Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
TESSA
Iawoke to the sound of breaking glass and the blare of the security alarm. Shooting up in a fright, I threw the covers back and ran out of the bedroom, snatching my phone off the bedside table along the way. I cleared the door just as Charity’s frightened voice called out, “Ms. Tessa?”
She was halfway down the hall by the time I reached her. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”
A loud voice traveled up the stairs, and I was suddenly filled with rage. “Charity? Baby? It’s momma. I’ve come to take you home, sweetie.”
The color leached from Charity’s face, and tears poured down her eyes as she looked back at me in panic.
Grabbing her hands, I pushed my phone against her palm and curled her fingers around it. “Here, I want you to take this, go into my room, and lock the door. Call 911 and tell them there’s an intruder in the house.”
“I don’t want to go with her,” she whispered frantically. “Please. Please don’t let her take me. I wanna stay with you.”
“You don’t need to worry about that. You’re not going anywhere, I promise. Now do what I said, okay? In the room, door locked, cops on the phone.” She hesitated for a moment before running into the room.
I waited until I heard the lock click before pulling in a shaky breath and starting for the stairs.
Bryce
I’d just stepped into the ratty, pay-by-the-night motel where I was crashing until I finished the job in D.C. when my phone started going off like crazy.
Pulling it out of my pocket, I checked the screen and felt my stomach bottom out at the notification.
Whenever the alarm I’d installed at the house was breached, a call automatically went out to the police and the guys at Alpha Omega, but I also set it up to send an alert to my phone.
It was barely after two in the morning, and something—or someone—had shattered the back window into the living room.
Turning on my heels, I headed straight to my truck and jumped in, gunning it out of the parking lot.
I hit the button on my phone to ring Tessa’s, getting voicemail only a second later. “Goddamn it,” I cursed, disconnecting and trying again. I got the same thing three more times, and each time Tessa’s voice came over the line with that recorded message, my skin tightened.
I’d just hit the highway when the phone in my hand began to ring. “Tessa, baby?”
“You got Hunt,” I heard in my ear. “Just got the call your alarm’s goin’ off. You got any clue what’s goin’ on?”
“Fuck. No. I can’t get Tessa on the phone. I’m in my truck now, but I’m two and a half goddamn hours out. I need you to get to my place as fast as you can.”
“On it, brother. I’m five minutes away.”
“Make it two, Hunt,” I said on a croak. “I can’t . . .”
“Nothin’s gonna happen,” he stated, his voice full of determination. “I’ll call you as soon as I know what’s happenin’.”
With that, he hung up. And I pressed the accelerator all the way to the floor.
Tessa
Rounding the corner to the living room, the first thing I saw was that one of the big picture windows on the back wall had been shattered.
“Charity! Come down here, girl!” Ava continued to shout as I made my way closer.
“She’s not here,” I said calmly as I stepped into the living room. Ava was standing by the couch, a twitchy, scraggly-looking man I could only assume was her boyfriend was just inside, shifting from foot to foot by the balcony door.
Both of their heads shot around to me. “Bitch, you’re lyin’!” Ava snapped. As I moved closer it became obvious the woman had gotten high before deciding to give breaking and entering a whirl.
“I’m not lying. She isn’t here. The cops are on the way, so I suggest you leave now.”
“Ava, we gotta go,” her strung-out boyfriend insisted, becoming increasingly manic.
“I’m not leavin’ without my kid!” she shouted at him before whipping back around to me, her stringy hair slapping her in the face. “I know she’s here. Me and my man been followin’ you for days.” Shit. “Now, you just take your stuck-up ass back up them stairs and get my girl.”
I lifted my chin and stared the woman down. “No.”
“Fuck,” Strung-Out Boyfriend clipped. “Ava, come on. We gotta move!”
“Not without my Charity!”
“Fuck this,” he spit back. “I ain’t goin’ to prison for your sorry ass.”
“That’s smart,” I told him. “You should probably go now to avoid a felony.”
He turned and darted out the door, leaving his girlfriend behind like the piece of trash he was.
“What the fuck ever,” Ava barked. “I don’t need him. I can take care ’a you all by myself.”
I curled my lips in disgust. “Somehow, I doubt that.”
“You think you’re so special, don’t you, bitch? Livin’ in this fancy house, drivin’ that fancy car. You think you’re better than me? Think you can take my daughter away from me? Make her love you more?” With each sentence she became more and more wired. “She loves me!”
“I’m sure she does,” I told her, inching a little closer. “But you’ve taken that love for granted. You’ve abandoned her and mistreated her over and over again, and I’m not going to let you keep hurting her.”
“She’s my kid!” she screamed, her whole body beginning to shake.
“And you don’t deserve her,” I shouted back. “It’s my job to protect her, and I’ll do that any way I have to. So, you’re taking her out of here over my cold, dead body.”
A chilling, evil smile suddenly stretched across her face as she reached behind her back. The gun in her hand glinted in the dim lights of the living room as she lifted it, pointing it right at my chest.
“Works for me.”
Bryce
I’d been on the road for five minutes, five of the longest, most agonizing minutes of my life, trying Tessa’s phone over and over again before one of the calls finally connected and I heard, “B-Bryce?” followed by a broken sob.
“Charity? Sweetheart, what’s goin’ on? Where are you?”
“I-I’m in your room. The a-alarm started going off. Tessa m-made me come in here and l-lock the door. Sh-she gave me her phone to call the p-police.”
“Good. That’s good, honey. Is Tessa with you?”
The sobbing got harder. “N-no. She went d-downstairs.”
My heart stopped beating. “What?”
“I-I’m so sorry. This is all my fault. It’s m-my m-mom. She broke in. I-I’m sorry, Bryce.”
Keeping my eyes on the road, I worked to steady my breathing as a cold, clammy sweat broke out across my skin.
It felt like the world had fallen out from beneath my feet.
Fear worse than anything I’d ever experienced clutched my chest in a vice grip, making it impossible to breathe.
Each mile between Tessa and me was a special form of torture.
But I had a terrified girl on the other end of the phone.
There was nothing I could do to get to them faster, but I could try to calm her fears.
“Listen to me, Charity. It’s okay. It’s all gonna be okay, all right? I need you to try to relax, for me. This is not your fault.”
“But—”
“No, sweetheart. Don’t argue. None of this is on you. But I need to know if you’ve called the cops or not, because if you haven’t, I need you to hang up and do that now.”
“I-I called them.”
“All right, darlin’. You’re doin’ so good. They’ll be there before you know it, okay? I need you to hang tight a little while longer. And do not come out of that room, no matter what. You understand?”
“O-okay, Bryce.”
“No matter what, honey. Say it for me.”
“N-no matter what.”
She still sounded scared out of her mind, but at least she wasn’t crying as hard. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. I promise.”
“All right, Bryce.”
“And Charity?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re gonna be okay. You’ll both be okay.”
And I prayed to God to make that true.
Tessa
I wasn’t thinking. The moment I saw the gun, my body went into action, launching myself the rest of the distance between us, crashing into Ava and taking us both to the ground.
She let out a startled shriek, losing purchase of the gun in the fall. It skidded across the floor as we rolled around, fighting for the upper hand. I managed to shove her off, and as I crawled for it, she grabbed a chunk of my hair and yanked my head back at an awkward angle.
“I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you!”
I let out a pained cry but didn’t stop fighting, not for a second. My whole body had been shot with adrenaline, drowning out the fear that was coursing through my veins as we both struggled to get to the gun.
I reached out, kicking my legs to get her back as my fingers wrapped around the handle of the weapon, but before I could pull it back, she dragged her nails down my arm hard enough to draw blood.
I screamed as fire raked up my arm, losing my grip as she grabbed my shoulder and jerked me around to my back.
Her weight came down on my chest, forcing all the air from my lungs. Everything began to move in slow motion. Wide, glassy eyes stared down at me. Her arm moved, bringing the gun she was holding back into view.
“Told you I’d make you pay,” she snarled as the sound of the gun cocking rang through the air.
Wrapping my hands around her wrists, I fought to keep her from taking aim as I struggled to breath.
I was suddenly back in that car with the rain beating down on the crunched metal as lightning arced through the sky and thunder made the ground rumble.
But this time I was all alone, and it was me pulling in final breaths.
I pushed the horrible images from my mind, concentrating on picturing Bryce’s face. If this was it, I wanted him to be the last thing I saw.
The gun went off, the shot louder than anything I’d ever heard. A piercing scream filled the room, but it wasn’t mine.
A moment later, Ava’s weight fell off my chest, and I sucked in the air I’d been so desperate for.
I felt hands pulling at me a second later and began to struggle anew, flailing and yelling as I battled against the hold.
“Calm, darlin’. It’s okay. You’re okay.”
The fight drained out of me at the sound of Hunter’s voice, and time started moving at normal speed again.
Police poured into the living room, coming from all directions, as Hunter tucked a gun into the holster at his side and helped me off the floor.
“W-what just happened?” My wide eyes bounced around the space. Ava lay on the floor, shouting and writhing in pain as police huddled around her. I couldn’t make sense of the organized chaos. I looked back at Hunter. “Did you shoot her?”
“It was either that or let her shoot you. I stand by my choice,” he answered unapologetically.
“Is she . . .?”
“Just a shoulder wound, darlin’,” he said, answering my unasked question. “She’ll survive, but once her ass is in prison . . . I can’t promise she’ll be grateful about that.”
The adrenaline seeped from my body, the crash so hard I panted, my chest rising and falling with each rapid breath as my body began to shake. I felt like I’d run a damn marathon, on an empty stomach, no less.
“Come on, Tessa, you need to sit, take a minute to calm your nerves.”
He began leading me toward the couch. Then it hit me. “Oh, God. Charity!” I bolted for the stairs with Hunter on my heels. I wrapped my knuckles on the bedroom door as soon as I reached it. “Charity, it’s Tessa. Open the door, sweetie. Everything’s all right. It’s safe.”
The door was thrown open, and the wind was knocked out of me with the force of a thirteen-year-old girl barreling into my arms.
She instantly broke down, her body wracked with uncontrollable sobs. And right there in the hall, I took us both to the floor and held on tight until she cried herself out.