Chapter 19
TAYA
In the six days since the attack, I had become increasingly paranoid. That might have something to do with the fact that Chevy and my sons wouldn’t let me out of their sight, which was maddening.
Oh, my sons tried to play it off like they’d just happened to drop by at the same time that their brother was ready to leave, but I’d been dealing with their scheming ways since they were toddlers. They clearly think I’m just as ignorant now as they thought I was back then.
My daughter handled it in a completely different way.
Instead of hovering somewhere downstairs while I worked, she and her friends went to the sports store in town and bought me an arsenal of weapons.
Now I was the proud owner of not just one, but three tasers.
I had one for my desk, one for my purse, and one to keep in my vehicle.
I also had a Buck knife that was longer than my hand, complete with a leather sheath that would conveniently attach to my belt if I ever wore one.
As I walked into the kitchen yesterday, I found Samara helping Jaimee put a sock on the end of a bat while Brinn wrestled a sock onto another and somehow wasn’t surprised when they told me they’d gotten one to put next to each door, one for beside my bed, and another to keep in the downstairs bathroom of all places.
When I asked why the bat needed a sock, I was shown a mind-numbing array of TikTok videos explaining how to defend yourself in the event of an attack.
All of them showed a scenario where the attacker grabbed the bat as the sock slipped off, giving the victim the chance to hit a homerun using the attacker’s skull as the ball.
I wondered how Brinn had forgotten that I’d lived in this house for most of my life, out in the middle of nowhere with only wild animals and birds for neighbors.
Of course, I had a shotgun as did Jade which she carried with her when she walked from their house to mine anytime after dusk or early in the morning when predators were out.
What she probably didn’t know was that I had a handgun and a license to carry it - which I would be doing constantly from now on.
I didn’t remind the girls that I had home protection that was much more effective than their tasers and bats because I knew they were just working through their own fears that the events of the last few weeks had created.
I had my own theory about the accident and then the attack and was glad when Chevy didn’t blow off my worries and give me some line about how he’d take care of me.
It wasn’t that I doubted him, but I knew he couldn’t be with me all the time.
We had separate lives, and I wanted to keep it that way.
He had given me a tour of his shop where he spent a lot of time and even let me recreate the scene from that old movie with Patrick Swayze and the pottery wheel.
That turned into a mess of clay and naked skin and ended in Chevy’s bed in the loft above his workshop.
I loved my children more than life itself and adored Jade, Samara, and Jaimee as if they were my own too.
I wasn’t quite ready to admit how I felt about Chevy, other than an intense like that gave me butterflies every time I heard his voice.
I was surrounded by wonderful people who felt the need to protect me, but the only one of them that I didn’t want to tie up and push down the stairs today was Jade.
Ollie also made that short list. He was safe because, like his mother, he hadn’t been hovering over me like there were snipers in the trees or a bomb attached to the muffler of my truck.
I was going stir-crazy with everyone’s constant presence in my house. Even my office wasn’t the calm sanctuary it had been before. My daughter now insisted that I carry around a walkie-talkie just in case I needed someone’s help when I was upstairs.
My first thought when she handed me the radio was to wonder if she thought I was going to fall in the shower and break a hip or trip over a rug and get a head injury.
I had a sudden flashback to the Life Alert commercials that flooded the television all those years ago and had to hold back a giggle when I imagined myself yelling, “Help! I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up! ”
Brinn acted like the radio was a lifeline that could bring help immediately .
. . kind of like the phone I was never without.
Since I was never home alone, I didn’t really need to use the phone to get in touch with my future rescuers.
I had a big mouth and a healthy set of lungs.
If I needed someone, I could yell. Considering their proximity to me for the last fucking week, I could alert help with a whisper and save my voice for the day I finally lost my shit and started screaming.
I had penciled that in on my calendar for next Tuesday just in case things kept going like they had been for the last week.
With Blaine snoring on my couch in the middle of the workday, Brinn banging around in my kitchen, creating a mess that she would be blind to and would leave for me to clean up, and Brandt on his way to “check in,” I might need to up my timeline.
When my phone rang, I snatched it off the desk without looking at the screen and was surprised to hear Lynn’s voice followed quickly by Kaylee’s greeting.
This was the lifeline I needed or, better yet, the saving grace of my darling children who were walking a tightrope that led straight to my attorney’s office where I would soon be headed to take them out of my will if they didn’t give me some fucking room to breathe!
I realized it was a video call rather than just a voice call when Lynn said, “Do you want me to lick your ear before I see your smiling face or what?”
I pulled the phone away from my ear and smiled at the screen before I said, “No, but I’d like for you to erase that image from my head.”
“How are things there? Do you need money for commissary?" Kaylee asked.
“Not yet, but I will once I see the mess Brinn’s making in the kitchen and Blaine props his stinky feet up on my decorative Christmas pillow again.”
“The guards are still on patrol, huh?” Lynn asked.
“I can’t say anything right now because I’m almost sure they’ve got my office bugged,” I whispered dramatically as I looked around the room.
“Fly to Texas. We’ve got lots of open space here, and I can . . .”
“Don’t encourage her!” Kaylee chided.
“What? I was just going to say that there’s plenty of room to get lost here. Damn.”
“Oh.”
“What did you think I was going to say?” Lynn asked Kaylee.
“I thought you were going to encourage her to go on a killing spree and bring the bodies to Texas for burial.”
“I’d never ask her to transport bodies halfway across the country! Can you imagine the cop-cam video that would make?” Lynn laughed before she said, “Do you know how fast you were going? I need your license and . . . what’s that smell?”
“She could rent a refrigerated truck,” Kaylee suggested.
I scoffed before I said, “As if that wouldn’t raise some red flags. Here’s a paper trail. Follow it all the way to Texas, so we can all get arrested.”
“I’m innocent. I’ve been a thousand miles away and have no idea what you’re talking about, officer.”
“What do you want to bet that when we get off this call, we’re all going to get ads on social media for truck rentals and cheap flights to Texas?
” Lynn asked. “They don’t need a paper trail.
You know there’s some FBI agent at a desk somewhere rolling their eyes because they’re having to listen to another of our erratic conversations. ”
“Hello, Jake! Hope you had a great Thanksgiving,” I said cheerfully, talking to our imaginary FBI handler who was probably shocked at our search histories and graphic conversations about violence, sex toys, and weird plots.
“She sounds hideous!” Kaylee said through her laughter.
“Because he’s a guy,” Lynn finished, quoting a popular television commercial from a few years ago.
“How is the writing going? Have you nailed down the plot about the hostage who overtakes her captors and drags them behind a truck?” Kaylee asked.
“I was daydreaming about that exact thing when you called,” I joked.
“Go hunt Chewie down and have some wild sexcapades or something. Make him take you for a ride and then bang you at a rest stop on the side of the highway,” Lynn suggested.
“What a horrible idea. It’s rainy and 42 degrees outside. That sounds like the recipe for pneumonia.”
“Well, for anyone else who was feeling on edge, I’d tell them to go outside, get a little sunshine, and all that other bullshit I read about, but since you live in the rainforest, that’s not an option, is it?
” Lynn was smiling when she said, “I came up with a great storyline while I was in the shower this morning. I think I have it ironed out, but I need to name the characters.”’
“That’s almost as hard as writing the blurb,” I commiserated.
“The main character I’m having a problem naming is the asshole that everyone will want to kill,” Lynn explained.
“And we’re back to death and destruction!” Kaylee cheered.
“Man or woman?” I asked.
“I think I need one of each,” Lynn explained.
“You’ve already used my ex, my high school boyfriend, and the cop that gave me a ticket last year. I really need to work on my petty revenge list.”
“When you find out who is gunning for you, we can add them to the ‘horrible death name list,’” Lynn suggested.
“And then there’d be written proof that it was premeditated murder,” Kaylee chided.
“Whatever,” Lynn said dismissively. “At this point, if anyone I’ve crossed dies mysteriously, I’m gonna end up a suspect.”
“Aren’t we all?” I asked with a chuckle.
“Back to the names. What age bracket are we talking about?” Kaylee asked.
“My age. I was thinking Lena would make a good name, but I really want her to be a solid main character,” Lynn explained. “I guess I could save it and use Trixie.”