Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Kayla
Ifilled five cups with ice and was excited to see it was the good crunchy pebble kind. The ice could really make or break a soft drink.
The day was turning around after a cluster fuck of problems. I hadn’t expected to feel so broken when OPS took me and had been trying to think of a way out of the whole situation when Kara messaged me asking about Beck.
The OPS agents weren’t going to bring me to the hospital at first, but when I threatened to jump out of the vehicle, they turned the car around.
I’d like to think it was my threat and not the omega agent advocating for me.
It probably didn’t hurt that shortly after that the main OPS office called with new information.
I knew that man was the scum of the Earth from the second I met him.
Something hard pressed into my back and a mouth brushed my ear, causing me to shudder. “You whine, and I’ll shoot you and your alpha before hunting down the rest.”
Brian.
I bit my lip hard enough to draw blood to stop my whine.
He pushed me around the end of the soda machine and out through a door that someone at the serving station wouldn’t be able to see.
The few people that were eating in the dining room area were too busy looking at their phones or chatting to notice anything amiss.
To an outsider, it would look like one of my mates leading me away, their hand on the small of my back. But there was definitely a weapon pressed against me.
“What do you want?” I had to figure out a way to get away from him without getting shot or getting someone else shot in the process.
“Well, seeing as I no longer have an omega, I’m in need of one.” He took me to the stairwell, reached around me to scan a card he had, and urged me forward.
I didn’t even want to know how he’d gotten the keycard. Had he killed someone for it?
No, Kayla. This isn’t like some action movie.
I put my hands up, stopping him from pushing me into the secluded area. “Shoot me then. I’d rather die than go with you.”
“So dramatic.” He laughed in a way that chilled me to my bones and then kicked me in the back of my knee, sending me to the ground on my hands and knees with a yelp of pain. Leaning over me, the gun pressing into my skull, I whined, hoping someone would hear it.
That pissed him off and he grabbed my ponytail, yanking me to my feet. “Shut up. Just shut up!” He shoved me forward into the stairwell. “Move.”
My scalp burned as he maneuvered me by my hair, and I nearly fell down as we went up the steps. I was going to make a break for it as soon as we were out of the stairwell. I had to. There was no way I could let him take me.
The first floor had the emergency department, which had plenty of security. Brian surely wouldn’t open fire in a room full of people, would he?
We stepped onto the landing in front of the first-floor door when the intercom chimed. “Code purple stat. Code purple stat.”
“What the fuck is code purple? Open the door.” He let go of my hair but kept close to me. “Not a peep or facial expression, do you understand?”
“Yes.” I opened the door, which was right next to the elevators.
One of the elevator doors opened as soon as we started walking into the corridor, and Rylan, a doctor, and a security guard appeared.
“Ry-”
Brian grabbed my ponytail again and yanked me back into the stairwell. “Go. Up! Now! I swear I’ll open the door back up and shoot him in the fucking face.”
Tears streamed down my face as I climbed the next set of stairs. “Just let me go. This isn’t going to end well.”
There was a small window in this one, and he cursed as he saw security rushing toward it at the far end of a hall. “Go! Up all the way to the top!”
“No!” I elbowed him and he grunted before slamming my head into the door.
Things went a bit fuzzy, and then I was floating. He heaved me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and started up the stairs. I groaned and squirmed, but he had his arm around me tight and was stronger than I expected him to be.
“Help!” I croaked, hearing the door below slam open. “Help!”
Brian picked up his pace, carrying me as if he was in firefighter training and racing to beat a time. If he dropped me, I’d plummet down the steps, so I stayed still, trying to think of what to do when we were on flat ground again.
We burst onto the roof not more than a minute later, and I rolled my body, causing him to drop me. I fell onto my side and scrambled away from him as he loomed over me, my eyes going to his hand that had a fucking stapler in it.
“You don’t even have a gun!” I kicked my feet at him, but he managed to grab one of them and pulled me across the helipad that was lit up. “What are you doing?”
“If I can’t have my omega, then they can’t have their omega.” He gave my leg a hard yank, and I screamed, hoping someone would come to my aid.
Where is security? They should be up here by now.
As soon as I had the thought, the roof door opened, but Brian was already yanking me to my feet by my hair. I was going to cut it off as soon as this was over.
He wrapped a forearm around my neck and one around my waist, tugging me backward toward the edge of the roof.
“Please, Brian. Stop!” I tried to kick backward, but the way he was holding me made it impossible, and his feet were moving at just the right distance from mine that I couldn’t stomp with enough force.
I dug my fingers into his arm and threw my elbows back, but he ignored whatever pain they were causing him.
“Freeze!” Two security guards were on the roof, their weapons drawn and pointed at us.
There was no way they could shoot him without also hitting me, and we were at the edge of the roof where there was a two-foot-high barrier between us and falling to our deaths. The roof was meant for helicopters, not for people to be in a standoff on it.
The elevator doors dinged, and Rylan, several security people, and two police officers poured onto the roof. I could hear Rylan growling from clear across the space, a few other growls mixed in from the others.
“Let her go!” Rylan barked, starting to move forward, but was stopped by an officer.
Brian grunted but readjusted his arms around me, lifting me farther off the ground and stepping backward onto the roof ledge. “It didn’t have to be like this, but oh no, your little cunt ass had to go and ruin everything.”
“Please,” I begged, the fight leaving me for a moment to try to figure out how I could get away without falling off the roof. “You don’t have to do this. We can all sit down and talk, and maybe you and Brandie can-”
“Don’t you say her name!” One of his arms went back to my neck, pressing hard into it and cutting off my air for a moment.
“Why?” I croaked. “Why me? Why?”
The cops were on their walkie-talkies, and Rylan was pacing, his eyes never leaving mine. He would have stormed over to me and ripped me from Brian’s arms, but even I could see the fear in his eyes at seeing us standing on the ledge which was about two and a half feet wide.
“Sick and tired of alphas always getting everything. The fame. The fortune. The fucking omegas.” His arm loosened a bit around my neck. “They have everything!”
It was my opening. He was raging on, rambling about alphas and my pack, and I let my body go limp. His loosened hold gave way and I fell to the ledge, my body tangling with his feet.
He stumbled backward, his arms flailing to get his body to move forward, but it wasn’t enough to keep his feet on the ledge.
I screamed.
Brian screamed.
Rylan screamed.
I scrambled around, my adrenaline pumping through my body so fast I felt like I was outside of myself, watching a robot take over my body.
Brian’s stomach hit the ledge, his arms reaching, trying to find something to grab on to. I reached out to him—I don’t even fucking know why—and let him grab onto my forearms. I did the same, our arms locked together as the weight of his body pulled both of us.
Someone landed on my back, stopping my slide. Every muscle in my body hurt like it was being twisted and yanked through a small hole. My vision tunneled, the edges of it going dim, but all I could see were Brian’s fearful eyes staring back at me.
I could have just flung myself onto the roof and to safety, but I couldn’t let someone die. Brian might have been threatening to jump off the building with me, but from the look in his eyes now, I didn’t think he had wanted to go that route.
His plans had failed, whatever they entailed, and now he was just a small, desperate man whose life was now hanging on by a thread.
“Grab his other arm,” one of the other men said, lying next to me and reaching forward to pull Brian. “Pull her.”
There was a lot of grunting, and my shirt rode up, my stomach scraping along the cement ledge as we were pulled to the safety of the roof. Arms wrapped around me, and then I was sitting in Rylan’s lap, his fresh-cut wood scent surrounding me.
“What the actual fuck.” He buried his face in my neck, his purr vibrating both of us. “Why’d you do that, crazy woman?”
I trembled violently, despite the purring. “Did they save him?” I managed to get out between chattering teeth.
“Yes.” He rubbed a hand over my back. “You’re safe now.”
“Let’s get her to an exam room,” someone said. “Kayla, can you stand?”
I attempted to stand, but I was shaking so bad Rylan had to hand me off to a doctor while he got to his feet. He took me back in his arms and I put my head against his shoulder.
“Did you hit your head?” The doctor reached for my chin, looking me over. “She has a bump on her forehead.”
“He smashed my head against the door.” All at once, the pain started.
My forehead, scalp, knee, and arms hurt. Plus, my stomach was in knots and felt like it was on fire from being dragged across the cement. I groaned and tried not to cry.
The elevator dinged and we got on it, Rylan turning to face the roof. Brian was laying in the center of the helipad, his hands cuffed, his head turned to the side watching us.
I’d saved him but also hadn’t.
As the doors slid shut, I knew he’d have to live with what he did. Hopefully for the rest of his life behind bars.