Chapter 27 - Diana
Tears stream down my face. I don’t dare brush them away. I’ve stopped trying to slow the blood coming out of Ashley’s stomach. It keeps flowing, but it’s slower. Her breathing is gone.
The smell of smoke hits, and I cough, looking up to see the hall clouding over with smoke I hadn’t noticed before, too lost in my grief.
A door closes, and I look up to see Barry coming closer to me.
“Come on.” He nods to the waiting-room door.
I shake my head.
“I said, come on.” He huffs like I’m being a stubborn child and reaches down to pull me up.
I shrug him off. “No.”
“Suit yourself,” he mutters and steps past me.
“She’s dead.” His footsteps stop just behind me. I turn just enough to make sure he hears me. “And her kids. Dead.”
“Not mine,” he says with a finality that pisses me off enough to turn on my ass to look at him take another step toward the door.
“Don’t you care? You killed her. Killed them.
Your babies. Yours. She didn’t step out on you.
She’d never do that. She has done nothing but be there for you.
When you’re sick, she stays home to care for you.
She’s turned down promotions twice so her schedule wouldn’t change.
So you two could be together. Together!”
Tears and snot run down my face, but I don’t care.
None of it matters now. My friend is dead.
Killed by a man she foolishly fell in love with.
A man society called a hero, yet he judged mine for wearing leather, something that others consider dangerous.
The Hounds are dangerous, but only if you fuck them over.
Then I’ve got no doubt they’ll destroy everything to take that person down.
I cough again as the smoke irritates my throat and darkens the hallways.
“She loved you,” I say as I look back at my lifeless friend.
“She wanted to surprise you and tell you one of the twins was a boy. One each.” I smile at the memory.
He didn’t want to know the sex till they came.
She did, so she snuck a peek and found out.
She was holding it in but had to tell someone. So she told me.
“She wanted to call him Barry Jr. She couldn’t think of a name for the girl, but the second she found out about the boy, she just knew.
” A laugh bursts out, then a sniff and a cough.
“I told her his initials would be BJ, but she didn’t care.
She wanted everyone to know that you had a son.
” I turn back to him with a glare that I hope he can see through the smoke.
“You. Not someone else. You. And you just destroyed it. All of it.”
He smashes his fist into the wall over and over, and I flinch away.
“Fuck!” he yells, then sinks down the wall he just smashed, rest his elbows on his knees, and cries into his hands, not caring that the gun is pressing into his skin as he rubs them over his eyes.
Part of me enjoys watching him suffer. Relishes the hurt he’s experiencing. And I just want to make it worse. To make it last longer.
“She bought it for you.” He looks at me, so I continue, not hiding the bitterness in my voice. “The lingerie. She didn’t know how to put it on, but she wanted you to see it. To know she would try it for you. Just another thing she was doing for you while you were out with someone else.”
He sniffs and wipes the snot away with his forearm. “It was a one-night thing. A mistake. I didn’t mean it. But Ashley kept working and then throwing up. She didn’t have the energy when I wanted her.”
“So it’s her fault? She was carrying your kids. Instead of making sure she was okay, that she had your help when she needed it, that she was well rested and taken care of, you snuck off to get your dick wet?”
He shakes his head as he looks at the wall ahead of him. “She never had time for me. It was always them. Not me.”
His words take a second to register, and then I bark out a laugh. “Are you fucking serious? She was growing babies. Your babies. Jesus, you really are a selfish bastard.” I shake my head and hate that I ever thought of him as a good man. Nothing about him was good. Not a damn thing.
“You don’t get to talk to me like that,” he mutters with enough venom that my eyes slowly meet his. “You’re just a lying whore too.” He nods to the dead woman between us. “Sleeping with a fucker who should be locked away.”
“You know nothing about him. About any of them. They are more men than you’ll ever be.” I seethe at the thought that he would dare claim Karter, or anyone in the brotherhood, was less than him. Not in a million years.
“Whatever.” He sneers and stands. “We’re getting out of here.”
“Go. I’m not leaving her.” I look back and grab Ashley’s hand. She might be dead, but she doesn’t deserve to be alone.
“Don’t be stupid. The place is already on fire.”
“And who the fuck started the fire, Barry? Huh? Would it be the fucking fireman who swore to protect people but ended up fucking up everything good in his life? You going to blame this on her too?” I scream at him, but it comes out choppy from the smoke.
He looks at me for half a second, then moves to grab me under the arms. I twist and turn, dragging myself out of his grasp before he drops me unceremoniously back where I was.
“You’ll burn.” He says it like it’s a threat and a warning all in one. His face is probably saying more than his mouth, but I can’t look away from my friend. I won’t. Never again when he’s around.
“Better that than be with you,” I call over my shoulder with barely a chin lift in his direction.
“Be that way.”
He walks out the door, and I break down into tears, grieving fully for Ashley now that I’m alone. But I know I can’t stay long. I might want to keep her safe, but I also need to keep my own child safe. I know the smoke is affecting me, as I keep coughing.
With a new focus, I get to my feet. My ankle gives out, obviously sprained, but I push through it as I grab Ashley’s hand and drag her to the door, coughing when I take a full breath to clear my throat.
It’s a slow pace, but we’re moving in the right direction.
Pushing the door open and pulling her along is harder than I expected, but I cry out like a warrior when I get us both through it.
One more to exit the waiting room, and then just a few more feet to make it to the stairs.
It seems impossibly far away, but one step at a time.
I’m just at the waiting-room door when Barry rushes back in and shoves me aside. Bullets slam into the door he just shut. I scream on impulse.
“Shit.” He looks around, realizing he’s back where he started. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“What’s the matter, Barry? Having a bad day?” My tone is flat. I’m getting dizzy from the smoke. It’s lessened with the door closed to the doctor’s office, but it’s still coming.
I know it isn’t a small fire. Not if Barry started it. Probably thought he could cover his ass and have Ashley’s death go down as an accident or something. I doubt he remembers there were witnesses to him shooting her before they all ran.
“Shut up!” he shouts, but he doesn’t wave the gun at me. I hope he doesn’t have any bullets left.
That sparks a new plan. I’m not staying in here. Not with him. I’ve never waited for someone to save me before, and I’m not about to start now.
I stand again, using the chair Ruby sat in to steady myself. Barry is mumbling to himself again, but nothing more. Grabbing Ashley’s hand, I ignore the smear of blood as I drag not only her lifeless body, but her two babies. There was no saving them, not after where he shot her.
It’s slow. The adrenaline is crashing down on me, the weight of everything hitting me all at once. But I keep going. It’s what I always do—push through the hard parts and look forward. Something good has to come from this. Something, anything.
I make it to the door and pull it open just a crack.
“Don’t shoot,” I call out, but I’m not sure if anyone heard or cares. “Please.” My voice breaks at the end, and I cough through my emotions and the smoke. “I’m unarmed.”
“Move slowly,” a voice I don’t know calls back. “Hands up. Walk toward my voice.”
I open the door enough to hit the accessibility button, letting the automatic door swing wide. It seems to drag in time, but I need the door open to bring Ashley with me. I walk backward, dragging Ashley, watching that I don’t get her stuck somewhere.
“Arms up!” someone yells, and I still.
“I can’t.” Hysteria crawls up my throat with panic.
“I can’t let go. She’s… she’s….” I cry out on a sob, and for a second, I let myself wallow in the pity that is life till I shake it out of me.
I wipe my eyes with my hands, ignoring the dried blood coating my fingers, then secure her hand in mine once more.
“I’m coming out. Don’t shoot.” It’s all I give them. It’s determined, strong, and authoritative. It lets them know I’m not to be fucked with, and if they scream about my hands again, I’m going to lose it.
But the second I pull, I stall. I pull her harder, but she barely budges. My eyes travel the length of her, noting every part of her body from the top of her head to her feet to see what she’s caught on.
She isn’t stuck. She’s being held, pinned in place.
“Let go.” I glare at Barry. My voice doesn’t tremble as more hate than I knew I possess comes out of me in those two words.
“She’s mine.”
I lean closer, just to make sure I heard him right. “She’s yours? When did that happen? When you slept around on her? When you blamed her for shit that was your issue? When you shot her? When? When was she ever yours?”
He yanks hard and rips her out of my grasp. I stumble from the force and fall back, hitting my elbow hard enough to knock the breath out of me. I’m half in the waiting room, half out.
“She was always mine. Mine! No one else’s. Ever.” He’s acting like some creature out of a Tolkien book, claiming her as if she was precious to him, but minutes ago he was okay with letting her be devoured by flames he started.
I watch with shock and a bit of wonder as he cradles her in his lap, covering her stomach with one hand and using the other to brush away the strands of hair on her face. Her eyes are open, staring at him. Judging him for his actions.
“Shhh, baby. I’ve got you. I’ve always got you.”
“Babygirl!”
That voice. My name. All of it draws my focus to the other side of the hallway. The one I was going to go to because of the stairs. Not where the voice, which I guess belonged to a cop, was telling me to go with my hands up.
“Karter.” I breathe his name out like I breathe life into my chest. He’s being held back, just before the stairway door. It’s wide open, but so many guns are pointing out from it, I’m not sure if it’s safe to go there.
“Stand down,” a cop in a sea of leather shouts.
He isn’t looking at me. I glance the other way to see more cops flood around the corner.
“What the fuck are you doing, Knight? This is our show. Get the fuck back downstairs,” the random voice from before shouts, and I see he’s one of the closest out of those on the far side of the hallway. Leading the charge, no doubt.
“Look at me, Babygirl. Look at me.” There’s no shouting from Karter. Just a steady voice that drowns out the others yelling around us. “Good girl. Are you hurt?”
I look down at myself and feel pain, but from the amount of blood on me, I bet he thinks it’s mine. I shake my head. Not hurt like he thinks. Not hurt enough not to move.
He nods and licks his lips. “Crawl to me, baby. Come to me.” He hunches just a bit, ignoring everyone else, like I’m doing.
I look back at Barry, holding his wife as if he hadn’t murdered her.
Cherishing her like he should have from the start.
I look back at Karter, and he gestures for me to come to him.
My heart is split between Ashley and him, but I can’t do anything for Ashley.
She’s dead. Just like Mom. Holding on doesn’t help me at all.
It only weighs me down with the guilt, something I promised I would never do after Mom died.
And I need to keep that promise. Ashley was a friend, and she didn’t deserve this.
But I don’t deserve to hold myself hostage between her needs and mine.
I nod at my man and see him release a heavy sigh of relief. I roll to my hands and knees and move to him. But something catches my eye. Looking back, I see Barry kiss Ashley’s forehead, and then, slower than I think it actually happens, he raises his gun to his head.
“No!” rips from my throat a second before he shoots himself.
The impact has me sliding onto my ass as I take in the blood and brain matter sprayed around them. The way he slumps over her as if in sleep. A peaceful sleep. Something he doesn’t deserve.
I shake my head at it. I shake all over.
“Diana!” Karter screams, panic all over his face. He’s being pushed away. Farther back. The others are doing the same on both sides. I don’t get it. I don’t understand.
Till the radio on the cop’s shoulder cuts through the fog in my brain and I hear what’s being said.
“This place is going to blow.”
And then it does.