“You do well with Reagan,” I told her, knowing for a fact that she had done just that.
She sighed.
“Reagan’s already her own person. I can’t screw her up any more than she already is,” she said. “A baby, though, depends on me. If you leave me, I’ll be alone taking care of a child all by myself. And I don’t know that I can do that.”
I gave her a look that clearly said, ‘you’re nuts.’
“I’m raising a kid by myself. If anybody can do it, you can,” I told her. “And that’s not even going to happen, because I’d never let you go. You’re mine now. The only way you’d be able to leave was if I died and could no longer hold on to you.”
She blinked.
“That’s kind of morbid,” she admitted. “And really kind of nice.”
Yawning loudly, I reached over and pulled the chain on the lamp next to the bed, plunging the room into darkness.
“That’s good that you think so, since every bit of what I said was true. I’m yours and your mine. That’s it. No take-backs,” I said sleepily.
She moved, burrowing into my body.
Instinctively, I wrapped my arms around her shoulders and pulled her into me, her feet finding their way to in between my calves as she liked to do every night.
“Bennett,” she said after a few long minutes.
“Hmm,” I asked, well on the way to dreamland.
“How many kids do you want?” she asked.
I ran my lips over the top of her head. “One. Two. Three. Whatever. I don’t really care. As long as you want to keep having them, I’ll keep planting them inside of you.”
She snorted. “How chivalrous of you. And are these babies going to be legitimate, or just fruits of your loins?”
I smiled, knowing I had her.
“Oh, if I have my way, they’ll be legitimate,” I informed her.
Her lips pressed against my bare chest.
“When do you plan on making them legitimate?” she continued.
I didn’t answer.
Mostly because my eyes were too heavy, and my mind was already shutting down.
Though I did think it.
Soon, Lennox. Very, very soon.
Chapter 17
I’m not funny. I’m mean and people think I’m joking.
-Lennox’s secret thoughts
Lennox
Legitimate.
He was going to make babies with me. Legitimate babies.
Babies.
Holy shit.
Babies had never been on my agenda before. Not with my hectic schedule.
With Bennett, though, I questioned nearly all of my old agenda.
I’d already taken a significant decrease in hours so I could spend more time with Bennett and Reagan.
While it hadn’t been on purpose, I still liked the outcome, and planned to keep it the way it was.
I liked it.
I got to see the two of them every night, and if anything happened and Bennett had to be called out, then I was there and Reagan never had to be woken up.
It’d been three weeks since the night Corrinne had wrecked me as I’d been driving home from work with Reagan in the car. And two weeks since I’d last seen her.
I’d gone to the police station, per Bennett’s request, to press charges against her for not only vandalizing my house but also handing my phone number and other personal information to the rest of my neighborhood.
My parents and I had had to change our phone numbers due to the hundreds of calls a week I got.
Apparently, not only had she given my phone number out to the residents in my neighborhood, but she’d also placed an ad for ‘a good time’ on Craigslist and other dating websites with pictures she’d secretly taken of me.
That latest event had taken place about a week after she’d tried to run me off the road, and I was honestly tired of it. It was really taking a toll on my happiness, which I guess was what she’d been trying to accomplish.
Bennett hadn’t been doing well thanks to her, either.
Especially when Corrinne tried to accuse him of raping her nine years ago, then forcing her to give up rights to the baby he’d made with her as a consequence of said rape.
Everybody knew it was bogus, but Bennett was still getting weird looks from the citizens of Kilgore, and even some of his fellow cops who didn’t know him or how Corrinne was a lying, vindictive whore.
“Are you nervous?” I asked Bennett as we walked hand in hand into the courthouse.
He squeezed my hand slightly before shaking his head. “No. There’s no reason for her to get custody of Reagan. In fact, this is all just preliminary. The papers have already been signed, sealed, and dated. The only thing that happened was that it wasn’t filed through the state. It’s a done deal.”
Shockingly, we found out that it wasn’t a done deal less than an hour later when the judge’s gavel rang out like a shotgun blast shooting through the courtroom.
“Court dismissed,” the judge roared.
She had to roar because everyone on Bennett’s side of the courtroom was screaming in outrage.
The only two not screaming were Bennett and Todd.
Bennett looked like someone had knocked him over the back of the head with a crowbar.
Todd, Bennett’s badass lawyer, looked deadly quiet.
In fact, if I didn’t know any better, I would’ve said he was plotting murder.
Corrinne, the fucking bitch, was sitting across the aisle from us with a smile the size of Texas on her face, and I wanted nothing more than to slap the stupid bitch across that big mouth of hers.
I was seething mad, and if looks could kill, Corrinne would be a puddle of brain matter, blood, and guts on the floor.
Her husband, Buck, the spineless bastard, sat in his seat looking like he’d just been beaten with the same crowbar that’d taken out Bennett.
He was looking down at his hands that were twisting in his lap, and I couldn’t figure out what the hell he was doing with her.
I couldn’t figure it out when I was in college, either. Which was why I’d been accused of cheating with him in the first place. I’d been trying to save him and look where that’d gotten me!
“I can’t believe she gave her partial custody,” Payton breathed beside me. “She’s going to kill her.”
“She won’t get her,” Max mumbled from her other side. “The boys and I… we’ll make fucking sure of it. She won’t touch another hair on that baby’s head.”
No, she wouldn’t.
I’d make sure of it.
I didn’t know how, or when, but I’d make sure of it.
Even if I had to kill the bitch.
I’d do it for Bennett and Reagan.
Okay, I probably wouldn’t kill her. But I’d maim her.
“Did she pay the judge off?” Shiloh asked softly. “Why would any sane person do that? She has tons and tons of evidence in front of her. Seriously, either that judge is mentally challenged, or she was paid off. There’s no other reason for what she’s done.”
I agreed.
One hundred and ninety percent.
“Everyone leaves a trail,” James said cryptically.
“Bennett,” Michael said, standing behind him. “Let’s go. We’ll get home, figure this all out.”
Bennett stood, not looking at anyone, and left without looking back.
My heart ached.
And it really ached when I got to the parking lot to see Bennett gone.
“Shit,” I murmured.
Everyone got on their bikes, or into their prospective cars, and started motoring away, and I was left alone before I even realized that I needed a ride.
So I called a cab and had the driver take me to Bennett’s.
Only when I got there, it was only for Bennett to meet me at the door with a frown.
“I need some time to talk to her. Alone,” he murmured, eyes void of an
y emotion.
I nodded.
“Okay.” I nodded. “I’ll just leave you alone. Call me when you want me to come back over?”
He nodded. “Thanks, Lennox.”
Not Nox like he’d been calling me for the last couple of weeks.
Lennox.
My heart hurt for him as I watched him close the door on me and ached even more as I started the long walk home.
I didn’t call a cab this time, instead settling on a long walk in hopes of clearing my brain of the cobwebs and any lingering doubts that my brain was trying to shove upon me.
But I couldn’t shake them.
Had I been the one to bring this all on Bennett?
Would Corrinne have pursued this had I not been in the picture?
She hated me. Seriously hated me.
For something I’d never even done, but she’d thought I’d done, nonetheless.
Did he blame me?
By the time I’d gotten home, I’d worked myself into a major depression.
All the assurances that Bennett didn’t blame me, from his own mouth no less, were now gone.
In their place were disturbed thoughts.
Ones that wouldn’t go anywhere.
That’d stay and fester if Bennett didn’t banish them.
But he didn’t banish them.
He was gone.
And had no plans of ever coming back.
Chapter 18
I’m a right bitch until I have my coffee.
-True Story
Lennox
Four weeks later
“They found a paper trail?” I asked Michael.
He’d found me in the maze of a hospital where I was eating lunch in the break room that nobody used.
Michael nodded. “Yep. The judge’s already put in her resignation, effective immediately. All cases that the judge has heard in the past eighteen months have been put on review.”
I took a deep breath.
“Thank God,” I whispered shakily. “I’ve been racking my brain for the last four weeks. I’ve had my dad using his resources and his PI to help. He had nothing, though.”
I picked at my salad, still unable to eat.
I’d lost fifteen pounds that I really shouldn’t have lost in the four weeks since Bennett had literally dropped off the face of the earth.
I’d had to change phones again, just yesterday. Now I didn’t even bother calling him.
Michael nodded. “Yeah, he’s been delivering information to us. All of it useless, but efficient nonetheless.”
I nodded. “Good.”
“You don’t look good,” he said softly.
I shrugged, avoiding his eye.
“I have to go back to work,” I said, standing and throwing my untouched salad in the trash.
I could see Michael frown as he watched my movements out of the corner of my eye.
“I tried to come by and see you yesterday, but your house was empty,” Michael said.
I grimaced.
“I had a few… people show up. They were looking for me and I felt it prudent to move before it got worse,” I told him.
“What kind of people?” he asked, standing now too.
I shrugged. “Don’t worry about it.”
Michael frowned.
“Did you file a report?” he asked me as my hand met the doorknob to the break room.
How had he found me, anyway? I ate back here so nobody could find me.
Somebody would’ve had to tell him where I was.
Fucking Paxton and Melissa.
Nosy fuckers.
“Nope. What would be the point?” I remarked sadly, letting the door shut softly behind me as I left.
Not looking back, because if I did, he’d see.
He’d know my heart was broken.
***
Using the brand new key I’d just picked up from my landlord, I opened the door to the apartment I’d rented a few days ago, looking at Cola and smiling for the first time since I’d left for work.
She had three balls in her mouth, and she was shaking her big booty to the tune of the commercial playing on the TV.
“Hey baby,” I said, running my fingers through her long fur as I shut the door firmly behind me.
She whined low in her throat at the attention I was giving her, leaning on me enough that I stumbled.
“Oy,” I said laughingly. “Get your butt off me and let’s go outside.”
At the mention of outside, she started to turn around in circles, losing one of the balls from her mouth, and trying frantically to pick it up once again.
Laughing, I walked into the bedroom and slipped my clothes off as I went.
Changing into a pair of short shorts and a tank top, I walked to my closet, slipped my feet into my tennis shoes, sockless, and went back out to the living room.
I didn’t bother walking anywhere else.
Had I, I would’ve seen that I wasn’t alone.
I would’ve seen Corrinne sitting at the table with a gun in her hands.
I’d nearly made it to my front door when the first bullet tore through my belly.
It played out about like the movies.
I instantly placed my hands over my belly.
And blood started to slip between my fingers.
I looked down and moved my hand up to my face, looking at the blood on my hand like it was fake.
I’d felt blood before.
Lots of times.
Never my own blood, though.
It felt like warm syrup.
Sticky like it, too.
Then the pain hit me, dropping me to my knees.
Then farther to my back.
That’s when I saw Corrinne standing over me, the proverbial smoking gun in her hand.
“Why?” I rasped.
She didn’t answer, instead bending down with a packet of something in her hand and pouring it over my wound.
“Don’t want you to die on me too fast. That wouldn’t work out well for either of us. I’m gonna need you,” she said cheerfully.
I blinked. Then blinked again.
“What?” I rasped, belly stinging from whatever she’d poured on it.
Then I was unceremoniously kicked to my belly where the same burning sensation started on my back.
What was she pouring on my wound, salt?
It wouldn’t surprise me if she had.
Cola whined, licking my face, and the tears I hadn’t been aware I was shedding.
I turned my face to see her pace away from me, only able to see the bottom half of her body as she made what I assumed was a phone call.
I was proven right in the next moment when she started to frantically speak into the phone about ‘gunshots’ and ‘a crazy lady shooting.’
She dropped the phone which I distantly realized was my house phone and went down on one knee beside my head.
She looked down at me with hate-filled eyes.
“Why?” I asked tiredly.
My mind was sluggish from what I guessed was blood loss, but I wanted to know. No, needed to know.
She smiled savagely.
“You nearly talked him out of it,” she said. “You had him telling me he was leaving me. Had I not convinced him otherwise, you would’ve ruined my life.”
I shook my head in denial. “How is it ruining your life to help someone get away from a psycho like you? You’d have just found another poor soul to do your bidding.”
“Because I was on the fast track to jail. He had money to pay the people off, and I needed it quick. I’d nearly gotten him to propose when you showed up with your high and mighty self. Lucky for me that you weren’t as good of a convincer as you thought you were,” she sneered.
I didn’t say anything, deciding that maybe it’d be best if I just didn’t say anything at all.
“And what are you going to do now? You’ve lost. I just heard that this after
noon,” I said weakly.
Corrinne moved down, placing her face close to mine.
“Yeah, I just heard that, too. From Buck, when he told me he was leaving, and taking all my money with him,” she hissed. “Which is why I’m at Plan B.”
Plan B.
Wonderful. Shooting me was Plan B.
“And what now? What’s the play now?” I asked, coughing slightly.
My stomach screamed in protest, only making me cough all the harder.
Which was when I tasted blood.
The coppery taste made my stomach roil, and I knew that I only had an hour, at most, to live.
Coughing blood up was a bad thing.
“Now I just take you both out. Hostage situation means he’ll come. You’ll live long enough for him to get here, then I’ll take you both out. Then there’ll be no one left for Reagan but me,” she declared.
Was this woman insane?
She really had to be.
No sane person would think that something like this would work.
Bennett wasn’t stupid, and anyway, he’d proven just how much I meant to him in the past couple of weeks.
“It won’t work,” I promised.
She was bonkers.
She sneered, and I heard the first siren.
“Watch and learn,” she said, standing up and going to the table.
“What are you doing?” I asked when she went for my phone.
She grinned maniacally as she came over to me, snapped a picture, and then said, “I’m sending this to your boyfriend. I think the blood pooling around you adds a nice effect.”
I tried to sit up and grab the phone from her, but the minute I put pressure on my belly pain bloomed like an out of control fire, centering in my belly and radiating out so that I felt it in the tips of my toes.
My God, who knew that being shot hurt so fucking much?
“Trouble in paradise? I don’t see him in your phone!” she jeered.
I refused to even answer her.
God, how do I get into these things?
“Now the fun begins.” She smiled widely and pointed the gun at my face. “Good thing I know the number.”
Bang.
Chapter 19
Grab a straw, because you suck.
Code 11- KPD SWAT Box Set Page 120
