-Text from Travis to Hannah
Travis
“Got it,” Evander grunted, attaching the last chain. “You want me to go ahead and deliver it straight to the bank?”
I nodded my head. “Yea. It’s getting on up there in time…”
My phone rang, and I winced when I saw the screen.
I held up my hand at Evander. “Go, I gotta take this.”
I didn’t want to take this, but I had to.
Evander gave me a lazy wave and then got into the truck and drove off all before I could say another word.
Wiping the sweat off my forehead—we pushed the fucking car all the way out of the garage from the top floor—I answered it with a terse, “Hello?”
“Travis?”
I’d heard Allegra crying all of four times in my life, so to hear her actively bawling, and sounding like she was in pain, it made me stop for a few moments.
“Yeah?” I asked warily.
“Something bad happened to me,” she sniffled. “And I need to tell you something.”
Need to tell me something?
“What?” I asked, wondering if what she had to tell me was related to how fucked up and stupid she was for having driven my child in a car with her while she was drunk off her ass.
“I’m sick,” she coughed. “And I want to give you some papers.”
“What kind of papers?”
I heard her moan.
“Papers that give up my rights as a parent,” she hesitated. “I know that what I did was wrong. I shouldn’t have pursued custody in court, and I think it’s time that I leave. Leave this town, and never come back.”
That made me angry.
“And what about Alex?” I growled.
“Alex is safer without me around. I’m not in a good place. I’ve done some…things,” she hedged.
Some things.
I didn’t want to know what ‘things’ she’d done.
Not at all.
But I sensed that if she didn’t meet with me, she’d be gone for good, and I would forever be waiting for the other shoe to drop when it came to her.
So, I agreed to meet.
“Fine,” I said. “Where do you want to meet?”
“Your house?”
I snorted. “Definitely not.”
She made a frustrated noise. “How about mine?”
That wouldn’t be happening either.
“I’ll be at the office in ten. We can meet in the parking lot there.”
It was only a few blocks away, and it was as neutral as it could get in a town this small with people that made it a living to butt into everyone else’s business.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll be there in about a minute and a half.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’ll get there when I get there.”
She said something else, but I’d already hit the ‘END’ call button and shoved it into my pocket.
Then I thought better of it, remembering my fight with Hannah last night, and pulled it back out to call her.
She didn’t answer, though.
So I left a voicemail and got into my truck.
It took me eight to get back to the shop, but only because it seemed like every single officer in the county was now on their way to a scene.
Making a mental note to turn my radio onto scan once Allegra was through with whatever bullshit she had to give me so I could figure out what in the hell was going on, I pulled into the parking lot of my business and parked in one of the bays.
Once I had it where I wanted it, I shut the truck off and got out, looking around at all the trucks that were supposed to be there today that weren’t.
There was only one tow truck in the bay today, and that was one that was meant to be serviced.
Hell, even the service guys weren’t around.
Where the hell was everyone at?
“There you are,” I heard Allegra’s voice come from behind the truck.
I turned, took one step, and felt the most searing pain I’d ever felt hit my chest.
I heard the roar of the shotgun just as my head hit the concrete.
I’d fallen.
I’d hit the ground so hard that I was having trouble breathing.
Or was it because I’d been hit in the chest by something?
My brain was fuzzy, and I couldn’t make sense of things.
Allegra? Had Allegra hit me with something?
***
Baylor
I grunted as I pulled the last of the chains off the truck.
Today was normally the day that I’d be off, but since we were short staffed, I’d come in anyway.
Now I was having to deal with this bullshit.
“Listen,” the woman whose car I was repossessing pleaded, “if you take the car, I have no way to get to work.
I looked over at her, then dropped down to my knees and started to crawl under the car to attach the chains.
They weren’t needed, not with today’s technology and advances when it came to towing, but I was old school. I liked them on there because it made me feel better, so sue me.
That’s when I felt something on my foot.
I looked down at the woman—girl really. What was she, all of twenty-one?
“Don’t touch me,” I ordered.
I hated being touched. Fuck, that was why I hadn’t had sex in over eight years.
I was seriously on the verge of kicking out with my foot when she let go, then fell to her ass in defeat.
“Perfect,” she whispered.
That’s when the tears started to drip out of her eyes.
Fuck!
I hated when women cried. Especially pretty ones.
Shit, fuck, damn.
I attached the chain and scooted out from under the car, not bothering to dust the dirt and grass off my back. This wasn’t the first time today I got on the ground, and wouldn’t be the last. That I knew for sure.
If I wasn’t repossessing a car, I’d be towing a truck to either A, the impound yard. B, an auto mechanic, or C, a body specialist to get repair work done due to a wreck.
Not all of my pick-ups were repossessions.
And most of them didn’t come with crying women. The majority of them came with little to no trouble at all, but if there was trouble, I preferred it in the form of a man swinging his fist at my face instead of tears.
But that’s just me.
I lived for the adrenaline spikes that this job offered me.
“Come on, darlin’.” I held out my hand. “I’ll take you where you need to go.”
She looked around the parking lot—the mall parking lot—and swallowed.
She didn’t take my hand.
“That’s okay,” she whispered. “I’ll walk. I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again.”
I didn’t get a chance to say anything before my phone rang.
When I pulled it out of my pocket and placed it to my ear, the woman was already slinking away, her head hung.
I resisted the urge to wrap my arms around her shoulder—because goddamn I did not need another crying woman on my hands—and answered the phone.
“Yo.”
“Get down here now.”
“Tate?” I asked.
Before I could reply, he said, “Shop.” And then hung up.
I didn’t even look back at the woman as I dove for the open door of my truck.
If Tate was out, and he said to get to the shop now, then something was seriously wrong.
Five minutes of bat-shit-out-of-hell driving later, I arrived at the shop and pulled into the parking lot just in time to see Tate Casey, my best friend, and the man that’d been in jail for what felt like forever, aim a gun at the back of Allegra’s body, and pull the trigger.
She fell like a rock, clutching her arm.
When she scooted around and went to turn to see what had hit her, Tate stepped behind the rack of tir
es, and I bailed out of my truck.
I took the gun from my friend, the one that normally hung in Travis’ office, and looked at him with confusion clouding my eyes.
That was until I saw my brother on the floor, blood pooling around him on the dirty bay floor, with a hole in his chest. Well, a lot of them.
That was likely due to the shotgun discarded haphazardly at Allegra’s feet.
“Fuck, man,” I groaned. “Get the fuck out of here. Don’t come back for a few days.”
When I turned to make sure Tate complied, he was already gone.
Chapter 27
Nutritional Labels should also include a ‘what if I ate the whole fucking box’ section.
-Hannah’s secret thoughts
Hannah
I’d forgotten.
I’d been very careful not to drive onto school property with my gun in my car.
I’d park at the daycare and walk the kids over while leaving it in the car—but then I’d witnessed a driver nearly plow into me and the girls, and I’d stopped walking them over.
Today? It was raining. Today? I’d dropped them off directly in front of the school.
I’d never once intended to get out of the car, but my back hatch wouldn’t open. I had to get out, and I had to have my keys. I thought it’d be easier to get the purse and just use the key fob’s closeness to the tailgate to open it, rather than pulling the keys out.
It wasn’t intentional to have my gun out of my car at all.
A gunman walked onto school property and immediately started opening fire on me…on my girls.
At first, I wasn’t sure what the hell was going on.
The screams.
I didn’t think. I just reacted.
I pulled my gun out of my purse, aimed, and fired.
“You didn’t think to look around to make sure that nobody else was in the line of fire?”
My eyes flicked up to the man questioning me.
I nodded my head. “I did. I gauged that no one else was around…I opened fire on her.”
I was explaining my reasoning for having a gun on school property, and it wasn’t going so well.
I’d been questioned for going on two hours now, and the angry-eyed officer—FBI agent—was staring at me like I was already tried and convicted in his book.
“You gauged that no one else was around,” he drawled like he didn’t believe me.
I nodded.
“Yes,” I agreed almost immediately. “I looked, saw that there was nobody behind her but a brick building that I knew that my bullets wouldn’t penetrate, and fired.”
“How did you know that the bullets wouldn’t penetrate?” he pushed, clearly not believing that I knew what I was talking about.
“I’ve already told you that my brother is a police officer. He’s on the SWAT team. When I spoke with him about what bullets to put in the gun, he instructed me to buy hollow point bullets.”
“Hollow points aren’t guaranteed not to penetrate a wall,” he chided as if he were instructing a small child.
I was getting upset at this point.
“No, you’re exactly right,” I agreed. “However, if you hit what you’re aiming at, it shouldn’t be a problem.”
I’d surprised him, that I could tell.
“Well, Ms…”
Some sort of commotion at the door had us both looking up, and a furious Baylor was standing there.
“Get up, you’re going with me.” He pointed directly at my chest.
“I’m sorry, Sir.” The agent stood up. “But we’re not finished here.”
Baylor looked at the man like he was a speck of dirt on a white shirt. As if it didn’t belong anywhere near his vicinity.
“I’m sorry, Sir,” Baylor said back, just as controlled. “But you’ve had her in here for over two hours. You haven’t given her a phone call. You haven’t arrested her. You haven’t given her access to a lawyer. And again, you haven’t arrested her, so as far as I’m concerned, she’s free to go.”
“Then I’ll arrest her,” the agent stated, sounding full of authority.
My belly dropped.
“You have no reason to arrest her,” Baylor snapped. “She was defending her child. You can charge her with a crime, yes, but then you’ll have every single senator and Republican, as well as parent in this county, upset that you did because she was protecting children.”
The agent’s lips thinned.
“Her husband-to-be has been shot,” Baylor hissed. “He’s in surgery, and she needs to be there, and not here.”
“How was he shot?” the agent asked at the same time that I shrieked, “What?”
It was high-pitched, hysterical, and from the very bottom of my heart as I let those words take root.
Her husband-to-be has been shot.
What. The. Fuck.
I got up and started toward the door.
“I’ll be there to arrest her in two hours,” the agent instructed Baylor.
I didn’t say another word as I ran out of the room and straight out of the police station.
I didn’t look at the men and women that were there, filing their own statements.
I ran and didn’t stop until I reached the tow truck that Baylor usually drove around.
It had the number ‘9’ on it and had fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror.
“What happened?” I gasped, looking at Baylor.
“Buckle up,” he ordered.
I could tell he wouldn’t leave the parking lot until I did, so I reached behind my shoulder blindly, latched onto the belt, and roughly yanked it over my body.
***
I stood over Travis’ bed and stared down at his chest.
It was covered with fifteen pieces of gauze, all dotting from his clavicle to his belly button, and everywhere in between.
“Shot him from pretty far away,” the doctor said. “Could’ve been a lot worse. As it is, the pellets only penetrated about an inch into his skin, all the way around. As long as he gives it a few weeks, he’ll recover just fine. But that means zero movement. I don’t want him doing anything but getting up to go to the bathroom. Showers are out until the wounds heal for a few days. Possibly a week. He can take a bath with the tub filled about half full. No submerging anything until then.”
I listened to the doctor explain what had happened and how the next few weeks would be for Travis, who was still heavily sedated.
I stared at the pieces of gauze. Fifteen. Fifteen places that a pellet had penetrated his beautiful chest. A beautiful chest that would forever be marred.
“What happened to Allegra?” I whispered.
“Shot in both shoulders, believe it or not. Not dead.”
I looked over to find Baylor standing there, his arms crossed over his chest, muscles bulging as he tried to hold in the urge to do something. Punch someone.
“Which room?”
“Don’t.”
I looked over to find Travis’ eyes open and staring at me with a glaze to them.
“Trav,” I whispered, taking a few quick steps forward.
Before I could touch him, however, there was a commotion at the door.
“Hannah Morton?”
I gritted my teeth.
I hated that I still had Joshua’s last name. I’d taken the step to change my name back to my maiden name, but then I’d met Travis. My hopes had heightened, and I thought it would be odd to change my name in case something more came of us.
So I’d left it alone.
Now I wished I’d changed it.
“Yeah?”
That’s when I saw the agent, as well as two uniformed officers, standing at the door.
One of them had cuffs in his hand.
“You’re under arrest for…”
There was a roaring in my ears, and I closed my eyes in defeat.
Rough hands went around my wrists, and I was turned to face the bed where
Travis was looking at me with horror in his eyes.
He started to get up, putting his hands on the bed where the white handles were, and I shook my head at him frantically.
“Don’t move!” I ordered. He stopped at my forceful tone. “Don’t do it. Don’t move. Be good.”
Travis opened his mouth, but before he could say another word, I was taken away.
Arrested.
Son. Of. A. Bitch.
I’d lose my nursing license.
I’d lose my concealed carry.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
My girls, however, were alive. Was I really losing here?
Chapter 28
Shhh, my coffee cup and I are having a moment. Come back later.
-Coffee Cup
Michael
I stomped up the steps of the police station—a sorry excuse for one, if my opinion was asked.
It wasn’t, but still.
“Where is Hannah Morton?”
That was asked to the first officer I found, which happened to be a woman who looked like she was afraid of just about anything—loud sounds, small dogs, rabbits. Possibly gerbils.
“Ummm,” she hesitated. “She’s in the cell in back.”
I passed her.
“Sir, you can’t go back there.”
I ignored her.
I had to make sure that she was okay before I found whatever motherfucker that’d arrested her, and gave him a piece of my mind.
It didn’t take me long to find her.
Hostel, Texas wasn’t a very big place, so it was no surprise that there were only two cells in the entire place.
At least they put my sister in a cell all by herself. If they’d put her in there with that drunk motherfucker that I could smell from the goddamn doorway, I’d have been pissed.
“Hannah Banana?”
Hannah was leaning forward, her hands on her knees, her feet planted on the floor. Her head was hung, and I could tell without actually seeing or hearing the words leaving her lips that she was saying something over and over in her head.
Her head snapped up, and she was on her feet in an instant.
“Is Travis okay?”
I nodded. “Yeah, from what I hear.”
Her eyes closed, and tears started to slip down her cheeks.
“Han.”
She opened her eyes, and they were swimming with tears.
“Thank God,” she said. “Did you go check on the girls?”
Go to Hail (The Hail Raisers Book 2) Page 18
