Love you to Death

by Shannon K. Butcher

  Elise kicked the weapon away from Gary, well out of his reach.

  He was thrashing around on the ground, holding his chest.

  Trent had collapsed and didn’t look good. His skin was pale and there was a lot of blood on his clothes.

  She couldn’t deal with both of them, and she couldn’t go to Trent until she was sure Gary wasn’t getting back up. She needed something to tie him up with.

  Elise looked around for something she could use, and saw Ashley standing at the top of the stairs, staring at the man who had held her hostage and tortured her for the past seven days.

  “He didn’t lock the door,” she said in an eerily calm voice. “When he grabbed you, he didn’t lock the door.”

  “Help me find something to tie him up with, Ashley. Trent’s bleeding”

  Ashley bent down and picked up the gun Gary had been using. The thing looked huge and alien in her hands. She leveled it at Gary. Her hands didn’t shake. “Go ahead and take care of Trent. I won’t let Gary up.”

  Ashley stared at the bleeding man lying on the cracked vinyl floor. The demon lay broken but not destroyed.

  Blood frothed from Gary’s mouth. He stared at Ashley, his oil slick eyes wide with rage and hatred. He tried to say something but he choked on his own blood, and the words were too garbled to understand.

  Not that Ashley cared what he had to say. There were no words to make up for what he’d done. No possible redemption.

  The gun was heavy in her hands and surprisingly warm. The red polish on her thumbnail shone like wet blood against the dull black surface of the gun.

  Gary gripped his chest as if trying to hold in the blood that leaked between his fingers.

  He was dying.

  He hadn’t suffered nearly enough for her to let him die so easily. He deserved to suffer first, to be afraid, to be in pain.

  He deserved to lose his hands.

  Ashley leaned down so he could see her face. She looked into his tainted eyes, at his hands, then back again. Her gaze was deliberate—slow—so he’d see what she was going to do before he did it.

  Gary’s eyes rounded in fear, and it was the most satisfying thing Ashley had ever witnessed.

  That satisfaction wouldn’t make up for the terror and pain he’d caused so many women, but it felt good all the same. She supposed that made her a smaller person, but so be it.

  Ashley leveled the gun, aimed for his hand—an easy thing as close as she was to the demon—and fired.

  The weapon shuddered in her grip, and Gary’s hand exploded into a ragged mess of flesh and bone. He screamed, a gurgling wail of agony.

  A grim sense of justice filled her as she aimed the gun at his other hand.

  A gun went off behind Elise. Gary screamed. Elise jumped, turned around in time to see Ashley shoot Gary again. His hand exploded in a spray of blood and pulpy bits. The other hand was already a bloody mess.

  He’d been holding his chest, and both of Ashley’s shots had gone through his hands and into his body. He jerked, trying to suck in a breath. A panicked look stretched his features into a grimace.

  Ashley didn’t seem to notice. She walked across the kitchen, as if in a trance, set the gun beside the stove, picked up a steaming pot of something and walked calmly back to Gary’s side.

  She tipped the pot, spilling its contents onto Gary’s groin and abdomen. Boiling water splashed down onto him, along with shiny bits of metal that stuck into him like silver quills. Gary screamed out in agony. His body arched up off the ground, then went suddenly limp.

  Ashley dropped the metal pot on top of him and stood there staring, unmoving.

  Not once did her expression change. It was as calm and tranquil as if she’d been sleeping, only now, a steady flow of tears fell down her face and wet her shirt.

  The sirens grew louder. Trent’s eyes fluttered open for a brief moment.

  “You safe?” he asked.

  “Yes. We’re all safe. You hold on. Help’s here.”

  Elise split her time between Trent’s hospital room and Ashley’s house. She hated leaving either one of them, but at least Trent had a constant stream of family coming in to sit with him. Elise was the only family Ashley had.

  Trent had woken up only once since they’d done surgery to remove a bullet and repair the damage Gary’s gun had wrought, but he hadn’t stayed awake long, and it was clear he wasn’t lucid. The doctor assured her he’d recover; he just needed time for his body to heal and fight off infection.

  Elise stroked his hand, silently willing him to hurry up. She needed to see for herself that he was okay. Until then, she wasn’t going to be able to take a full breath.

  The door to Trent’s room swung open and his parents walked in.

  Elise had met them once before, but she hadn’t been able to talk with them. As soon as she knew Trent had someone at his side, she’d raced out to go check on Ashley.

  Leann Brady looked young enough to be Trent’s sister, but there was no mistaking the maternal concern tightening her features. She had shoulder-length hair that had only begun to show a few silver strands at her temples. Her blue eyes glowed with tears, and a crumpled tissue was clutched tight in her fist.

  Trent had gotten his mother’s coloring—dark hair and blue eyes—but his build had come straight from his father.

  Alan Brady was a tall, lean man, tan from years spent working under the sun. He had one leathery arm around Leann’s waist, holding her close. His eyes were the color of autumn sunshine, glowing with the kind of determination that would make grown men step out of his way.

  He glanced at Elise, then to where she touched Trent’s arm. He nodded, as if pleased by what he saw, then led Leann over to the far side of the bed.

  “How is he today?” asked Alan.

  “Better,” she said, because she wanted to believe it was true.

  “Has the doctor been in yet this morning?”

  Elise nodded. “Around seven.”

  Alan’s brows lifted. “You were here that early?”

  “That late. But now that you’re here, I should go back to my sister.”

  “How is she doing?” asked Leann. She clutched her husband’s arm with one hand, and with the other, she stroked a loving caress over Trent’s head.

  Elise almost lied but stopped herself at the last minute. “She has a long way to go.”

  “You’ll help her get through this. We all will. Our family is yours now.”

  The offer of help rang inside Elise like a church bell—full of beauty and hope. She had to swallow twice before she could speak. “Thank you.”

  “You go on and see to your sister,” said Alan. “We’ll stay with Trent.”

  Alan put his arm around Leann and hugged her close. She looked up at him, and the love shining between them, glowing in that simple gaze, was almost palpable.

  Elise stood there in shock, staring, intruding upon their private moment. But she couldn’t stop looking. She’d never seen anything like it before.

  After all the years they’d been together, they still loved each other. They weren’t bound by convenience or habit, stuck in a marriage that neither one wanted. They truly loved each other.

  If she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, Elise never would have believed it.

  She stumbled away from the hospital bed, feeling like her world was shifting beneath her feet. With each step, her internal landscape changed, leaving her reeling from the shock.

  She had to get out of there before everything she’d thought true was ripped from her and she had nothing left to cling to.

  Trent had been right. The tooth fairy and the Easter bunny were real.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Trent woke up to find his old partner, John, next to his hospital bed.

  “Hey, ugly,” said John, giving him a weary grin. “Took you long enough to wake up. Guess you really needed your beauty rest.”

  Trent’s head was a bit fuzzy, and it took a minute for everything that had happened
to come back to him. The last thing he remembered was passing out after shooting the killer.

  A quick glance around the stark room told him Elise was nowhere to be found.

  “Where’s Elise? Is she okay?” A spurt of panic lanced through him, and he tried to sit up.

  Bad move.

  Pain radiated out from his side, stealing his breath with its intensity.

  John wheeled his chair forward and pushed Trent back down, not that it was a hard thing to manage, as weak as he was. “Whoa there, hero. Take it easy. Elise is fine. She’s been here the last two days. She just left to go check on Ashley.”

  “Ashley?” Had she been there, too? Trent couldn’t remember.

  “Yeah. She’s okay, too. A little fucked in the head, but she’ll pull through. That woman of yours won’t have it any other way.”

  Trent let out a long sigh and waited until the pain dwindled down to something less ferocious.

  “Want me to get a nurse?” asked John.

  “Not yet. Tell me what happened first.”

  “Well, Ed knows more than I do, but he’s a bit busy weeding through all the evidence they found at Maitland’s house.”

  “Maitland?”

  “Gary Maitland was the asshole’s name. That house in the boonies you found was his late wife’s family home. Maitland had been bringing women there for years, torturing them and killing them. And he would have kept right on doing it if you hadn’t stopped him.”

  “Is he alive?”

  “I don’t know if he was when you got done with him, but he sure as hell wasn’t once Ashley finished bringing down justice.”

  Trent wished he’d stayed conscious long enough to see that. “Good. That’s good. He deserved whatever he got.”

  “You don’t know the half of it. They found videos of dozens of women he’d killed. He had parts of them in this big walk-in freezer in the basement. Apparently, he took pieces from each and sewed them together. I saw photos, and let me tell you, Bride of Frankenstein doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

  Trent really didn’t want to imagine. He was sure he’d see the crime scene photos eventually, but he was in no hurry to add that image to the ones he already had in his mind.

  The memory of Elise in that killer’s arms, with a gun pressed against her soft flesh, was more than enough terror for one lifetime. He broke out in a cold, shaking sweat just thinking about it.

  “Maitland had a brother that has Mob connections. He runs a funeral home, and evidence is stacking up against him, too.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Ed’s pretty sure he helped cover up the murders by cremating some of the bodies, maybe burying them with other corpses.”

  “That would explain why it took years to find the killer.”

  John nodded. “I figure we’ll be finding cases connected to this guy for a while. With all those pieces of women in his freezer, we’ll be able to get some DNA, maybe close some cold cases and give some families peace.”

  Trent wasn’t sure how much peace any family would get from knowing that their daughter or sister or wife had been in this man’s hands. At least they’d know what had happened to their missing loved ones. “I hope you’re right.”

  “You did good, son. I know it had to have been hell, but you came through.”

  Barely. It had been too close. He didn’t think he’d be able to relax again until he could see Elise with his own eyes and know for a fact she was okay.

  “I’d really like to see Elise,” said Trent. “Think you can manage that?”

  “Sure. You get some rest and I’ll rustle her up. Maybe get you some nice drugs while you wait.”

  “Thanks. And thanks for being here.”

  John shrugged. “I owed you, after all those hours you spent by my hospital bed.”

  “You knew I was there?” Trent had always been careful to leave as soon as John had started to wake up. He didn’t think the man deserved having to face his shooter on top of trying to recover.

  “Of course I did. You kept trying to sneak away, but I knew. You’ve always been my friend. It’s just taken you a couple of years to remember it. That’s all.”

  “You don’t have to be nice to me. You don’t have to stick around. I understand if you never want to see me again.”

  “Listen up, Trent. This whole thing where you avoid me is over as of right now. I think I’ve given you more than enough time to pout, so get over it already. Once you’re up off this bed, you and I are going to have a nice, long talk about why you should go back to work at the CPD.”

  The idea made Trent’s pulse race, but that sickening sense of doom he used to get whenever he thought about becoming a cop again was gone. Instead, there was a heady kind of excitement. Hope.

  Maybe John was right, and it was time to rethink things. “Sounds good.”

  John gave him a slow, satisfied nod. “I’m so glad you’re not going to make me beat some sense into you. I’ve been working hard on pretending to be civilized lately. Carol likes it when I do.”

  “I’m glad you see things her way.”

  “She didn’t give me much of a choice. God, I love that woman, even if I don’t deserve her.”

  Trent didn’t deserve Elise either. Maybe that meant there was hope for them, too. He wanted there to be.

  “Sit tight,” said John. “I’m going to go find someone who can drug you up, then I’m going to record whatever you say so I can hold it against you later.”

  Trent smiled as he closed his eyes, and like magic, when he opened them again, Elise was standing beside him, holding his hand.

  She smiled down at him, blinking relieved tears from her eyes. “Hi.”

  “Hi, yourself.”

  She looked tired. Her eyes were shadowed with fatigue and red from crying.

  He wished like hell he had been awake to hold her while she did.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  He lifted the arm they’d hooked up to the IV. “Pretty good, thanks to whatever happy juice they pumped into me. What about you?”

  She looked fragile, like she might fall over. Trent patted the space on the bed next to him in invitation.

  Elise eased down to perch on the edge of the mattress. It wasn’t good enough. He wanted her stretched out beside him, close enough he could feel her heart beating. Preferably naked. But he’d take what he could get.

  “I have a cracked rib, a few bruises. I’ll live. Thanks to you.”

  Thanks to him? “All I did was pull the trigger. You were the one who was going to pay the price if I missed.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t.”

  The way she said it, so calmly, so matter-of-factly, eased something deep inside Trent that had been clenched and tense for years.

  Trust. She’d given him her trust without hesitation, and somehow, that gift had taken root inside him and sprouted into a tiny, quivering blade of trust in himself. He wasn’t sure how it had happened, but he accepted the gift, and whatever magic lay behind it, gratefully.

  Trent tugged her arm so she’d lie down beside him. He wasn’t sure the hospital staff would appreciate him sharing his bed, but they could all go screw themselves for all he cared. He needed this.

  She was careful not to bump his wounds, but she snuggled into his side like she’d been dying to get close as much as he had.

  “How’s Ashley?”

  He felt her body go tense. “Physically, she’s fine. Mentally… she has a long way to go. But she’s out of bed and painting again.”

  “That’s good. It might help her heal.”

  Elise shook her head. “I don’t know, Trent. She’s different now. That carefree, weightless quality she had before is gone. Her paintings are dark now.”

  “Dark? How so?”

  “She used to paint birds and dogs. Now, sometimes it’s hard to tell what she’s painting. They’re abstract, with lots of angry slashes of red and black. The one she was working on when I left looked like a pool of shadowe
d blood more than anything else.”

  “It’s only been a couple of days, right?”

  “Three.”

  He’d slept longer than he thought. “Let her work things out. Give her time to realize she’s safe.”

  “Of course she’s safe now. Gary is dead.”

  “Her mind might know that, but you know Ashley. She’s emotional. It may take time for her heart to catch up.”

  “I hope it doesn’t take long. I’m so worried about her.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll help her through this. Whatever she needs.”

  Elise nodded and her body began to relax again. Trent knew it would be a while before things were back to anything resembling normal, but he wasn’t sure how much more time he had before Elise left. There were some things they had to get out in the open.

  “So, where to now?” asked Trent.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, your overnight bag is sitting by the door. I assume that means you’re headed back to Hong Kong.”

  She stiffened, then leaned up and stared at him like she was ready to slap him. “Oh, no you don’t. You’re not getting off that easy. That bag is full of your clothes, not mine.”

  Relief made him smile. “Easy? You call this easy?”

  “You don’t get to tell me you love me, then take it back just because you’re not dying anymore.”

  He looked right into her eyes. “I’m not taking anything back. I still love you.”

  Her glare turned to a weepy look of relief. His poor Elise had been through the wringer, and clearly, her emotions had been sent for a loop. “You do?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re not taking it back?”

  “Hell, no. And just so we’re clear, once I get out of this place and back on my feet, I’m going to find you in whatever country you’re in. I figure I can watch your back. Keep you safe while you go out and get all those exciting stories.”

  “You’d do that? You’d go with me? Travel the world?”

  “If that’s what it takes to be with you, then yes. So, where will you be? Hong Kong?”

  She sniffed and shook her head. “I’m done with excitement for a while. I thought I’d try something a little closer to home.”