29. Olivia
CHAPTER 29
Olivia
W ith my heart racing and my hand wrapped tight around Kourtney’s, I watch the guy who approached us as we walked to my car after leaving Blue’s pace back and forth in front of us, muttering to himself. I didn’t recognize him, with his longer hair, scraggly beard, and obvious weight loss. He pointed a gun at us and ordered us into Kourtney’s car that he made me drive because Kourtney was in distress— for good reason—and couldn’t stop crying. It wasn’t until we arrived at the dilapidated barn in the middle of nowhere and he started rambling about how I cost him everything that I realized he was one of the furniture delivery guys taken away by the cops outside of Kourtney’s house weeks ago.
“Please, just let us go.” Kourtney whimpers, and he stops pacing and points the gun at her before swinging it over to me.
“Shut her the fuck up.”
“She’s just scared.” I wrap my arm around her shoulders, and she buries her face against my chest as she sobs. “Let her go. It’s obvious your problem is with me, not her.”
“No.” He walks to where there is a pile of clothes and a backpack in the corner of the room. As he starts to dig through his things, I debate getting up and trying my luck at overpowering him. The only thing keeping me in place is Kourtney. She’s so scared I doubt she would be able to help me, and I’d need her help to get the gun from him.
While he’s distracted, I glance around the open space lit by two small lamps and search for something I could use as a weapon. There are a few bales of hay, and some discarded pieces of wood propped up against the wall, but besides that, it’s empty. I might be able to use one of the pieces of wood to knock him out if I can get to it, but I’d need to make sure that I hit him hard enough that we’d have a fighting chance at getting his gun and the keys to Kourtney’s car from his pocket.
“It’s going to be okay,” I whisper to Kourtney as I watch him stop searching through his bag and take a seat on the dirt floor across the room from us. Then, with shaking hands, he pulls out a piece of foil from his pocket and dumps the contents into the pipe.
Lighting it, he takes a deep drag, then blows it out, and what smells like ammonia permeates the air around us.
As he gets high, his hate-filled eyes stay locked on mine, but I refuse to cower under his gaze.
“You need help.” He might have said that I cost him everything, but it’s obvious his problems are way bigger than me.
“Do I, bitch?” He stands, tossing the pipe and his lighter toward his backpack.
“Yes, you do.”
“No, what I need is for you to shut the fuck up.” He starts pacing again.
“It’s not too late to stop this.”
“Shut the fuck up.” He points the gun at me.
“There are some things you can’t come back from. You don’t want this to be one of those things.”
“Shut the fuck up!” he screams, pulling back the trigger as he aims off to the side of me. I hear the bullet cut through the air, then feel the wood splinter beside me. Screaming, Kourtney backs away from him and me, and he aims the gun at her. “I said shut the fuck up.”
“Okay.” I move between him and Kourtney and hold up my hands. “Okay,” I whisper.
“I’m tired of bitches like you telling me what to do. All you do is yap your fucking jaws. You never just shut the fuck up.” I press my lips together to keep myself quiet. I don’t need to rile him any more than he already is, especially when he’s high on whatever it was that he was smoking. “Fuck,” he roars, swinging his foot back, kicking through the dirt, sending dust and rocks flying toward Kourtney and me.
I squeeze my eyes closed, then cover my face when he does it again and again while shouting and cursing. With Kourtney whimpering in distress behind me, I pull my hands away from my face when I hear a thud, and then my eyes widen when I find him on his knees with his hand against his chest, heaving like he’s struggling to breathe. My eyes shoot to the gun he’s still holding in his hand, then to his face.
He looks panicked as his eyes lock on mine.
Scrambling to my feet, I start to rush toward him but stop when he tries to lift his hand holding the gun. He’s lost whatever strength he had. He can barely lift his arm.
“You’re having a heart attack; we need to call an ambulance,” I tell him, and he shakes his head. “Don’t be stupid.”
“Fu-ck you,” he wheezes before falling to his back. I glance back at Kourtney, who’s looking at him with wide eyes.
“Go search his stuff for a phone,” I tell her, and she shakes her head. “Now!” I scream, and she clambers to her knees and crawls across the space to his bag.
I slowly move toward him with my heart pounding so hard I feel nauseous. When I’m close, I reach down for his hand holding the gun, and it takes me a second to pry it away from him, but I get it.
“I can’t find a phone,” Kourtney says, sounding panicked.
“Take this.” I hold the gun out toward her, and she starts to shake her head. “Take the gun and go hide it outside,” I say firmly, and she comes over to me, physically shaking. Once she has the gun and is running to the barn door that is closed, I drop to my knees and check him for a pulse. He has one, but it’s barely there.
Shit.
Running my hands over his pockets, I dig out Kourtney’s keys but can’t find a cell phone on him.
“Okay,” Kourtney says out of breath. “I hid it.”
“He doesn’t have a phone,” I tell her, holding out her keys. “I want you to drive to the nearest house and call the police, then bring them here.”
“You want me to leave you with him?” She backs up a step. “I’m not leaving you.”
“Yes, you are. I’m going to stay with him until help gets here.”
“Olivia.”
“He’s dying.” I shove the keys at her as tears fill her eyes. “I don’t have time to argue with you. Just go get help.”
“Please come with me.” She takes the keys with her hands shaking.
“I can’t leave him like this.”
“Olivia.”
“Just go.” I drop my eyes to the man in front of me and feel for a pulse again. It’s so weak I barely feel it against my fingertips.
“I’ll be right back,” she whispers while I start CPR and say a silent prayer that she gets back here before it’s too late to save his life.
With my body exhausted and my arms aching, I look at the man I’ve been performing CPR on for what feels like forever and squeeze my eyes closed when I feel for his pulse but find nothing. “Come on, you idiot,” I whisper. Dropping my head between my shoulders, I swallow over the urge to cry and go back to performing chest compressions between doing mouth-to-mouth. When I hear the sound of sirens getting closer, my eyes start to water, but I keep trying, keep hoping that the next time I check his pulse, there will be something there.
I don’t know how much time passes, but I hear footsteps approach, and then someone yells out.
“Police.”
“We’re in here!” I shout back, lifting my head in time to watch a uniformed officer with his gun drawn scan the room from around the edge of the door. “Help,” I choke out, and he quickly cuts across the distance between us.
“Give me some room, darling,” he says, and I fall to my bottom, wrapping my arms around my shins as I watch him and a second uniformed police officer move to each side of his body and start doing CPR.
“Olivia.” I look over at Kourtney, and my eyes start to water.
“I don’t think I saved him.”
“It’s okay, come on.” She helps me to my feet, then walks me out of the barn as two paramedics rush past us. Once I’m out in the open air, I take a deep breath of clean air and watch as a trail of vehicles flies up the dirt road we drove on to get here.
“Do you want some water?” an officer asks, approaching us.
“Please.”
“Come on.” He motions for us to follow him to his car. “Are either of you injured?”
“No.” I hear a vehicle come to a sliding stop in the gravel behind us and turn to look over my shoulder.
“Olivia,” Bax shouts, leaving his door wide as he jumps out of the cab of his truck. The look on his face is tortured as his gaze meets mine through the dim light coming from the vehicles now surrounding us, and my heart squeezes.
With what little energy I have left, I run toward him while his eyes scan me from head to toe.
“Fuck, you’re okay,” he breathes as I crash against a solid chest, and his arms wrap around me.
“I’m okay.” I swallow over the lump in my throat, and he hauls me closer. His hold is so tight my rib cage aches as he crushes me against his solid frame.
Burying my face in his shirt, I cling to him. I never once let myself think that I wouldn’t see him again, but now that I’m back in his arms, all that fear I kept at bay bubbles to the surface, making it difficult to breathe.
“Are you hurt?” He wraps his hand around the side of my neck and forces my head back so he can look me in the eye.
“No, no, I’m okay,” I reassure him, then look toward the barn when there is a sudden burst of commotion, and people start shouting as they roll a stretcher with the guy on it toward the ambulance.
“Who is that?” he asks, and I shake my head.
“One of the guys who was supposed to deliver my furniture.” I drop my forehead to his chest. “He… He got high, I… I think he had a heart attack; I tried to keep him alive until help got here, but I…” I swallow as my throat burns. “I was getting so tired.”
“Jesus,” he whispers, and I squeeze my eyes closed as he wraps his big hand around the back of my head. “Fuck me.” He ducks his head and cocoons me in the safety of his embrace. And feeling safe, really safe for the first time in hours, I burst into tears.