Chapter Twenty #2
The guard fidgets, unable to meet my angry glare. “I got a phone call from my wife. My kid was rushed to the hospital and I stepped away for a second so I could take the call and hear her over all the noise.”
A muscle throbs in my temple, the beginning of a painful headache caused by my feeling of impotence. “So you left your post and now the woman you were assigned and paid to watch is missing!” I yell.
“I’m sorry. It was an emergency—”
“So you don’t know where Raven is, do you? You should have had eyes on her the second she stepped outside!”
The man winces, clearly contrite, but I don’t give a shit. “You took a call and walked away at the same time we had a bomb scare that in all probability was a setup?” I shake my head in disgust. “By tomorrow you’ll be out of a fucking job.”
I spin around and stalk back across the street in time to see a woman run out of an alleyway, two blocks away. From her black clothes and ponytail, I think it’s Raven. The moment she screams for help, her voice confirms it.
As I run toward her, a man grabs her ponytail and she trips, falling onto her knees on the hard concrete, only to be pulled by her hair once more.
I pick up speed. Before I reach her, a stranger yells and shoves the man who has to be Lance away from her.
He stumbles and falls into the street at the same instant the ambulance, siren on, slams into him, sending him into the air before he hits the ground and lies motionless.
“Raven!” I reach her seconds later and she throws herself into my arms.
“Tell me you’re okay,” I say into her hair.
She sniffs and tilts her head back to look at me. Red marks mar both sides of her mouth and I gently run a finger over the bruising, anger welling inside me.
If Lance wasn’t already injured and surrounded by police, I would be pounding the bastard’s head onto the pavement.
“What happened?” I ask quietly, knowing we have just minutes before the police walk over to question her.
She shakes her head, obviously not ready to explain, so I run my hands along her arms to calm her. “It’s okay. But you are going to have to talk to the police. We need to get your statement on record before Lance regains consciousness and talks.” No doubt the asshole will spin his own tale.
I also want her cared for by a doctor.
“He’s high,” Raven says, her teeth chattering, shock obviously setting in. “And he has a gun.”
“Couldn’t ask for anything better,” I say. Nothing has gone as planned today but Lance has sealed his own fate. “Are you hurt anywhere else?” I ask.
She shakes her head and I take comfort in the fact that she’s still fully dressed in her work clothes. She might be traumatized but she hasn’t been raped, and for that I’m grateful.
“Miss?” A uniformed cop I don’t know walks over. “This gentleman said you ran out of the alley screaming and the guy who was hit by the ambulance was chasing you and had a gun.”
Raven and I glance at the man who saved her and I give him a grateful nod.
“Can you tell me what happened?” the officer asks.
I hold up a hand. “Can’t she get checked out by the paramedics first?”
Beside me, she trembles but says, “I want to get this over with.”
I glance at the officer. “Then can you at least get her a damn blanket first? Her teeth are chattering.”
The officer inclines his head and extends his arm, gesturing toward the second ambulance with an open back door, and we head that way.
The female EMT takes one look at Raven and ducks into the back, returning with a mylar blanket and wrapping it around her shoulders.
When Raven smiles at the paramedic, I’m able to breathe for the first time.
I wait beside the ambulance, pacing as Raven has her palms and knees treated by the female EMT with whom she’s bonded.
Garrett arrives and takes his place by my side. “You okay?” he asks.
I roll my neck, rubbing the tense muscles with my fingers. “Not sure. Those minutes where I couldn’t find her were endless.” I wasn’t sure my heart would survive it. “When I saw her running from that bastard…” I shake my head.
“She’s tough,” Garrett says. “And she’s okay.”
I nod. My friend has a point. “You’ll be the one to question her?”
“Yes.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. At least she’ll tell her story to someone she knows.
“Remy? Detective Lewis?” Raven calls out.
We turn at the same time.
“I’m ready to talk now.” She still has the blanket wrapped around her and chills still rack her body. She’ll calm down later. I’ll make sure of it.
“You can stay,” Garrett says to me. “But you need to let her talk. Since you were a witness, I’ll take your statement later.
” Garrett sits down beside Raven on the back of the ambulance.
Her feet dangle off the side and I listen as Garrett questions her, beginning with the bomb scare evacuation and everything that happened after.
As I listen, my hands clench at my sides and my anger grows until I storm off to find Lance, only to be pulled back by Zach.
“Looks like I’m just in time,” Zach says, his hand on my shoulder.
We watch as the bastard is loaded into an ambulance just like the one that hit him. Cuffed to the gurney, Lance appears conscious though I don’t know the extent of his injuries. I hope they hurt like hell.
“Let’s go,” Zach mutters. “You can’t go near him without fucking up the case against him.”
With a groan, I follow my friend to a spot where we can talk alone but one where I can keep an eye on Raven.
“The bar’s been cleared,” Zach tells me. “They’d already done a full sweep when Lance admitted to making the fake call.”
I nod. “Good. Hopefully we won’t have to do too much PR to get business back to normal. A bomb scare isn’t good for the bar.”
“We’ll be fine. We have a good amount of returning customers.” Zach pauses in thought. “Add a Women Drink Free night and they’ll all come back. I’m not worried about the business.” He eyes me, concern visible in his steady gaze.
“I’m fine,” I insist. “Just worried about Raven. Once I get her home everything will be okay,” I say, hoping I’m right.
Despite dodging a bullet with Lance, she’s badly shaken and my gut tells me she wasn’t as prepared to face her brother as she believed herself to be. Even if she did save herself. I’m damned proud of her for escaping.
Zach adjusts his leather jacket and eyes me with surprise. “Home, hmm?”
I blink. “What?”
“You do realize that technically, Raven still lives in the apartment above the bar?”
Zach’s words are a gut punch. Since she moved in, I’ve all but forgotten she’s there out of necessity and not choice. “After the attempted break-in, she said she didn’t want to go back.”
“That was when Lance was out of prison. He violated his parole and we both know calling in a bomb scare means federal charges. Add in the unlicensed gun that a known felon can’t lawfully carry and the drugs in his pocket, and he’s in deep shit.”
“Seriously?” I shake my head. “Stupid motherfucker.” But I feel my lips tug upward in a grin.
“Keep smiling,” Zach says. “The detective who patted him down said the pills look like the synthetic fentanyl they’ve been tracking.”
I chuckle. “That bastard is going away for a long time.” And if Lance doesn’t plead guilty, I’ll be in court every day of his trial, no matter how long it takes. “At least I can tell Raven she’s finally safe.”
Comfortable silence falls between them. “I need to give her time, don’t I?” I ask.
Zach, who lost his first love, then found her again, only to let her go home to Chicago when the threat against her was over, nods. “Sorry, man. She needs to be ready.”
“You did change your mind and go after Hadley,” I remind my friend.
“But I gave her the time she needed first.”
“Fuck.” I want Raven in my life for a long time. I’ve been patient but that patience has run out.
But Zach is right. Raven has been consistently terrorized by Lance since she was adopted. If she needs to live her life before I ask her for a commitment, I’ll have to back off and let her go.