
“Wait, you think David started a fire?”
“No, mate, I think Sam did.”
“Kade, are you okay for this? What if you can’t…”
I slammed my hands against the steering wheel, blaring the horn loudly. “When it comes to Sam, I could do anything,” I said through clenched teeth.
“What if you can’t?”
“I got this.”
“You’re going to kill someone for her? Is she worth it? Maybe we should let the authorities handle it, because I mean, bloody hell, Kade, all this violence? Losing yourself to it, going to jail for a woman you met six months ago?”
“You know what, you little fuck? In one day, back in 1998, something happened to me that changed my life forever. It took literary forty-seven minutes in that classroom. Forty-seven minutes shattered everything and changed me completely. So don’t tell me six months isn’t long enough to be changed or affected by someone. She makes me sane. She makes me calm. She makes me not want to fight or slink away. She makes me want to live. So yes, I am damn fucking ready to do whatever I bloody can to get her out of there, and to be back with me. Because without her by my side, I’m half a fucking man, and it’s the half I can’t live with.”
Dylan smiled at me and slammed his hand on the dashboard, “Bloody hell, you got this. Let’s go hunting then, mate.”
Chapter 16
The sound of the gunfire cracked like thunder over the blazing fire that was closing in around us. Sliding my hands down my body, I wait for any pain, but there was none. I snapped my head in David’s direction. His gun was still pointed out, but it was Aurora’s body flat on the ground, half a dozen bullet holes seeping blood across her chest and over the white snow. Hell, he thought that was me. He thought it was me moving through the brush and he killed her instead. From where I lay, I searched her form for any signs of breathing, any movement at all. There’s no use trying to save her, she was dead the minute she met David.
But, fuck, that, she didn’t deserve.
My body was on the ground; face down in the cold earth, a muscle memory reflex from the military. You hear gunfire in the open, you fucking duck, and find your enemy. My eyes shot up to David, and his emotionless eyes fixed on mine. “My bad. Thought she was someone else. Want to check her pulse, don’t you, pet? Still have that drive to save people?” Snowflakes of fiery ash fell around us, gently floating, floating to the ground.
“David, what if she’s still breathing?” Until the day I die, I will always, always be a trauma surgeon. I will always crave to heal people. That’s who I am. Just look at me right now. This is probably the day I do die, and I want to save her someway.
CRACK! I violently flinched back as he brutally blew a hole in the middle of her forehead, in the soft creamy patch of skin that separated her flawlessly groomed eyebrows. A deep chuckle rasps up from his throat, “Well, now we know she’s definitely not breathing. Does that stop your itch to save her?” Fuck, how many rounds did he let go. Fuck. Think. Was it nine or ten. Fuck, I need to find out if that gun is empty.
Oh. My. Shit. I couldn’t think straight, and all I wanted to do was run. If I did, he would shoot me in
the back, if he had bullets left. Would he get a perfect shot? Goddamnit, so far, gaging from the perfect hole on Aurora’s face, I’d say he was a damn good shot, and he’d know exactly where to shoot me for maximum damage.
“Ah. Ah. Ah. Samantha,” he wagged the gun at me, “I see you planning some stupidity in that empty little head of yours. Do you think you could outrun my bullets?” A fiery branch crashed down behind him, causing sparks to explode into the air around him. I heard my gasp, the intake of breath, the undeniable evidence of my raw fear for him to witness. He stood there, a small distance away, with the raging flames of an inferno behind him, and I truly believed I knew then what the face of pure evil looked like.
This was what Kade’s nightmare’s were made of.
He stalked towards me, shoulders tight, drenched in sweat from the heat, and gun pointed right to my head. “Point blank range, little one. Tell me where my money is,” he hissed.
“Nope…I have to show you. I can’t tell you. You’d never be able to get it.”
“You’re wasting your time trying to be smarter than me, pet. You’re not. Now, tell…”
“It’s housed in a safety deposit unit in a private storage facility in Jersey. It needs my fingerprints, my retina scan, a code, plus another person with some kind of identification.” No it didn’t, I was lying. The money and all the evidence were handed over to authorities months ago, so they could build a case on him and monitor his movements, but I needed him to think that he couldn’t get just a code, put a bullet in my head then walk away. “Why do you think I didn’t go to the authorities, David? Why wouldn’t I tell them everything you and my father did? Why would I hide in this remote place and pretend I was dead? Think about it, sweetheart.”