Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Tanner
“Hi Mrs. Brigham, can Berkleigh come out and play?” I can’t see out of my right eye because it’s swollen shut. It makes people uncomfortable when they look at me. I don’t really care.
“What happened to your eye, Tanner?” Berkleigh’s mom reaches out but I flinch back.
“Baseball.” It’s all I say because I don’t like lying.
“Oh! That’s awful. Did you try out for Little League this year?”
I did. I’ve been playing since I could physically hold a glove. My dad loves baseball and wants me to become the next Mickey Mantle. I’m really good at it when I’m on the field and pitching is my favorite position.
But I didn’t get a swollen black eye from practice. I got it because my dad threw the ball at my face when I wasn’t looking. Because I wasn’t looking.
“Yes. I’m pitching.” I look to the side and around Mrs. Brigham, wondering what’s taking Berkleigh so long. She knows I don’t like talking to people.
“Well, take good care of yourself.” She then steps out onto her porch, curious what the banging sound is in my yard. My dad is bashing in a toy car with a baseball bat, but I don’t care. I was bored with it. I prefer playing soldiers because they have guns and knives.
When I look back at Mrs. Brigham I notice she’s breathing heavier and her skin is pale, her stare darting from my black eye to my normal one.
“I’m sorry, Tanner. Berkleigh is in bed sick. Come back next week.”
My face must say it all because…next week?
Then again, I’m sure her mom is sick too. She looks like she’s going to puke.
It’s been less than five minutes and she’s gone.
Any pragmatic, logical, and self-aware person would have followed the natural trail that circles around my property, yet here we are.
Berkleigh is nowhere to be seen, which means that in the span of a three minute conversation with my commanding officer, she stepped away and went completely rogue.
In any given situation, I am in control. It’s how I’ve been trained since I joined the military, but looking back, it’s safe to say my controlling instincts most likely started well before then.
Which begs the questions…why is my heartbeat suddenly skyrocketing? And why the fuck can I hear it in my ears?
As I search through the short distance a three minute walk takes, my eyes scan the branches to see if any of them are broken or if the grass is bent in an unnatural way.
The obvious clues I should be concentrating on are her footprints since she wouldn’t have even tried to dissimulate them.
As a tracker molded by the military to hone my skills like a blade against a whetstone, she should be easy to find, yet my mind isn’t as sharp as it should be. What the actual fuck is up with that?
I’d bet my left nut she was thinking about that cake more than her survival in these unknown woods. Finding her should be the easiest task I’ve ever been given. Fucking Christ, what was I thinking?
I wasn’t, that’s what. My dick, though? That’s a different story. The mere idea of me stalking her while she looked for me had my cock so hard, the pain was real.
But all of that is out the window as of five—make that seven—minutes ago.
My mind is hyperfocused on finding her, which means putting the phone conversation to the back of my mind.
It’s rare that I refuse a job since they always involve the killing of a predator the justice system wasn’t able to condemn through the legal path.
This one, however, was a civilian paying to snuff out corporate competition.
I don’t do that. Mainly because I don’t give a shit about greedy assholes addicted to their power. When I kill, it’s only satisfying if I know I’ve balanced the act out with meaningful purpose.
Meh, I guess I’m not so bad after all.
Crouching down and keeping my ears trained for any noises out of the ordinary, I press the tactical switch on my military-grade flashlight. It has a high lumen output but I bring the brightness to low so I don’t give my position away.
One corner of my mouth ticks up into a smirk when I see the distinct shape of her shoes imprinted into a patch of damp soil. I’m finally on the right track and the relief that courses through me is the strangest thing I’ve felt since seeing her all those weeks ago curled up on my front stoop.
I’m barely thirty seconds in when I hear her voice. Every nerve ending in my body fires up because there is absolutely no reason—at least none that I like—for her to be speaking with someone.
There was a legitimate reason for me buying the land here years ago.
It’s secluded without being hours away from town.
The road is far enough that I don’t usually worry about trespassers but close enough for me to be in and out without a hassle.
The water source was also a selling point, but a moot one in this instance.
The fact that Berkleigh is talking to someone means she’s near that road or close enough that someone saw her. And there isn’t a single bone in my body that relishes the thought of her being alone on the side of the road with a complete stranger.
In fact, that singular notion is what’s driving me to run like a silent, deadly predator and has me beelining straight toward her voice. A voice that’s sounding more and more frantic.
By the time I reach her, and her ear-splitting scream hits my ears, my vision morphs from clear and focused to red and murderous.
The flashing police lights aren’t fucking helping with that, either.
Circling around so I’m coming up from behind, it takes every ounce of self-control to restrain myself from shooting this motherfucker in the back of the head.
To be clear, he deserves it. In fact, the way he grabbed the collar of her shirt and pulled her back, causing her to fall on her ass and cry out, is the definition of a motherfucker asking for repercussions.
That’s me. I’m repercussions and he’s about to get up close and personal with my favorite brand of revenge.
Just as I’m sliding on my gloves so I can knock the life out of this prick, I see the moment Berkleigh applies what I’ve taught her and starts fighting back.
There’s no denying my awe. As soon as she stopped panicking, her fight or flight kicked in and my Sweet Bee is, without a question, the fighting type.
More accurately, she’s the punch-them-in-the-balls then run-like-a-fugitive kind of woman.
Hands down, the sexiest thing I’ve seen in a long time.
Problem is, I don’t have time to bask in the moment because this is my cue to take this motherfucker out.
To be clear, I’m not reacting blindly or killing because someone put his hands on my—yeah, the whole categorizing our relationship is going to have to wait until I dispose of Officer Sully Schultz.
It’s hard to believe he used to be the quarterback when we were in school. He’s just as creepy now as he was back then.
Apparently, the beat down I gave him our senior year when one of the cheerleaders—his girlfriend at the time—came to school with bruises on her neck and a split lip, didn’t sink in. She was a good kid, two years younger than me, and from what I learned years later, she was never the same.
My guess is he didn’t stop at the beating. Which makes tonight all the more enjoyable.
Just as Sully stands to his full height, I’m right behind him with my arm wrapped around his neck and squeezing those pressure points until he quietly passes out.
“Berkleigh!” One word, her name, with a tone that should have her running back here in mere seconds. The cracking of a twig tells me she’s back, immediately coating my nerves with a sense of calm. I have no idea how she does this to me. It’s fucking weird and I don’t know if I like it.
“Did you kill him?” It’s a whispered question like someone might hear us. I’m more worried about the red and blue disco ball happening on the road than how loudly Berkleigh speaks.
“No but I need to hurry before he wakes up.” I turn away from her then call out over the shoulder of my free arm. “Make sure no one’s coming.” This is not how I do things. A half-assed disposal of a body isn’t how I operate and it’s pissing me off.
“There’s no one here or coming.”
Gritting my teeth after getting the all clear from Berkleigh, I carry Sully to the driver’s side of his car, sit him back down, and turn off the fucking lights.
We’re instantly bathed in darkness and just that small change releases a little of the pressure at my temples.
“Take a branch, a big fluffy one, and erase our footprints or anything else that could appear to be out of place.” Berkleigh listens and for once doesn’t ask any questions. That being said, it doesn’t take a genius to know I’m about to make a bad situation a hundred times worse.
I know what a piece of shit Sully is, but to the town, he’s an upstanding sheriff who once raped his ex-girlfriend. Then again, she was a cheerleader wearing short skirts so what was he supposed to do? Fucking hypocrites, every last one of them.
Once I reach over to put on his seatbelt, assuming it’s a habit he has, I round the front of the car and point at Berkleigh. “Do not move. Do not panic. Whatever you do, do not…under any circumstance, come after me.”
“What? What are you talking about?” I’m about to answer her when Sully starts moaning back to consciousness.
“Fuck!” Complications are the bane of my existence. One minute I’m counting the minutes until I get to come inside Berkleigh after eating her pussy long enough to make her beg me to stop, the next I’m killing a cop for touching my—again, not going there.
By the time I reach the driver’s side door, my patience is gone and all that’s left is my lack of impulse control. I’m pretty sure that’s not a good thing.
Grabbing Sully by the back of the head, I take a deep breath, and with all the strength I can muster, I slam his head against the steering wheel. It doesn’t have the effect I’m going for and instead of knocking him out, I make him furious.
“Goddamit!” It’s a muttered curse but he hears me loud and clear.
“What the fuck are you doing, Tanner?” Oh, great. He remembers me.
“Taking out the trash.” With less finesse than before, I compress the carotid again, giving myself a few more minutes to make all this look as close to an accident as humanly possible.
“Are you fucking crazy?” Berkleigh whisper-yells as she does the exact opposite of what I asked her to do.
Shocker.
Grabbing her hand, I pull her with me as I go back to the passenger side, then take her face in my hands and bruise her lips with my mouth. Berkleigh is my gateway drug and if anything goes wrong in the next fifteen minutes, I want the last thing I taste to be her.
“Go back to the cabin. Wait an hour, in the dark, then take my truck to the house.”
“No. What are yo—” I cut off her protests with another kiss.
“I don’t have time to argue with you, Sweet Bee. Do what I say, it’ll be fine.” I see the moment she steels her spine and nods once like it’s taking every ounce of her bravery to go through with my plan. Even though she has no idea what that plan is.
Just as I let her go and sit in the passenger seat, she calls out, “Tanner?”
“Yeah?”
There’s a second hesitation and I can see a million questions running through her watery blue eyes. “Be careful.”
I nod, giving her my confidence that it’ll all be just fine, and she accepts it.
As she runs back toward the woods, I take the wheel from the passenger side and put the car in drive.
I’m pressing down on Sully’s knee to get the car to a reasonable speed and hoping to get to the small clearing in the trees on the other side of the road where tourists usually stop for pictures of the canyon below.
This is all a gamble considering the short distance and the speed I need for the stunt to work.
The speed isn’t ideal as we come up on the exact spot I want the car to drive through, so I mentally prepare for my exit.
Next to me, Sully is coming to again and I don’t have the luxury of fucking this up again.
Too much is on the line, and by too much, I mean Berkleigh.
If shit goes wrong and he doesn’t die tonight, she’ll be implicated right alongside me and I can’t have that happening.
Our only saving grace would be a loss of memory, but that shit’s for fiction, not reality.
He either dies right now or I’ll have to dive right into plan B, and for once in my life, I don’t have one.
Well, that’s a lie. I don’t have a specific one for this exact situation but I do have a general contingency plan in case shit goes wrong. Problem is, it’s for one person, not two.
“What the—” Sully doesn’t have the time to realize what’s happening before I open the passenger door and throw myself out just as the front wheels hit thin air and the car flies over the edge into the ravine.
The momentum of the car throws me farther than I anticipated. No matter how hard I try to roll toward the right side of the road to avoid following Sully, fate has decided tonight’s the night she grows a sense of humor.
At the exact moment that I hear the crash of the patrol car, my body hits a tree trunk, slowing me down but not stopping me completely. To say it hurts like a motherfucker would be a lie because my brain is too busy scrambling for ways to save my life before limb.
In moments like this, it’s all instinct. There’s no rationalizing any-fucking-thing, it’s pure will to survive and a hint of luck.
Somehow, I latch onto a branch sticking out from the side of the ravine.
Instead of freefalling to my death, I’m now hanging freely into the void and hoping that root isn’t going to snap.
Again, I know my hand is going to be fucked up, even with the gloves on, but this isn’t the time to wallow in the pain that will be later.
I take the time to breathe a sigh of relief that I’m not dead…
yet. Hanging from this branch on the side of a mountain isn’t looking good though, either.
As I look down and around, searching in the dark for a way to haul myself up, an orange light below gets my attention.
I’d expected the crunching of metal and glass, or even some smoke and steam, but luck is on my side.
My best guess is that leaking fluid and a small spark had an intimate moment and in about two minutes that flame is going to reach the tank.
Contrary to popular belief and Hollywood movies, cars don’t spontaneously blow up when they crash. Not anymore, at least. New technology has seen to it, which is great on any normal day, but in situations like these, it’s a shame.
“Tanner! Take my hand.”
You have got to be fucking kidding me!