“Are you good?”
“Give me a minute, would ya? I’m kind of working with a broken leg here, pal.” I groaned as I sat back down on my ass. The water was hitting the bench and spraying cold water in my direction, sending a hard shiver up my spine and goose bumps down my arms. Resigned, I pulled the towel off the bench and did my best to cover up my girl parts.
“Okay, I give up.” I sighed deeply, shaking my head. “I need your help.”
“Are you covered?” Brody had the decency to ask.
“Yes. You can come in.” I hung my head in shame with a sopping wet towel covering all my girly bits.
A few seconds later, he pulled the glass door open and stepped in, barefoot with his jeans rolled into cuffs. The black v-neck shirt he’d been wearing was off and damn, the display. Broad-muscled chest, carved abs, magnificent arms and that treasure trail. Well, shit.
“Why are you all the way over here?” He seemed confused.
“I was trying to get to that razor,” I said, lifting my chin toward the shallow shelf set into the wall.
“I don’t think you need to worry about shaving your legs today.”
Ugh. If only. Do men have no clue that women shave about half of their body?
“No, not my legs.”
His eyes waxed and his smile grew.
“No, you big perv,” I chuckled, “my underarms. I needed to shave my underarms. If I don’t, it’ll start to itch. But at this point, I don’t care. Please just get me off this cold, hard tile,” I whined—yes, whined—as I prepared to be hoisted into his strong arms, against his toned, muscular chest.
Without any additional commentary, he picked me up and cradled me to his body. He stepped cautiously over the wet tiles, out of the shower and to the tufted bench. He sat me down then turned and walked over to the tall, floor-to-ceiling cabinet and retuned with a dry towel. “Here. I’ll be just outside. Don’t get any more bright ideas.”
“Thanks.” Solicitous but annoying.
“Anytime, sweetness.” He turned and walked out, pulling the door almost closed behind him. I was coming to the conclusion that around Brody, privacy was no more than an illusion. If he was as controlling as he seemed, he probably had a whole dossier dedicated to me and my horror of a mother.
But each and every time he called me sweetness, he made my insides turn to Jell-O with a side of butterflies.
***
Finally, at nine a.m., someone at the orthopedic surgeons’ office answered their phone and I was able to secure an appointment for later that morning. Sadly, I had to go back to the hospital I had just left the day before.
I hated hospitals. They smelled of death cloaked in overwhelming dread and tinged with antiseptic and heartbreak. And let’s not forget the food. Vile.
Brody had an appointment at the office he was unable to reschedule, so Aunt Jane and I struck out at eight thirty with those damned crutches after he carried me out to her SUV. We made small talk until we didn’t.
“I’m sorry that you’re going to miss the show circuit, darling. I know how excited you were,” Aunt Jane said, patting my hand with an apologetic smile.
She had heard me yesterday when I tried to call my boss. I didn’t reach Mr. Ted, rather my friend Jeff. He had been in the barn taking care of Pu when I called. He assured me my job would be there when I was able to return, but he thought it best that I take the three months off like the doctor suggested. I was beyond devastated. He promised to have his dad call me later. Now I dreaded the phone ringing.
“Thanks, Aunt Jane. Can you please help me remember that I need to get copies of my records before we leave? I need to take them with me when I go back home.” I stared out the window, thinking toward the future.
“Certainly, but I thought you were going to stay a little while longer?” she asked with a furrowed brow, confused.
“No… I never said I was staying longer. Why would you think that?” The question came out more harshly than I had intended, and immediately I regretted my tone.
“Well, Brody said—”
“Brody said what exactly?”
She stared, silently chastising me for my uncouth interruption.
“Sorry, Aunt Jane. That was disrespectful. Please continue.”
“As I was saying”—she turned her eyes back to the road as the light turned green—“Brody said that with the surgery option not completely off the table yet, he thought it would be best if you stayed here. With us.”
“Well, I’m glad he knows what’s best for me now. Maybe it would have been nice to share his opinion with me so I could tell him to go to hell. I make my own decisions. I don’t need some bull-in-a-china-shop man telling me what I am or am not going to do.” I looked back out the window. “Who does he think he is?”
“He thinks he’s the man that should be taking care of you since you were hurt at his home on his horse. He feels responsible, dear.” Her words took a minute to hit home.
He felt responsible for my accident.
Was that why he was waiting on me hand and foot? Because he felt guilty?
God, I was so stupid and naïve to think he was coming in there because he wanted to be close to me. Instead, he was there because of guilt.
Great.
All of the flirting and little touches, were just that. Flirting. Lust. Nothing more.
This is not a fairy tale, Em. You’re not his Cinderella and he’s not your Prince Charming.
Fairy tales did not exist. Ever. We don’t believe in fairy tales, remember?
For the rest of the ride Aunt Jane was silent, giving me time to beat myself up for letting my heart convince me that there was more going on with Brody than there really was.
We arrived to the appointment with a few minutes to spare. Hobbling along, I used the crutches to get myself in and out of the building. When I got back to the house, I’d refuse to let him carry me around anymore. I didn’t want his pity or his guilt.
During the appointment, they took more X-rays to check the position of the fractures. I had been diligent in icing and taking ibuprofen to help decrease the swelling.
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Miss Lennox, but this really needs to be pinned. Probably six or seven small screws, maybe a plate or two and one long screw right about here,” The orthopedist, said, running her finger along the computer monitor that displayed my broken leg and ankle. “The break that is a little higher up should heal on its own.”
“What break higher up?” I asked, shocked at what she was telling me.
“Here, along the border of the tibia. Luckily, it’s a small, clean fracture. I’m guessing they did not see this one yesterday,” Dr. Witten surmised.
“No.”
“I will get my nurse to come in and get you scheduled for surgery. The sooner the better. Do you have any questions?”
“Not that I can think of right this minute,” I said with a shrug.
“Okay, good. If that should change, don’t hesitate to call me. I’ll see ya soon,” she said, smiling. Using the wireless mouse, she clicked the top right corner and closed the screen before tipping her head and leaving the room.
“Ugh, I had really hoped I could avoid surgery,” I told my aunt as I rubbed my forehead, trying to smooth the skin and push away the worries at the same time.
“I know, honey. I’m so sorry.”
Thirty minutes later, we were on our way back to Brody’s house. As we were driving on a single-lane road, Jane kept looking up into her rearview mirror. All of the sudden she gunned the engine and we took off.
“What’s wrong? Why do you keep checking the rearview?”
“I think that black, tinted SUV back there is following us. They’ve made all of the same turns as we have,” she said. Looking out the windshield, I saw a tan Volkswagen about fifty feet ahead. The roads still had several puddles along the side and they sprayed the shoulder as we hit them. “Hold on.”
All of a sudden Aunt Jane slammed on the breaks then whipped t
he car right onto a narrow side street. Doing my best to turn around, I watched as the black large SUV continued past. “See, they kept going. No one is following us, Aunt Jane.”
“Well, Brody told me all about what’s going on with those guys from the barn. How they’ve been threatening you.”
“Oh.” I wasn’t sure what to say. Half of it was true. He had just omitted the parts about being in a drug cartel led by my great-uncle Carlos.
She put the car into reverse, made a three-point turn then got back on the road to continue home. Just as were passing by the local pharmacy, I spotted the black SUV in the parking lot. We caught a red light at the next crossroads. I looked in the passenger-side mirror and noticed the SUV pulling out into traffic, once again, behind us.
“SUV just pulled out behind us again,” I alerted Jane as I felt my heart begin to race. Panic was setting in. Once I realized they had pulled over and waited, I knew they were after me.
“Call Brody. Now,” my aunt demanded as she turned on to Maybank Highway. “He’ll know what to do.”
I pulled the phone from my handbag, went through the contacts until I found Brody. As the phone rang, I kept my eyes locked on the SUV via the passenger mirror. It continued to follow us, three cars back. Finally, I heard his voice and put him on speaker.
“Hey Em, what’s up? How was—” His voice was deep and warm before I interrupted.
“Brody, we are on Maybank and there is a black SUV following us,” I blurted out.
“Shit,” he cursed under his breath. “Where on Maybank are you? Give me landmarks or street names,” he growled.
“We just passed by Fat Hen, Brody,” Jane told him.
“Okay, keep driving but don’t come here. Start making turns to see if you can lose them, but whatever you do, don’t stop. I’ll come find you. Stick to main roads,” he directed.
He hung up and I stared at the phone, unable to move, terrified into stillness. My mind wandered and what-ifs started playing like a horror movie inside my head. What if they were really after me? What would they do to me if they did catch us? Were the guys following us Rico and Gigantosaurus? Were they sent after me by my mom? Would they take me to her or would they kill me?
Aunt Jane’s voice stirred me back to the here and now. “Emmery? Are you listening to me?”
Shaking loose the questions that clogged my brain, I looked at her. “What? I’m sorry, I was just thinking. What did you say?”
“I said to pull up your map on your phone. I want to make sure I don’t turn down a dead end.”
Looking up I saw that we’d driven past the road we normally turned down to get to Brody’s house and were now driving through dense woods. I opened the maps app and found a long road that eventually connected back to the road we were on. “Okay, in about a half mile there is a road on the right, Bears Bluff Road. It’ll go down and then we can turn left onto McCollough Dam Road, which will bring us back out on to this road.”
“Call Brody and tell him where we are going,” Aunt Jane directed as we approached the fork in the road and veered to the right, effectively turning onto Bears Bluff.
I got Brody back on the phone and gave him the plan. Once we got back to the main road we retraced the path we were on previously and he said he would fall in behind our tail.
They were still hanging back about a hundred yards or so and they had to know that we were on to them. Surely, they weren’t that stupid. We had already made an evasive turn earlier. Those thoughts quickly left my mind when I looked back and saw the SUV closing ground. And quickly.
“They’re speeding up. We’ve gotta go faster. Make sure your seatbelt is pulled tight,” Aunt Jane said as she pushed the accelerator to the floor and we went from thirty-five miles per hour to fifty-five in a blink of an eye.
Glancing over my shoulder from the passenger seat, I saw the SUV at the rear quarter-panel, trying to come around us. “Oh God, they’re coming around us.”
Jane had a death grip on the steering wheel and was starting to panic. “Call Brody back. Now.”
“You got me.”
“They are right beside us now, like they are going to pass us.” I tried to keep the hysterics out of my voice.
“Keep calm and slow down. How fast are y’all going?”
“I don’t know,” I spit out before I looked at the cluster of gauges in front of Aunt Jane. “Fifty-five or so.”
“Slam on the brakes and see what they do. I’m on Bohicket Road, coming that way.”
Aunt Jane looked at me, silently asking if I was ready. I nodded and braced as best I could.
With both feet, she stomped on the brake pedal, almost stopping us dead in our tracks. I looked out the windshield and saw that the SUV was now in front of us and they had also slammed on their brakes.
Shit, this is not good!
“What did they do?” Brody asked.
“They’ve stopped.”
“Wait until you see a door open up, then gun it. Go around them and get back out to Bohicket. Stay on the phone and for the love of God, be careful,” he ordered.
“They aren’t getting out. Can you see anything through those tinted windows?” Aunt Jane kept her left foot on the brake and the other hovered above the accelerator, ready and waiting.
“No. Nothing. I don’t see any movement.”
The seconds ticked by as we waited to see if someone was going to get out of the car. And those seconds felt like hours. Finally, the driver’s side door opened and Jane gunned it, just as Brody had demanded. The squeal of the wheels told Brody we were again moving.
“God damn it,” he shouted into the phone, followed by a guttural noise that could only be described as a feral growl.
We passed by the black vehicle just as Rico Suave shouted and jumped back into the car, gun in hand.
“Oh, God, he’s got a gun. Go, go, gooooo,” I screamed at Aunt Jane, like the higher my pitch was the faster the car would go. I knew it was ludicrous but I was in a panic. Nothing made sense.
The faster we went, the more terrified I was, but Aunt Jane had managed to put a little bit of distance between the two vehicles.
“I’m on Maybank now, get to McCollough and turn left, come toward me,” Brody told us.
“What are you going to do?” I asked as I turned in my seat to see where they were now. “Shit, they’re right on our bumper.”
Just as the last word crossed my lips, they rammed us from behind, sending Jane’s SUV lurching forward.
We both screamed.
Jane scrambled with the wheel and managed to keep us on the road.
“What the fuck happened?” Brody hollered.
“They bumped us,” Jane said with a shaky voice.
“What the hell do they want? Jesus, this is fucking insane,” I blubbered, looking back. “They are catching up again.”
“I’m going as fast as I can without wrecking us.”
“Go faster. They’re going to—”
They ran into the back of us again, harder than last time. This time, it shot us forward and to the right, onto the flat grassy shoulder. Gripping the armrest and the handle above the door, I braced myself and began to silently pray to God to save us.
Jane screamed as she tried desperately to correct the wheel and get us back on the road. After turfing the shoulder for a good twenty yards, she was able to get us back on paved ground as she chanted. “We’re not gonna die. We’re not gonna die.”
“Are you both okay?” I heard Brody’s voice ask from the floor. In my panic, I’d dropped the phone to be able to hold myself in place in case Jane lost control of the vehicle. Quickly, I let go and grabbed for the phone that was just out of reach. “Can you hear me?” Brody shouted into the phone.
Using my crutch, I slid it closer until I could finally reach it. Grabbing it, I dropped the crutch and answered him. “We’re here. I dropped the phone. They are trying to run us off the road.”
“I’ve texted Drew, he’s called his buddies at Charlest
on County and they are sending units but they aren’t going to be here for five minutes.”
“We don’t have that much time,” Jane told Brody.
Looking back once more, I saw them at the quarter panel yet again. “They’re going to hit us again.”
And they did. The back of the car went one way and the front another. No amount of correction could fix us. We were shoved perpendicular to the road, and in the blink of an eye we were upside down. Airbags went off from all around us, essentially cocooning us in like caterpillars.
We continued to flip so many times that I lost count just before I blacked out.
Chapter Seventeen
~Brody~
“They’re going to hit us again,” Emmery screamed into the phone, sounding horrified.
That was the last thing I heard before the screams started. After a few seconds the line went completely silent then I heard screeching tires.
“Emmery. Jane,” I yelled into the phone. “Can you hear me?”
Silence.
Hollering again, I called to them. I was answered with more silence.
“Please, God, let them be okay,” I prayed.
I sped down the road and came up to the split that was Bears Bluff Road. Slowing down to make the turn, I listened to the sound of crunching glass come through the phone. They were still three miles away. I pushed the accelerator down even further.
“Esta viva?” a male voice asked if she was alive.
“Yeah,” another male who sounded closer answered.
“Asgala y vamonos, ahora. Rapido.” The first voice demanded he grab her and go.
“What about her?” The closer voice.
“Déjala. Ella es inútil. No vio nuestras caras.” The second voice told the first to leave her, that she had not seen them.
The voices ceased but the crunching glass continued and other audible noises that I couldn’t make out. Then the silence returned.
Two miles to go.
His Redemption Page 16
