I knew I loved Jarrod, even though I was too scared to say it to him, but I still struggled to understand what he saw in me. I was plain and liked gaming. He was hot, narrated erotic books, worked out, was hot again, and sang like a god. We just didn’t seem to fit, but we did at the same time. I’d never believed in soul mates or people being fated for each other. Looking at it from a different perspective, I was starting to think maybe I was wrong about that.
And on that thought, I parked up in the parking lot for the store and hustled my ass into it to pick up diapers, thinking as well about how I’d approach ever telling him how I felt.
Jarrod
Three hours later…
I was late leaving work after Rita showed up because we’d been talking while I was working, so it took me longer to finish the car I’d been assigned. Not that it mattered, though, because Ren and Cole were both in shit with Maya and Ebru, so they were delaying going home and had hung out at the garage with us, and Hurst had finally admitted defeat with his car and it had been written off, so he’d come to hide with them. My aunt was a blast, so there had been a lot of joking and laughter going on until we realized the time and locked up. Now we were home, and I was heading into Katy’s with Rita walking beside me.
I was just about to ask her if we should all go out for dinner when I noticed that Katy’s door was wide open, something she never did in case Duke or Elodie got out.
Holding my hand up, I silenced Rita, who’d been talking about my cousin, by putting my finger to my lips. When she saw my expression, her mouth snapped shut audibly, and she nodded.
Walking quietly up to the door, I put my hand flat on it and pushed it open all the way. It looked like there’d been a struggle by the door and the table Katy kept a glass dish on for loose change and keys was shattered, glass and coins spread out across a large area. Just behind that was the television lying face down and at least eight feet from where it should have been. Looking over at the couch, I saw a pair of feet that I knew well only just poking out.
“Call 911, Rita. We need two ambulances,” I barked, moving quickly around the edge of it to where Katy was lying on the floor with her back to me.
I knew the basics of what you were meant to look for, but all of it left me as I leaned over her and saw the small pool of blood under her mouth.
“Katy, baby,” I whispered urgently, putting a shaky hand on her neck and hoping I was in the right place to feel her pulse.
The fluttering under my fingers was a relief, but I wasn’t sure if it was coming from me or her. I’d done a first aid course in high school and I remembered the guy saying something about us being able to feel our own pulses in our fingers, but I couldn’t remember why he’d said it.
That’s when I thought about checking to see if she was breathing – which, at a later date, would hit me as the first thing I should have looked for.
Seeing her chest moving, I carefully moved around so that I was now in front of her, next to her arm that was outstretched on the floor.
Leaning over her so that my mouth was next to her ear, I called, “Katy.”
When nothing happened, I reached for the hand on the floor and gently lifted it up. That got a reaction in the form of a pained groan.
“Jarrod,” Rita called, sounding like she was crying. “Her grandmother’s over here.”
Reluctantly taking my eyes off Katy, I looked over my shoulder and realized immediately why she’d sounded like she was crying. The ever vibrant Maude, so full of life, was almost unrecognizable. Her eyes were already swollen, and her face was bruised all over.
“Did you call 911?” I barked, turning back to Katy and panicking because I didn’t know what to do.
What if one of them stopped breathing? With the bruising on Maude, I wouldn’t know if it was safe to CPR. With Katy, I’d probably break having to do that to her.
I didn’t know what to fucking do!
“No,” she whimpered. “I saw Maude and… and…” she broke off and started sobbing.
Pulling my phone out of my back pocket, I unlocked it and hit a number I’d never had to dial before in my life.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
Four words I’d never expected to hear in my life, and then I said some words I’d never even thought about saying, but once I had, I never wanted to say them again.
“I need an ambulance. My girlfriend and her grandmother have been beaten and are unconscious.”
With Rita crying hard in the background, I felt something deep inside of me start to crack, but then Katy twitched and something hit me. She needed me to be strong for her, and so did Maude. If I did that, I could follow the instructions that the lady on the phone was giving me while we waited for the ambulances to arrive. If I cracked now, I wouldn’t be able to do that and it could cost them their lives.
The lives of these two beautiful women, who’d made such a big difference to me in such a short space of time, were potentially in my hands.
So, with that epiphany, I took a deep, shaky breath in and did what the woman said.
Sixteen
Katy
I felt it as soon as I began to wake up, but it didn’t make sense to me. There was just so much pain all over. It wasn’t unusual for me to wake up with aching thighs or a pain here and there, it happened to everyone and I liked to think I was an Avenger while I was sleeping, but this was different. Whatever I’d done through the night had left me feeling like I’d gotten in the ring with the late and great Mohammed Ali.
Surfacing more from slumber, I took in a painful breath and couldn’t stop the moan that followed it. Holy shit, that fucking hurt.
“Katy,” a deep voice whispered beside my ear and a hand gently picked up one of mine. “Wake up, baby.”
Moving to roll onto my back, I almost screamed with the pain that filled me with those movements. My elbow, my back, my side, my shoulder, my head… everything felt like it had been crushed.
“Baby, you’re in hospital. You were in an accident,” the deep voice rumbled, and that’s when my eyes opened as it all came flooding back to me.
“Where’s Elodie?” I whimpered, needing to know he hadn’t taken her.
“We don’t know, Katy. And if you wake up a bit more, maybe you can tell us,” Mom’s voice said from the opposite side of the bed to where Jarrod was sitting, and I looked at her without moving my head and causing myself more pain.
Seeing the tears in her eyes, I looked back to the other side and saw that Jarrod looked like he hadn’t slept in a week.
“It was freaky Shane,” I rasped, closing my eyes as it all played out in my mind. “I dropped Rita at the garage and went to get diapers. When I came back, I heard Elodie screaming from the driveway and ran into the house because it sounded like she’d hurt herself. Gloria was sitting on the couch with her on her lap, and her face was bleeding. I didn’t even get to ask what happened because something hit me on the head, and when I fell down he started kicking me,” I stopped to lick my lips, feeling how dry they were.
Every word, every replay of what I remembered was draining me, but the panic… the panic hurt.
“I was trying to crawl away from him, but he grabbed my arm hard and pulled it up behind me. I turned onto my back and then Shane put his hand around my throat and squeezed. He kept asking where the shit Effie stole from him was, but I still don’t know what he was talking about. I told him I didn’t know, but he squeezed harder and then started punching me,” I whimpered, the tears falling out of the corners of my eyes and trailing into my hair.
“You’ve done well, Katy,” a new voice that I recognized instantly told me, and I realized Jarrod and Mom weren’t the only two people in the room with me. “Did he say anything else to you?” Dave asked.
Closing my eyes, I replayed the look on his face as he punched me, how he’d called me a “fucking slut” as he did it, the rage he was feeling as he punched me.
Then I remembered, and my eyes shot open as I sucked in an
agonizing breath. “He said if Effie didn’t bring it to him, he was going to kill Elodie.” On the last word, saying my niece’s name and thinking of her being in pain, I started sobbing, big chest wracking sobs that made me want to scream in pain.
I wasn’t sure what injuries Shane had caused me during the assault, but I knew for sure that each sob felt like someone was stabbing me with a spear in my abdomen and head.
I’d put up with that pain every day for the rest of my life if I got Elodie back, though.
Large hands gently held either side of my face, and I looked up and saw Jarrod looking down at me with tears in his eyes.
“Do you trust me?” he asked, his voice sounding rough and raw.
I didn’t even need to think about my response to this question, but I needed to calm my crying to answer it. When that proved impossible, I gasped out, “Absolutely,” my voice breaking in the middle of the word.
Closing the distance, he ran the tip of his nose down mine. “I’m going to get her back, Katy. I’m going to make him pay, but she’s coming home.”
And with that, he pulled his head back, and I saw how serious he was. The easy going light that his eyes always had was gone and in its place was a darkness I wouldn’t have thought he was capable of. He wasn’t just saying the words to make me feel better, he was actually going to make it happen.
I tried to raise my right arm to grab his hand, but the pain in my elbow was too much to be able to do it, so I had to use my left one instead. Wrapping my fingers around the wrist of his right hand, I clipped, “Make it happen and bring her home.”
With a nod, he lifted up and turned around to Dave, who was watching us. “Get her dad to call Leo. Tell him I want Effie’s number.”
“I’ve got it,” Mom offered, pulling her phone out of her purse and pressing the screen a couple of times. “Here,” she passed it to him.
Looking from the screen to me, he gave me one final nod before turning to Dave. “Let’s go.”
How could something like this happen? How was it even possible?
I didn’t understand why Shane would think I had whatever he wanted. I never saw Effie, none of us did, so why would he assume she’d given me something of his?
My little niece’s face, her mouth grinning, popped into my head and I took in a shuddering breath thinking about how scared she must be.
When he’d been attacking me, I’d seen Maude lying on the ground and knew she’d have done everything she could to protect her great granddaughter. I also knew she would no doubt be pissed and trying to get Jarrod to let her go with him to get Elodie right now, so I needed to speak to her and hold her hand until they brought her back to us.
Rolling my head to look at Mom, I asked shakily, “Where’s Maude?”
That’s when it got even worse – if that was even possible – because her eyes closed slowly as her lips trembled, and tears started trailing down her cheeks.
Jarrod
Taking in a steadying breath, I looked around all the friends and family that were sitting in the waiting room and stopped on Leo.
“Your daughter has something that belongs to the fucker who did this. He’s taken Elodie and if she doesn’t give it back to him, he’ll kill her,” I growled, watching as his face turned from shocked to horrified.
Normally, I would probably have felt sympathy for him, but right now I was disgusted. I knew I was directing my anger in the wrong direction, but it was his daughter who’d caused this.
“I’m going to call her, it will not be nice, but I want whatever the fuck it is he wants in my hand in the next hour, and all of this shit is because of her. Her daughter’s life is at risk because of her. Maude’s life is hanging by a thread. Because. Of. Her!” I roared the last word, watching as his head jerked and he got even paler.
“Jarrod, man,” DB muttered, coming up behind me to hold my shoulder.
Shrugging him off, I shot him a glare and moved closer to Leo. “Are you with me on this?”
“Of course,” he replied immediately, looking confused about the question and why I’d be asking him it. I
if I’d been feeling even remotely rational instead of pissed, it might have dawned on me that this was because his mom was lying in ICU, her outlook unknown at that moment, and his granddaughter’s life was hanging in the balance all because of his daughter, and the second he’d found that out any lingering loyalty he had to her had disappeared in a cloud of dust. I wasn’t rational, though, so all I saw was a man who might stop me from getting the information out of Effie, so I didn’t trust him one bit at that moment, which was why I’d laid it out. Another reason I’d done it in the way I had was so that DB could stop him if he went to grab the phone from me.
Hitting the number on the screen, I held the phone to my ear, my eyes not leaving his once. When no one answered the number, I rang it again and again, putting it on speakerphone so DB and his men could hear it. Finally, on the fourth try, she picked up.
“What the fuck?”
“That’s the wrong way to answer right now, Effie,” I clipped.
“Who the fuck is this?”
“Right now your grandmother is clinging to life by the skin of her teeth after being attacked by an acquaintance of yours who took Elodie. This means that your daughter is most likely terrified out of her tiny little mind and my mother is missing because he took her, too. And it’s all because of you.”
There was the sound of rustling and then she snapped, “How’s that my fault? I’m not even there.”
Jesus Christ, she hadn’t even asked about Maude or sounded worried about Elodie even after what I’d laid out. Why the fuck are people like that in the world?
“Because the man responsible for all of that and putting your cousin Katy in hospital after beating and choking her, says you’ve got something of his. His message to you is that if he doesn’t get it back, he’s going to kill your daughter,” I hissed, stressing the last word to try to trigger some level of human decency and compassion in her shriveled black heart so she’d give us the information we needed.
There was a pause and silence on her end, and then she asked impatiently, “And who’s saying all of this?”
There was no fear or sadness in her voice. It was empty and uncaring, just like her, and sounded almost like she was bored by it all.
Glancing quickly at Garrett, who’d shifted to stand closer to where I was and mouthed the word calm to me, I took a deep breath before I replied to the bitch. “Shane Perkins is saying this. He passed the message on while he was assaulting Katy and your grandmother was lying on the floor fighting for her life.”
I’d expected her to hear the name and realize how serious this was and that it wasn’t a game, regardless of the information I’d already laid out for her, which should have triggered her into offering up information immediately but hadn’t. But, proving she was an even bigger piece of shit than I thought she was at that moment, she snorted. “Shane? Really? He won’t do anything.”
Looking away from her dad and staring unseeingly out of the window of the waiting room, I asked incredulously, “That’s seriously your answer? I tell you that your grandmother - that Maude - might die, that your cousin who’s helped look after your daughter is in hospital after the man you claim wouldn’t do anything beat and choked her, that your daughter’s life is in danger, and that another woman – my mother – is missing, and you laugh and dismiss it?”
Not picking up on the barely banked fury in my voice, or just not caring about it, she replied, “Yeah, ‘cos it’s Shane.”
Those four words broke the fragile hold I had on my anger.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” I roared into the phone. “Tell me what he’s looking for, Effie, or I swear to God I’ll make your life a living hell. The dealers that you go to will send you away or give you flour to snort, the tricks you’re turning to fund your habit will dry up, and the people you hang around with will lock their doors on you. You’ll be dried up and strung out, l
iving on the streets like the piece of shit you are.” I stopped and then lowered the tone of my voice to a level of sinister I didn’t even know I was capable of. “Don’t think I won’t make that happen. You don’t know who I am, but I promise you, I know who you are.”
I don’t know where the words came from because I didn’t have that kind of sway in the world, but I would give everything I had to make it happen if she didn’t give me what I needed right now, and I knew targeting her habit and what she used in life to keep it going would be a trigger. The death of her grandmother, the violent beating her cousin had endured, the fact a woman had been kidnapped because of her, and her daughter’s life hanging in the balance hadn’t, but drugs would.
Fucking Christ.
There was a silence that stretched on for so long that I thought for a second that she’d hung up on me, but then she whispered, “In the purple bear. It’s in there.”
The fucking purple bear? Whatever was worth her daughter’s life was in that piece of shit bear that she’d given to her daughter. She had to have known it would put her life in danger, but she’d done it, anyway.
Fuck. Fuck me!
And that’s when all the remnants of the pity and ideas of helping save Effie from the demons that were controlling her and driving her to live a life of drugs I’d had left me. She’d knowingly and deliberately put her daughter’s life in danger.
Looking back at Leo and seeing him looking ashen and devastated, I hissed, “Right now your father is looking like his world has just ended finding out his daughter deliberately put his granddaughter’s life in the hands of a psychopath.” When she went to say something, I snapped, “Shut the fuck up and fucking listen to me. Your grandmother is in a bad way – Last Rites kind of bad way,” I clarified, listening to her gasp. “Your daughter will now know that her mother not only didn’t care enough about her to raise her and give her the world she deserves, but she’ll know that you cared enough about yourself to dangle her over the edge of a cliff. If anything, anything happens to that baby or my mom, I’ll deliver you to Perkins myself. Now, the last thing you do for your daughter – in fact, it’ll be the only thing you’ve ever done for her – is you text me the number you have for Perkins. If you don’t, I’ll find you and get it myself, and trust me – you don’t want that to happen.”
Talk Flirty To Me: Cheap Thrills Series Book 4 Page 19
