Chapter Forty-two
I’ve driven around long enough. Screw my idea to give her space and hope she comes around. What if she takes off like Lissa? I’m not going to let that happen. I’m going to get through to her.
I park in the lot of her building and look up at her window, trying to find the words that will break down her barriers. Because apparently, I love you wasn’t enough. But the longer I sit here, the more anxious I get. I just need to man up and do it.
I exit the car and walk to her building. I think I hear someone scream. It alarms me, but when I don’t hear it again, I continue to the outer door. I stare at the security keypad. Texting her won’t work. She probably won’t let me up. I tug on the door, wondering if with enough force, I can open it. I’m surprised when it opens immediately. Upon further investigation, the lock has been broken and the wood around it splintered. I guess someone else was in my same predicament.
I’m thanking my lucky stars until I hear a second scream. Okay, now I know I wasn’t hearing things. My whole body is on high alert. It was definitely a woman. I doubt it’s coming from Ellie’s apartment, but I take the steps two at a time anyway.
When I get to her door and hear a blood-curdling scream that pierces the very center of my being, I try her door. It’s locked.
Two neighbors come into the hallway, having heard the screams. “Call the police!” I yell. Then I step back and with all my might, I kick in her door.
“Ellie!” I yell out of sheer terror.
A big motherfucker of a man comes from the kitchen and points a gun at me, growling, “Who the fuck are you?”
“Where’s Ellie?” I ask, my eyes darting around the room hoping to see her. Praying that whatever is going on here is one big mistake.
The guy scoffs as if amused, not seeming disturbed in the least that I just busted down the door. “You mean my cunt of a daughter who thought she could hide my wife from me?”
Grant Lucas. Oh, holy shit.And he’s got a gun pointed at me. But that’s not what worries me the most. What worries me is the silence. There are no more screams. Is she dead?
My heart stops cold, fear burning a trail throughout my body, and for one tortuous moment, I get a taste of what Dallas must have endured.
A flash of someone coming from behind him gives me hope. But it’s not Ellie. I have no idea who the woman is who just threw herself on his back. As he attempts to buck her off, the gun fires, followed by a searing pain in my thigh.
The pain isn’t enough to keep me from charging him and barreling him to the ground. The gun goes flying. But there’s another holstered to his side. We each struggle to get control of it when he goes limp. My ears ring at the sound of another gunshot in close range. I quickly check myself for a second wound when I see blood pooling on the ground. But as the color drains from Grant’s face, I know I wasn’t the one shot this time.
The woman holding the gun drops it and collapses onto the ground into a fetal position.
“Where’s Ellie?” I shout through a ball of sawdust in my throat. The seconds I spend waiting for the woman to answer are nothing but pure agony.
Sirens sound in the distance as the woman points to the kitchen. “I… I t-tried to stop it.”
I brace myself for what I’m going to find when I go around the corner. Flashes of my life without Ellie bombard my mind.
“No!” I scream, when I see her lifeless body slumped over the table. I run to her, looking for a bullet wound, praying for her to wake.
A small amount of blood trickles from a cut on her head. I press my fingers to her neck and cry out in relief when I feel a pulse. Then I see her hands. Bile rises in my throat as I try to comprehend what I’m looking at. The entire backs of both of her hands are swollen and red with white patches and various sizes of blisters that seem to grow with every second.
“Oh, Jesus.” I pick her up and carry her into the other room just as police arrive, guns pointed.
“Put her down and put your hands up!” one yells.
“Blake Montana?” I glance up to see Mitchell Graves, a guy I went to high school with. He does a visual sweep of the room and asks, “What the hell happened here?”
“Get an ambulance!” I shout. “She’s severely injured.”
With guns still drawn, a third officer uses his radio to dispatch an ambulance.
I lay Ellie on the couch and check her pulse again.
One of the officers puts a few fingers to Grant’s neck then shakes his head.
“Blake,” Mitchell says. “I’m sorry, but I need you to step away from her.”
“You’ll have to fucking shoot me, Mitch. I’m not leaving her.”
“That’s m-my husband,” the woman says. “I’m Tara Lucas. Ellie helped me escape.”
“Escape what ma’am?” Mitch asks.
“Escape him.” She points to the lifeless bastard on the floor. “He hurt me. He hurt me for years. Decades. And I’m not the only one.” She nods to Ellie. “He’s her birth father. He hurt her mother as well. He did this to Ellie. I tried to stop him. I couldn’t stop him.” She rambles on as I cradle Ellie in my arms, willing her to wake up. “I did it. I fired the gun. It was me.” She holds out her wrists. “You can arrest me. It’s okay. He can’t hurt me anymore.”
The officers holster their guns just as EMS arrives.
Patrick Kelsey, one of the paramedics, goes to the body on the ground first. “Not fucking him,” I bark, more acid rising from my belly at the very thought of Grant Lucas being deserving of any medical attention. “Help Ellie.”
He checks Grant’s pulse anyway, wasting precious seconds in my opinion, then he and his partner ask me to move aside. “Jesus, Blake. What the fuck happened here?”
I can’t answer, because I don’t know.
“He poured an entire pot of boiling coffee on her hands,” Tara says.
I turn and vomit at her words.
They put an oxygen mask on Ellie’s face, a collar around her neck, and load her onto a backboard. Patrick puts rolled towels under both her hands, elevating them above her heart before wrapping them in gauze.
“Will she be okay?” I crawl over and touch her hair before they lift her onto the gurney. “Please tell me she’ll be okay. Why isn’t she conscious?”
“The burns are bad, Blake. She probably passed out from the pain. She’s got a gash on her head that could be from a fall. We’ll know more after we get her to the hospital.”
“I’m going with you.”
Mitch’s strong hand clasps my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Blake. This is a homicide. We can’t let you leave until we have full statements.”
Patrick eyes my leg. “You’re injured. Let me check it out.”
“He shot me, but it’s fine. It’s Ellie I’m worried about.”
“Sit down, Montana. I’m evaluating you while the others get her loaded in the rig.” He leans down and looks right into my eyes. “Blake, I need to check your leg. Listen, I believe she’s going to be okay. There’s damage, but she can recover. There’s protocol we have to follow.” He nods at the officers. “If you try to leave, they’ll restrain you. The sooner you cooperate the sooner you can go to her.”
It takes everything I have not to plow him over and run to Ellie as her limp body is rolled into the hallway.
“Fuck!” I yell, then stomp into the kitchen, sitting on a chair as I stare at the coffee dripping off the table. He burned her fucking hands. If he weren’t already dead, I’d kill him.
“Back up folks,” I hear Mitch say in the other room. “It’s over. Go back to your apartments.”
Patrick cuts my jeans from knee to thigh. I brace myself to see a bullet hole, hoping I don’t need to have surgery that will keep me from Ellie.
“It’s a flesh wound,” he says, rolling a swab of iodine over it then securing a bandage. “You were lucky. Had it been a few inches over, it may have hit an artery. You’d be as dead as that asshole in the other room.”
Mitch interviews Tara in the second bedroom, presumably to get her away from the dead body. I can’t hear them. He does it quietly, as does Henry, the officer who’s grilling me. I suppose they want to make sure our stories match up.
I tell it three separate times, and he keeps asking more questions. I throw up my hands. “How many fucking ways can I say I walked into the middle of it, and then he shot me, and we fought until Tara shot him? Ask the goddamn neighbors. I mean, Christ, my girl is hurt. I have to get to her.”
Mitch walks in. “The coroner is here. We’re done for now. But you’ll need to come to the station for an official statement. And, don’t leave town.”
I glare at him. “Where the hell would I go, Mitch? Ellie is in the hospital. That’s the only place I’m going to be.”
He nods and steps aside. “You’re free to go then.”
I’m walking out when it occurs to me that Tara is still here and is clearly shaken. I go to her. “Thank you,” I say with the utmost sincerity. “That could have gone the other way. You saved Ellie. And you saved me.”
“Too little too late,” she says, tears streaming down her face.
I get my phone out. “I’m going to have my mom come over. She’ll help you and get you anything you need. Her name is Sarah.” I turn to Mitch. “Can you stay with her until she gets here?”
“Yeah, go.”
I walk out of the room that’s now filled with a dozen officers. Things like this don’t happen in Calloway Creek. Grant’s body is put into a body bag and lifted onto a gurney. Evidence tags mark bullet casings and other things they find important. A large pool of blood remains on the floor. It doesn’t even turn my stomach to see it. He got what he deserved.
Questions from nosey neighbors are shot at me from every direction as I make my way down the stairs and to the car. I don’t answer any of them. I call Mom on the way to the hospital. I call Allie, who’s still with Maisy, and give her the gist. I drive as fast as I can, knowing most of the town’s patrol cars are back at Ellie’s place. I even run the one traffic light in town, once I’m sure the coast is clear.
I’m at the hospital in less than five minutes.
I park on the grass next to the ambulance bay, not caring if my car gets towed, and race inside, the whole time praying she’s okay.
Her hands. I can’t stop thinking about them. What if her body went into shock and her heart stopped and I wasn’t with her? What if the injury to her head is severe? What if I’ve lost her before we even have a chance to be… us?
Holly Overton sits behind the desk in the ER. She looks up with sad eyes. “I know why you’re here, Blake. But I have to follow the rules. Family only.”
“Are you fucking serious?”
“I can’t let you back. I’ll lose my job.”
“She doesn’t have any family here yet. I’m the only one.” I run a hand through my hair. “Shit. I have to contact her parents.”
“I can do it if you’d like.”
I shake my head. “No. It has to be me.” I look past her to the locked doors leading to the back. “Holly, I have to know if she’s okay. Please. I love her.”
Her face is filled with empathy. “No promises. But I’ll see what I can find out. Wait here.”
“Believe me, I’m not going anywhere.”
As she disappears through the doors, I sit and let my head fall back against the wall. My leg is throbbing. Has it been this whole time, or am I just now noticing?
I stare at my phone, wondering how I’m going to tell her parents. I don’t have their contact information, but a quick search has me finding the phone number of Dr. Kyle Stone from New York City. I press the phone to my ear, hoping I don’t have to leave a message. When he answers on the third ring, though, my heart lodges in my throat, because I know he’s about to be as devastated as I am.