Saving Jenna

by Christina Butrum

  Within seconds, the sound of splintered wood crashed into the wall beside them and John’s dark shadow encompassed the living room directly in front of them. G2 made a mad dash right for John, but a loud bang stopped him in his tracks. The dog whimpered and dropped to the floor in a heap at John’s feet.

  “Gun!” Jenna screamed, reaching for Ian, who was out of reach, already fighting and scuffling around the area just inside the door. Fumbling her phone out of her pocket, she dialed the police.

  A dark figure lurched at her, causing her to trip backward out of reach. “You whore!”

  “Police? Yes, this is Jenna Avery!” Out of breath and struggling to get the words out, she ran out of the room and tried her best to say the address over the phone as she stumbled over several different objects scattered throughout the house.

  Leaving Ian behind was the last thing she wanted to do, but John was on her heels as she ran outside. She made a mad dash through the neighboring yard, including a maze of rose bushes. Thorns sliced her skin as she pressed on, staying a few feet ahead of John’s reach.

  “Help me, please!” she shouted, not sure who would be able to hear her, let alone help her. She had dropped her phone along the way. There was no time to pray for help to get there fast. It was already too late. He was going to kill her.

  Chapter 29

  G2 was down for the count but was still breathing. Ian didn’t have time to closely check him over, but it appeared the bullet had nicked and grazed G2’s shoulder.

  “Stay there, boy,” Ian said, pushing off the floor next to G2. “I’ll be right back. Don’t move!”

  Chasing after John, his only hope was he wouldn’t be too far behind. Between G2 getting shot and Jenna running out the back door, John had slipped past Ian.

  Running through the maze of darkness and scattered objects, glass crunched under his feet as he made his way out the back door. There was no sign of Jenna or John. Where the hell did they go?

  Panic induced adrenaline fueled his anger as he made his way to the street out front of the house. As soon as he made it into the light casted by the street lamp, he heard Jenna’s screams again, followed by the firing of a gun.

  Running in their direction, Ian’s thoughts went faster than his feet. If Jenna had been shot, that son of a bitch would die tonight. If that bastard so much as put a finger on her, he would die tonight.

  “Stop!” Jenna screamed, holding her hands up, cornered with nowhere to go. “John, don’t shoot me, please…don’t!”

  The gun pointed in her direction, angled perfectly in line with the center of her chest, directly over her heart. He wanted her dead. His face scrunched with an angry rage she had only seen once or twice before.

  “Please, John, let’s work this out,” she pleaded, trying everything she possibly could come up with to settle him down. So far, nothing seemed to work. He was beyond all reason.

  “If I can’t have you, then no one will,” he shouted, spitting his words into her face. The smell of alcohol overwhelmed her senses, burning her nose by its unwelcomed presence. “I’ll be damned if I let him take what’s mine!”

  The barrel of the gun pressed hard against her chest. Shutting her eyes, she silently prayed for Ian to save her from this monster. The chances of Ian finding them were slim to none, but she had hope, even if only for a moment.

  “Open your eyes and look at me!” he shouted, spitting in her face as he reached up and took hold, gripping tightly and refusing to let go. She wanted nothing more than to stand up to him, but the gun…one pull of the trigger…

  “Look at the monster you’ve created, you dumb bitch!” He kept a tight grip on her face, never once moving the gun from its unwelcomed position against her chest. “I fucking loved you! I was never like this! But you! You just had to go and ruin what we had!”

  Shaking her head, she knew better than to try to interrupt him in his rage of words as they spat against her face, causing her to pull back away from him, an attempt she would regret.

  “If I’d known you were a whore, I would’ve never settled for you!” He continued to shout, raising the gun in the air, flailing it around like the madman he was. “You just had to ruin us, didn’t you! For what?”

  Tears welled. She knew better than to let her emotions show, especially knowing it would set him off further into an uncontrollable rage.

  “For what?” he asked once again, closing the distance between them as he pressed his face into hers. “I fucking loved you, Jenna.”

  He pressed his lips against hers. Forceful and strong, she was unable to push him back. She hated his power over her. She fought hard, pushing and thrashing against him. He refused to let her go. “Stop!” she managed to yell out. Mustering enough strength and catching him off guard, she shoved him away from her. He stumbled back, but no sooner than he got his feet under him, he was back in her face.

  “Leave me alone, John! You need to let me go!”

  He grabbed her wrists, holding tight as he gritted his teeth. “I’ll never leave you alone!”

  “Let her go!” Ian said, running up on them from behind. He had struggled to find them, but now he had his eyes on John and the way he had a hold of Jenna. “I said, let her go! Now!”

  John ignored him, continuing his hold on her wrist, gripping tighter than he had been. The sliver of light gleamed off the sleek gun in his right hand, now pressing against Jenna’s chest.

  Ian watched on, speechless, thinking fast on a plan of action. He had taken several training sessions revolved around situations like this one. He hated that it had come to this, but he refused to let John hurt Jenna more than he already had.

  “Put the gun down, John,” he said, contemplating the possibility John would listen. “You don’t want to do this. Trust me.”

  John gritted his teeth, shouted out something jumbled, and held tighter to the gun, pressing it deeper in the center of Jenna’s chest, causing Jenna to squeal out in pain. “No, I do want to do this. You have no idea how bad I’ve wanted to do this. You come into town, try to take what’s mine, and here you are trying to save the day.”

  “I don’t want any problems,” Ian said, inching his way closer, taking subtle steps not to draw attention to the distance he was gaining between them. “Just put the gun down and we can sort this out.”

  John shook his head. “Nope, I’m not doing what you want me to. She’s mine. She’s been mine! You left her!”

  Jenna cried out. The twist of her wrist in his grip was causing her too much pain. Ian could see the panic written across her face. He hated this.

  “You’re right,” he said, refusing to argue, an attempt to diffuse the situation. He was willing to say or do whatever it took to keep this situation under some sort of control until the police showed up—wherever they were. It’d been a while since Jenna had called them. What felt like hours were only mere minutes. “I did leave. I left town and never looked back.”

  “You did! You left her crying and I was there!” John shouted, turning the gun toward Ian. “I was the one to pick up the pieces! You shattered her and left her like a stray dog!”

  Ian couldn’t argue the facts. John was right. He had left town. He had left Jenna. He had broken her heart, he knew it, and the whole town had known it. He couldn’t rewrite the past, he was aware of that, but the least he could do was be here now – something he hadn’t planned on.

  “But now here you are, acting like a knight in shining armor,” John said, taking a few stumbled steps toward Ian. Ian looked at Jenna, giving her the okay to run. She needed to get out of there. No matter what happened between him and John, she needed to be safe. She needed to run for her own sake. “Go!” Ian yelled when she stood still. “Jenna! Go!”

  John’s focus left Ian, as his eyes landed on Jenna now escaping as she ran through a neighboring yard and into the street. Her screams and wretched cries for help made Ian weak. He wanted nothing more than to make this nightmare end.

  “You bitch!” John hollered,
turning to chase after her. Taking aim, he fired a random shot. Ian launched forward, taking everything he had in him to tackle John to the ground. There was no way he’d let him get his hands on Jenna again. Not this time. “Get off me!”

  “No, you’re not going after her anymore!” Wrestling with a man twice his size, Ian mustered enough strength to pin the man on the ground, but it wasn’t enough to stop the drunken mess from escalating once again.

  The gun was within reach, and Ian needed to do whatever it took to keep John’s hand away from it. He knew as soon as John grabbed a hold of that gun, he would shoot Ian. He would kill him without hesitation. John’s anger had escalated to an uncontrollable rage. A rage Ian had seen time and time again with his tour in Iraq.

  Where were the damn police? They had to be there by now. “Fuck!”

  John used his weight to wiggle his way out from underneath Ian. Reaching out, he was able to grab the gun, and the last thing Ian remembered was seeing the barrel of it pointed between his eyes.

  Chapter 30

  Blue and red lights flashed, closing the distance between Jenna and the house. Police cruisers pulled in and officers jumped out no sooner than they shifted their cars into park.

  Jenna had seen the wrestling match between Ian and John. The gun had been pointed in Ian’s face for a split second before Ian snapped into action, plummeting his fists into a battle of their own with John’s face. She had tried to pull him off, knowing John was down for the count as his breathing was clotted with blood from his nose. There was no use for Ian to keep punching John when he was on the ground and motionless. The threat had been stopped. It was over now.

  Police grabbed Ian, pulling him off John. And even though Ian was protecting her, the officers detained him as they took him in the opposite direction.

  An ambulance’s sirens screeched out front of the house and medics climbed out, grabbing a bag and the stretcher before heading John’s way. Still lying on his back, gurgling on his own blood, they hustled to his side. If only they had an idea of what that bastard had done tonight, they wouldn’t want to help him. A part of her wanted him to suffer a bit longer, possibly die—if only he would.

  “Ma’am?” An officer walked up to her, pointing the flashlight in her direction, assessing her condition. She was certain her face was a mess. Aside from the smearing of tears and makeup, the defense marks of her and John’s scuffle mixed with dirt and grass stains. She turned her attention away from Ian, who was now standing against the police car, making a statement of the events leading up to this awful end to her night. “Can you come with me?”

  She nodded, allowing the officer to guide her back to his car, where he pulled a clipboard and a sheet of paper out of his bag in the front seat. He walked her to the back of the car and opened the door, offering her to take a seat. “I need you to tell me what happened tonight.”

  She had no idea where to start. She could tell them about her mistake of going to John’s in the first place. She knew this whole thing was her fault, once again, because she provoked the monster, poking the bear when she should have left it alone. Thoughts of John getting out of what he’d done tonight crossed her mind. She hated him for being a lawyer and being able to talk his way out of everything. She couldn’t win against him. Regardless of what he had done tonight, he would still manage to snake his way out of charges, not only because of what he knew, but who he knew.

  “Ma’am?” The impatient officer caught her attention from being somewhere lost in thoughts. “I’ve got a guy who beat another, and you. I need you to tell me what happened,” he said, flipping his notebook open to a blank page and clicking his pen. “Do you know either of these two men?”

  She nodded, keeping her eyes on Ian, who was continuing his statement with the officer. She wished she could be next to him. She wanted nothing more than to rush over to him and thank him for saving her.

  Motioning for her to say something more, the officer impatiently tapped his pen against the notebook. “I haven’t got all night, ma’am. I’ve got one on his way to the hospital and another facing criminal charges.”

  “Criminal charges?” Her eyes widened in fear of what she’d just heard. How could Ian be facing charges when he was the one who had protected her from the man with a plan to kill her?

  “Yes, he pulverized that other guy. You saw it all, didn’t you?” the annoyed officer asked, clicking his radio to repeat something back to the voice on the other end. “He’s facing several charges and depending what happens to the guy on his way to the hospital, he might be facing more.”

  “He was protecting me,” she said, her voice not her own, her words unrecognizable as they left her mouth.

  “He was what?” The officer looked over at Ian and back at her. “That man damned near killed another man and you’re saying it was to protect you?”

  She nodded, because for once, she had nothing else to say. She wanted so badly for the officer to back off and let her go be with Ian.

  “Just fill this out,” he said, shoving the clipboard into her lap. “Write down everything that happened and don’t leave anything out. I’ll be back.”

  She watched the officer march off in the direction of the police car with Ian in the backseat. Wanting nothing more than to open the back door and let Ian out, she decided against it and studied the blank paper in front of her.

  Debating on where to start, she decided to start from the beginning. Starting with her idiotic idea to go to his house in the middle of the night to make everything right, not realizing how wrong the night could have gone once she was there.

  Writing words furiously as tears splattered the paper, she didn’t stop until a voice called out to her from the direction Ian had been. “Can you come over here, please? Bring the clipboard, too.”

  The officer, in the middle of a conversation with a much younger officer, motioned for her to stand next to them. “Let me see what you’ve written,” he said, reaching out for her statement. She was close to being done. The last half noting Ian’s fight for his life was the part she had left to write. But, as far as she could tell, the story was self-explanatory.

  Furrowing brows as he read through her words, the officer shared it with the other officer in silence. The younger officer nodded and said something Jenna couldn’t quite make out before the much older of the two turned back to her.

  “Okay, both of your stories correlate.”

  “So, you’re going to let him go, right?” Jenna asked, pointing to Ian in the back of the cop car. She wanted him out.

  The younger officer gave a questioning look to the other, waiting for his approval before opening the car door. They were going to let Ian out! She couldn’t help but shed the tears she had held back until now. This night could have gone more than one way, and she had Ian to thank for the alternate direction the night had taken.

  “Well, to be honest, I should haul him in for assault, but since it was in self-defense for the both of you, I have no choice but let him off the hook,” he said, nodding to the other officer to let Ian out. “Are you wanting to press charges?”

  “Yes, we are,” Ian said, rubbing his wrists where the cuffs had dug in. “The bastard tried to kill us all.”

  Jenna’s mind flashed to the shooting of G2. The officer said something about heading to the hospital, pressing charges, and arresting John for attempted murder times two, along with a ramble of a few more charges. Jenna didn’t stop to listen. She was halfway across the yard, heading in the direction of Ian’s house.

  She needed to get to G2. He had tried to protect them. He had taken the first hit from John. She needed to make sure he was okay.

  Chapter 31

  Ian chased after Jenna. He knew the thought she had while they were waiting for the cops to get in their cars and leave. She had seen G2 take the hit, but she had run out of the house and had no idea he was okay. At least, Ian hoped he still was. Damn.

  “Jenna! Wait up!” he called after her, sprinting the length of the
yard to catch up to her. She had cleared a few feet before he had a chance to follow. When she didn’t stop or acknowledge him, he hollered, “Jenna! Please stop!”

  He didn’t want her to be the first inside just in case G2 hadn’t pulled through. She stopped, turning her attention to him, catching her breath as she rested her hands on her knees.

  “I have to make sure he’s okay,” she said, still trying to catch her breath and struggling to control her emotions. “Ian, is he okay?”

  He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close, walking beside her. “I hope he is.”

  They walked in silence the rest of the way to his house. He knew she was lost in her own thoughts, traumatized by everything she had gone through and had seen. When they reached his place, he held out his hands and took hold of hers. Looking into her eyes, he made her focus on him.

  “Let me go in first. I’ll make sure everything’s okay.”

  “Ian, let me go in,” she pleaded, trying to push past him.

  He grabbed hold of her, placing his hands on either side of her face. “If he didn’t make it, it’s not going to be a pretty sight, Jenna.”

  “It’s fine,” she said, shoving past him. “I can handle it.”

  Without much fight left in him, he let her lead him into the house, ducking under the crime scene tape on their way through the door. She was a stubborn one, and if she had her mind set on checking on G2, there was no stopping her.

  Officers crowded the small house, leaving barely enough space to breathe as they made their case, investigating evidence of the events that had transpired here less than an hour ago. One officer tried to stop them, giving them the overused “this is a crime scene” statement, but Jenna pleaded for him to let them get the dog.

  Offering a sympathetic look, the officer motioned for them to pass by him and gave a signal to tell the others he’d allowed them in.