CHAPTER 1
AVA
TEN YEARS LATER…
My eyes snapped open as the nightmare receded back into the darkness it had crept from.
I didn’t jolt awake any longer, and I definitely didn’t cry, or scream in terror.
There was no more shaking, or sweat covering my body.
It had been ten years, and though the nightmares still haunted me and filled me with pain and regret, I lived them too often for them to affect me as they used to.
I reached out to the table that sat behind the old Barker lounger, which I had fallen asleep in, and grabbed for the bottle of vodka that I had left there.
It was dark outside the windows of my crappy apartment and the only light in the room was from a dim lamp I left on beside me before I dozed off.
My head throbbed and my back tensed with pain as I moved, but I managed to get my hand around the neck of the bottle I wanted and I brought it to my lips without even a thought.
The last vestiges of vodka slid into my mouth and down my throat easily, but it wasn’t enough.
“Motherfucker!” I hissed as I tossed the bottle at the sofa to my left. It wasn’t as satisfying as throwing it at the wall and hearing it shatter, but I’d learned the hard way how much pain it caused to clean that up the next morning.
I struggled to get myself out of the lounger and to my feet cursing up a storm with the pain that ricocheted up my back shoulder and neck with every single movement.
Checking the time on my cell, which sat on the tiny two person dining table between me and the kitchenette, I groaned at the awaiting messages and missed called from Colt.
I knew I needed to call him back, but I didn’t have it in me to sound sunny and bright, and I hadn’t for a while if I were honest.
My brother didn’t know about what had happened.
No one but my colleagues at CPD, and my doctors did, and I liked it that way.
But it had been almost two years since the incident, and for all of that time I had put my brother off every time he tried to visit, delaying him from seeing me, with excuses that I was too busy.
It wasn’t going to work for much longer, and I knew it.
It would be time to face the truth with the one person in the world who cared about me very soon, and I dreaded it.
My brother used to be proud of me. I could see it in his face every time he came to visit me after I fled to Chicago almost ten years ago.
He was relieved that I got over what happened to me back then, and happy that I had a career I enjoyed with the Chicago Police Department.
And he had been right, mostly. Even though it wasn’t my dream to work with CPD, I was happy.
I had found a life for myself and it was a good life.
I found a way to keep going, even if I knew deep down I would never truly overcome what had happened to me before I left New York.
What I endured that one night was not something I believed anyone could ever just get over, but I was glad my brother believed that was what I’d done.
All I ever wanted was to be worthy of all of the support I’d had from him, and to make him proud.
Now I was a cripple, living in a dump with no money, no job, career, and no prospects. I was an embarrassment and I didn’t want him to know me as the woman I had become in the last two years.
“Fuck!” I cursed as I pressed the worries, shame, and embarrassment from my mind and headed for the refrigerator.
I pulled out the full bottle of vodka with a loud grunt of pain, then grabbed my pain pills and shuffled back to my lounger.
The TV was playing silently in front of me as I unscrewed the liquor bottle and washed down a handful of the pills I’d been told expressly not to mix with alcohol.
What did it matter anyway? I didn’t want to die, but if I quietly slipped away after an accidental overdose, it wouldn’t be the worst thing.
I got as comfortable as I could, which wasn’t very, then drowned my pain, memories, and sorrow in the alcohol that I knew would bring unconsciousness soon enough.
It was two A.M, so I had three hours left to drink what I wanted.
It was a rule I set for myself, a rule that said I only drank alcohol between the hours of five PM and five AM.
I figured if I could spend twelve hours a day not touching a drop, I couldn’t become an alcoholic, right?
Yeah, maybe I was kidding myself, but the Vodka I bought every day on my drive home from the gym, was the only thing that ever numbed me enough to find peace in sleep, and I needed it more than I needed anything at that time.
A third of a bottle of Vodka later I was just starting to slip into blissful unconsciousness when I heard the very faint scrape of something against the front door of my shit hole of a studio apartment.
I turned to look at the door behind me, and the rusted, old brass handle turned just slightly.
Luckily, I knew it was locked, so I had a little time.
I eased the bottle of Vodka down to the carpeted floor below me and instead reached for the Glock 19 I always kept close and loaded. I’d been a victim enough. Never again.
Moving as slowly and quietly as I could I got to my feet, all of the vodka I had consumed making me a little unsteady, but adrenaline helped me to move into the kitchenette, just around the corner from the doorway.
I clutched my gun between my hands, and wished it was my service weapon, which I was so much more familiar with after eight years of carrying it on me.
Of course, that gun had been taken from me the day my Chief arrived at the hospital with the paperwork for my medical retirement.
I’d had no say in it. I simply wasn’t fit to do the job I loved any longer.
My badge and weapon were taken, along with the last threads of my self-respect, and instead I was given a crappy pension that barely covered the rent on this shit hole that I had lived in ever since.
God, I missed my place so much. It was a small two bed house in the outskirts of the city, with a large open back yard and every convenience I could ever need.
My cute little car sat in the garage there too, all of it bought for me by Colt the moment I settled in Chicago, but I’d left it behind the day I got out of the hospital.
I hadn’t wanted Colt to find me there if he came to visit, so I had leased this crumbling room, and hidden from him for way too long now.
The sound of the front door snicking open almost silently, brought me back to reality and I tensed my core, preying my body would just hold up long enough to keep me alive through whatever the hell this was.
The good thing about living in one room for so long, was that I knew every creak it made, so when the intruder to my home stepped on the creaky board close to where I stood in wait, I knew he was in the perfect place, and I stepped forwards, pressing the gun to the side of his head before he even saw me.
“Drop it and put your hands up,” I told him calmly.
When he seemed to start weighing up his options I pressed my gun harder into the side of his bald head.
“You move to do anything but what I said and I’m gonna shoot you,” I warned.
I moved around him enough to get eyes on my now closed front door. No one else was in my apartment.
Finally Baldy dropped the handgun he’d been holding, to the floor with a muted thud, then he slowly moved his hands to the back of his head.
“Who the fuck are you?” I asked as I kicked his gun behind him into the kitchenette, almost losing my balance in the process, but I didn’t go down and my gun never moved from his head.
I’d thank my personal trainer later, grateful for the balance exercises he’d been pushing me to do in the two one hour sessions I could afford with him a week.
“I’m looking for your brother?” he uttered, and I could see the calculating look in his eyes as he tried to work out how to get out of this bind.
“My brother?”
“Colton MacMillan. I was sent to bring him in,” he went on.
“To whom? Who the hell wants my brother?”
No answer came though. Instead Baldy launched his elbow into my right cheek, and pain shot through my whole face as I tried to remain standing.
It was the opportunity he needed to knock my gun from his head, and he swept my legs so I went down hard and fast, crying out in pain as my back hit the floor hard.
He leaned in and hit my face again, this time on the left side, and I could instantly taste blood.
“Where is he?” Baldy demanded as he loomed over me.
I managed to get my right leg, which was my strongest side, up between us and I thrust my knee straight up into his chin, making him reel back enough for me to roll free.
I landed right where I planned to and grabbed my gun which I dropped when I went down.
I lifted it and shot in warning right past Baldy’s head, so close I was sure it had grazed his ear.
“Next one won’t miss,” I warned him as I lay half raised, my gun between both hands and pointed right at him where he was frozen a few feet from me. I was breathing heavily and the pain shooting through my back was inexplicable, but I held my ground.
Baldy moved fast, leaping closer to the door for his gun where it sat on the ground, and I didn’t hesitate as I shot him right through his upper shoulder. He cursed as he stumbled, then he got to his feet and fled the apartment, not even taking his gun with him.
“SONOFABITCH!” I roared after him as I collapsed to my back on the ground and allowed a second to get a breath in.
I needed to get up and get the door closed and locked, then I needed to find out what the hell Colt had gotten mixed up in and find a way to keep him safe. Easier said than done with the poor state of my body.