Pieces Of Heaven: Pieces Of Heaven (Heaven & Hell Book 2)

by Natasha Madison

  He scoops her into his arms, holding her close as she wails out her terror. “Ackson, they take Momma,” she says between sobs.

  “Who, baby girl, who took Momma?” he asks her. “Who?” This little girl has woven herself into his heart, and there is nothing he wouldn’t do for her. I haven’t even met Lori yet, and I feel the same way about her. I pull up my phone, texting more security detail to come and watch the house again. Jackson doesn’t even have to ask. I just know since it’s what I would do.

  She hiccups, her sobs, her breath coming out in choppy pants. “Daddy and his briend.”

  Brian arrives and comes straight to us. “So, he came in the side gate from what we could tell by the sensor times.” He looks at his phone. “Front door sensor indicates it was disengaged and reengaged twenty minutes ago. The silent alarm was activated about twenty seconds later.”

  Jackson looks down at Lilah. “You did so good, baby girl. Just like we showed you.” He then kisses her stain-streaked face. “So brave, my baby girl.”

  “I want Momma, Ackson,” she says as her eyes start to close as the trauma of today finally hits her.

  My phone starts beeping in my hand with the address of the hotel. “We got the name of the hotel. We are sending two cruisers there right now.”

  He looks at me, about to ask questions, when his mother runs into the house.

  Her eyes are open wide with fear as she scans the area. Tears start falling when she sees Brenda being lifted on the stretcher.

  She finds him sitting on the floor holding Lilah. “Jackson.” She gets on her knees next to me, stroking Lilah’s hair softly.

  He looks at her straight into her eyes. “He did this.” He doesn’t have to say his name because we all know it’s Adam, Jackson’s long lost addict brother.

  Her hand covers her mouth, and she gasps in horror.

  “He came here, into her home, and he took her. He beat Brenda, badly as you can see, to get to her. And he did it in front of Lilah.”

  “Jackson.” That word is ripped from her, pained, but it’s all she gets out before I step forward, drawing his attention away from his mother.

  “Jackson, Bella has her phone on her. We have a location.”

  He hands Lilah to his mother before he gets up.

  “You aren’t going to like this,” I tell him.

  His fists clench at his sides. “Tell me,” he says through gritted teeth.

  “Same motel Ryan sent us to.” It’s all I have to say.

  He looks at his mother. “I have to know if you will keep her. If anything happens to us, to me, to Bella, you will keep her.”

  “Jackson, get Bella and just bring her home. Both of you just come home to Lilah.”

  “Mom, I need you to promise not to leave her sight. Do not leave Lilah alone for a second, not even to go to the bathroom. I’m going to have someone staying with you both, but I still want you to promise not to let her out of your sight.”

  “I promise, Jackson. Go get Bella.”

  We both nod at her, rushing out of the house, he jumps in the passenger seat of the car since I’m driving, and he immediately calls for backup.

  The address they gave us is about twenty-five minutes out, but with the way I’m driving, we should get there in about ten, maybe fifteen minutes max.

  There are five undercovers on-site, waiting around the corner, scoping the place out.

  There is a black Honda parked right in front of room eight, which is the room we think they are in.

  We let the on-sites know when we are two minutes out. I want into the room the minute we get there.

  “You loaded?” The question isn’t to ask if I’m carrying my weapon, it’s to ask if I’m carrying more than one.

  “Got two on me. A couple in the back, locked.”

  He nods, while I’m preparing myself for the war that is about to be waged at the motel.

  The moment we get there, Jackson walks in the front door and straight to the reception desk. “Adam Fletcher, what room?”

  She looks at us, smacking her bubble gum. “Who are you?”

  Jackson takes his gun out and places it on the counter, her eyes going as wide as saucers. “You really want to do that right now?”

  She shakes her head. “Room eight.”

  I don’t even wait to hear her finish before I walk back out, talking to the team that has gathered. Jackson opens up the trunk so he and I can grab our vests and put them on.

  “Room eight confirmed. We know they are armed. Brenda has a bullet hole to prove it.”

  I look around at the twenty officers who have showed up, plus the ten of Brian’s guys, all waiting for the war to start. The adrenaline is rushing through my body. The blood in my body flowing so fast from my beating heart that my body is starting to radiate and shake.

  “We just saw movement,” Brian says while looking over at the room.

  “It’s go time. Seems they know we are here.” I turn to walk away from the car to attack the door from the side.

  Jackson approaches the other side. We have our guns both drawn.

  We’re a few feet from the door when we hear a shot fired. My stomach drops, and I rock to a halt as my feet stop moving. Two shots and my breathing stops. Three shots and I brace myself on the wall outside room seven. My body goes from hot to dead cold. Rage courses through me.

  I don’t even wait for Jackson. I just shout out, “Police, hands where I can see them.”

  The swat team breaks down the piece of shit door in one measly kick. Standing next to a naked Bella is a man with his gun at his side.

  “Drop your weapon!” I command, upon entering the room. “Drop the fucking weapon now!” I warn him again right before I fire a shot at the man’s leg. The man cries out in pain as he drops to the floor, the gun still at his side, so I shoot one more time, this time to his shoulder. His body jerks backward, the gun falling from his hand.

  I walk deeper into the room, gun drawn, and it’s like I’m walking into the devil’s dungeon. I look around, taking in the filth of the room. The smell of urine is so profound, my eyes burn. It makes the pier warehouse look like a spa.

  The one bed in the middle of the room, dirty sheets askew, half on the bed, half off. Bella lies in the middle of it, her clothes partially removed.

  One lone chair in the corner of the room is wet with obvious blood stains on it. Carelessly discarded, used needles litter the floor all around us.

  An old television sits on a cheap, dusty stand facing the bed. The television is on, tuned to The Shopping Network.

  I continue scanning the room when my eyes land on three teenage girls huddled in a corner of the room and chained to the wall.

  All three are wearing sheer camisoles, with no bras and sheer underwear, leaving little to the imagination. All three are filthy with greasy, stringy hair, and it’s obvious none of them have bathed in quite a while. Their eyes are puffy and closed, like they are napping.

  Their arms show round, fingertip-shaped bruises and swollen, red needle marks along the inside of their elbows. Their hands are clipped with a chain to the wall. I can see the dirt under their chipped fingernails. If that wasn’t enough to push me over the edge, I take in what appears to be dried blood crusted over on their inner thighs. Their panties are almost non-existent, brownish reddish stains covering them in the front.

  I almost wish that I shot the fucker, who is lying on the floor near the bed with a bullet hole in his shoulder and kneecap, right between his fucking eyes. He’s moaning like a fucking pig, complaining about me shooting him.

  The girls have all opened their eyes at this point, all of them looking right at me with empty eyes. They are vacant, like they’re here but they aren’t really here.

  Jackson rushes to the bed, checking Bella for a pulse. It’s there, thank God. He covers her with the filthy sheet and gathers her in his arms to walk out of the room.

  I look down at Chuck, who is being cuffed by Chris in the middle of the room, blood s
eeping out of his leg and shoulder.

  Brian, Hulk, and Roger are all working to remove the chains from the three other girls in the room.

  I walk over to the girls, squatting down next to them. Their condition is beyond deplorable. I know right away which one is Lori. She has her mother’s eyes. Eyes that are now starting to clear. She starts to shake, and I’m sure she’s looking for her next fix even if she wasn’t the one who was injecting herself. She is absolutely filthy, and if I didn’t know better, I would assume she’s a junkie.

  I reach out to move the hair out of her face, and she turns her head violently to the side, groaning in pain and pleading.

  “Please don’t do this. I don’t want this. I want to go home.” She looks around and starts to take in the SWAT team members with their badges hanging around their necks. “You came for us?” she asks as the realization settles in.

  I have a tear running down my face before I wipe it away. “I came for you.” I look at the other girls who are being attended to by the other cops. “Your mom has been searching for you since you left.” I reach out to her again, and this time she doesn’t turn away. She starts sobbing, calling for her mom.

  Once they free the chains from her, I scoop her up in my arms. The smell of urine and feces hits me right away. She is almost naked, so I look around for something to cover her. I don’t look for too long when Chris walks up to us and throws his jacket over her.

  She turns her head to look at Chris.

  “There you go, beautiful,” he says to her right before he turns around, shaking his head angrily.

  I nod to him right before Lori speaks up.

  “I want to go home.”

  I bring her closer to my chest. “I promise you, baby girl, we are bringing you home.”

  She lays her head on my chest, and her body goes limp in my arms, her head falling back.

  “I need help,” I say, running from the room to one of the waiting ambulances. I place her on a stretcher, and the EMT goes straight to work. I move out of their way but stay with her.

  I look over at Jackson and call out, “It’s Lori. We found them.”

  He doesn’t say anything more because the door to the ambulance shuts. “Sir, you need to step back so we can take her in. Her blood pressure is low and dropping,” one of the EMT tells me while loading her into the ambulance.

  “Where she goes I go,” I tell them while I jump in the ambulance before he shuts the door.

  Chris runs over to us.

  “Take the car,” I say, tossing him the keys. “Meet us at county.” The doors close, and we are rushing to the hospital where I hope and pray we are in time and they can wake her up.

  I take out my phone and make the phone call that I’ve wanted to make since I got this case.

  It doesn’t even ring before she picks it up on a sob, almost like she already knows, like she feels it. “Mick.”

  “I got her, baby, I’m bringing her home.” The wails that come out of her sound like a wounded animal howling in pain. “Baby, you have to be strong. She needs you to be strong.” I look down at the girl lying on the stretcher fighting with everything she has left. “Meet us at county. Take a cab if you can’t drive.”

  She doesn’t say anything, but I hear the phone squishing, so I know she’s nodding her head.

  “I need to hear the words.”

  “You found my baby?” she asks in a whisper, and I can’t miss the relief and gratitude in her voice.

  “Yeah, baby, I found her.” I close my eyes, trying to forget the scene that I just walked out of. “Come to her, babe, she needs you.”

  “Okay, Mick.” She disconnects.

  I lean forward and take Lori’s limp hand in mine. There are track marks running up her inner arm. I trace them with my finger, praying to every god available that she’ll be okay and vowing to them that in return I’ll protect her from any more evil.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Mick

  As soon as we arrive at the ER, the EMT starts rattling off Lori’s vitals to the ER doctor. He runs alongside the stretcher with the doctor as the paramedic fills them in on what he knows and steers it into an exam room. I run along, keeping pace with them.

  The doctor stops me before I can get into the room. “Sir, you can’t go in there.”

  The nurse closes the door behind her and comes out to talk to me. “You need to wait in the waiting room. We will come and get you when we know something.” She doesn’t wait for me to answer, just goes back into the room. When the door opens again, I can hear the beeping of machines and the bustle of them working.

  I walk into the waiting room, and the dread and fear I feel is written all over my face. I see Jackson sitting in a chair, and I make my way to him. I drop into the chair beside him before my legs can give out. “Her pulse is weak, man, so weak. At one point, they couldn’t find it.” I look toward her room.

  He doesn’t have a chance to ask me anything else before the door bursts open and Marissa comes running in, looking frantic. Her face pale, her cheeks tear-streaked, her eyes obviously scared and worried.

  As soon as she sees us in the hallway, all of the fear and worry of the last few weeks and the uncertainty and concern she is feeling now collide and overcome her. She stops in her tracks, and her knees give out as she wails with so much emotion, I’m shaken to my core.

  I move faster than I ever have to get to her. The need to hold her is overwhelming. I scoop her up and hold her close as I sit on the floor with her cradled in my lap, slowly rocking in an attempt to calm her down.

  “Baby, she’s a fighter,” I whisper to her. “She is going to pull through. She didn’t survive all of that to die this way.”

  Marissa doesn’t reply. She just clings tighter to me like I’m her anchor in this storm, curling in so close to me, like she can’t get close enough, her hands fisting my shirt tightly. “My baby,” I hear softly between her sobs.

  We both sit in that waiting room, waiting for news.

  The minutes feel like hours, the hours feel like days. Each time someone comes out of those doors, we all look up hopefully. At one point Chris shows up and asks if it’s okay to stay and wait with us. All I can say is thank you.

  The other girls have also been brought in, and their parents are here waiting just like we are. They are going through drug screening and rape kits. It’s a fucking parents’ worst nightmare.

  Marissa has calmed down a bit, but she hasn’t moved from my lap nor has she loosened her grip on my shirt. Her head is resting in the crook of my neck, and it’s like she was made to fit there. I kiss her head every single time she breathes heavy from all of her sobbing.

  Her eyes are open, waiting and anxious for someone to come out of the door and tell her something, anything. I finally see the doctor who was treating her come out. I don’t have a chance to get up before he’s standing in front of us. “Are you the parents to Lori Sullivan?” he asks, and we both nod yes. “I’m going to cut right to the chase. I’ve never seen someone so stubborn in my life.”

  Marissa finally sits up. “What does that mean?”

  “She flat lined, twice. We had to intubate her. She also went into shock from the overdose of heroin in her system. I have to say, her blood pressure was off the charts. It’s no wonder her heart stopped. We are administering methadone to help with the withdrawal symptoms. The good news is that her body went into shock before her heart stopped, so we placed her in a medically induced coma to allow her body to focus its energy on healing. We ran a pregnancy test, which came out negative. We have also run a full workup for STDs that she could have contracted as well as to rule out any infections that may have been spread from sharing needles.”

  I look at Marissa and see that her lips have started to tremble, and she looks a little faint.

  Chris gives me his water bottle that he has almost crushed in his hand while listening to the doctor’s report of Lori’s condition.

  She grabs the bottle from me and looks me i
n the eyes as she asks, “Was she raped?” She is obviously processing everything that has happened to her daughter a little bit at a time.

  I don’t get to answer her because the doctor continues.

  “She was raped and sodomized. At this point, she has vaginal trauma and tearing that should heal. She also has scarring on her cervix, which will also heal, but she will need to follow up with her OBGYN. Overall, it could be a lot worse.”

  The doctor almost continues, but Chris speaks out, “A lot worse? Are you fucking insane?” He gets up. “They fucking raped and sodomized her and drugged her! How much worse can it be?” He is standing up now, his chest heaving.

  The doctor has clearly seen worse cases because he isn’t fazed by his outburst and answers without hesitation. “She could be dead.”

  Chris looks to the side and walks out of the room.

  “Mrs. Sullivan, the next three days will be very difficult. Heroin is highly addictive. Detox is very difficult because the withdrawal process is so intense. The best thing for her right now is to sleep through it. I’m not saying when she wakes, it will be easy either. Symptoms can persist for months, weeks, even years. One thing in our favor is that we found out from Bella that the girls were forcibly given the heroin. So it’s not like they came into that situation already addicted and we have those behaviors to overcome.” He looks at both of us. “Do you have any questions for me?”

  Fuck, my mind is a mess, swirling with all the information that he just gave us.

  “Can I see her? I want to see her.” Marissa starts to stand up, not waiting for the doctor to answer.

  He doesn’t, just leads the way. “Perhaps you should wait for us to clean her up a little.”

  Marissa pushes past him, opens the door, and the sight before her is too much for her. Her legs buckle as she covers her mouth with her hands to stifle the sobs coming out of her.

  Lori is, thank God, dressed in a hospital gown now. Gone are the skimpy things that we found her in while she was being held. Her hair is still in need of a wash. Her skin is tinged an almost yellowish color. The track marks marring her skin are clearly visible in that position with her arms lying alongside her body. The machine next to her beeps quietly. The nurse was writing something down on the paper but stopped when the sobs started.