Execution Style

by Lani Lynn Vale

He grunted, not replying.

  My phone chose that moment to call out its death rattle once again, startling me.

  “Alright, people. Let’s get out of here. Go slow. Don’t scare the boys outside,” Sam said authoritatively. “Go out with your hands above your head.”

  Sam stood, leaving the unconscious Sarah on the floor. “Let’s get out of here before she wakes.”

  My mother ran to me, throwing her arms around my neck. “Oh, baby.”

  “Now, ladies,” Sam ordered again.

  I disentangled my arms from around my mom. “Now, mom. She has a bomb strapped to her chest.”

  “What?” My mom screeched, but still chose to follow me out, despite the fact that she wanted to look back at Sarah.

  “Did you kill her?” My mother asked him. “I swear to God. I babysat that girl when she was a small child. What the hell is going on in this town?”

  “Apparently, this town’s inbred and needs to branch the fuck out,” Sam muttered under his breath as he opened the doors and was the first one out.

  It wasn’t in a selfish way, either. It was because if anybody was going to get shot by a jumpy cop, it’d be him.

  Which showed me the measure of him in those few short actions he’d taken in the two hours we’d been in there.

  In fact, the entire thing was less than climatic.

  I felt like there was something still going to happen, yet the only thing that did was when Miller started running up the steps of the bank and picked me up into his arms.

  Then, without preamble, he turned around and hauled ass down the steps, with me cradled in his overprotective arms.

  “Where are we going?” I asked frantically.

  “To the courthouse,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “But what are we gonna do there? I need to talk to my mom!” I said worriedly, turning around to see my mother hurrying after us.

  “Your mother’s following us there. She’s stopping to get your father,” he snapped.

  “But…but…” I stuttered. “What on earth?”

  He shoved me into the back of the nearest cop car, pushing his hand onto my head to help guide me in.

  “Hey!” I yelled indignantly, slapping at his hands.

  That didn’t stop him, though.

  It only made him shoot a glare at me before he threw the door closed and started rounding the back of the car.

  “Foster! Car!” He yelled loudly.

  Foster came running.

  They both got in, and Miller started hightailing it to the courthouse.

  I sat in the back, fuming.

  What in the world was his problem?

  When he spun a little too quickly around the corner, I placed my hand over my abdomen in reflex, which caught his eye.

  His mouth tightened, but he slowed down to a more manageable pace.

  “Where are we going, bro?” Foster asked after a few minutes of silence.

  “Courthouse,” Miller said shortly.

  “Oh, okay,” Foster said congenially.

  It was as if he knew exactly what was going on with just those two words.

  ‘’Do you know what I was doing when I got that call that there was a bank and hostage situation?” Miller asked, as he pulled up in front of the courthouse.

  He got out and stopped by my door, hunching down so he could look in at me.

  I shook my head slowly. “No. What?”

  It came out breathless, mostly because the look in his eyes had me struggling to breathe. The expression in them was positively tortured.

  “Planning our future. But what I didn’t realize, while I was doing that, was that you were being taken from me. Before I ever even officially made you mine.” He rasped. “Which leads me to now…I need you to do this. For my sanity.

  “It’s going to be hard, and we’re going to have times where we hate each other. Where you hate my job. Where I don’t come home until five hours past my shift’s end. Where I don’t come home at all until you’re so worried about me you can’t see straight. Then I’ll walk through that door, and it’ll just be because I got peed on and needed a fucking minute to unwind with the boys. I’m not promising you a perfect life. What I am promising you, is a life where I love you until you until I die. A life where you know I’ll always have your back. A life where the reason I breathe easier is because you’re lying next to me.”

  He got down on his knee, pulling a simple black ring box from a pocket in his vest.

  “Mercy Me, will you marry me?” He asked solemnly.

  I gasped, trying to recover from the debilitating tears that I knew were going to take me down fast and hard. “Of course, you stupid, fool man. I’ll marry you. Just don’t ever go all caveman on me again.”

  He slipped the ring on my finger, and stood, pulling me close with two hands on either side of my face, making sure I didn’t hit my head on the car’s roof.

  “Is that a condition of you marrying me?” He asked

  I shook my head. “No. Because I know you’d never uphold that end of the deal.”

  “You’re right,” he growled against my throat. “I won’t.”

  Then we were moving once again, heading straight through the courthouse, not stopping at the metal detectors because of Foster’s badge that he flashed once we opened the front doors.

  “Okay, but you’re going to have to give me a real ceremony in a couple of weeks. One where your parents are there. And your brothers. My father needs to walk me down the aisle. I also have a big extended family with the fire department. They should be there, too.”

  We arrived at an open door that led into what looked like an office when I heard an amused voice at my back.

  “Got that covered, baby girl. They’re all outside right now. In fact, I think the whole fucking city is out there,” my father said, running into the room with his hair a mess, and his tie he’d worn to work that day skewed, and my mother’s hand in a death grip.

  He wasted no time gathering her into his arms. “God, I thought you both were lost to me.”

  The words, whispered with so much emotion, had the power to nearly send me to my knees.

  Turning my gaze to Miller, knowing I had the same thing with him that my parents had, I offered him my hand. “Let’s do it.”

  Chapter 21

  Drink responsibly…as in don’t fuckin’ spill it.

  -Note to self

  Mercy

  “What do you want to go do?” He asked softly as we walked outside into the beautiful afternoon hand in hand.

  I smiled. “I have something you’ll want to see. And I swear to God if they did it without me, I’m going to kill them.”

  We stopped short, though, when a man on a bike stood and smiled at us.

  “Sam!” I said happily.

  He cocked his head. “How’d you know who I was?”

  I gestured to Miller. “You’ve got a fan club. Plus your mommy-in-law talks about you a lot.”

  Sam smiled. “Good to know.”

  He offered his hand first to Miller, then to me.

  “Got married?” He asked, eyeing the ring that would now be a permanent fixture on my hand.

  “Yep. Someone couldn’t even wait for his parents to arrive,” I said, looking up at my man. My husband. “But we’re having a reception this weekend. You should come.”

  Sam’s lips twitched. “Sure thing, honey. I just wanted to thank you.”

  Miller’s arm encircled my neck as he kissed the top of my head.

  He had a slight tremor to his movements, still, and I could tell he was still pretty shaken up from the day’s activities.

  “Yeah,” he nodded, eyes connecting with Miller. “She saved our lives.”

  Miller nodded, something passing between them. “I hear you had a lot to do with that, too.”

  Sam shrugged. “I wasn’t the one on the phone, though. I had a gun on me and everything, and there wasn’t a
single thing I could do without knowing she didn’t have a fail switch on her. Your girl kept calm, relayed it all to the police and, in the end, was the one to distract her so I could take her down. She’s the real hero.”

  I blushed at the praise. “I don’t know about all that, but thanks.”

  “On that note, I’ve got to get home to my wife and kids. They’re still pretty shaken up. I just wanted to introduce myself, and say that if you ever needed anything, I’m here.”

  With that, he handed me a card, and turned to his motorcycle.

  He swung his muscular leg over the powerful machine, started it up, and roared off.

  “You’re drooling. Your husband’s right next to you, and you’re drooling over another man,” Miller said cheekily.

  I pinched him and looked down at the card.

  Freebirds- 100988 Freedom Dr. - Kilgore, TX

  “I think you need to get a motorcycle,” I said teasingly.

  He looked at me weird. “I have a motorcycle. I just keep it at Trance’s place because I have to have my cruiser on me at all times.”

  My mouth dropped open as he held the door to his truck open. “After all this time, you’ve had a motorcycle, and haven’t once offered to take me for a ride?”

  He smiled, and then leaned into me, working his hips in between my splayed thighs.

  “Honey, I’ll take you for a ride anytime you want me to. All you have to do is say the word,” he said against my lips.

  I grinned, and then took advantage of his open mouth by sweeping my tongue inside.

  He groaned, pulling me closer into his body.

  Something ridged pressed into my pussy through my jeans and I knew, for a fact, that that wasn’t his flashlight.

  My hands latched onto him desperately, holding him to me with every bit of strength I possessed.

  My belly started to flutter, and I was gasping at the intenseness of the kiss.

  “Miller,” I breathed.

  Wanting him closer, I started to pull him into the car with me, but he stayed my hands.

  “You said you had an appointment,” he said, leaning his forehead against mine as we both fought for breath.

  “Fuck the appointment,” I said.

  He chuckled, and pulled back even further.

  Then went ahead and swung my legs into the truck before buckling me in.

  “Hey!” I said breathlessly.

  He grinned at me. “We have the rest of our lives.”

  I pouted but didn’t argue.

  “So, where are we going?” He asked once he started the truck up.

  I gave him the address, which he drove to while holding my hand in his.

  I studied the connection as he played with the large rock he’d placed on my finger in the judge’s chamber only an hour before.

  His finger twisted it back and forth on my hand, and I loved it.

  “You’re kidding me?” Miller said in denial.

  I looked up, smiling when Miller stopped short of the house.

  Disengaging my hand from his, I got out and walked up to Brock who was sitting in the bucket of the track hoe, kicked back reading the newspaper.

  “You ready?” I asked.

  He eyed me up and down, I assumed surveying for an injury, but said nothing else. Only stood and walked around to the track hoe’s side, and then climbed into the seat.

  “Let’s do it.”

  With that he rounded his arm high above his head, causing Maine to nod on his own piece of machinery. Followed shortly by the rest of my crew.

  Then they demolished Linda’s house, and all the memories that went with it.

  ***

  “You’re a fucking nut,” he said, shaking his head in denial. “That was a perfectly good house. You could’ve given it to someone.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I sure could have. I’ve given quite a bit to this community, though. It was time I did something for me. That house has a lot of negative memories in them. I needed it to go.”

  He opened the truck door for me, and I waved at the guys who were still picking up the rubble while the neighborhood watched, before getting inside.

  He leaned in, gave me a possessive kiss on the mouth, and walked to his side of the truck.

  “You wanna go see what I’ve been working on?” Miller asked, eyes shining with mirth as he continued to watch the house come down in a pile of rubble, and splinters of wood.

  I grinned at him, wrapping my hand around his, and nodded. “Anything you want to do, I’m there. Unless it’s cleaning. I don’t like to clean.”

  He winked. “Dually noted.”

  The drive was a lot longer than I’d thought it’d be, but really it was only twenty minutes or so outside of the city.

  “That’s where Nico lives,” he said, gesturing to the massive black gate without taking his hand off the steering wheel.

  My eyes widened as I saw the man in question walking down the drive.

  Shirtless.

  I licked my lips.

  The man was gorgeous, and his dark looks, and brooding personality only seemed to add to his appeal.

  “Where are we going? I thought this was a dead end,” I said, tearing my eyes away from Nico.

  Nico’s wife, Georgia, was a new friend of mine, and I felt it prudent not to ogle her husband.

  Nico raised his hand to us as we passed, and I waved back at him.

  Miller didn’t even bother to do anything more than a chin lift, which Nico did back before we passed him.

  “You’re not answering me,” I said, looking at Miller’s face.

  He was grinning. Smiling so wide that I feared his next actions.

  Veering off the road, he pulled into a driveway that I’d never seen before, on the opposite side of Nico’s property.

  “What…oh, my God! That’s the old Holmes Homestead! When did they get an entrance on this side? Hey, they painted, too!” I said in surprise.

  The Holmes Homestead was somewhat of a fairytale in Kilgore.

  The Holmes Homestead was one of the oldest, and most beautiful places in the state. It’d been featured on the cover of many magazines for quite some years now.

  It known mostly for the millions and millions of bluebonnets that graced its rolling pasture land during the year.

  They didn’t allow the public to cross their land, but if we were lucky, some of the bluebonnets would grow underneath the fence, and we could take some pictures in them on the side of the road.

  I hadn’t realized, though, that there was another entrance.

  “How’d you find this?” I asked warily.

  He grinned. “I saved the granddaughter last month when she fell from her horse. The granddaughter was six and lost. I found her wandering along the side of Stone Road, scared and cold.”

  “So they’re letting you go on their land?” I asked worriedly.

  I really, really didn’t want to get sent to jail for trespassing, which was something the Holmes’ did on occasion. They hated when people came on their land to take pictures; which was something someone inevitably tried to do every year.

  “Actually,” he said, getting out of the truck. “It’s ours.”

  I followed him. “What’s ours?”

  He gestured to the house.

  It was a massive house with huge white pillars in the front holding up the porch and second floor balcony.

  It’d been repainted lately. No longer was the paint peeling and flaking. Now it was a beautiful white, with red accents.

  “The house.”

  I froze, turning around to look at him.

  “It’s our house,” he said again once I didn’t say anything. “The place is ours. The Holmes family sold it to me.”

  “What-how?” I asked, my mind reeling.

  This place had to have cost a fortune.

  “I told you I had money. Well…not much anymore, but I put down a fuckin’ whack on this house to buy
it. I’d heard you talking about it the other day to Memphis. About how beautiful it was. So I went and asked, and it must’ve been the right time to do so, because Old Mr. Holmes decided to sell. His kids live in Alaska, and have a good business going up there. There’s no reason not to sell. He moved to Alaska to spend more time with his grandkids, and I got his house,” he explained.

  I got out of the car and warily walked across the front lawn.

  “This is what you’ve been doing over the last week?” I gasped, running my hands along the red pillars that graced the front porch.

  He winked. “Yeah, me and the boys have been busting our ass to make it livable. Foster says you owe him a month’s worth of home cooked meals.”

  “Foster can move in, for all I care. This place is the freakin’ bomb!” I said excitedly, rushing up the steps.

  I tried the door, but it was locked.

  “It’s locked,” I said smartly.

  He winked, and then reached into his pocket, withdrawing his massive key ring, and handed it to me. “It’s the new one.”

  It was easy to find.

  All the keys on his ring were bronze, or really old looking.

  The only new looking one on the entire ring was incredibly easy to spot.

  The inscription on the key said, ‘Mercy Me.’

  I tossed him a smile, then opened the door, gasping at the site before me.

  “Oh, it’s beautiful!” I squealed, jumping up and down. “Uh-oh. Those are stairs. I’ve never had stairs before. Those should prove exciting when I’m as big as a house in a few months.”

  His eyes widened as he took in the stairs, me, and then the stairs again. “I can move everything downstairs…”

  I snorted. “I was just kidding. I think I can handle the stairs. Don’t worry.”

  I could tell by the look on his face that he was going to worry, but I chose not to make a big deal of it, and went about touring the house.

  “Oh, wow,” I said. “This kitchen is beautiful.”

  The countertops were a dark, slate gray. “Are these concrete?”

  He nodded. “It was interesting seeing those going in. Your men are miracle workers.”

  “My crew did this?” I asked, turning to look at his face.

  “Yep,” he said, pointing at the cabinets. “They did those, too. The guys and I just focused on the things we were good at. Such as painting and the floors. The back deck was us, too.”