What if I hit his hand and he shoots me in the eye?
What if he presses the trigger and the gun jams?
What if the gun jams and it explodes and takes half my face off as well as his hand?
What if I miss his hand when I swing?
What if I hit his hand and he shoots through the window of the house and gets one of the other women or baby Jamie? That’s the one that made me freeze and take a deep breath. I’d been bordering on hysteria – obviously – and I remember Jones telling me that in a situation where there were high emotions involved, removing as much emotion as you can and assessing it using the facts made it easier to resolve.
Could you resolve a situation where a psycho was holding a gun to your head, though?
So, I’d gotten into the car. I’d gritted my teeth when he’d brought the butt of the gun down on my left kneecap. I hadn’t cried when the kneecap had popped out of position. I hadn’t thrown up when I’d looked down at my knee and seen the kneecap out of position ie on the side of my freaking leg. I’d cried silent tears and had prayed, but I’d bit my lip and refused to let even a squeak out.
“Shoulda fucked you up in high school,” Nick ranted as he drove. Somehow, he knew where to drive to avoid getting attention even with everyone on the lookout.
The Townsends really needed to reassess what security meant.
“Why?” I croaked around the lump, most likely my kneecap, in my throat.
“Because you’re a cunt,” he sneered. “They’re all cunts.”
I hated the c-word. It was disgusting and in all of my years on this earth, I hadn’t used it once. Him calling me and the most beautiful and loving family I’d ever met that heinous name? It pissed me off even more.
At that moment, as if my prayers were being answered – thank you, God. In case I forget! – his car spluttered and drifted to a stop in the middle of the field.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he screamed, hitting his hands off the roof of the car, including the one that was holding the gun which scared the shit out of me. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he continued screaming, punctuating each curse with the slam of his hands off the roof.
Throwing open his door, he ran around the front of the vehicle and almost wrenched my door off its hinges before reaching in and yanking me toward him. That was when I screamed as the pain in my knee amplified itself by a gazillion, radiating down toward my toes and up toward my groin with the epicenter of hell in the piece of bone sitting in the wrong place.
“Shut up, you fucking bitch,” he screamed in my face, spittle flying everywhere.
I had a moment then where I properly took in the changes in him since I’d last seen him. He’d always had a hard look about him, like he lived a really hard life. Now though, he looked at least fifteen years older than he should. I wasn’t sure if it was life in general that had done that, the breakdown of his marriage at such a young age, or if his aging was down to the vengeance that now fueled him, but dude looked old.
That was when he yanked me out of the vehicle, making me land awkwardly on my injured leg. I didn’t scream this time, I scrarfed– screamed and barfed at the same time.
It was like I had no control on the violent spasms as they rocked my center, giving each expelled mouthful of my stomach contents the power to project even further than the last one.
Nick gave me a hard shove that forced me in the direction of my left leg, the bad one, meaning that it took the full force of the shove and ended up with all of my weight on it.
The pain was so bad it felt like everything in my body froze – my brain, my eyes, my lungs, my heart… and like a sissy girl, I passed out.NineteenMadix“F uck!” Levi shouted, running toward us. “That was Luna. Dahlia’s missing.”
Not waiting around, I ran toward his truck and got in at the same time he did. In seconds he had us moving toward the houses and was relaying what he knew.
“She went to let in the dogs and when they started losing their shit at the door and she didn’t come back, the women went looking for her. They knew she wouldn’t do that, especially not just now, so they called as soon as they realized it.”
“Jesus Christ,” I roared into the tiny space. “He was waiting. He was fucking waiting, and we didn’t do jack shit.” I was panting by the time I’d finished and little flashes of light were swimming around in front of me.