25. Dom
I’ve had bullets fly at my head before. Not once has it ever happened while I’m naked. In bed. With the woman I love.
Technically, it’s one bullet, and I’m pretty sure that the culprit doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing with the gun in his hand, but still.
“Have you lost your damn mind?” I’m up and shouting, even if I’m naked, before the plaster settles on Emma’s head.
Is it the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life?
No. Not even close.
Lying to Emma still takes the cake on the idiocy front. But I have to protect her, and if that means acting like a dumbass so that Emma can get out of bed and to safety, so be it.
Emma, who definitely isn’t an idiot like I am, slides out of the bed onto her ass and grabs my t-shirt to put on so she isn’t confronting the crazy man naked.
For the first time in my life, I have something to live for, and here I am, standing in front of a man holding a gun, ready to die if it means that she’s okay.
“Can I put some pants on before you shoot me?” I don’t mean for the question to come out as snarky as it does, but the man has a gun pointed at me and I can’t control the asshole inside myself.
I’m more than a little pissed at myself for letting my guard drop. I’m only naked because I didn’t hear a single sound coming from anywhere in Emma’s house. Not until he was opening the bedroom door.
Honestly, I’m surprised that he can hold a gun, let alone successfully fire the damn thing. When he stares at me wide-eyed, I realize that he wasn’t expecting me to be in the room.
“Pants,” I snap. “Can I put pants on?”
He nods, and the action lets us see who it is that brought a gun into Emma’s house.
“Jesse?” Emma steps into the pale light offered by the moon. “Jesse, what are you doing? How did you get in my house? Is Bee okay?” She leans over. “Is Bee with you, Jesse? She’s not here, is she?”
What Emma doesn’t ask is how Bee’s uncle knew where she lives. Nor does she do anything that will agitate him any further than it is clear he already is. She’s taking the attention off the hostile situation that we’re in, and she’s bringing it to something innocent.
“What am I doing?” He waves the gun in my direction, and his voice rises with every syllable until he is screeching at the top of his lungs. “What the hell is he doing here?” Jesse doesn’t answer the question about his niece, though. “He shouldn’t be here. He doesn’t belong here. He needs to leave. He shouldn’t be here.”
While the other man is obviously having a mental breakdown, I grab my pants with my toes and lift them up. No one needs to get shot while they’re completely naked. When I have them in my hand, I start to make a plan. My gun is at my house, in the safe. Emma has a gun safe too, but I know for a fact it’s in the closet behind Jesse, so that is out of the question.
Which means that the only resources I have to defuse the situation are right here. And the first thing I need to do is put my pants on.
I can’t spend the rest of my life making love to Emma if I get shot in the dick.
Which really just unlocks a brand-new fear that I never knew I had.
“I’m her boyfriend.” I try to buy some time as I slide them on, thankful that he hasn’t shot me while I’m moving. “That’s what I’m doing here.”
“What?” He looks between the two of us, and the gun moves with his head.“You aren’t her boyfriend. You don’t belong with her.” The gun isn’t pointed at me, and I didn’t realize how terror worked until I see it pointed at her.
“Hey,” I order. “Point the gun at me. Not Emma.”
His eyes widen and he moves the gun to follow my order.Clearly, he doesn’t have a plan, and I was right when I made the assumption that he’s in the middle of some sort of mental breakdown.
There’s no other reason for what’s happening. No other explanation.
“Jesse, what are you doing?” Emma gets his attention again, but she steps back to the side table that hugs her wall. “Where’s Bee at? Is she okay?” There is genuine fear in her voice.
I take a chance and glance at her to see that she’s put her hands on the handle of the drawer behind her back.
“Jesse.” I say his name loudly, getting his attention away from Emma again. “Do you want to tell me what happened to Bee? Is she at your house, safe and asleep in bed?” I glance at the red stain on his shirt. “Emma needs to know that Bee is safe, Jesse. Can you tell me that?”
But Jesse isn’t looking at me anymore. He’s staring at Emma again.
Emma, who’s on the other side of the bed, too far for me to protect from the gun if he fires. I’m fast, but there’s no way in hell that I can get in front of her before a bullet leaves the chamber of that gun.
“You look just like her, you know that?” The tremble of his lips and head and matching tremor in his hand send a wave of nausea through me.
Fuck it. I’m not going to let him do this without going through me. Slowly, so slowly that I can see him watching my every step, I move so that I’m on the same side of the room as Emma. It’s both a blessing and a curse. I can get in front of her, yes. But it also means there’s more of a chance that she’ll get hit by a stray bullet if he fires.
“Look like who?” I step in his line of sight again, trying to force him to look away from Emma.“Who does she look like?” If I get him to focus on me, Emma can potentially get away.
“Stop fucking blocking my view of Dani!” He points the gun at my chest. “Move. Now.”
“No.”
He isn’t expecting me to say that, and it shows in the way he freezes. The gun trembles, and he lowers it slightly before raising it up again and putting his finger on the trigger. All of a sudden I’m staring down the barrel, and I’m pretty sure I’m about to die. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to give him a clear shot of her.
My life for Emma’s? That’s not even a real question.
The things that I would do to ensure her safety would make even the most hardened criminals take a step back.
“What?” he stammers. “W-why? I have the gun. Move.”
“No.” I shrug. “I don’t care if you shoot me. You were pointing a gun at the woman I love. Now you’re not.”
Jesse moves, trying to get around me without actually shooting me. “You don’t love Dani. You don’t even know her. Neither did James.”
“Who the fuck is Dani? Or James for that matter.”But I already know the answer to that question. I investigated their murders.
Keeping him talking, keeping him confused and unable to work out a plan. That’s the key to getting the upper hand.
Emma puts her hand on my shoulder, and I make the smart choice by letting her step around me. Why? Because I can see the gun that she’s holding behind her back.
“Dani and James were Bianca’s parents, weren’t they, Jesse?” She doesn’t make eye contact with me, and I’m glad. If she does, she’ll see the utter panic I’m feeling reflected back at her. “Jesse loved Dani. Didn’t you, Jesse?”I can hear Emma swallow, and the tension in her body fills the space between us.
He nods, tears starting to fall down his face as he turns his attention to me. “That bastard of a brother hurt her. Over and over again, he hurt her. I had to kill him. He hurt the only woman I loved. You understand. Protecting Dani means that I had to kill him.”
“I know you did.” Emma’s soothing voice fills the space between all of us. She’s clearly playing his game so that she can get the upper hand. “But I need you to tell me where Bianca is, Jesse. She didn’t do anything. And I just need to make sure that she’s safe. You know that’s what I want more than anything.”
“She wouldn’t stop crying, Dani. She cried all night after we got home, wanting to visit her friend Emma, and I couldn’t take it anymore.” He sobs louder, rubbing the hand not holding the gun over his shirt, where the red stains are. “Please, I just wanted to make her stop crying.”
Ice fills my veins at the implication of what he’s saying, and I see the trembling in Emma’s shoulders as the realization that something terrible happened to Bee fills her mind.
I reach forward, while Jesse can’t see me, to take the gun from Emma’s hand, but she holds tight and refuses to let it go.
“Jesse.” Her voice takes on a stern note and she snaps the other man’s name. “Tell me that you didn’t hurt Bianca. You promised Dani that you’d make sure nothing happened to her. You told us at dinner that you would protect Bianca. You told me that you were taking care of her.”
Jesse nods, and his face is now a crying and sobbing mess. “I did take care of her. Now she won’t cry again. Now, she can rest.”
Emma lifts her gun from behind her back and points it directly at Jesse’s face before I can take it from her. “Jesse. Drop the gun. Right now.”
“No,” Jesse stammers. “I have to get Dani. We have to be happy.” He lifts the gun again. “We have to be. There’s nothing standing in the way. Not anymore. No more James. No more pain.”
Two shots ring out, but only one of them hits its intended target.
The other slams into the wall, raining more plaster down over our heads.
Jesse drops to the ground, brain matter spilling out and mixing with blood. Nothing more than a body on the ground, his life over.
Emma has her phone in her hand and her gun drops on the bed before I even blink.
“What the hell just happened?” I check Jesse’s pulse, even though half his head is missing, before turning back to Emma’s panic-filled face.
“Poppy,” Emma gasps into the phone. “I just killed Jesse Hart in self-defense in my bedroom. He did something to Bianca.” Emma holds her shit together a lot better than I am right now. That’s for sure.At least until I see her trembling.
I take the phone from her shaking hands.
“Poppy, It’s Dom,” I say into the phone. “You’re going to need to alert Bangor PD, Maine State Police, the Birch County Sheriff, and get Chief Townsend down here along with the coroner. Jesse Hart stated that he did something to Bianca before he attempted to kill either me or Emma. He’s dead, we’re not, and we need to find that little girl before it’s too late.”
“I’ve got units en route,” Poppy says quietly. I can hear voices in the background and know that officers are headed to us.
This isn’t a normal emergency call. Poppy doesn’t need to use medical dispatch protocols to make sure that the victim is taken care of. She doesn’t need to ask because I’ve told her everything she needs to know.
When I hang up the phone, Emma collapses into herself on the bed. “I froze,” she mutters. “I froze. I knew what to do and I fucking froze, Dom. I cost us valuable time.”
I was pretty sure that she’d be freaking out about having to shoot someone, but not Emma.
No.
Only she would be upset that she froze and didn’t snap into action immediately.Of course she’s ignoring the fact that she was the one to take out the threat in the first place.
“You were naked,” I point out logically. “And in bed. What the hell were you supposed to do?”
Emma looks down at her naked legs and glares at me. “Get dressed.”
I’m already a step ahead of her and grab my shoes off the floor. “Yup. Do I still have a shirt here?” She points at the closet, and I open the door to see every piece of clothing I left behind organized neatly, like she was expecting me back at any time. “When did you move your gun to the nightstand?”
“When I joined the academy and my boyfriend deployed, leaving me alone at home,” she snaps. “I don’t share a house with anyone. It’s not like it was actually doing anything in the gun cabinet.”Emma huffs. “Don’t you dare give me shit about not having it secured either. There aren’t any children in my house.”
We are both dressed and moving out the front door when the first units show up. Both Remy and Linc jump out of the same cruiser, and Remy opens the back door to let Daisy out.
“I’m checking their house,” Emma announces to everyone as a whole. “I don’t want to think he’d hurt her, but the things he said…”
There’s a car in the driveway of the Hart house across the street, and Emma takes off at a run. I look at Linc. “Jesse Hart’s body is in Emma’s bedroom. Gun’s slid under Emma’s bed. I’m with her.”
Remy follows us, Daisy at his side, while Linc heads into his sister’s house.
“She okay?” He nods toward Emma’s back as she inspects the vehicle.
“No,” I tell him. “And if something happened to Bianca, nothing is ever going to be okay again for her. She loves that little girl.”
“Dominic!” Emma shouts.
I sprint the short distance to her side just in time for Emma to pick up a rock and smash the rear window of the car and open the door.
“Bee?” She is crying now. “Please, Bee.”
I get to her and move her out of the way so I can get to the blood-soaked little girl. And a pair of blue eyes that are more hazel than blue stare up at me.
“Bee, you have to wake up, honey.”
“Where’s all the blood coming from?” Remy stares at Bee, who has a growing pool of blood under her body, even while she’s lying on the concrete driveway.
“She’s got a pulse!” Emma has her fingers to the girl’s carotid. “It’s weak but it’s there.”
I check her neck, coming away with sticky blood. “Give me your cover shirt,” I snap at Remy, who is already unsnapping his uniform shirt.
We use it to put pressure on Bianca’s neck while Remy calls in the ambulance.
“Hold on, Little Bee,” I whisper against her pale forehead. “Don’t leave Emma just yet. She needs you. We all do.”