Chapter Thirty-Two
KATIE
I don’t know why those smoothies would affect me like that, but I’m assuming it’s all the fiber. The last thing I want to do is leave because I’m not feeling well, so the best solution is to grab the Pepto pills I have in my glove box for these types of emergencies.
A smile fills my face as I leave the celebration and walk toward my car.
It’s only a few blocks away, and I can still hear the band playing in the distance.
As I get closer, I unlock my phone and scroll through the few pictures I have of Owen, Noah, and me together.
Earlier, when he said it was our first family photo, I nearly cried.
My emotions bubbled over, and I lost my words. It’s been only Owen and me for so long that when he said that, it felt right. We are a family, and I love him with all my heart.
When I turn the corner, I see my car and notice all four of my tires are slashed.
“What the actual fuck?” I say out loud just as I’m getting ready to call Noah. Before I can, I’m grabbed, and my arms are secured behind my back. I struggle, trying to break free, but the man holding me is too strong. A few seconds later, I’m peering into dark brown eyes.
Brittany.
“Let me go!” I scream. All I want to do right now is claw out her eyes.
A maniacal laugh escapes her dark red lips. “No.”
Taking another step forward, she grabs my cheeks and squeezes hard, digging her nails into my skin. “I never understood what he saw in you.”
I glare, wishing she’d drop dead.
“Gabe never had the best taste in women,” I throw back.
Her fist connects with my stomach so fast that she knocks the wind out of me. My pain only causes her to laugh. As I suck in air, she tells the guy who’s holding me to bring me to her Suburban.
“Why’re you doing this?” I croak.
She opens the back door, then crosses her arms and stares. “Isn’t it obvious? You’re the ticket that will lead Noah directly to me. Honestly, I should've taken this route a lot sooner.”
“You don’t have to do this, Brittany. Just let me go, and we can pretend none of this happened,” I say, thinking about Noah and how Owen’s with my mother. They’ll all be looking for me if they aren’t already.
“Don’t think so. There’s no turning back now.” She reaches into the back and grabs a roll of duct tape.
The sound of her pulling it from the roll nearly pierces my ears.
“Please,” I beg again. “My son is with me.”
“I don’t give a fuck about your kid.” She rips the tape and slaps it hard over my mouth. I struggle to break free, but it’s no use.
“Nicolas, don’t you fuckin’ let her get away.”
Moving behind me, Brittany tapes my wrists together, then wraps it around my thighs and ankles until I can hardly move.
I try to scream, but it’s so muffled no one would ever be able to hear me.
Tears stream down my face as I come to terms with what she’s done.
Adrenaline courses through my veins, and I wish I would’ve let Noah accompany me like he wanted. But I was stupid and insisted he stay.
My phone buzzes in my back pocket, and Brittany grabs it and smirks. It’s Noah. She turns it off, then slams it on the pavement. The screen shatters, and she picks it up, then throws it in her vehicle.
“I’m gonna kill him,” she seethes. “Then this will all be over.”
Sweat forms on my brow as I try to scream through the tape. My stomach is so upset, and I’m scared that I’ll throw up with my mouth secured closed. This is the worst possible time to be sick.
“We need to get going,” she tells Nicolas. “They’ll be looking for her soon.”
With all her strength, Brittany punches me in the stomach again and brings her knee in too. “That’s for being a bitch toward me.”
I lose my balance and fall to the ground, where Brittany kicks me until I nearly lose consciousness.
“And that’s for fuckin’ the man who killed Gabe.”
After a minute of her physically taking her anger out on me, Nicolas grabs me by the hair and throws me in the back of her SUV. After the doors slam closed, the engine rumbles, and we’re quickly speeding away.
I wonder how long it’ll take Noah to realize I’m gone. After I didn’t answer the first time, I know he’s already searching for me. I just hope to God he has Eric with him because I don’t doubt Brittany’s words for one second.
She speaks to Nicolas in a high-pitched tone, like she’s happy about what she’s accomplished.
I try to turn my body to see out the window but can’t manage to twist around.
My eyes burn with hot tears, and I try to take myself out of the situation until I hear Brittany tell Nicolas she’s calling Noah.
A lump the size of Texas forms in my throat as I hang on to every word she says.
“Noah,” she purrs. “How’re you?”
I can only imagine what he said to her and wish the phone was on speaker.
“Ah. Okay. Playing hardball. Got it. Well, as you’ve probably figured out, I have your girlfriend.”
She’s silent for a moment. “We’re not playing macho man today, Noah. You’re not in control here. I am. Now you’re gonna listen to me very carefully and follow every fuckin’ one of my directions, or I’ll kill her. And trust me when I say it would satisfy me beyond belief to end this cunt’s life.”
I wish I could see her reaction, but based on her tone, she’s unamused.
“So if you want your precious girlfriend back, I need you to meet me alone at the storage units outside of town,” she says. “You know which ones.”
For a second, I think she’s ended the call because she’s quiet.
All I can hear is the hum of the tires against the road.
She eventually speaks up and forces me back to this reality.
“Because I want you to suffer for murdering the love of my life. This is only fair, Noah. There are consequences to every action, and this is yours. You took away the only man I loved, so I’ll take away the only woman you’ve ever loved.
At first, I wondered how I’d be able to pull this off. Honestly, you made it too easy.”
The tears begin to fall again. I never wanted to put Noah in danger, and now, I’m the reason he’ll go straight to Brittany.
“I’ll tell Nicolas to let her live,” she says with a laugh, then continues. “Don’t worry about it.”
I try to scream and tell him to stay away.
She speaks up again. “Oh, I’d much rather see you bleed out than her. You have thirty minutes. If you arrive a minute late, she’ll have a bullet in her head. And I won’t stop until you do too.”
She hangs up, and I can only imagine the satisfied look on her face. “It will all be over soon,” she confirms.
“It will,” Nicolas agrees. “I told you it’d all work out.”
Eventually, the SUV makes a hard turn onto gravel, then comes to an abrupt stop. Brittany and Nicolas get out, and I’m convinced they’re going to leave me in the hot vehicle. It’s already hard enough to breathe, but the heat seems to make it worse.
A long time seems to pass before the back opens. Nicolas grabs my arm and drags me across the gravel toward a storage unit.
I’m thrown into a metal chair, and I try to adjust my body the best I can without slipping off it. I glare at Brittany, wishing my internal anger could magically strike her down. By the grin on her face, I know she’s enjoying this a little too much. Psycho bitch.
The large garage door of the storage building is closed to a crack. Nicolas flicks on the overhead lighting that seems to buzz with intimidation as they load their guns.
Right now, I’m more scared than I have ever been in my life. The last thing I want to do is bring any attention to myself, but it doesn’t matter because her beady eyes zero in on me.
Brittany stands before me and shakes her head with disgust. Another step forward is all it takes for her to grab a fistful of my hair and pull it as hard as she can. I nearly slide off the chair, so Nicolas finds a way to secure me to it as if the duct tape isn’t enough.
I wish I could tell her to go fuck herself. Excitement seems to roll off her.
With great exaggeration, she sticks out her bottom lip, mocking me. “Poor baby is upset. She didn’t get to hang out with the murderer all day.”
I let out a muffled scream as she paces in front of me, playing with her gun.
“We’ve got twelve minutes,” Nicolas says before stepping outside and closing the garage door again.
Brittany acknowledges his words with a nod but keeps her focus on me.
“I know you’re probably wondering why I wanna kill your boyfriend,” she says, randomly pointing her gun at me to try to scare me.
If I could talk, I’d tell her I already know why. Instead of giving her any sort of response, I keep my eyes forward, not acknowledging her because that’s what she wants.
She doesn’t like me ignoring her, so she grabs my cheeks and forces me to meet her cold gaze. “Gabe loved me. He loved me so damn much, more than he could have ever loved you.” Her voice shakes with anger, or maybe it’s pain. I can’t tell.
“The night of the accident, he met me at the bar so we could come up with a plan for him to leave you. You disgusted him, Katie. It’s why he fell in love with me so hard.
I was your opposite in every sense. He promised me we’d be a family and move away from Lawton Ridge to start a new life together. Him, me, and our son, Anthony.”
I try to stay calm, but my breathing increases, and I feel red-hot anger. Though Loretta told me most of this, it hurts coming from Brittany.
“We were together for over a year, sneaking behind your back. There were plenty of times I fucked your husband in your bed. The same one you woke up in that morning and made before you went to work.” She smears it in my face.
“I pleased him in ways you never could, and he had said the only reason he married you was because he felt obligated.”
I don’t want to hear anymore, but she continues.
“Gabe was gonna hand you the divorce papers the next week. I’d taken money from my savings so he could hire a lawyer to do it. But all of that was ripped away from me the night your fuckhead boyfriend killed him. Noah stole my happily ever after, and I’m ready to take that from him.”
I want to tell her it was an accident, and Noah never intended to hurt Gabe, but it’s not like she’d believe me anyway. Brittany paces, then she puts the gun to my temple. Though the metal is cold, it feels as if it’s burning my skin.
She’s a loose cannon, and I don’t doubt that she’d kill me.
I slam my eyes shut and say a prayer that Owen will be taken care of if something happens to me.
Tears spill down my cheeks as I imagine him not having me in his life.
It’s bad enough he’s growing up without a father—losing me would destroy him.
And Noah too. Everyone would be devastated, and the truth is, I’m not ready to die.
Not yet. Not when I feel like my life has just begun.
“You wanna know the reason Gabe wanted to start a family with me? He said he wasn’t convinced you’d keep your baby full-term.” Her words stab through me as I relive the devastation of the miscarriage and how worried we were about Owen surviving.
“But you did,” she says with a snarl. “And our boys are the same age. In the same class. Who would’ve ever predicted such a thing? He’s a sweet kid and has the same mannerisms as Gabe, but then again, so does my Anthony. Too bad they’ll never know they’re brothers.”
She forces herself under my skin with her words.
Brittany laughs as if she finds something funny about this situation. “Loretta knew the whole time and never told you, did she? Guess she planned to take it to her grave until I showed up again.”
With every passing second, I grow angrier.
Pissed that Gabe would do this to me, would lie, but then again, he had a way of promising things without delivering.
I’m sure Brittany hadn’t seen that side of him yet, but he would’ve done the same thing to her as he did to me—because a tiger can’t change its stripes. Not that any of that matters now.
Nicolas knocks on the metal door. “He’s here.”
Brittany tucks the gun in the back of her jeans and walks outside, closing me up inside.
“Is he by himself?” I hear her ask.
“From what I could tell when he pulled in.” Nicolas grumbles.
For a moment, while I’m alone, I let the elephant-sized tears fall. They’re not caused by sadness but by deep-rooted anger.
A car comes to a stop, and moments later, Nicolas approaches. “Put your fuckin’ hands up,” he demands, and I wish more than anything I could warn Noah.
“I need to see Katie to make sure she’s okay,” Noah says.
The door lifts, and I see the panic in Noah’s expression. All I’m concerned about is Brittany murdering him and forcing me to watch. I think that was her plan all along.
Noah takes a step forward, and Brittany points the gun directly at me. “I kept my end of the deal. She’s alive…but won’t be soon.”
“Brittany,” he hisses. “I knew your word was shit.”
“That night at the bar, I had to bear witness to you killing the love of my life. Now I finally get to return the favor,” she says.
I keep my eyes on Noah, hoping he understands how much I love him. I wish this wasn’t happening, and we were back at the grand opening eating hot dogs and listening to music. Today was supposed to be different. It was supposed to be our day.
Brittany steps closer. “Any final words you’d like to say to her?”
She places the gun to my temple, then looks at him. Noah yells and rushes forward, giving Brittany enough time to turn her body and pull the trigger.
It happens too fast.
The shot.
The ear-piercing sound.
Then watching Noah fall lifelessly to the ground.
I scream and try to break free as Brittany’s laughter echoes throughout the space.
“It’s over,” she says. “It’s finally fuckin’ over.”