CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE #2
Maude found that an odd question to ask. But she was coming to realize that Edmund had more knowledge about his sister than she ever would. She didn’t intervene.
But Natasha did. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“When were they married, Tasha?” he asked her again.
“About four years ago,” she said.
“So they were married right around the time you introduced Ross Hampton to me as your fiancé?”
Maude was shocked. “Her fiancé?” She looked at Natasha. “Hamp was your fiancé?”
“He was the night of that meet and greet party your publisher held for her,” Edmund said.
“But he got married a few months after that,” said a confused Maude.
“Yes, he did,” Natasha admitted. “Was I crushed? Yes, I was. But what does that have to do with the price of tea?”
“Motive,” said Edmund. “He rejected you and married Pernita. And you wanted revenge.”
“Four years later? Give me a break!”
Maude agreed. “That is a long time to be stewing in revenge,” she said. “Usually people lash out much sooner than that.”
“Then why would Hampton accuse you of killing his second wife?” Edmund asked his sister.
“Just like he accused that other lady of killing his first wife. His second wife, like his first wife, had the goods on his ass too. So he got rid of the first wife and blamed his mistress. Then he got rid of his second wife when she got the goods on him, and he decided to blame me to take the spotlight off of him. Because he knew I had the goods on his ass too. But he had an at least plausible excuse to point the finger at me. I did it because I’m the jilted lover. But that’s bullshit.”
“What goods do you have on Hamp?” Maude asked.
“He’s even more crooked than you thought,” Natasha said. “I got business records. I got recordings. I got it all. And he found out.”
“Do you still have those records and recordings?”
“Yes I do. In my safe deposit box.”
“Number 8476?” Maude asked.
Natasha smiled. “You figured it out!”
“Your brother did,” Maude said just as they heard what sounded like gunfire erupting out front.
“What’s that?” Natasha asked.
Don, who was guarding the front door, rushed inside the house. “They just shot Wyatt,” he said anxiously. “They’re running around back for full penetration. Get them out of here, Boss, get them out now!”
Edmund began ushering Maude and Natasha toward the front door as Don ran toward the kitchen that led to the patio doors.
But gunfire erupted at the back patio doors as glass was shattered and Don had to pull back and then he began a shootout with the two men attempting to enter the back of the house.
Edmund rushed with Maude in his arms and Natasha beside them as they hurried out of the front door.
They ran to the Tahoe. Edmund’s heart dropped when he saw Wyatt slumped over the steering wheel.
“Get in!” he ordered the ladies. “And get down,” he added as he frantically opened the front driver side door and checked where the bullet was lodged.
When he saw that it was lodged in Wyatt’s arm, he felt better.
But the sound of bullets were echoing in their ears. The ladies were still in danger. That was why Edmund began attempting to move Wyatt over onto the front passenger seat so that he could get behind the wheel.
Although Natasha was down and covering her head, Maude helped Edmund move Wyatt over to the passenger seat. Without her help, it would have been like attempting to move dead weight.
Once they successfully moved him, Edmund hopped behind the wheel of the SUV and closed the door. He pressed the Start button then took off his belt and began wrapping it around Wyatt’s wounded arm to staunch the bleeding.
But when he finished, and he still didn’t leave, Natasha was impatient. “Let’s go, Eddie, what are you doing?”
“I’m not leaving, Don!”
“But they can kill us!”
“He’s not leaving, Don,” Maude insisted too. What was wrong with that woman?
But it wasn’t a long wait. Don came busting out of the front door running for his life, his gun waving as he ran.
“Move!” Maude said to Natasha, forcing her to move further over on the middle row as Don hopped into the backseat and Edmund slung the gear into reverse.
“I got one of them,” Don said. “There’s two more,” he added as Edmund began backing the SUV extremely fast out of that driveway.
The two gunmen ran out of Natasha’s house shooting as they ran. “Stay down!” Edmund yelled as they all got down and Don pressed down the window to return the gunfire.
“That means you, too, Maude,” Edmund insisted.
“She’s down geez, Eddie,” said Natasha. “You’re more worried about her than you are your own sister, you bastard!”
Don hit one of the men as Edmund backed up onto the street, slung the gear into Drive, and took off down the road.
A big Ford Expedition sped up, stopped in front of Natasha’s house, and the unwounded gunman ran to the street, hopped in on the front passenger seat, and they took off after the Tahoe.
It was a race between tanks as both SUVs sped in and out of lanes, around slow-moving cars, as they made their way through the mildly busy streets of Dillon, Georgia. Edmund didn’t know where he was going, just that he was getting as far away from their attackers as he could get.
Don and the gunman in the Expedition began exchanging gunfire again, but neither were hitting their target. The SUVs were traveling too fast.
But the Expedition proved faster, or their getaway driver was more expert than Edmund because their SUV pulled alongside his SUV and slammed into it in an excellent PIT maneuver.
The Tahoe began spinning out and then losing traction as it sailed airborne across from one side of the street to the other side.
Then it was offroad. It began coughing up dirt and small rocks as it hit rough terrain.
But the PIT caused the big Expedition to lose control and spin out too. Only it was spinning into oncoming traffic and was broadsided by two different vehicles. One vehicle hit the Expedition head on so violently that the Expedition exploded into a fireball of unsurvivable flames.
The Tahoe, still offroad, didn’t flip, but it crashed into a huge tree trunk. When it came to such an abrupt stop, everybody inside slammed forward.
The airbag had deployed, but Edmund fought it so that he could get to Maude. He hopped off of the driver seat and hurried onto the middle row.
“Are you alright?” he frantically asked Maude who had been down on the floor of the SUV when the crash occurred.
“I’m okay,” she said as she tried to reposition herself. “You?”
“I’m fine,” Edmund said as he put his hands on Maude. And then he looked around. “Everybody okay?”
They all said that they were as Don hopped out and hurried to Wyatt, who had been barely conscious from his gunshot wound. He helped Wyatt get out of the mangled SUV.
But Edmund had been so terrified for Maude during that entire ordeal that his heart was still hammering.
That was why, when she looked up at him and they made eye contact, his heart grew faint.
There was no getting around it: He had feelings for her that had to be loved.
He pulled her up and into his arms. And held her for several seconds.
But that was when they heard Don yell it’s on fire!
Fearing that he meant the Tahoe, Edmund grabbed Maude and hurried out of that SUV.
But they both quickly realized Don was talking about the Expedition. They hurried up the path to the main road and that was when they saw the wreckage too. And how the Expedition was now engulfed in flames. It was a sight to see.
“Natasha wasn’t lying,” said Maude as they stood there. “She’s got something on Ross Hampton that apparently nobody else has.”
Don agreed. “For them to go this far? To put so many people at risk?” He shook his head.
“She’s got the goods on that man just like she said.
He doesn’t just want her in jail anymore.
He wants her dead.” When Don spoke so bluntly, they all looked at him.
He was the expert. They knew he knew what he was talking about.
But then Don noticed who wasn’t looking at him. ‘Where’s Natasha?” he asked.
And that was when the rest of them realized she wasn’t in the group too.
They quickly began looking around for her. Edmund and Don even ran back down the path to the SUV and looked inside. But she wasn’t there. His heart began hammering again. Where was his sister? Had she been thrown from the vehicle when they crashed?
They looked around the SUV. But there was no trace of her. But where was she? Where on earth could she be?
And then they both realized, in that moment, that while Edmund was focused solely on Maude, and while Don was focused solely on Wyatt, she must have wandered off. But where???
“There she is!” Wyatt yelled out as he pointed down the road.
Edmund and Don ran back up the path to the highway.
When they looked, not in the direction where the Expedition had exploded, but in the opposite direction, that was when they saw Natasha.
She was running along the opposite side of the road as if she was trying to get away from them!
Then she hopped into what looked like a BMW that was parked on the side waiting for her.
And then the BMW kicked up dirt as it sped away.
“What the fuck?” said a completely baffled Edmund as they all watched the getaway with nothing but astonishment on their faces.
But Maude had a revelation. “They weren’t there to kill Natasha,” she said. “Natasha’s in on it! They were there to kill one of us.”
Edmund looked at her with even more bafflement. “What do you mean?”
“What she means,” Don said, taking it further, “is that they were either there to kill one of us.” Then he looked at his boss. “Or all of us.”
That wasn’t what Maude said, but that was exactly what she meant. And that was the revelation that floored them.