Ashes to Ashes

by Rebecca Norinne

  Because of me, Ash’s team could be hurt—or worse—and my two furry buddies, the sweetest pups you’d ever meet, were downstairs taking the brunt of my stalker’s assault. Who was he that he could take on two military trained German Shepherds and not go down?

  “Do you understand, Rae?” Ash demanded, his fingers digging into my flesh.

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  I understood, but I couldn’t imagine actually doing it. Couldn’t imagine a scenario where whoever stepped through that door wasn’t Ash returning to me. Couldn’t fathom a world in which Chip Noones bested an Army Green Beret. Couldn’t wrap my mind around how I’d go on if Ash was taken from me.

  He shoved me toward the bathroom as he strode toward the door. “Remember, if he comes through that door instead of me, shoot the motherfucker and don’t stop. Keep pulling that trigger until you’ve emptied the magazine. And then once he’s down, kick him in the nuts and in the face, and keep on kicking him until he’s a bloody pulp. Don’t let up until you’re sure he’s never getting up.”

  Abruptly turning, he took three purposeful strides and tugged me tight against him before his lips crashed down. After too brief a kiss, he pulled back and slid a set of keys into the pocket at my chest. “Don’t stop to worry about me, or the dogs, or anyone else. If he gets to you, it’s too late for any of us. Take him down and then get the fuck out of here. Don’t turn back.”

  I flicked my eyes between his, my vision blurring. I was light headed and felt sick to my stomach. Only an hour ago, we’d made love, the kind of physical bonding I’d never known before. I’d given myself over to this man—mind, body, and soul—and now he was telling me this might be the end? That Chip Noones, whoever the fuck he was, might take all this away from me?

  No!

  I straightened my spine and stiffened my shoulders. That was not going to happen.

  This was not how our story ended.

  This is just the beginning, were my last thoughts as Ash slipped out the door, his gun held aloft.

  Heeding his directives, I flipped the lock and then backed toward the bathroom, the pistol heavy and foreign in my hand. As I closed the door, I heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire.

  Pop, pop, pop.

  Three shots.

  Three bullets discharged, and I had no idea who’d fired them or who they’d hit.

  I slumped down to the floor, my knees giving out. Watching, waiting … counting down the seconds until my fate was known.

  Ash has to come back to me. He absolutely has to.

  I couldn’t live without him.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Rae

  There was shouting, and banging, and then two additional shots fired out. And through it all, I sat huddled in on myself on the bathroom floor, praying that Ash was still alive. But then suddenly, everything went quiet, and I knew. I just knew. He wasn’t, and I was next.

  But even so, one thing was for certain. I sure as hell wasn’t going down without a fight.

  The man I loved and the dogs I adored had given their lives to protect me, to keep me safe from harm. In the end, they’d failed, but I wouldn’t.

  Their deaths would not be in vain.

  I pushed up from the floor on wobbling legs and stood with my feet braced apart, the gun directed at the door. It shook in my hands, but I knew my aim wouldn’t falter. Ash’s words echoed in my head and rattled around in my chest in the empty space where my heart once lived. Shoot the motherfucker and don’t stop. Keep pulling that trigger until you’ve emptied the magazine. Don’t let up until you’re sure he’s never getting up.

  One of us was walking out of here today, and it wasn’t going to be Chip Noones.

  I waited for the coming battle, listening to the sound of pounding footsteps echoing on the bare wood treads as my assailant made his way upstairs to find me. And then the crack of plaster when the bedroom door was flung wide and the doorknob crashed into the wall. And finally, more footsteps, this time muted by the thick pile of nondescript beige carpeting.

  I took stock of my body—catalogued my breathing, my heart rate, my stance—as the gun rested solid and heavy in my trembling hands. I locked my elbows, and set my finger on the trigger, ready to fire.

  And then the door flew open, and reflexively, I squeezed. A deafening shot rang out and reverberated through the small room. I closed my eyes against the pain searing my eardrums and then squeezed again. A large hand clutched the gun, trying to wrest it from my grip, but I held tight. Noones let go and then shook me until my teeth rattled in my skull and my body flopped to and fro like a well-loved rag doll. When I realized my eyes were still screwed tight, I opened them. I wasn’t going to die without seeing the man who’d terrorized me all this time.

  But it wasn’t Noones.

  It was Ash.

  His lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear a word he said. In fact, all I heard was a low, insistent ringing, a steady buzz in my skull.

  Ash’s hands skated over my hair, over my face, and down my shoulders. And then he was tugging me out of the room, throwing clothes at me. My hearing was slowly returning, so I was able to make out his barked commands as if he was speaking into a pillow.

  “Get dressed.”

  “We have to go.”

  “Put this on.”

  I threw a sweatshirt on over my head and pulled my legs into a random pair of jeans he’d tossed my way, noting they must have come from the bottom of my drawer. The pockets were dotted with rhinestones, and they were so tight they could have been painted on my skin and no one would have known the difference. I couldn’t remember packing them, and I certainly hadn’t worn them since we’d arrived. These were pants made for the stage, not for sitting in a studio pouring your heart out. For some strange reason, I couldn’t stop thinking about why Ash had picked these pants, why it was important that when we fled, I should be wearing something sparkly.

  Ash came around in front of me and gripped my biceps in his large, calloused palms. “Rae, look at me.” He shook me, gently, and my eyes landed on his.

  “I know you’re in shock, but I need you to move. Can you do that for me, baby?”

  I licked my lips, surprised to find them dry and cracked. “Where’s Noones?” I asked, my voice breaking.

  “He’s downstairs, but that’s not important. What’s important is that we get you out of here. I need you to put on your shoes now.”

  He crouched down in front of me, and I rested my hands on his back as I lifted first one foot, and then the other. If the rhinestone jeans were incongruous with our environment, the well-worn hot pink cowboy boots were even more so. They weren’t practical, but I loved them. They’d been the boots I’d had on the day I left home, and then again when I’d signed my first record deal, and finally, when I found out I’d been nominated for my first-ever Grammy. And, I realized, they were also what I’d had on the night I met Ash for the first time, that fateful night in a dive bar outside of Boise, Idaho. No matter where I was in the world, these pink cowboy boots had been my constant companion, marking all the most important moments of my life. It was appropriate then that Ash had slipped my feet into them as we were fleeing from my would-be killer.

  And with that thought, the mishmash of my jumbled thoughts coalesced, and I came back to myself. I’d been fumbling since the moment I’d closed my eyes and fired the gun back in the bathroom, but I needed to get a grip on myself. I squared my shoulders and stiffened my spine with determination. Ash needed to know he didn’t have to coddle me like a child; that I was a grown ass woman and I could be his partner in this, not a burden.

  Once my feet were in my boots, I moved to the bedside table and grabbed my phone and a big old wad of cash out of the drawer. Call it a holdover from a different life, but I always slept with money by my head, in case I had to make a quick getaway and leave everything behind. Today wasn’t the first time I’d taken the money and ran, but I sincerely hoped it would be my last.

  I tried shoving my ph
one and money into my front pocket, but the jeans were too tight to even get my fingers between the fabric, so I pushed it all down into my bra instead. You’d be surprised what a woman can keep in here, my grandma once told me as she hid a whole coin purse down the front of her blouse. She’d winked at me then; despite its size and heft, you hadn’t been able to see it under her clothes.

  Ash grabbed my hand and we ran down the stairs toward the front door. As we went, my eyes scanned the stairwell and then the landing, but there was no sign of Noones. None, until we reached the foyer. That’s when I saw it. There was blood everywhere.

  I skidded to a halt. “Ash?”

  He tugged me forward. “Keep moving Rae,” he ordered, flinging the front door open and pushing me through. I tripped over the threshold but followed his command. From behind me, Ash whistled, and the sound of eight feet clicking on tile filled my ears. Blanche and Dorothy trailed behind, Blanche’s fur matted with blood, while Dorothy hobbled on an injured leg. But they were here, and they were alive, and I’d never been so happy to see them.

  We reached Ash’s truck, and I jumped into the passenger seat while he hefted both dogs into the back. And then he hopped in, fired up the engine, and we peeled out down his long, winding driveway to the road.

  We’d done it. We’d gotten out alive.

  But then the truck swerved, and my eyes darted to Ash. He was white as a sheet; his skin dotted with perspiration. That’s when I realized he was driving with only one hand; the other was locked on his side, blood seeping through his fingers to coat his hand.

  “Holy shit!” I unbuckled my seatbelt and flew across the bench to grab hold of the wheel. “Ash, stop!”

  His head lolled and fell against the seat back. Thankfully, he stayed conscious just enough to slide his foot from the gas. A few seconds later, we came to a bumpy stop on the side of a deserted forest highway.

  I pressed my hands to his wound, and blood seeped between my fingers. Ash’s head twisted and his eyes found mine. “You’re safe.”

  “But you’re not!” I screeched, my panic rising. We were in the middle of nowhere, and I had no clue how close the nearest hospital was, or how to explain to the police where they could find us. With one hand still pressed to Ash’s side, I rooted around in my shirt and pulled my phone out from my bra. Slick with blood, it slipped from my fingers and clattered to the floor near Ash’s feet. I reached down to get it, but it had fallen too far away. I couldn’t keep my hand on Ash and reach my phone at the same time.

  I grabbed his other hand and pressed it against his side. “I need your help, Ash,” I implored when it fell limply to his side. “Come on, baby. Apply pressure there.”

  He blinked, and as though moving through wet cement, dragged his hand back to his wound and pressed. “Thank you,” I breathed out, dropping a kiss to his cheek and then diving down to the floor boards to find my phone.

  When I finally clasped it between my fingers, I sat up triumphantly. It didn’t matter though. We were in a dead zone. The “No Service” alert across the top of the screen loomed large. “Please, no,” I cried. “No, no, no,” I chanted, moving the phone all around, hoping to pick up even a faint signal. It was no use.

  “It’s okay, baby,” Ash whispered from lips that had gone chalky. “You did good.”

  “Stay with me, Ash,” I begged as his eyes fell closed. “Come on. I need you to stay with me.”

  His lips stretched in a small, faraway smile. “Everything’s going to be okay, Rae. You’re safe now. No one is ever going to hurt you again.”

  Dorothy ducked her head over the back of the seat bench. Whimpering, she nudged Ash with her long, pointed nose. Her whimpering grew louder and louder until Blanche joined in.

  Alone in the cab of the truck surrounded by two inconsolable dogs, I watched the man I loved slowly bleeding out.

  With a cry, I pressed against Ash with all my might and kissed him hard. “Don’t you dare die on me! Do you hear me, Ash? We have a long, happy life ahead of us. You have to fight for me. I need you to live so I can give you a bunch of babies, and we can grow old together surrounded by our grandkids.” Tears fell from my cheeks to mix with the blood coating my hands and wrists. And with each second that passed, I knew that no matter how loud or how insistently I begged for a different outcome, I was going to lose him. That we didn’t have a long, happy life ahead of us. That I wasn’t going to have his babies.

  I knew deep in my gut this was the end of our story.

  * * *

  Except it wasn’t.

  In the next heartbeat, I heard the distant sound of sirens. They drew closer, until a cop car and an ambulance pulled up alongside the truck, their tires throwing rocks and other debris into the air. Before I could jump out and alert them to the situation, an EMT was already there, yanking Ash’s door open and pulling him onto a gurney. Together, he and another EMT quickly took in the situation and began working to staunch Ash’s wound.

  A police officer gripped my hand and pulled me to the side, closing the doors on the two dogs that were barking and snarling and doing their best to protect me from what they perceived as a new threat. “It’s okay,” I told them as the door clanged shut. I palmed the window. “It’s okay girls. They’re here to help.” In an instant, their barks grew silent and they sat at attention, their big brown eyes watching. Waiting.

  “Are you Rae Griffin?” the officer asked.

  “Yes,” I croaked.

  He pulled out a pad of paper and a pencil. “Can you tell us what happened? Dispatch received a call from Mr. Devereaux about 30 minutes ago alerting us to an intruder, and then his private security system reported gunshots being fired from inside the house a few minutes later. The monitoring company alerted us to your location through a GPS tracker, but we don’t have any more details than that.”

  “Someone broke into the house,” I explained through panicky breaths. “There were three gunshots, and then a few minutes later, two more. Ash came up the stairs and dragged me to the truck. There was blood everywhere, but I didn’t know he’d been shot. Not until he started to lose consciousness.” I ducked around the officer to see how Ash was doing. The two EMTs had put an oxygen mask over his nose, and his chest was rising and falling in a steady, if slow, rhythm. “Is he going to be okay?” I asked, my eyes darting back to Ash’s supine form.

  The officer’s gaze followed and the EMT gave a quick, short nod. “It’s just a flesh wound,” he pronounced. “He’ll be fine.”

  I breathed a huge sigh of relief and my knees buckled. But before I hit the ground, the officer caught me in his arms. “Whoa there,” he said. “I’ve got you.”

  Now that I knew Ash was going to live, my mind was able to focus on something else. Like the fact that as far as I knew, Chip Noones was still inside the house. Ash hadn’t told me what had become of the man, but if he was alive, the police needed to arrest him.

  “You have to go to the house!” I cried, pushing him toward his car. “He’s still there!”

  The officer dug in his heels. “The intruder?”

  “Yes!” I hollered, shoving at him again. “Go! You can’t let him get away. He’s dangerous.”

  “Please calm down, ma’am,” he said, reaching a hand out to block me from pushing him again. “Officers should already be on the scene,” he explained. “Three cars were dispatched to Mr. Devereaux’s residence, while we came here to find you.”

  I sagged against him. “Thank god.”

  “Hey, Steve!” one of the EMT’s called out as they wheeled Ash into the back of the ambulance bay. “We’re gonna take him over to Legacy.”

  Officer Steve, who I now saw wore a name tag declaring he was one Steve Wheeler, nodded. “Yeah, alright. Miss Griffin and I will follow behind.” He threw a glance my way and gestured toward his waiting car.

  I shook my head. “I’m not leaving Blanche and Dorothy out here by themselves. They’re hurt too.”

  “Blanche and Dorothy?” he asked, scrubbing his
palm over his beard.

  I craned my neck toward the truck. “The dogs. Blanche and Dorothy.”

  He snickered. “The Golden Girls?”

  “Yeah,” I said, able to smile now that I knew Ash was going to be okay.

  Officer Steve eyed me speculatively. “Are you okay to drive?”

  I nodded vigorously. “I’m fine. I’ll be right behind you,” I said, skittering over to the truck, and hauling myself into the driver’s seat. Quickly, I adjusted the mirrors and flipped the ignition. As the ambulance and police cruiser peeled out onto the highway, their lights flashing and sirens blaring, I pulled out behind them.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Ash

  Beep. Pause. Beep. Pause. Beep. My eyes fluttered, and slowly I came to in a dimly lit hospital room to the muffled sound of nurses and orderlies shuffling outside my room. I dragged my eyes to the source of the beeping and saw a heart monitor whose neon green peaks and valleys looked steady. As my vision adjusted, my gaze landed on the corner of the room where Rae was curled in on herself in an uncomfortable looking chair.

  “Rae,” I croaked, but it came out tinny and weak. I cleared my throat, and she stirred.

  And then she bolted upright, her face a mixture of shock and euphoria. “Ash!” she exclaimed, rushing to my side. Her hands hovered uncertainly in the air, as if she needed to touch me but, given my current state, didn’t know where was allowed to. “Thank god you’re awake.” She let out a ragged sob that wracked her shoulders, and tears cascaded down her cheeks to splash on my hospital bed.

  “Ah, don’t cry. It’s okay, baby. Everything’s okay.”

  “I could have lost you.”

  I closed my eyes. “But you didn’t.” Mindful of the needles anchored to the inside of my elbow, I extended my hand toward her, palm up. When she laced our fingers together, I gave her a small squeeze. It was all I had in me after getting shot. Twice.

  “What happened, Ash?”