Chapter 25
Goldie
Amanda and I scream when the cop behind me rams into our tailgate, giving us whiplash as our heads snap back when the truck jumps forward. I wrench the steering wheel to the left to avoid running head-first at top speed into the trees up ahead at the bend in the road, which would have killed us on impact. Amanda reaches over to gain control of the wheel when my hands slip, slick with sweat, so we don’t go careening off the road on the opposite side into the deep ditch.
I slam the gas pedal down as soon as she gets the truck straightened out and relinquishes control back to me, the big tires slipping momentarily on the road before gaining traction. We take off, the powerful engine roaring as I push the needle past the RPM’s red zone, leaving the cop in our dust after they narrowly dodge crashing headfirst into the same trees we avoided.
“There!” Amanda shouts, and I follow her pointed finger toward the left.
“Goddamnit!” The fucking cop has caught up to us, maybe thirty feet from our tail, and I wouldn’t put it past them to try the same maneuver.
I almost flip the truck, pulling it off the road into the clearing without slowing, and the cop shoots past us on the road at the unexpected move, slamming on their brakes and hydroplaning. My heart bashes into my ribs at the scene as I speed through the field. Davis’s Buick and a black truck have a gray sedan boxed in, and just when I get within fifty feet, the cop catches up again. They speed up, the back end of their SUV bouncing wildly over the terrain, and they swerve, tapping the back right of the truck with the front of their SUV.
We’re not so lucky now as the Ford spins out, going up on two wheels for a terrifying three seconds before landing with a hard crack on all four, the engine stalling. The move would have thrown us from the vehicle if Amanda and I hadn’t been wearing our seat belts. As it is, my chest feels like it’s been caved in, my seat belt locked tight and unable to be unbuckled. Amanda hacks away at it with a huge knife I didn’t know she had, and as soon as it gives way, I throw open my door and fall out of the truck, wheezing through what might be a few cracked ribs.
I ignore the cop’s deep, booming shouts from behind me as I find my footing to run toward the vehicles…until a shot is fired, hitting the ground a few inches to my right. I skid to a stop and turn around with my hands held up high, shaking my head, pleading with him to let me go. I inch backward as he advances on me, his gun aimed at my chest. He’ll have to kill me to stop me from going to my baby, who must be in that sedan.
Then Amanda screams, “Drop your weapon or I’ll shoot!” from behind me, having run around the truck after freeing herself from her seat belt. I turn my head a fraction, and from the corner of my eye, I see her holding my gun up in front of her with two steady, outstretched arms, pointed at the cop as I continue inching backward, bits of jagged rocks biting into the soft soles of my bare feet.
The cop drops his gun in an instant, most of his face shielded by his cowboy hat, but not his dark mustache and wide mouth, which falls open. “Mandy?” There are so many emotions rolled into that one word. Disbelief. Pain. Love. Longing. And then he’s racing toward us, running past me.
I swivel, watching in stunned silence as Amanda drops her arms a split second before he crashes into her, her eyes huge and rounded. “Roman?”
The cop nearly knocks her off her feet with a moan. He wraps his long arms around her back to lift her and slams his lips against hers, his cowboy hat knocked backward off his head.
I dodge around them now that the cop doesn’t have his gun trained on me and pump my legs as fast as I can, slipping frustratingly in the freezing cold, water-logged grass, until I reach the gray sedan’s passenger side door, each breath more painful than the last. Through the window, I can barely make out the tiny, frantic shape of Mrs. Fitzroy in the driver’s seat, repeatedly putting the car in drive, then reverse, ramming back and forth into the vehicles with my daughter in a rear-facing car seat in the back. The sedan’s wheels spin, digging into the soft ground, the engine overheating and starting to smoke.
The noise I make at the danger she’s put my baby in is nothing short of a thousand mothers’ pure primal rage, and I didn’t know I possessed the kind of strength and speed needed to jump on top of the car’s smashed-in trunk when I can’t open either of the passenger side doors to get to Lily.
I spare no attention for Davis, who can handle his own, on top of some man’s back, choking the life out of him. I hope Davis makes the bastard suffer before he kills him. Mrs. Fitzroy doesn’t see it coming, continuing to throw the gear shift around, when I punch her in the side of her head through the broken driver’s side window. She lets out a guttural scream as her head snaps to the side.
I jump and dive through the window while she’s incapacitated to slam the gear in park, then rip the key out of the ignition. I’m half in and out of the vehicle when she recovers enough to fist my hair and does her best to rip it out in chunks, but I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care! Nothing matters except killing her and rescuing Lily.
Glass slices my hips and bare thighs when I grab onto the center console and pull my body through the window until I collapse in a heap on top of Mrs. Fitzroy, then straddle her, pinning her to the seat beneath my weight. I can’t see through my curtain of hair as Mrs. Fitzroy yanks my head side to side with her fists still wrapped in my hair, trying to knock me off as she bucks up to unseat me, but I can feel well enough where she is when I find and grip her skinny, weak neck with my left hand, crushing it and cutting off her air supply when I slam her back against the seat to hold her in place.
My hair parts with her next rip, and I watch with deep satisfaction as her face turns purple while her eyes bulge. “Get off me! Help! Help!” she chokes out in barely a whisper.
“You fucking cunt!” I punch her with my right fist, first against her cheek, feeling it crack, then straight at her nose, the small bones shattering beneath my knuckles. “You’re going to die for this!”
She mouths for help, but there’s no one to save her from my wrath. Her hands fall limp from my hair on the third punch to the center of her face, warm blood bursting forth, pouring down into her gaping mouth, gasping even in her unconscious state, slumping to the side after I finally let go of her throat. Sweet, sweet gratification wells up inside me when she gurgles on her own blood and her wheezing slows.
I push my hair back out of my face, scramble off of her, and climb between the two front seats into the back, my hands and legs shaking uncontrollably and slippery with Mrs. Fitzroy’s blood and mine. Lily is crying so hard now that she’s not even making a sound, unable to draw a breath, her face beet red and her lips turning blue as her tiny chin quivers. I thought I knew what terror was until this very moment, but I was so wrong.
I unbuckle the unfamiliar car seat with fumbling, swollen hands, immediately bringing her to my chest as soon as I get her out. My voice is high-pitched as I try to soothe her, her tears wetting my collarbone. “Mama’s here, Lily. Breathe!” I rub her back vigorously, willing her chest to rise and fall. I choke on a sob when her silent cry breaks, and she draws in the biggest, harshest breath like it’s painful to drag the foul gasoline and smoke-scented air into her tiny lungs before she starts wailing—the most beautiful, beautiful sound.
“Oh, you did so good, Lily. So good.” I push her face into my neck as I rock her side to side, heaving with my relief. “Keep going, baby. Mama and Daddy are here, and you’re ok. I’m going to get you out of here. Just keep breathing for me.”
With renewed strength, knowing I need to get her to a hospital fast in case the car chase and Fitzroy’s repeated crashes have hurt her, I stumble out of the back seat with her held upright firmly to my chest, trying to keep her head and neck steady. The world is an apocalyptic nightmare of flashing lights and sirens and shouting from all directions.
When a man I don’t know comes out of nowhere, charging at me, I throw myself to the side, bending my wrist too far back when I break my fall so I don’t crush Lily beneath me. The man crouches in front of me after I get to my knees, and my head and heart are pounding too hard to hear what he’s saying when he tries to rip Lily from my arms.
I go absolutely feral, twisting to brace my back against the side of the car, snarling, ready to rip his throat out with my teeth if need be. He doesn’t have time to react before I kick him right between his thighs in his squat position, and he falls backward at the impact, clutching his dick.
I get my legs under me and push off the car, darting to the other side. The man springs to his feet almost immediately, one hand still over his lap, the other reaching for me. He grabs the back of my shirt to stop me and ends up ripping it halfway down my back when I don’t stop. I swerve around the Buick and sprint toward the Ford, all while more strange men converge on me from every direction, their monstrous silhouettes a horror movie come to life in the blinding, flashing lights.
Terror clogs my throat when someone big grabs me from behind, wrapping huge arms streaked with mud and grass and ribbons of bloody cuts around me and Lily. I throw my head back, nailing them in the chin, thrashing in their arms to get away.
“Goldie!” Davis’s scream is delivered right in my ear, and in an instant, my fight goes out.
* * *
I can’t let my eyes drift closed. Whatever medication the nurses gave me tries to wrap my mind in black cloth, turning my limbs to jelly, but I can’t go to sleep. Not yet. Not until I know my baby is safe.
“Get off me,” I slur, my tongue thick in my mouth full of cotton as I push the nurse at my bedside with the strength of a newborn. I roll off the hospital bed and land hard on the floor on my belly, breathing raggedly as my ribs howl with protest while I try to army crawl toward the door. Toward Lily.
A million hands grab at me, lifting my limp body off the floor to dump me on the bed, a cacophony of urgent shouts and beeping machines. The last thing I remember before the world goes dark is the throng of blurry, blue shapes roughly parting to let two older women through.
I suck in a painful breath when the younger one grabs my injured right hand. “Mom?” No, that’s not right. I don’t have a mom. Confusion ripples through my thoughts as my eyelids grow too heavy to blink open.
The woman smooths my hair back from my forehead. “I’ll watch over Lily while they fix you up. Don’t worry, sweetheart. You just let them do their jobs so you can get better.”
Davis
“Good, you’re finally awake. Don’t say a word,” Vincent says as soon as an officer lets him into my hospital room, where my left hand is currently cuffed to my bed, my right hand in a cast, and both arms wrapped in white bandages up past my elbows.
The handcuffs are overkill, considering how much blood I lost after the glass from the broken window sliced my arms to hell and back. I was in and out of consciousness in the back of the ambulance, which the EMTs were only able to wrestle me into after I had found Goldie with Lily in her arms before we were surrounded by officers and pulled apart.
I had roused just enough to unstrap myself from the gurney when I was wheeled into the hospital, shoved one of the EMTs blocking my way, and then ran outside where a second ambulance had pulled up behind us. As soon as I laid eyes on Goldie and Lily in the back of that ambulance, seeing that they were both still alive and being treated for their injuries, I blacked out, apparently cracking the back of my head on the pavement when I fell.
Battling the pain medication making everything floaty, I screw my face up at Vincent, his lean chest bare save for a black blazer thrown on above gray silk pajama bottoms and shiny black Oxfords. I have no idea how long I’ve been in the hospital or how long he’s been here, half-dressed, waiting.
“What are you doing here?”
Vincent approaches my bedside with his cell phone held to his ear before he ends the call and drops it in the inside pocket of his blazer. “As your lawyer, I’m telling you to shut your mouth until I get this sorted. Understood?”
“My lawyer?”
He nods, then motions to the officer guarding the door, who steps out, giving us privacy. Vincent sighs with annoyance, walks away to actually shut the door, then comes back to drag a chair close to my bed so he can sit, purple bags beneath his eyes. “You have no idea the world of shit you’ve gotten yourself into.”
“What shit?”
Vincent eyes me with a frown. “How hard did you hit your head?”
The cuffs clang when I try to raise my hand to touch the patched-up knot on the back of my head.
“Never mind. Point is, if you don’t do exactly what I say, you could be facing some serious time in prison. Amanda and Marigold as well,” he adds, though I don’t know what my sister has to do with any of this.
“Doubt it,” I say. “This is Texas.”
Vincent huffs out an incredulous laugh. “This isn’t the wild west. Texas still has laws—” He leaps to his feet when the door opens, and Sheriff Gibson, Deputy Hernandez, and Amanda stride into the room. Vincent blocks their path, sticking out his arm to shake hands with the men, introducing himself as my lawyer.
Sheriff nods, then tells Hernandez to uncuff me.
I grin and roll my left wrist. “Told you,” I say to Vincent, and he shakes his head in disbelief.
Amanda, who is just as filthy and ragged as everyone else except for Vincent, leans over my bed to hug me. Not just a two-second half embrace, but a real I love you and I’m glad you’re ok kind of hug. It’s been so long since we’ve held each other like this, and though my arms hurt like a son of a bitch, I hold on a little tighter, a little longer, when she starts to pull away.
When I finally let go, I notice Hernandez behind Amanda in his undershirt, his eyes glued to her ass in her tiny pajama shorts beneath the uniform top he must have given her to wear, and he readjusts himself. I clear my throat, shooting daggers at Hernandez, who has no business looking at her like that after breaking her heart right before they graduated high school. He snaps his eyes to my face before winking and sidling closer.
Now, normally, I wouldn’t interfere in another couple’s business, but with my tongue loose thanks to the medication, I raise a brow at Vincent when he doesn’t make any moves to get between Hernandez and Amanda, though they’ve certainly got his attention. “You’re just gonna watch another man eye your woman without saying anything?”
“Jesus Christ, Davis,” Amanda says, pursing her lips when I ball my thin, blue hospital blanket and pass it to her so she can wrap it around herself. “‘Your woman’? I don’t belong to anyone.” She shakes the blanket back out over my legs.
Hernandez clicks his tongue, apparently taking issue with what she said. The deputy asks her in a challenging tone, “You sure about that, Mandy?” They’re evenly matched in height, with him in his boots and her wearing grippy hospital socks, though he has to have at least a good fifty pounds on her—on Vincent as well—with thick near-black hair and a medium brown face. He sets his hand on her lower back. “Because that’s not what you were screaming when I had you bent—”
Amanda’s cheeks flame red, and she elbows Hernandez hard in the gut, hissing through her teeth, “Shut up, Roman!” The man doesn’t even react other than to lower his hand to pinch her ass.
“Is this a fucking joke? Vincent, are you seeing this?” I wave to the pair awkwardly, unable to fully control my movements. Vincent’s brows go up, and he gapes, but otherwise, he doesn’t move. “Dude. Knock his ass out!”
Hernandez stares down Vincent, puffs out his chest as he slips his arm further around Amanda to grip her waist possessively, and says with a low growl, “I’d like to see you try. Don’t think I won’t put you in a hospital bed next to Davis if you do.”
Amanda stiffens and tries to inch away from Hernandez. “See! This is why I never come home. Bunch of backward, pigheaded, cave—”
Hernandez spins Amanda around, cutting her off by planting a fat, claiming kiss on her lips, right in front of Vincent. As soon as the kiss starts, it ends, and Hernandez dips to haul Amanda over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.
To Sheriff, Hernandez says, “I’m putting in a transfer to Michigan.”
Gibson gives a big belly-aching laugh and claps Hernandez on the back.
Amanda is hollering up a storm, though she doesn’t seem to be putting up too much of a physical fight. “You’re not coming to Michigan!”
“I’m not letting you get away again or raise the baby without me,” he says, stomping to the door.
Vincent chokes, finally stepping forward as if to go after them, until Amanda draws a huge breath and screams shrilly, “I’m not pregnant!”
Hernandez chuckles as he exits the room. “No, but you will be soon.”
Vincent falters, still gaping like an open-mouthed fish. Eventually, he rounds on Gibson. “You aren’t going to stop him from taking her like that?”
Sheriff thumbs his nose, then crosses his arms. “That was your job, not mine. And I’d say you just got fired.”
I nod when Vincent looks my way like the world has lost its mind. “Welcome to our slice of Texas.”
Vincent throws his hands up. “Fuck this. I’m out of here. Good luck staying out of prison.”
Gibson sighs and takes Vincent’s empty chair after he leaves, setting his cowboy hat down on one thick thigh.
“You going to send me to prison, Sheriff?” Even if that’s where I’m headed, I’ll sleep just fine knowing I took out that scummy bastard Matt—unfortunately, Harold’s nephew and the one who’d assaulted Dolly way back when she first started working at Granny’s diner, who then started working for the security company that installed our cameras and locks. Russell got to me before Vincent after somehow finding out that Mrs. Fitzroy paid Matt to disarm our system and get past our keypad on the front door, kidnap Lily, and then be the getaway driver.
Sheriff leans back in the creaky, padded chair, getting comfortable. “You plan on murdering anyone else?”
Colton’s name flashes across my mind. If I find out he had anything to do with this, then, yeah , I’ve got plans to make.
Gibson narrows his eyes. “Don’t answer that.” He sucks his teeth. “The way I see it, ain’t no father in his right mind would have done anything different to protect his family. Who knows where they would have taken that sweet baby of yours if they’d gotten away. You know she had forged passports for her and Lily with all new names?”
I didn’t know that. Rage and terror battle each other for first place in my mind at the thought of my daughter disappearing in some foreign country. I clench my jaw, pushing that aside so I can focus, knowing that the threat has been neutralized. “What about Goldie?”
His face darkens. “She did what she had to do, same as you. Fitzroy got exactly what she deserved.” He shakes his head. “You know, it’s always the ones you least expect to be moving such large quantities.”
I’ve got no clue what he’s talking about, and he laughs, leaning in close with his elbows on his knees like he’s got a juicy secret to share.
“The DEA’s been after her for some time, apparently. Been hunting her here since she went into our system. Meth, and a shit ton of it, too, cooked out in the desert. Who’da thunk? They were mighty happy to find out we had her in custody—well, in hospital, chained to her bed, detoxing after getting hooked on the shit for who knows how long.”
“That would explain her batshit, psychotic behavior, I’m guessing?”
Sheriff nods. “They’re happy enough to back y’all, too, I think. Same as me.”
Relief hits me like a ton of bricks. “Well, damn, that’s good to hear. I don’t think even Violet could pull off a jailhouse wedding.”