by Elise Faber
So, I sat in the corner and watched the sun go down beyond the skylights.
“Here.”
I glanced up and saw Cal had extended a bag of pretzels in my direction. I took them in my lap. “Thanks,” I murmured, but I didn’t eat anything from the open bag, only reached my hands in until he turned away, and then stashed the bag behind me.
I wasn’t eating or drinking anything from this place.
Leaning my head against the wall, I stared back up at the skylights. I was in a strange sort of euphoria. Nothing hurt any longer, and while I was cold, I couldn’t seem to muster up the energy to care about it.
I wondered if I was going into shock and if Rob somehow managed to find me—maybe track my phone—if I was going to die anyway.
The tourniquet on my thigh meant that I wasn’t gushing blood, but I did have a steady drip that kept the cotton of my pajama pants wet and sticky. Add in my feet and my wrist—now purple and swollen—and I hardly felt human.
Which was probably why I didn’t scream when I saw the shadow peer through the window.
Some angel of death had come to take me away.
Or not, I thought and blinked up at a man I’d only seen once.
Danny. From the security company.
I squinted and leaned forward, but Danny shook his head, raised a finger to his lips, and disappeared from sight.
That cold lethargy disappeared, and despite half my brain deciding that I had imagined the whole thing, the rest of me got ready.
I was down a leg, one arm, and the bottoms of both feet. But my ankles weren’t bound, and I had the screwdriver down my pants.
By the way, that was a terrible euphemism that nearly made me snort aloud.
Not that the room at large would have heard it because the moment I thought it, the front doors blew open. My mother screamed, Celeste grabbed a gun off the rack and began firing through the wall. Cal picked up a pistol and crouched in front of me, eyes moving between the disturbance at the front and the back doors.
What neither of them saw or heard were the windows shattering and the men rappelling in through the ceiling.
I’d not have believed something could be so efficient or rapid if I hadn’t witnessed it with my own eyes, but I did see it, and it was amazing.
One tackled Celeste from behind, ripping the gun out of her hands and using his size advantage to pin and then handcuff her wrists and ankles.
Not so nice, was it bi-otch? I thought before my attention was pulled to Cal and the two men who were working to subdue him.
Blows were exchanged nearly faster than I could track, and he seemed to just be getting the advantage of one of the men when Danny grabbed him from behind in a choke hold and took him to his knees.
Thirty seconds later, he matched Celeste and was cuffed hand and foot.
Danny turned to me. “Are you—?”
“Where is she?” Rob thundered, sprinting through the debris at the front of the house. Hayden trailed him, the police chief two steps behind.
I opened my mouth. “I’m—”
The arm around my throat and the gun pressed to my temple cut off my greeting.
“Stop right there,” my mother said, and I felt the click against my skull as she turned off the gun’s safety.
“Sonya,” Rob began.
“Where’s the fucking money?” my mother screamed, and when I jumped she pushed the barrel even harder against my skin. “Shut up,” she hissed and asked again, “Where is the money?”
“Sonya,” Rob said, taking a step toward us.
“Don’t move a muscle, Robert,” she spat. “You were always an interfering little shit, and this is no different. You couldn’t take Celeste’s warning with that dumb dog of yours. No, you had to keep pushing and because of you Cal missed his chance at a drop.” The gun came off my head, pointed at Rob. “You cost us fifty million, you son of a bitch.” The barrel returned to my temple, dug in violently. “And just when we’d had you set up to take the fall, you had to go to the FBI.”
“Where your husband works,” Rob said softly.
I hadn’t even known my mother was married again. I’d lost track of the number of husbands, in all reality. But it would have been really helpful to know she’d had an FBI spouse named Cal before Rob and the chief had gone to seek the government’s help.
“You should have gone to ATF,” I muttered. Or any other organization besides the FBI.
Rob’s mouth quirked at the corner. “I agree.”
“Shut up!” my mother screamed and yanked me to my feet.
I cried out in pain and collapsed to the floor.
“Stop being such a baby. The drugs on those pretzels should have you flying by now.”
Except I hadn’t eaten the pretzels.
Except the screwdriver and my phone had fallen from my underwear.
“Get up!” She yanked at my hair, and I barely had time to grip the screwdriver in both hands and get my good leg under me before the gun was back at my temple.
“The money’s not coming,” I said, shifting my weight slightly as I rearranged the screwdriver.
“Miss,” Rob warned
I shook my head, twisting my shoulders to look up at my mother.
“You’re always looking for that easy payday,” I told her. “But I can tell you this time that it’s not coming.”
“Hate to contradict you, Melissa,” Danny said. He tossed a duffle bag on the ground. “But the payday is here.”
“Open it,” my mother ordered as I slowly shifted my head from the gun. She still had a handful of my hair, but there was nothing to be done about it.
Especially when I saw Danny hesitate and knew the bag was only a distraction.
One deep breath and I moved.
Using a technique Rob had taught me long ago, I rotated under my mother’s arm and brought the screwdriver up hard.
My hair ripped and my scalp was on fire. The tip of the tool met resistance . . . then that resistance was gone.
The screwdriver slid home.
I screamed and let go, falling to the floor as the men ran forward and grabbed my mother.
But I knew before I saw the empty, unseeing eyes.
I knew she was gone. Forever.
45
“Here we meet again, huh?” Haley, the nurse who’d cared for me on my previous hospital visit said.
I made a face. “Not that I don’t like you, but . . .”
She grinned. “I think you’re just trying to get out of that cooking class you promised.”
I laughed. “Get out of and cooking are words that I’ve never uttered.”
It had been three days since the incident at the old McKinney barn, just over seventy-two hours since—
I closed my eyes against the bile that seemed to rise every time I remembered the incident, and since I seemed to be remembering the events every minute of every day . . .
“How’s the pain?” Haley asked.
I peeled back my lids, watching her as she probed the bandage just above my knee and checked those on the soles of my feet. “It’s fine,” I said. “Nothing is hurting too badly.”
She touched the splint covering my right wrist, glanced up at my face until my gaze locked with hers. “I didn’t mean the physical pain.”
“Oh.” My eyes filled. “I’m okay. I just—”
“Am reliving it every second of every day?” she asked.
“Well . . .” I tore my eyes away, stared up at the ceiling. “Yeah.”
“Don’t let it fester, okay?” she said. “Promise me you’ll talk to someone about it.”
I tilted my head so I could look at her again. “You sound like you speak from experience on that.”
Pink lips pressed together, and her pale skin went a shade lighter, making the freckles on her nose and cheeks stand out in sharp relief. But she didn’t shy away from the eye contact. Instead, she straightened her shoulders and nodded. “You’d be right.” She fussed with her ponytail. “It was
a long time ago, but time doesn’t always make everything go away.”
“I—” But my words were cut off by a knock on the door.
“Hey,” Rob said, and my heart fluttered. Like it used to, like it was filled with butterflies.
“Hi,” I said and couldn’t find the words to say anything else. I just stupidly stared at him.
“I’ll see you soon.” Haley squeezed my shoulder. “Don’t forget what I said.”
“I won’t.”
Rob came into the room, plunking himself in the chair at my bedside. The chair he’d refused to leave from the moment I’d come out of surgery, until I’d forced him out of it that morning in order to go home and shower.
“How are the kids?” I asked.
“Anxious to see you again.” They’d come yesterday when I finally felt like I wouldn’t scare them.
I swallowed hard. After I’d stabbed my mother—no, Sonya, because she was no mother to me—the tourniquet around my leg had given way, and I’d lost a lot of blood really fast.
It had apparently been touch and go there for a while, Justin working on me in the back of a police car as Rob had rushed me to the hospital.
In some ways, I felt lucky that I’d passed out and hadn’t been awake during those frantic moments.
I had enough nightmares to last me.
“Will you bring them after school?” I asked.
He smiled. “Only way I could get them to agree to go in the first place.”
“They love school.”
“They love you more.”
I sniffed, felt my eyes well. “No fair. I’m supposed to be keeping fluids in, not losing more.”
Rob’s face sobered, and he went very, very still.
“What?” I asked.
His gaze dropped to the bed, and he picked up my uninjured hand, laced his fingers through it.
“I thought I’d lost you,” he said softly.
“Justin wouldn’t have let that happen,” I said.
“Not then.”
The serious tone of the words made my breath catch. “We almost lost each other, Rob.”
He shook his head. “I—”
There was another knock at the door, interrupting his words, though I almost felt it was timely.
Because I had the feeling this conversation was one that Rob and I were going to need to have many times over.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” came a male voice.
“Sam!” I exclaimed.
The vet walked into the room, glanced at Rob and my interlaced hands, and smiled. “I heard that you’re going to be discharged tomorrow and wanted to talk to you about Rocco.”
My stomach clenched. “Is he okay?”
Sam put a hand up. “Totally fine. He’s been staying at my house because I wanted to make sure you guys were ready for him. Do you want me to keep him a few more days? Or to bring him over tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow,” both Rob and I said.
Sam nodded. “Okay then. I’ll just head back to the clinic—”
“A word?” Rob said.
“I don’t—” I began, but Sam said, “Sure.”
Rob stood, pressed a kiss to my lips. “I’ll be right back. Outside,” he said to Sam once he got closer.
“I—”
But they were gone, through the door, and I couldn’t follow them.
“Ugh,” I muttered and stared up at the television screen. It was on Tammy’s food channel, a celebrity chef whipping up a meal for her closest friends. The sight of the lovely cranberry, apple, and brie-laced bread was almost enough for me to forget about the fact that my husband may be coming to blows in the hallway with our vet.
I tried to convince myself it would be fine. Though Rob had been stiff and quiet, he hadn’t been angry.
Or at least I hadn’t been able to feel his rage as though it was a tangible thing, like the last couple of times they’d interacted.
I forced my gaze to the TV, tried to think of how I’d modify the recipe, and just was really beginning to worry when Rob stepped back into the room.
“Is everything—?”
“Everything is fine, Miss,” he said. “Sam and I just needed to come to terms with a few things.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “What things?”
One half of Rob’s mouth curved. “He was the one who spotted you being pulled from the trunk of the car on McKinney land.”
“What?” All thoughts of bread disappeared. “How?”
“Luck,” he said. “Sam was seeing to some injured calves on the Sinclair Ranch. It wasn’t a place anyone would normally be.” His voice gentled. “But we’re lucky he was.”
I nodded and knew that someone had been looking out for me that day. Normally, I wasn’t religious or spiritual or whatever, but I couldn’t explain away the feeling that I’d been slightly more than lucky.
Sometimes things just worked out.
“So I was thanking him. For that. For Rocco.” He sighed. “For looking out for you when I didn’t.”
“Rob—”
“Hey, speaking of lucky,” he said, obviously changing the subject. I think Rob and I both needed to talk with someone. Apart and, perhaps, together. “I think you’ve got a friend in Theodore.”
“What?” I said, suitably distracted and then promptly guilty because I hadn’t given the horse a second thought. “Oh my God. How could I have forgotten him? Is he okay?”
Rob grinned. “Temperamental as ever. I guess he showed up back at the barn as Justin and the hands were rounding up the loose horses and created all sorts of trouble.”
“What trouble?”
“Would only let Justin get him and then when he was back in his stall, kicking and ramming the door until Justin let him out. When he still wouldn’t settle, Justin finally re-saddled him and decided to give Theo free reign.” Rob chuckled. “It’s crazy, really, Justin came up to the McKinney barn like an avenging cowboy, dust cloud, pounding hooves and all.”
I held my breath, imagining the scene, and glad, really glad that Theo was okay. The fuzz bucket was growing on me.
“Justin said that once Theo heard the shots, he started galloping and wouldn’t stop. It’s like he knew something was wrong and that Justin was needed there.”
“A bushel of apples,” I said, feeling suddenly exhausted.
“What?” Rob asked.
“I owe him a whole lot of apples.”
Rob squeezed my hand. “I think you made a new friend.”
I closed my eyes. “He’s not so bad.”
“No,” Rob said. “He’s not.”
46
Six Weeks Later
“And stir that in.” I grinned at the camera when Haley shrieked. “Slowly, sweetie. Slowly.”
Haley sighed and grimaced when she glanced down at her splattered apron. “Great,” she muttered. “And now I’ve embarrassed myself on national television.”
Kel put her hand to her belly, her twin-sized baby bump now beyond obvious. “At least you didn’t attempt to dip yourself into the pancake batter.”
We were making brunch on a live stream, a new addition I’d added to the blog. It had actually been Tammy’s idea, to get me more comfortable with the camera before we began filming in a couple of weeks.
And it was great, actually. All of my social media sites had jumped in traffic, and I even had my own YouTube channel.
A big part of that was the recipes.
The other portion, I figured, was the national news coverage that had come from Rob taking down an FBI drug ring and my kidnapping. Celeste and Cal were currently in federal custody awaiting trial, and while I still didn’t understand why my sister seemed to hate me so much or had decided that she needed to take some sort of vengeance on Rob and me, I was coming to terms with the fact that I might never know.
“I hear pancake batter is good for the skin,” I said.
“Who says that?” Kel groused, wiping at her shirt with a towel. “Stupid belly getting in the way,” s
he muttered.
“I say that.” I grabbed Haley’s arm to show her the proper motion for whipping the cream.
Yes, I did it by hand. Yes, it gave me nicely toned arms.
The cameraman snorted and I snagged the small camera from his hands. “Okay, Rob,” I said, grinning into the camera before turning it onto my husband. “Since you seem to have something to say, you can do it on film.”
Justin laughed, and I rotated to face him. “Do I need to commandeer you too?” He was sitting behind a laptop, reading comments and questions to us that were posted during the stream.
“Nope.” He raised his hands. “Unless it involves taste-testing bacon.”
We all laughed, and I returned the camera to Rob who gave me a once over and raised a brow.
I sighed. I knew what that brow meant.
It was the signal we’d come up with over the last weeks. His sign to me that he thought I was overtired and needed to wrap things up.
I smiled and nodded and where I once would have ignored the gesture, I’d learned to appreciate the thoughtfulness.
He was trying to help me. He was worried.
And my leg was aching.
So I sped into action, finishing the pancakes, plating them up for the five of us alongside the whipped cream, bacon, and egg casserole that had been resting in the oven.
Rob didn’t intervene, though I knew it was hard for him. Especially when I stumbled as I turned and my knee nearly gave out.
Now that would have been embarrassing.
The TV cook upending multiple plates on camera.
But I righted everything in time, got everyone sitting down and eating, and we ended the live stream.
After five weeks of therapy—I’d taken Haley’s recommendation straight away—and three weeks of rehabbing my leg, Rob trusted me to know my own limits.
Things weren’t perfect, but we were finding our way.
He set the camera to the side, swept me up in his arms, and deposited me on the couch in the next room. Thirty seconds later, he’d returned with two plates and fed us both.
He might trust me to know my limits, but he also wanted to take care of me.
And I was learning how to let him.
