by Yvonne Heidt
She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the tall trees that ringed the perimeter of the playground. The streetlights lit the small area and the trees cast giant and twisted shadows.
A couple of teenagers were on the swings. She hadn’t even thought of the possibility there would be people around. She scanned the area for a place to hide from them as well as to find a good vantage point to spot Mark when he approached.
Tiffany listened to her intuition when she came upon some thick brush on the far side of the property. It was far enough that the teenagers wouldn’t spot her, but close enough that she felt she could surprise him.
Strangely, she wasn’t scared. It was a liberating feeling for her. With each passing moment, her senses became clearer and her focus narrowed to keeping her breath slow and even.
She refused to think about anything other than Mark. Tiffany looked to her memory and took out every humiliation, every painful blow he ever gave her, and drew strength from them for what she was about to do. She’d lived her life doing the best she could in any given situation, she took her spirituality seriously, and she never thought she would consider hurting someone on purpose. But that’s exactly what she was going to do. The implication of how easy the decision was for her would be handled later.
That is, if she made it through the confrontation.
An hour later, the teenagers left, and she was alone in the park.
One hour to go.
After twenty minutes, Tiffany shifted her position because her legs were falling asleep. She willed the pins and needles sensation away. She didn’t want it to affect her range of motion, and she would need to be quick.
She looked to her left when she heard a small rustle in the bushes. Of course, he would be sneaking in, she thought, but he would never have thought Tiffany would, or have the guts to do so.
The sound grew louder then faded as he moved off around the perimeter. Tiffany tracked him. She would need the perfect opportunity to catch him off guard. She hadn’t shot the pistol in over two years when she took her defensive training class, and there hadn’t been time to practice when she learned he was out of prison.
She would only get one opportunity to surprise him.
The park grew quiet, and Tiffany didn’t know where he was. Several minutes ticked by and she sat very still. Then she heard it. A small branch broke behind her and she leapt to her feet to swing her arm around to shoot the gun.
The blow hit the side of her head, and the last thing Tiffany saw was the ground coming up to meet her.
Chapter Thirteen
Kat woke and found she was alone in the bed. She got up to use the restroom, and when she was done, she peeked down the hall. The guest bedroom door was closed, and she assumed that Tiffany got back in bed with Angel. She didn’t think too much about it; they were in a new place and Angel may have been scared. Tomorrow they could talk about where they went from here. Maybe Kat could talk Tiffany into taking a trip to the East Coast. She didn’t imagine that Mark would have any means to follow them there. They could lie on the beach and watch Angel play in the waves. The nights would be for making love.
The room was cold, and Kat pulled on a pair of flannel pants and T-shirt before getting back into bed. She felt wonderfully sated, full of hope for the future, and had no problems falling quickly back asleep.
She dragged herself another foot through the mud and leaves before she flipped onto her back. Her body began to shiver from shock. Her teeth chattered painfully behind swollen lips.
She steeled herself to look at the wound that slashed across her abdomen. Her leather shirt gaped where the enemy had stabbed her. She was afraid to look because she felt the blood seeping through her fingers. The warmth of it was a direct contrast to the icy rain.
She felt heavy, exhausted with the effort to reach home.
Blood, there was so much blood. She grew languid as she stared at the sky. The noise of battle faded, then stopped.
She felt as if she were floating, but that was an illusion. The constellations slowly swam into unfamiliar patterns, blurring beyond recognition. She began to hum the lullaby her mother had taught her when she was a child.
She knew she was dying. Her heart ached with loss. She was too young; there was so much she hadn’t done yet. She cried out to the Goddess for help.
Her lover’s beautiful face swam amongst the stars. She had that smile on her face. The one she had after making love in the sacred forest grove under the light of a full moon.
She had to find her. She forced herself to her knees and began to crawl toward the sickly red glow over her village.
She didn’t want to die alone.
“Ow!”
Kat’s arms were tightly wrapped around a little body. She opened her eyes and saw Angel staring right back at her. Kat didn’t feel Tiffany behind her so she didn’t quite know what to make of the situation. “Good morning.”
Angel patted Kat’s face. “I had a bad dream too.”
Kat kissed her forehead. “I’m sorry, honey.” She could still feel the smoke burning in her lungs from the nightmare. The unimaginable loss she’d just relived again was tearing her heart into shreds.
“No Mommy. Where is she?”
Kat’s blood turned to ice in her veins as she tried not to panic. She didn’t want to show Angel how scared she was. She hoped her voice was calm and steady. “Let’s go find her, okay?”
Angel nodded and held her arms out for Kat to carry her. Kat picked her up and held her close while they left the room. She knew something was horribly wrong.
*
The horse galloped toward her in slow motion. Flowers burned at her side, and small sharp stones cut into her knees. Screams rent the air, echoing through her mind repeatedly. Steel glinted in the glow of a dozen fires, and blood ran in small rivers in front of her.
The thudding grew louder until she was aware only of the whites of the rider’s eyes and her breath. The sword arced into the air and then sliced downward. She closed her eyes against the impact.
Tiffany became aware of a woman weeping in the darkness. Helpless keening filled the air with despair and hopelessness that wrenched her heart. She wished someone would help her, do something to quiet her anguish. She fought to come out of the nightmare, tried to open her eyes, but something was wrong with them. They felt fused shut. She could only manage to lift them a few millimeters, enough to know there was no outside source of light in the room.
Panic began beating in her chest that had nothing to do with the dream. Her heart thudded against her ribcage. What was even more horrifying was realizing that the sobbing was her own. She fought to control it, tamped it down to small whimpers.
The more aware she became, the more her body racked with pain.
She moved slowly to try to sit up and gritted her teeth against the sharp pain in her ribs the motion caused. Fear and blind terror permeated the air in the space, stifling her attempts to question where she was. She couldn’t remember how she could have gotten here.
Darkness closed in around her, and she had a fraction of a second to be dimly aware she was going to lose consciousness again before she fell back.
*
“Maybe she went to the store, munchkin.” Kat stroked her hair and tried to soothe Angel’s worry. “To buy something for Mitt.”
“No,” Angel said. “The Rider has her.”
Chills threatened to overtake Kat’s composure, and the beating of her heart escalated until her blood pounded in her ears, but she knew she had to keep calm for Angel’s sake. “What can you see, sweetheart?”
Angel clutched the kitten. “It’s dark and scary.” Her little face twisted, and she began to cry. “I want my mommy.”
“I know you do. I do too.” Kat held her tight and carried her to the kitchen where she left her phone. “How about we call Nana and the aunties?” Kat desperately wanted to go out and search for her, but she couldn’t leave Angel alone. All her fighting instincts were turned on, and she w
anted to move, do something now. But she had no idea where to start. What happened?
“Okay. Can I feed Mitt the bottle now?”
“Yes, let me get it ready for you. I’m going to put you down on the couch, okay?”
Angel nodded and settled in the corner of the sofa with Mitt, who was purring softly. Kat was relieved that Angel seemed to be distracted.
She picked up her cell phone and was dismayed to find ten missed calls, all from Tiffany’s family. She checked and noticed the sound had been turned off.
Oh, sweet Mother of God, she left on purpose.
The intercom next to the front door rang, and Kat ran to answer the call from the doorman. “I have four distraught women who want to see you.”
The gratitude and relief she felt nearly knocked her to her knees. “It’s fine, James. Please send them up.” She left the front door open while she went into the kitchen to make the kitten a bottle.
She’d never felt so helpless in her life.
Aura walked in the door and headed straight to Angel. “I’m going to take her in the other room,” she said. “What do you have there, baby?”
“Her name is Mitt. I found her. She’s mine.”
“And I can tell she’s very special too. Show Nana your room, okay?”
“Are we going to find Mommy?”
“Of course we are. Come on. We’ll let the aunties take care of that, okay?” Aura nodded to Kat. “Call me if you need me.”
“Why the fuck are your phones turned off?” Shade stomped in.
“I didn’t do it. Tiff did.” Kat was numb. Sunny walked over to her, but it was apparent she wasn’t at all stable either. She was pale, and black mascara tracked dark tears down her cheeks and onto her white shirt.
“Listen to me,” Sunny said. “She’s alive. I would know if she weren’t.”
Kat looked into her eyes. Sound and space appeared to narrow down to a small box. Sunny was trying to give her hope, but she was having a hard time breathing against the thought of losing Tiffany. There was nothing in that box but grief, shards of glass that cut into her heart and twisted, leaving bloody pieces behind in its wake. She didn’t know how to survive it again.
Kat forced herself to continue looking into Sunny’s bi-color eyes, focusing first on the blue, then the green. Breathe. Again. Concentrate on the tasks and not the probable result. Gradually, the red in her vision cleared and the pounding of her pulse slowed enough for her to think.
She saw Jordan on the phone and knew she had to be talking to the authorities.
“She left her bag,” Shade said and dumped it on the counter. “We can look for clues.”
Sunny pulled out the blue notebook from the pile and flipped through it. “She wrote us good-bye letters.”
*
Tiffany came out of the darkness once again. This time she had better command of her heavy limbs and managed to put her hands to her face. She took an inventory. Her lips and cheeks were swollen and her nose felt off center. She knew without looking it was broken. The copper smell of blood nauseated her, and she felt her stomach roll.
The small room’s only window was boarded up, but a small sliver of light traveled through a crack, and fractured across the room to illuminate just two inches around her. She was in the corner, on cold concrete. Her fingernails were broken and dried rusty stains covered her hands. There wasn’t an inch of her body that didn’t hurt. She lay there for a moment and then slowly began the task of sitting up.
She finally managed to shift her leg but found she was held in place. She reached down and felt the rope around her ankle. She struggled with the knots, but they were too tight.
She was trapped.
In a basement.
Her skin began crawling. Tiffany forced herself to take a deep breath, and when she did, she almost passed out from the white-hot pain that stabbed her ribcage. Death permeated the air, and she struggled to breathe around it. All her senses were screaming there was evil here, real and definable malevolent intentions.
She closed her eyes. Suddenly, she knew exactly where she was and why she was there. She patted her sides and realized her coat had been stripped from her. She leaned to the side and heaved repeatedly.
Tiffany inched her way back from the mess to lie down. She fought to stay awake against the dark wave of pain, but when she blinked, her swollen eyes refused to reopen, and she went under again.
“Tiffany! You get over here right now.”
“No, please. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. I promise.”
“Spawn child. You know what happens when you break God’s Law.”
“No, Mommy.”
Her mother stood at the top of the stairs to the basement and pointed into the dark hole of the entry. “Get! When you’re down there, get on your knees and beg the Lord for forgiveness for your wicked ways.”
“But there are spiders down there!”
The slap sent Tiffany through the doorway and onto the landing.
The door shut, clicked, and she was alone in the dark.
*
Kat watched Shade approach, fierce determination carved into her features. “Where would Tiffany’s energy be the strongest here?”
She thought of the love they shared last night. “The master bedroom, at the end of the hall.”
“We’ll set up back there,” Shade said. She picked up Tiffany’s hairbrush and her own black bag on her way out.
Kat wasn’t psychic, and she felt helpless with this plan. “Shouldn’t we be out there looking?”
“We are going to search, Kat,” Sunny said. “With tools far different than the police have.”
Forty-eight hours, wasn’t that the general rule for finding a murderer? What about missing persons? How many hours before it turned into a homicide? As soon as Kat thought it, the ticking of a clock started in her mind. She would work under her own set of rules.
Her skin burned with the need to rip something apart, the desire to pummel someone for answers, but she needed a direction to go in. So for now, she would take Sunny and Shade’s lead, see what they were capable of, and decide what to do from there.
But when it was time to unleash, when she had a target—God help anyone who got in her way. There would be no mercy from her.
*
Tiffany was drowning. She beat her hands against the tub, aware of the pressure on the back of her head, the pain of her hair being pulled back. She felt the air hit her face and gasped before coughing up water. She was thrown onto the floor to her side.
She opened her eyes as much as the swelling would allow. A muscular man hovered over her. Her vision was blurry, but she managed to see well enough to know his head was shaved and covered with tattoos. She would have never recognized him like this.
“Wake up, cunt.”
The instant she heard his voice, her old fears crashed down around her.
“Surprised, Tiffany? Prison changes a man.”
She had no doubt of his intentions. He was going to kill her this time. Tiffany attempted to curl up into a ball to protect herself, and then folded her arms over her head. She pulled a vision of Angel’s face close to her. Her heart shattered at the thought of never seeing her baby again, never smelling the sweet spot on her tiny neck, never feeling her little arms come around her in an embrace.
“Did you think I wouldn’t see through your pathetic attempt to ambush me?”
Tiffany shook her head and felt hopelessness crush her spirit. It was as if the last five years had been turned back and she was lying in a puddle of blood on her own kitchen floor.
A roaring sound filled her ears. She could see his mouth moving but couldn’t hear the words.
Mark grabbed her chin painfully. “Listen to me when I’m talking to you, bitch.”
Tiffany tried to shake free, but his grip tightened and he twisted her face painfully.
“It’s time to pay for what you’ve done. You stole five years of my life.”
Wait a minute. The absolute
absurdity of his statement kindled a flame in her. It was tiny, but steady. How like him to blame her for his actions. How could she ever have thought she loved this monster? She searched his face for clues. What had changed between them?
A small very faint voice inside her answered.
“You have.”
Mark stood, and pain exploded in her back where he kicked her in the kidneys. Her head began swimming again and she saw telltale black dots that told her she was going to lose consciousness again. Tiffany sent out a silent plea.
Help me, Mother!
*
“I can’t just stand here. I have to do something.” Kat paced in the middle of her bedroom. She was so scared for Tiffany, she felt as if she were having an out of body experience. Five paces to the left, turn, eight to the right, turn again. She could still smell Tiffany on her skin and in the room, rich rosemary and earthy scents of the forest. The reminder spurred her to greater agitation. “What the hell was she thinking?”
Both Sunny and Shade looked up from their position on the floor where they held hands over a white candle’s flame. “Sacrifice,” they said in unison.
Kat’s helpless rage exploded. “Where are the fucking cops, Jordan?”
“We don’t have a crime yet, but I pulled some strings. They’re sending someone over.”
“We’re going to find her,” Sunny said firmly. “There is no other alternative that we will accept.” Her eyes filled. “Please, Kat, I’m trying to keep it together here. She’s our best friend and we love her. I can’t deal with your anger right now.”
Kat’s heart skipped a beat, then another. The pain in her torso threatened to fold her in two. How could this happen? God, it was the past overlapping with the present. She couldn’t let this play out again. She focused on the steely determination in Jordan’s eyes, and beat back the fear. Tiffany needed her. It was time to draw on the warrior she knew lived in her, through her. This was not the time to focus on the helplessness—it was the time to be fierce. She took a deep breath and stood straight.
“I can’t find her,” Shade said.
Sunny’s tears were falling freely. “I can’t either.”
