by Rachel Blake
“That’s not fair,” Ezra snarled as he took a step toward the bed.
“Really, because I’m pretty sure I’m not the one who walked out on me. Who didn’t give a shit how hard I begged him not to go. I wasn’t the one who left me crying in the middle of our living room when you walked out the door, and I sure as hell wasn’t the one who never came back.”
“That’s enough,” Maverick ordered as the other man opened his mouth to argue. “This is not the time or place for any of this. This is a hospital, and V is healing.” He turned to the woman in question, “Have the doctors been in? What did they say?”
“They’re going to run some more tests, blood work, and the like, but as of now, I’m awake, alert, and ready to get out of this fucking bed.” V threw the covers off her legs. “Holy shit, how long have I been in bed? I could probably braid these fucking leg hairs.”
“A little over a month,” Maverick said over Ezra’s growl.
“A month?” Shock registered on her face.
“Thirty-six days,” Ezra shared without missing a beat.
“That’s not possible. I couldn’t have been here that long.” Panic overtook the shock. “It couldn’t have been.”
“Okay, we’ll have to check the dates again. We’re wrong,” Maverick reassured. “Do you want to tell me why you called me down here at this ungodly hour?”
V shook her head. “You really think changing the subject on me is going to help?”
“I’m hoping it will, at least for a little bit,” Maverick said as a small smile played on V’s lips.
The smile died when the sound of a gunshot had Maverick freezing. His eyes went wide as he looked toward the door. No, it couldn’t have been that, but when he looked between the couple, his suspicions were confirmed. Someone had fired a gun in the hospital.
“Ezra?” V reached for him, the first time since Maverick had been in the room, she had done anything other than yell at the man.
“I’m here, Lettie.” Ezra was at her side, picking her up and sliding her to the one side of the bed, so he had room to lay next to her, his body running the length of hers, shielding her. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Tell me that wasn’t what I thought it was.” Maverick’s stomach dropped to his toes as a single thought ran through his head—Embry.
“A gunshot,” Ezra called to him as Mav started moving to the door. “You can’t go out there, Mav.”
“Are you telling me you would sit here and wait for the police to tell you what’s going on if our roles were reversed? If you didn’t have your girl in your arms right now?” Maverick shook his head. “Don’t you dare fucking lie to me.”
“What does the flashing light above the door mean?” V questioned.
“It means the hospital’s on lockdown.” Ezra’s eyes remained glued to Maverick. “And you’re to stay put until the lockdown is over or law enforcement finds you.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” Maverick growled, already knowing the answer but needing to know if push came to shove, his friend would have his back.
Ezra sighed. “You know I wouldn’t, but my situation is different.” He paused in his explanation. “It’s just different, okay. You hardly know her.”
Maverick took a step back. “Fuck you.”
When Maverick stepped from the room, an eerie feeling took over. The halls were deserted, void of any noise other than the faint sound of crying from the direction of the nurse’s station.
He didn’t have time to take in any other details as he took off running toward the waiting room. When he pushed through the door, his heart stopped altogether.
Titus laid in the back of the room with a pool of blood around him, and Embry was nowhere to be seen.
Chapter Fourteen
“You’re just making yourself a target,” Embry pointed out as she moved down the hall, feeling the gun pointed at her back as if it was physically touching her.
“Stop fucking talking!” Tommy roared as he pushed her around another corner.
“Just admit it, you’re lost.”
“I’m not fucking lost. I knew where I was going, I had a fucking plan, but they locked the God damn doors.”
“You fired a gun in a hospital, everyone heard it, so of course they’ve put the building on lockdown.” Embry turned to the scared man and tried her best to ignore the black metal now pointed at her chest. “You should have really used a silencer, it still makes some noise, but not enough to alert the whole hospital of what’s going on. With a silencer, we would have already been out of the building, and you would be free to do whatever you want right now.”
“What I want is for you to shut the hell up for five fucking seconds, so I can think!”
“Sorry, I’m scared, and when I’m scared, I talk. It’s a nervous habit.”
“It’s about to be the habit that gets you killed if you don’t shut the fuck up!”
“Shh, keep your voice down, you don’t want to let everyone know where we are.”
The look on Tommy’s face would have been enough to have her laughing in any other situation, but given the fact she was already pushing her luck, she reeled it in a bit and gentled her voice, “You’re scared.”
“Well, fuck, wouldn’t you be?”
“I wouldn’t shoot a man for doing nothing more than his job.”
With a growl, he pushed her into one of the staircases and backhanded her as soon as the door clicked shut behind them, sending her stumbling to her knees. “I didn’t do that, you did. You’re the reason the man is bleeding out on the waiting room floor. You’re the reason someone’s going to have to tell his mother he didn’t make it home. You did that, you caused it.”
One hand on her face, the other bracing against the gritty cement floor of the small landing they were on, Embry looked into his eyes.
“No, those were the acts of a selfish man. A man willing to buy a woman, a wife, so he had a place to dip his wick. A man who didn’t think twice before he attempted to rape that very woman. Not a man, a coward.”
“I’m no coward.”
The yelled response had her flinching away, but when he didn’t move, she pressed forward.
“A person, or man, who lacks courage in facing danger, difficulty, opposition, and an easily intimidated person. That’s the definition of a coward, and from what I see, that’s what’s standing in front of me—a coward.”
“Shut your fucking mouth!” As soon as he broke eye contact, he started pacing the small space. “You’re wrong.”
“I’m not.” As she stood, she made sure to keep up the act of protection, curling in on herself, allowing the words she chose to do the damage. “You couldn’t get a woman with your winning personality, so you resorted to buying one. The worst part? You didn’t even have the balls to be in charge then.”
“Stop it!”
“You still let my father call all the shots. You still had to go through my father to get to me. You hurt all these people, and for what? To be trapped in a staircase like a rat in a cage?”
“Hurt all these people?”
“Don’t act like you don’t know. Don’t treat me like I’m stupid. I know you hurt them—my dad, V, and Parker. I know it was you, and after this, everyone will know it was you.”
“No, the only person I hurt was your guard. That’s it. You called me a coward, and you’re right. I couldn’t have hurt anyone else, shooting him was hard enough.” Tommy paused for a second. “They’re going to think just that. The officers are going to come in here guns blazing, set to take me down.”
“Tommy, that’s not how this works.” That was all the further she got before he was moving to the door and tugging helplessly on the handle.
“Open you stupid, mother fucking door! Just fucking open!”
“It’s locked from the outside. It’s part of their protocol during lockdowns.” When he turned his panicked eyes on her, she shrugged. “When people you care about are in the hospital with their people, you ten
d to read. Turns out, the useless information you find in a pamphlet, you never thought you would need, can come in handy.”
“You knew this would lock behind us? You knew, and with all the fucking talking, you didn’t tell me?”
“Oh, yeah, because you were so keen on listening to me.”
Tommy angrily swung the gun toward her and slowly pulled back the hammer. “I should fucking kill you where you stand.”
She laughed, she actually laughed. If she got out of there alive, she was seriously going to take her sanity into question, but at that moment, laughter it was. “You’re going to shoot me now? Here, in an otherwise empty staircase.” Her laughter had her doubling over. “That will really help with the whole ‘cops coming in here guns a blazing’ thing, won’t it?”
Sobering, she watched as his options played across his face—determination, fear, and, finally, defeat.
“I can’t kill you any more than I could kill your guard back there.” Shaking his head, he lowered the gun.
“You fucking shot him! Last I knew, that was a pretty good way to kill someone.”
“I hit his shoulder socket. While his recovery will be substantial, he’ll survive.”
“He wasn’t moving,” Embry screamed back.
“Well, he wasn’t dead!”
“You killed him, and now you’re too much of a coward to admit it.”
“Stop saying I fucking killed people. Kidnapping, assault with a deadly weapon.”
“Attempted rape.”
Tommy curled his lip at her statement but moved forward. “Fine, I did those things, but I am not a murderer.”
“No, just everything up to that point.”
“Fuck you!”
The sound of a door opening below them had them turning.
A second before Embry was able to call for help, his hand landed over her mouth, and the end of the gun pressed into her back.
“You say one fucking word, draw any attention to the fact we’re in here, and you’ll turn me into a killer.”
When he slowly peeled his hand from her mouth, she let the whispered words fall from her mouth. “Don’t blame me for the person you’ve come to be. That’s all on you.”
“Move.”
With a rough pull of her arm, she was turned to the ascending stairs, pushed forward with the barrel of the gun. “You’re just trapping yourself.”
“No, I’m buying myself some time,” Tommy rumbled as he pushed her up the stairs.
“Time for what, exactly? Time to panic and make it worse?”
“Time to figure out a plan.”
“There’s no plan from here, Tommy. Nothing else you can do. You’re not getting out of this. The more you do, the worse this is going to be for you because you are the only one here who has done anything wrong! Fuck, Tommy, you’re just prolonging the inevitable.”
“I had a plan. Not a very good one, but a plan, nonetheless.” They reached the next landing, and the shocked man stood there for a few moments before he finally spoke. “Well, I thought I did.”
“You either did, or you didn’t, there’s no in-between here.” Embry paused as the man started pacing once more.
“Fuck, I didn’t even think about the noise the gun was going to make, I just fired it.”
“I’m telling you, silencer is the way to go.”
He looked at her as if she had grown a second head. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be giving me pointers on how to better pull this off.”
“I told you I was a nervous talker, gave you fair warning.” A thought floated into her head, “How did you find me?”
“What?”
“How did you find me? It wasn’t luck, and they disabled the tracker in my necklace. So, how did you find me?”
He searched the empty space they occupied, avoiding eye contact.
“Really?” Embry threw her hands in the air. “You’re holding me hostage at gunpoint, and you’re embarrassed to tell me how you found me? That’s fucking rich.” She wasn’t sure if it was the angle of his head or what, but something in the way he held himself clicked it into place. “You’re the guy who ran into me last night. You planted a device on me?”
“What fucking choice did I have? Your father is dead, and I’d lost the only connection I had to you. I wasn’t just going to let you slip through my fingers.”
“Choice? You wanted to know what choice you had. You could have fucking left me alone. You could have moved on with your life. Found a real wife.” She shoved at his chest, the anger getting the best of her. “You could have pretended to be a good person, and who knows, maybe someday you would have been.”
“Now… now, you’re going to go to prison and rot in a cell for the rest of your life. For what, a woman who doesn’t want you? Sounds like a waste of life to me.”
“You’re mine.” Tommy took a step closer to her. “I was promised you. Don’t you see that? Your father made a deal with me, and you were my prize.”
“I’m not some oversized stuffed animal at a county fair. I’m a human being.” She pushed him again, forcing him to take a step back.
“You would have grown to love me.”
“That’s not how love works. You shouldn’t be forced into learning to love someone.”
“But you would have. Hell, you still can. If we get out of here, we can still have a good life with each other.”
“Really?” Embry ran her fingers through her hair as she took a step closer to him. “You’re still holding out that hope? Get it through your skull, Tommy, I am not going to marry you.”
“Don’t say that. I love you.”
“You don’t love me, you love whatever sick and twisted picture my father painted for you.” She pushed him as she advanced. “You love the pretty little picture my father put in front of you.” Again, her hands bounced off his chest. “You didn’t love me and I would sure as hell never love you.”
“Stop pushing me.”
“Oh, you want me to stop pushing you? To. Fucking. Bad.” With each word, she advanced on him, forcing her further back. “You wanted me to stop pushing you, make me!”
In an instant, the gun was leveled at her head, his shaking hand with anger. “How’s this for making you? Hmm? Do you think a bullet through your skull would be enough to get you to do as you’re told?”
“I’d rather die than be stuck with you for a minute longer.”
Swiftly, she dropped into a crouch. The sound of the gun going off echoed around the room as she threw herself at his knees, and the two of them tumbled down the stairs. The last thing she remembered was the sound of another shot ringing out.
***
“You’re not fucking listening to me. The shooter has my girl. He shot her guard and took her,” Maverick yelled into the face of the officer assigned with the task of keeping him out of the way. “You have to find her.”
“You know, I would really love to go find her, but you can’t pull your head out of your ass long enough to let me go do my job, so I’m stuck here making sure you don’t interfere with our attempts to locate the two of them.” The officer crossed his arms over his chest.
“You can’t expect me to just sit here.”
“I can, and I do.”
The sound of a gunshot had the two of them freezing until the sound of another round had both of them moving.
“Mr. Grandgeorge!”
Mav ignored the call of the officer behind him as he made it to the stairwell and pulled open the solid door. Taking the stairs two at a time, he followed the sounds of the officers ahead of him.
When he came up behind them, his world stopped.
A few feet in front of him laid Embry and Tommy Gilber, neither moving, but the pool of blood around them was growing.
“Embry!” A weight hit his back a second before he was taken to the ground, his face pushed into the grit of the floor. “Embry!”
“Fucking told you to stay put.”
“Angel, get up!” Maverick didn’t pay th
e officer any mind, too busy screaming for Embry to look at him, wake up, anything.
The cold metal around his wrist registered before he was pulled from the ground by his arms.
“No, no! You can’t take me from her. I have to be with her, please! She needs me. Embry, Angel, please wake up. Please. Angel, talk to me! Fuck, just wake up.”
With the help of two other officers, Maverick was pulled away from the scene playing out before him and pressed into a wall, the cuff digging into his flesh. “Please, I just need to be here for her.”
“Then pull your head out of your ass and cooperate with us before I have to read you your rights as I load you into the back of my car. You have to let them do their job.”
Epilogue
“Angel?”
The sound of the nickname had a smile forming on her lips. Of course, George was here. He hadn’t left her side in the few days since she was found in the stairwell, and she didn’t want it any other way.
Okay, so maybe she wanted a couple of changes. She wiggled her hips—the rubber wedged between her ass cheeks was just annoying enough to remind her of the plug he had pushed deep into her puckered hole only thirty minutes ago.
“Stop fidgeting, Angel. You earned it, and you damn well know it.”
“You know, I was nearly shot the other day.”
“Trust me, I know.”
Embry looked up at him as he stepped closer and wrapped her in his arms. “Are you ever going to let me out of your sight again?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“An inch to the left and it wouldn’t be Tommy in that morgue, it would—” She didn’t get to finish her statement as the hand resting on her butt pressed against the plug, bringing her to her toes. “Hey.”
“I know, Angel.” His lips pressed against the top of her head. “God, I know, and I won’t ever fucking forget.”
“I can’t believe you made them arrest you.”
“I think you’re the only one who can’t believe it. The guys keep asking why I didn’t fight harder.”
“Put them in a pair of handcuffs, and I’m sure they’ll have their answer.” Heat flooded her face. “You’re right, my sass is strong today.”
