Chapter Twenty-Four #2
Tanner didn’t waste any more time on him. Alive or dead, he’d have to wait.
A bang against a table that had fallen caught his attention. “Bree!”
A cough.
“Bree, I’m coming.” He got to his feet, still keeping as low as he could, and ran behind the table.
Bree was there. She was alive. She was moving her hands all over the ground, crying and coughing.
“Bree.”
She couldn’t hear him between her frantic movements and crying. He touched her ankle and she screamed, kicking at him.
“Freckles, it’s me!”
“Tanner?”
“Yeah, baby. Come on. We’ve got to get out of here.”
“Wait, there it is!” The last word turned from a sob to a cough. The smoke was getting thicker.
Tanner crawled closer to her. She was still feeling around for something. Some evidence? Something about Jeter?
She scurried away, fighting him when he tried to pull her back. “Bree. We’ve got to go. Now!”
He’d never spoken to her in this way, but whatever was going on inside her mind, she needed to let it go. “You’re alive. I’m alive. I don’t care about anything else. Let’s just get out of here.”
But she still scrambled forward another foot. “Got it!”
He had no idea what she was talking about, but she was at least ready to go now.
“Stay close to me. We’re going to have to keep low.”
They rounded the table and Tanner came to an abrupt stop.
Jeter was there—one leg still lying awkwardly to the side—and had his gun trained at both of them.
“Sorry, Tanner. But I did warn you that if she wasn’t with me, she wasn’t going to be with anyone.”
Tanner’s weapon wasn’t in his hand. He’d dropped it during the explosion. There was no way he’d be able to get to his ankle holster before Jeter shot them.
“Admittedly,” Jeter continued. “You did warn me that I’d have to go through you to get to her. Looks like that’s true too.”
He felt Bree’s hand tighten on his side. It seemed so unfair that they would both survive to this point only to die here.
“Michael,” Bree said, just loud enough to be heard over the burning.
“Yes, Bethany.”
“I’m coming over to you.” Bree got unsteadily to her feet. “Don’t shoot Tanner. I’m coming to you.”
“I have to shoot him. Don’t you understand? You’ll never be mine as long as he’s alive.” Jeter pointed the gun right at Tanner’s face and Tanner knew with him only ten feet away this time there wouldn’t be any cheating death.
Bree took another step closer to Jeter but was still too far away to be able to harm him. “You said I would eventually give this back to you. And you were right. Here it is.” She tossed something small in Jeter’s direction.
Jeter’s attention was splintered as he tried to catch it, forgetting about his injured arm. It gave Tanner the seconds he needed to get his weapon from his ankle holster.
Tanner didn’t hesitate. He was firing as he swung the weapon up and in Jeter’s direction.
The man died still reaching for whatever Bree had thrown at him. Tanner looked down and saw exactly what it was.
Her engagement ring.
He had no idea how she had gotten it or why throwing it at Jeter had caught him so off guard. And he didn’t care. He scrambled forward, grabbed the ring and took Jeter’s pulse, just for good measure.
This time the man was definitely dead.
Bree was staring at him like she couldn’t quite take it all in. Tanner didn’t blame her.
But they were going to have to process later when the building wasn’t burning around them. He grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the front door, now being opened by firefighters. Whitaker was staggering that way too.
They made it outside, squinting against the sunlight so bright after the darkness, sucking in gulps of fresh air. Firefighters led them to the side so they were out of the way.
Tanner and Bree just clung to one another. Too many times today they’d both been sure they’d never see each other again.
“He’s really gone?” she finally said against his chest.
“Yes. Forever. You never have to look over your shoulder for him again.”
And she would’ve, Tanner realized. Even if Jeter had gone to prison, she still would’ve spent the rest of her life always wondering if the shadow behind her was Jeter.
She clutched him tighter. “This is it. Now we’re finally able to move forward. No more past to keep us trapped.”
Tanner dropped to his knee right there surrounded by firefighters, paramedics and cops. The building was burning, they were both bleeding and smelling like smoke.
He pulled out the ring anyway.
“This should have been on your finger before today, but for whatever happened in there when you threw it at Jeter and he lost all focus, I’m thankful it wasn’t.”
She looked down at him, her green eyes even more huge in her face smudged by soot.
“I love you, freckles. I know we have things we need to work out, but marry me. We’ll figure out the rest as we go.”
Her hands stayed clinched at her side. “I know Jeter is gone, but that doesn’t change who I am. The things he did to me... The way I had to live to survive... I’m never going to be like normal women with normal expressions of emotions.”
“Thank God. You are everything to me, Bree Daniels. Everything I never even knew I wanted. Now say you’ll be my wife so poor Whitaker over here can stop pretending like he’s not about to cough up a lung.”
She cupped his face with her hands. “Are you sure?”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my entire life.”
The smile that split her face was breathtaking. “Then yes. I’m yours, forever.”