by Alana Terry
“I’m okay.” I was a little light-headed and I was freezing, but I was still in one piece. Mostly. I picked my way through the debris to him.
“You’re not okay,” he argued as I sank to my knees beside his chair and started working on the ropes with slippery fingers.
“They’re not that deep.”
“There’s a lot of blood.”
“Vomit you can handle, but blood makes you squeamish?” I asked. I tried to keep my voice light and playful, but it came out shaky. He’d held my hair back shortly after we first met, when my memories made me sick to my stomach.
“No, blood does not make me squeamish. You bein’ in pain makes me squeamish. You can’t be here when he comes back.”
A loud crash from downstairs made my heart flutter. I needed to find a way to untie him and get all of us out of here. I couldn’t—I wouldn’t—leave him behind. I left my family behind and they all died.
“I’m not leaving you.” I tried to wiggle my fingers in between the layers of rope to pull it apart, but it was too tightly knotted. “Jordan’s downstairs delaying Edward.”
“I heard the gunshot.”
“He missed.” I grabbed a jagged piece of wood from the floor and began sawing at the rope. A few fibers frayed, but not quickly enough.
My hands were slippery with blood, and I kept losing my grip on the piece of wood. I tried prying the rope apart again, but I wasn’t strong enough.
Another string of violent thumps came from downstairs. It sounded like they were slamming each other into the walls.
“Holly, if he comes up those steps . . .”
“I said I’m not leaving you and you can’t make me,” I snapped. “Let it go.” I tried the ropes around his right wrist. “Come on,” I begged. The ropes on that side of the chair weren’t as tight, and I was able to squeeze a finger in between the loops and slowly loosen them.
My fingers were so cold they were numb, and it made them clumsy. I worked at the rope as quickly as I could, and I knew I was making progress, but it wasn’t fast enough. Minutes were slipping by.
“Holly,” Marx said urgently, and the note of fear in his voice brought my eyes up instantly.
The killer stepped into the room. Crimson dripped from the tip of his knife onto the floorboards, and my gaze flickered to the doorway. Jordan. Edward wiped the knife slowly across his shirt to clean it.
“I told you, Holly. I get what I want, and we’re not done,” he said.
“Don’t you touch her,” Marx demanded as he twisted in the chair, trying to pull free of his bonds. I hadn’t had enough time to loosen them.
Edward’s bottomless eyes shifted from me to Marx, and a chill went through me. There was a glimmer of murderous intent in his eyes, and he twisted the knife in his hand as he stepped forward. “I wanted you to watch, but you’re proving to be more trouble than you’re worth. I’m just going to kill you now.”
I grabbed a chunk of wood the length of a baseball bat and stepped in front of Marx. I hadn’t been able to untie him so he could defend himself, and I would not let him die . . . at least not without trying to save him.
“Holly! What are you doin’!” Marx shouted from behind me. “Get out of the way!”
Edward paused and cocked his head thoughtfully, as if my behavior puzzled him. “You can’t honestly think you’re capable of stopping me.”
“Awesome things come in small packages,” I told him, and my voice wavered. Just look at Jesus. He came in a package that probably weighed about seven pounds, six ounces, and He changed the world. I could at least hit a psychotic, knife-wielding killer with a stick.
We both knew that when he decided to make his move, there was little I could do to stop him. But maybe I could at least delay him until Marx managed to pull free, or help arrived.
I really needed help to arrive.
He took another slow step forward, and I almost fell on top of Marx when instinct drove me back to avoid the approaching threat.
“Holly, please move,” Marx pleaded.
Edward advanced another step, and I swung. To both our surprise, I connected with his side, but there wasn’t enough force behind it to do more than elicit a grunt of irritation from him. He wrapped his fingers around the end of the chunk of wood and ripped it from my hands. He discarded it over his shoulder.
I ducked when he grabbed for me, but he managed to catch a fistful of my hair. I cried out as he wrenched me back.
“You don’t seem to understand how this works, Holly. I’m a man. You’re a woman. I can break you easily,” he explained.
His grip on my hair tightened, and I hissed in through my teeth. It felt like he was ripping it out by the roots. I drew back my foot and kicked him in the shin as hard as I could.
Anger sharpened his voice. “You want to fight me? Fine!” He locked an arm around my waist, lifting me up to shoulder height with laughable ease, and then spiked me into the floorboards like a football.
Indescribable pain exploded through my entire body, and my vision went white. I coughed as I desperately tried to draw in a breath; breathing sent another wave of pain splintering through my ribs and stomach.
Someone was shouting somewhere, but it sounded like bees buzzing around inside my skull. I drew my limbs slowly into my body as I curled into a fetal position on the floorboards, trying to pull myself together so I could get up. I had to get up.
I blinked at the terrifying face above me through a haze of pain-induced tears. Edward leaned over me as he whispered, “You’re mine; you’ve always been mine, and there’s only one way this ends for you.”
“No.” I dragged myself back from him, scooting through the debris on the floor to get away. He wrapped his fingers around my ankles, and I screamed as he wrenched me back with one quick tug that left me flat on my back.
He crawled on top of me, straddling me, and panic stole any hope of rational thought. “No!” I screamed. I pounded my fists into his chest and pushed at his shoulders in blind desperation. “Get off!”
I tried to squirm out from under him, but he dragged me back. I could hear Marx shouting something in the background, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. My mind was trapped in a place of single-minded focus: get him off.
I felt the sharpness of the blade as he pressed it against my abdomen. I clawed at the debris around me for anything I could use as a weapon. I found a sliver of wood and stabbed it into Edward’s shoulder. He howled in pain and backhanded me hard enough to leave my ears ringing.
For a moment, I thought I might pass out. I blinked and tried to focus. I had to get away. I tried to drag myself across the shifting floor, but he slammed me onto my back and grabbed for my wrists. He caught my left one easily and pinned it to the floor above my head. I slapped him with my right hand and raked my nails down his face, leaving bloody tracks from his eyebrow down the length of his jaw.
He swore and clutched at his face. When he drew back his arm to hit me a second time, I snapped into a ball with my arms protecting my head. I didn’t think I could take another blow to the head from him.
A deafening series of bangs reverberated through the room. I cringed and squeezed my eyes shut. An obscenely heavy weight fell on top of me, and I would’ve screamed, but it crushed the breath from my lungs.
I cracked open my eyelids and stared into vacant dark eyes. A fresh wave of terror washed through me, and I tried frantically to push Edward’s body off me before I suffocated.
I couldn’t breathe.
Someone hooked their arms under mine and heaved, pulling me out from under the body inch by agonizingly slow inch. I thrashed once I was clear of the body, trying to escape the person’s grip.
Gentle arms folded around me and hugged me. “Sh, sweetheart, you’re all right. It’s over,” a soothing Southern voice assured me. “He’s dead. It’s all over.” He held me against him as we huddled on the floor mere feet from the man who’d tried to murder all of us.
Jordan slumped down agains
t the far wall, looking frighteningly pale. There was a gash just above his eyebrow, and a welt blossoming on his right cheek that promised to be a spectacular bruise. He pressed one hand to the seeping wound on his stomach and gripped his gun with the other.
He would’ve had to make his way back down into the basement to recover his gun, and then climb two flights of stairs while wounded to get to us. And judging by the wine-colored stain spreading down his T-shirt and over his jeans, it wasn’t a glancing wound.
He glared at the dead man as if he wished he could put a few more bullets in him. “Ambulance is on its way. So is backup,” he said through a wince of pain. He looked at me and something shifted behind his eyes before he asked Marx, “Is she gonna be okay?”
My panic melted away slowly, replaced by pain and the bone-numbing cold that had seeped into my body an hour ago. I started to shake.
“She will be,” Marx said as he rested his head on top of mine—either to hold me closer or to impart some of his warmth—and I didn’t fight him. He murmured soothing words to me, and I sagged in his embrace.
And because I didn’t have much dignity left after everyone saw me that vulnerable . . . I cried.
Epilogue
FLUFFY WHITE SNOWFLAKES drifted down outside my kitchen window, and I watched them as I leaned against the counter, sipping my hot chocolate with marshmallows. I had no appreciation for the colder months of the year, but at least the sparkling snowflakes were pretty.
It had been just over a month since Edward Billings, the man who murdered my family eighteen years ago, had tracked me down and attempted to finish the job. If not for Marx and Jordan, he might have succeeded.
None of us had escaped my childhood home unscathed, but considering the three of us had walked away while the killer was rolled out in a body bag, we couldn’t complain. Jordan had technically been loaded onto a stretcher and carried out, but the killer had thrown him around like a rag doll and then stabbed him, so he’d earned the right to be carried down the steps.
I didn’t really understand why Edward had come after my family, and I doubted I ever would. Maybe if I studied his life and crawled inside his head I could find that answer, but that wasn’t a place I ever wanted to go.
Marx continued to dig into Edward’s past, searching for details that I was happy to live without. He told me that Edward had gone to college under a false name and had flourished in a career as a pharmaceutical salesman for veterinary clinics. It allowed him to travel the country and gave him access to ketamine, which he’d used to subdue the children of the families he targeted.
He’d met my mother at a veterinary clinic shortly after leaving prison, and I had no doubt he’d chosen that career as some sick reminder of her. She hadn’t been his first victim—that had been his own mother—but she’d been one of his firsts, and the way he’d spoken about her made me think she held a special place in his icy heart.
I had considered staying in Stony Brooke after everything was resolved. I could have a peaceful life there with my father’s bookstore, but I wouldn’t be happy. Too many people knew the little girl I used to be, and I wasn’t her. I spoke with Georgetta, and she agreed to stay on and tend the store for me. I accepted a small percentage of the income since I didn’t technically have a job anymore. I was flat broke and I didn’t even have my camera.
The main reason I couldn’t bring myself to stay in Stony Brooke were the people I cared about in New York. I loved Jace too much to abandon her, and Marx had grown on me.
I smiled as I sipped my hot chocolate. He was an interesting addition to my life. With his brusque, no-nonsense, cop persona and his fatherly protectiveness, I wasn’t really sure where or how he fit into my life now. He just . . . did.
I never thought I would be able to regard him with anything more than strained civility, but now I trusted him with my life. And he didn’t seem to mind me either.
It took me a while to understand the reason that God wanted Marx in my life. If I hadn’t been assaulted in the park that day, I never would’ve met him. And if I had never met him, I would’ve been completely alone when Edward came for me. There would’ve been no protection detail, no trip to Kansas to meet Jordan, and no one to come to my defense when Edward took me home to finish what he’d started all those years ago. I would’ve simply . . . disappeared.
The thought chilled me.
God always had a plan, even if I stubbornly fought Him every step of the way. We were always butting heads, but His head was bigger, and He always got His way in the end. Without Him, I wouldn’t be alive. I also wouldn’t have been reunited with my childhood friend.
Jordan was . . . complicated. I had regained a few of my memories of him: playing ball, tumbling through piles of leaves, creating strange and sometimes inedible things in the kitchen . . . but none of those memories, precious as they were, helped me to know how to deal with the man.
I might not desire anything more than friendship with him, but I could admit that he was handsome . . . in a pretty, charming sort of way. I wasn’t entirely certain what he thought of me, but sometimes he looked at me in a way that made my heart flutter in anxious confusion.
We were strangers with a history. We knew absolutely nothing about each other as adults, and I knew our reunion hadn’t gone quite the way he’d imagined it would. He was trying very hard to give me space and make me comfortable even though he didn’t know why it was necessary.
It helped that he didn’t live in New York. For the time being, he’d chosen to remain in Stony Brooke. But he promised to visit.
I lifted my mug to take another drink of hot chocolate when a knock came on my front door. I paused and gave the ghastly yellow door a wary look. I wasn’t expecting company. It was eight o’clock in the evening.
Another quiet knock.
“Holly, it’s Sam,” a baritone voice called through the door.
Odd. He wasn’t exactly the visiting type. I set down my drink and tucked my feet into my pair of warm green slippers before opening the front door.
Sam stood on the front patio in jeans and a sweater. He clutched a small box in his hands and was making a valiant effort not to shiver in the cold as snowflakes flurried around him.
“Is everything okay?” I asked. “Is Marx okay?”
“Fine. Everyone’s fine. Do you mind if I come in?” I’m not sure what look was on my face—considering his request left me feeling a bit uneasy—but he puffed out a breath. “Right . . . sorry. I guess I didn’t really think that one through. I’m good here.”
He bounced his legs to keep warm, and guilt gnawed at me. Sam had spent nearly two months out in the cold trying to keep me safe. I leaned out and looked around at the undisturbed powder and eerily quiet night. “So why are you on my porch?”
He opened his mouth to answer and then snapped it shut again. “Just . . . waiting.”
I stared at him intently, waiting for more information. When he didn’t volunteer anything, I prompted him, saying, “For . . . ?”
He sighed and just looked at me. Okay, apparently, it was a secret. “It’s nothing to worry about. You can close the door. I’ll be fine out here. I’m sorry I knocked and bothered you.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “And how long are you planning to wait on my patio?”
“Maybe five minutes.”
“Are you waiting for a person? Should I be concerned?” Marx would have called me if there was some sort of problem, and Sam wasn’t on duty, so I thought not.
“Yes, I’m waiting for someone. No, you shouldn’t be concerned.” He looked half-frozen already. The wind chill had plunged the temperature into the negatives.
I sighed and said, “You should consider a coat next time. I’m pretty sure they make them in your size.” I opened the door after a beat of reluctance and stepped back. I had never welcomed Sam into my apartment on his own before, and it did make me a little nervous despite the fact that he seemed like a good person. I hadn’t gotten to know him all that well d
uring those two months. But Jace thought highly of him.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“I’m gonna be less sure in about ten seconds.”
He stomped the snow from his boots before coming inside. He set the small, plain white box on the kitchen counter and then went back outside to throw the wooden plank over the steps, creating a makeshift ramp.
“Jace is coming?” I asked. The two of them had been interested in each other during the case, but Sam had been reluctant to pursue a relationship with her while he was trying to protect me. He didn’t want to divide his focus.
“Yeah.” He stepped back inside and brushed the snowflakes from his head. “She’s getting something from her car.”
“You didn’t offer to help?”
He gave me a flat look. “And risk bodily harm for daring to suggest she can’t do it herself?”
I laughed. “That drives you crazy, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does,” he admitted. He looked me over in that brisk, clinical way he usually did when we saw one another, like he was double-checking that I was still alive and in one piece. “You look better. The bruises are gone.”
The last time he’d seen me, I’d looked a little worse for wear after my encounter with the killer in Kansas. Most of my wounds had been hidden beneath my clothes, but I’d had a few bruises on my face and neck. I hadn’t looked nearly as rough as Marx, though. Eggplant purple might be my favorite color, but it did not look good on people’s faces.
“Yep,” I said, because I wasn’t really sure what else to say. I picked up my mug of hot chocolate and gripped it with both hands. I was going to freeze to death standing by the open front door without something to keep me warm, and I wasn’t locking the two of us in here alone together.
“So how are you doing?” he asked.
“Okay. You?”
He gave a stiff shrug. “Fine.”
I gnawed on my lower lip. Right. This was why I didn’t do small talk. It led to awkwardness. I stared into my mug because the silent eye contact was making me fidget.
