Matthew’s hand tightened on the handgun. He was ready to shoot, but reason prevailed. He popped open the magazine and saw that he only had one bullet left. He’d spent the rest of his bullets fighting his way out, trying to cover for Wyatt and Jade. Now he had no way to save his family.
Maybe he should just give himself up. Then they’d be together and he could try to beg for Samuel’s mercy. If he stayed in the shadow of the trees, he wasn’t sure how long he could stay hidden. His anger might get the better of him.
The sensible thing would be to wait until darkness fell and then attack Samuel. But darkness seemed like a lifetime away and it didn’t seem as if Nikki and Samuel were planning on taking hostages. At the same time, he couldn’t bring down Nikki and Samuel with only one bullet left in the chamber. What was he going to do?
Jade and Wyatt had said it best, hadn’t they? He needed to cut off the head of the snake. That was Samuel. Samuel was the greater threat, and probably the one who had the most experience with guns. Nikki might shoot Kathleen or Ruth or Allison, but she also might crumble if the leader of her gang was gone. Matthew braced himself against the tree and got ready to take out Samuel. He only had one shot. He had to make it count.
He scooted up until he was still covered by the trees, but able to have a clear shot at Samuel. If only the man wasn’t swaying so much. Matthew didn’t know if the man was drunk, but he looked like he might fall over at any moment. Matthew couldn’t be rash. He needed to wait for the perfect moment to fire. He let his breath ease out of him in one long sigh and prepared himself to take Samuel’s life. One shot. Only one chance.
His finger curled around the trigger. The safety had long been off. He readied himself to pull when Samuel was in sight, now only swaying slightly, only to jerk back when he heard another gunshot ring out and cut through the air. It was a louder bang, something from a shotgun instead of a handgun, and for a moment, Matthew whipped around, wondering if someone was aiming for him. He backed into the trunk, seeking shelter.
There was a splotch of red blooming on Samuel’s greasy coveralls. Samuel looked down at his chest as if in shock and dropped his shotgun. His hands reached up to touch the blood, and he raised his stained hands and looked at them as if he’d never seen them before. Who had shot him? Matthew looked around wildly, but could see no sign of anyone. Matthew’s heart thundered in his chest, making the blood roar in his ears. Nikki’s mouth widened with shock, and she took a step forward as if wondering if she should help him.
Even though Samuel had been shot, he was merely injured. He didn’t fall.
Matthew readied to fire again and complete the task. But at the same time, Kathleen reared an elbow back and caught Nikki in the jaw. Nikki staggered back, the barrel of the gun jerking up to the sky and away from the back of Allison’s head. Kathleen whipped around and punched Nikki again square in the face. Knocked back, the doctor staggered with a shriek of pain. The gun fell from her grip as she cupped her bleeding nose. Kathleen punched Nikki once more.
Allison whipped around and dove for Nikki’s dropped gun. Samuel bellowed, his voice laced with fury. With great pains, he bent down and retrieved the shotgun. He awkwardly brought it back up and aimed it at Ruth. Ruth screamed.
Without a second thought, Matthew leapt to his feet and bolted toward the group. His own voice joined Ruth’s cries as an endless war cry. Matthew had to get that shotgun away from his family. Aim it anywhere. Aim it at him.
Kathleen was still punching the daylights out of Nikki. Samuel swung the gun to focus on her. It was as if he didn’t even care that Matthew was in his line of sight. Matthew skidded to a stop and raised his own gun. He aimed straight for Samuel and fired. He barely felt the recoil with all the fear and adrenaline coursing through him.
His aim was true. Samuel jerked back and staggered once. Then he collapsed heavily to the ground. He didn’t twitch or move. Matthew knew he was gone.
Matthew sprinted for his family and held his arms out wide. He reached Allison and Ruth first and yanked them into a crushing embrace. Kathleen turned from Nikki, who was now on her knees in the dirt, and ran for Matthew. She joined their embrace. Matthew had tears falling from his eyes and he cried in relief.
The sound of the hotel’s front door slamming open brought the terror back to him. Even though his handgun was empty, he tried to push his family behind him and turned to face the new enemy coming for them. When he saw Patton bolting around the hotel with a rifle clutched in his hands, Matthew felt like the luckiest man in the world. His family was all here, uninjured, safe.
Patton’s eyes were wild with fear as he leaped into his father’s arms. “It was you,” Matthew said, getting a whiff of gunpowder that clung to his son. “You’re the one that shot Samuel.”
“I’m so sorry,” Patton sobbed and he sounded frantic. “I know I wasn’t supposed to touch the guns, but I had to, Dad I had to, they were going to kill Allison—”
“It’s okay,” Matthew said, holding Patton tightly. “You did the right thing. If you hadn’t, this whole situation would have played out much differently. I didn’t have enough ammo to take out Samuel. We did it together. You’re not in trouble.”
“I’m sorry, Dad,” Patton cried as if he still hadn’t fully processed what Matthew had said. Matthew hugged him all the more tightly. The rest of the Riley family embraced Patton until they stood in a circle, holding each other fiercely.
“You were so brave,” Matthew said to Patton. “You did everything right. You saved the day, Patton. You’re the hero.”
Patton looked up at him in awe and then burst into tears again. Allison shook as she hugged her brother. Matthew leaned back and kissed Kathleen.
“Where are Wyatt and Jade?” Kathleen asked when they parted.
Matthew didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want to recognize the dreaded possibility that they had perished defending the hotel. He opened his mouth to tell her his suspicions, but then Patton whooped in joy. “Wyatt!” Patton cried out. “Jade!”
Matthew turned around and saw two figures limping out from the direction of the well toward the hotel. He’d recognize Jade’s dark ponytail anywhere. Wyatt’s broad shoulders were slumped in pain, but somehow he managed to raise a hand in greeting. Matthew nearly fell to his knees in relief. As they got closer, he saw that Jade’s leather belt was cinched around Wyatt’s thigh, making a tourniquet.
When they approached, Matthew embraced both Wyatt and Jade. Wyatt made a pained noise and Jade pulled back with a shy grin before looking at the man writhing on the ground and then at Samuel’s motionless form. “Hey, we took out two other guys, too,” she said and then punched Matthew in the bicep. “Good thing I taught you how to fight, Riley.”
Matthew snorted a laugh. “Jade. I swear to god.” His words tangled up in his throat. “I thought you had died,” he finally managed to blurt out.
“Me? No way,” Jade said. “Although this Marine didn’t make things easy. Wyatt, you’re heavy.” She adjusted his arm around her shoulder.
“Sorry,” Wyatt said and then laughed wildly. “I thought we were going to die, too.”
“He’s delirious from blood loss,” Jade said, but when Matthew looked concerned she held a hand out. “Not really. He’s going to be fine, but we will need Nikki to look at it.”
“Well,” Matthew said, “there’s something you should know.”
Jade frowned and Matthew stood to the side so Jade could see the doctor sitting on the ground. Blood cascaded from her bruised nose and she had fallen into hysterical wailing.
“Nikki’s actually the reason all of this happened,” Matthew explained. “She was working with Samuel.”
Wyatt looked stunned. “That’s impossible,” he said. “I’ve known Nikki for years! She’d never do something like that.”
“Ask her yourself,” Matthew said. “She held my wife, daughter, and mother at gunpoint. She was going to let Samuel take over the hotel. At this point, I’d like some answers, too.”
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“Matt, I didn’t know, I swear—” Wyatt stuttered.
“It’s all right,” Matthew said. “We all trusted her. She put one over on all of us. Now, I want to know why.” He took a few steps closer to Nikki and then knelt in front of her. “Time to tell us everything,” he said to her, “and I mean everything.”
33
“I’m so sorry,” Nikki gasped through her tears. Her frantic sobbing seemed to grab her and steal her breath and voice. Matthew frowned in concern. He believed the doctor was on the verge of hyperventilating. Her sentences were broken and didn’t make much sense, but it seemed as if she kept apologizing for what she’d done.
“I’m so sorry,” Nikki tried again. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m such an idiot. I’m so sorry.” Hitching weeping cut her off again.
Matthew’s compassion had been destroyed. At this point, he wasn’t sure he could feel empathy for someone who had tried to take his home and family from him. “What exactly are you sorry for?” he demanded. “You held my family at gunpoint. You tried to help Samuel take over the hotel. I bet you murdered my father while you were at it!”
Nikki looked at him in shock and despair. “No, I would never. I never hurt David, I swear. I never did!”
“But you thought it was okay to point a gun at my daughter?” Matthew asked, feeling his blood rise. “You thought it was okay to hold my wife and mother at gunpoint and let Samuel try and shoot them?”
“He said no one was going to get hurt,” Nikki gasped. Her face was red and her eyes were swollen from both the beating and her own weeping. “He promised.”
“Samuel’s promises mean nothing,” Matthew spat. “If you don’t want us to throw you to the wolves, you better explain yourself right now. The only reason I’m giving you that chance is because I have to believe you wouldn’t hurt my father. He’d want to know why you acted in such a heinous way. I’m doing this for his sake.”
“We trusted you,” Kathleen hissed from behind him. “I trusted you!”
Nikki looked devastated. “I know,” she stuttered out between breaths. “I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t want to hear your apologies,” Kathleen said. “Tell us why you betrayed us!”
Nikki started to cry again. Huge wracking sobs shuddered through her body. She started to speak, but it all sounded like a garbled mess to Matthew. He couldn’t understand what she was saying.
“Calm down,” he said. “You need to calm down. Take in a couple of breaths.” He did so himself and watched as the doctor latched onto his instruction and followed his breathing techniques. She wiped blood away from her nose, and probed at her jaw tenderly.
“I’m sorry,” she said again and then covered her face with her hands before another wave of sobbing overtook her.
Matthew glanced back at Kathleen. Kathleen’s face was hard as stone. She crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow at Matthew. Matthew knew she would have no mercy in her until Nikki fessed up or at the very least explained herself.
Allison had her arms around Patton and Ruth. Jade had eased Wyatt down to sit on the ground with his back to the hotel, and she was adjusting the tourniquet. Matthew needed Nikki to explain herself soon. Even though Matthew couldn’t trust Nikki at all, she was the only doctor they knew. He had to get her to calm down and at least help them tend Wyatt. If Kathleen’s mercy had been exacerbated by the doctor, it was up to Matthew to try to reach her. He had to be kind to get Nikki to open up.
He put a gentle hand on Nikki’s shoulder. She looked up at him in shock. “Calm down,” he said again. “Please. We need to understand why you did what you did. I think you owe that to us.”
Nikki nodded in agreement and her face crumpled into a look of misery. She took in a couple of deep breaths until her crying subsided from frantic wailing to controllable sniffling. She studied the Riley family with soft, sad eyes. Her look reminded him of when he’d first forced Jade to leave after she’d come back to the hotel. Somehow, Nikki knew she’d done an awful, terrible thing. She knew that she would never be forgiven for it. Yet she was ready to lay all her cards out on the table and put herself at their mercy and judgment.
Matthew decided to help her start her story. “You sabotaged the garden, didn’t you?”
Nikki let out a soft sob. “Yes,” she said. “I tore it up. I used a rake and a shovel and pulled up all of the herbs and vegetables.”
“Why?” Allison cried out from behind Matthew. “We worked so hard on it!”
“I know it was a terrible thing to do,” Nikki said and she looked up and past Matthew to Wyatt. “I’m so sorry.”
“Why would you do that, Nikki?” Wyatt asked in a soft voice. “We trusted you. I never imagined in a million years you’d be the one responsible for all of this.”
Nikki’s lip trembled. Matthew feared she was going to backslide into hysterics. He patted her shoulder and tried to get the doctor to refocus on him. “When did you do it?”
“In the morning, before you all got up,” she said. “The kids were sleeping. David was having a rough night so it made sense that I was staying at the hotel to watch out for him. It took five minutes to destroy the garden. By the time everyone was awake, I was back in David’s room.”
“You ruined the well rigging, too.” Matthew said in a flat voice. “How did you ruin the rope like that?”
Nikki shuddered. “I had a kitchen knife,” she said. “Left over from one of David’s meals. I took it out after everyone had gone to sleep, and frayed the rope enough to ruin the integrity. Then I put the knife back on the table where I knew Ruth or Kathleen would find it and clean it and put it away. No one would think it was weird that a kitchen knife was missing or that it suddenly turned up.” Nikki paused and wiped her nose again. “No one really paid attention to me. I had one purpose here at the hotel and that was caring for David. No one really ever defied me ’cause I have that hard attitude. I had to be here for David and that was that. It was easy to destroy everything. You all trusted me.” She said this last part as if it was agonizing.
Matthew knew she wasn’t bragging about her tasks. Each sentence seemed as if it was being ripped out of her very soul. Her face screwed up with agony, not just because of her bruised face, but because she seemed to hate what she had done.
“Why would you do all that?” he asked softly. “You knew we trusted you. You had Wyatt’s endorsement and we didn’t question that. We’re all good people. Why would you do all of those things for someone like Samuel?”
Nikki dissolved into another bout of tears.
“You betrayed Wyatt and the gun club. I know they were like family to you,” Kathleen said from behind him. “Even if you didn’t care about us, why would you betray Wyatt’s trust like that?”
“More importantly,” Matthew said, “what did Samuel have on you?”
Nikki looked again at Matthew as if he had somehow peered into her soul and knew the ins and outs of her personality. She broke into sobbing again and it seemed as if she wasn’t able to control her emotions.
“It’s because of the pills, isn’t it?” Jade said, standing up from her spot next to Wyatt. “You’re some kind of druggie or have some kind of addiction.”
Matthew looked at Jade in confusion. “How do you know that?”
“When we went to the hospital when David first got sick,” Jade explained. “We were looking for medical supplies in one of the hospital rooms. I watched Nikki take a pill bottle and swallow a couple of them. She changed after that. Not a lot, but enough to show that she’d been exposed to those kinds of drugs before. They had an effect on her. Then, Wyatt had said something about Samuel dealing drugs, or being involved in drugs in some way. I hadn’t thought the two were related until now.”
Nikki closed her eyes and dropped her head in shame. “You’re right,” she said, sounding defeated. She ran her hands through her shoulder-length hair, spreading grime and blood through the strands as she tried to keep breathing normally. “Yes, you’re rig
ht, Jade. I’m addicted to pain medication. I’ve been addicted for a while now. I used to steal medications from the hospital and go home and take them. They helped me mellow out and sleep.”
For a moment, Matthew thought Nikki was going to dissolve into tears again. But this time, she closed her eyes as if gathering her courage and continued.
“When I took them, I didn’t worry so much about patients dying or about what the next day of horrors would bring. I didn’t have to live with the aching back and feet, or the migraines that nearly took me out for days at a time. But my addiction got worse after the EMP hit. There was so much happening all the time. So many people were dying.”
Nikki swallowed hard and continued. “But that’s when things got even worse. I knew there was a finite supply of pills. I was more dependent on them than ever to simply function. I never went to work high, though. I swear to you. I was always in control when I treated people, but soon enough we were always running from one dire problem to the next. At some point, I had to take the pills to numb myself to everything. Then I couldn’t handle it anymore and I had to leave.”
Matthew didn’t say anything. He couldn’t contradict her story. If she was lying to him about being on pain medication while she was at work, he didn’t see the point in fighting her on it. To him, it sounded like a way to justify her addiction, but it wasn’t his place to argue with her intentions. “What else?” he urged. “What happened next?”
Nikki took another deep breath, and it seemed that the hysteria was slowly leaving her, even though she was hanging onto her calm demeanor by a thread. “The EMP meant that my supply of medication would be cut short. Within a week, we were already trying to figure out ways we could live without medicine. I couldn’t keep taking it away from patients who really needed the medicine. That left me facing possible withdrawal.” She shuddered, as if the very word gave her chills. “I knew I couldn’t keep taking the medicine for myself. So I went to Samuel.”
EMP Catastrophe | Book 3 | Erupting Chaos Page 22
