“Alright baby, calm down.” I saw the look of hate on Mindy’s face over Zandi’s head as I held my wife and shit started to make sense. I’d been fooled. Well fucking played!
“I’m going to kill her!” Zandi huffed out the words with her out of breath ass and tried to make another move for her.
“No, you can’t do that, the cops are here.” I lowered my head to her ear.
“We’ll find a way to handle this stay cool!” Her head came up at my whispered words and they seemed to have the desired effect of calming her down just as the knock came at the door.
Mindy picked herself up off the floor and eased herself away out of the line of fire as I walked over to answer the door. Gavin lead the pack followed by Anderson, Borelli and two uniformed cops.
The questions came hard and fast but as usual Anderson seemed more interested in my part in the whole thing; like how I knew to come here in the first place.
I ignored his ignorant ass and turned my attention to Borelli who seemed to have gotten all the brains in that particular partnership. “You better get him before I lay his ass out. I’m not in the mood for his shit right now.”
Mike stepped up then and gave them his side before things got out of hand. Borelli got on the horn and made the call to send more cops in once Mike disclosed the location.
Throughout all this Mindy hadn’t said a word and from the way she sat gazing into space as she rocked back and forth I had a pretty good idea what her defense was going to be.
There was another kerfuffle when the EMTs showed up and tried to take the kids. Zandi wasn’t having that shit and neither was I. “You’re not taking them…”
“Ma’am, we have to check them over to make sure they’re in good health.” She looked at me with indecision and fear in her eyes as she clutched our daughter to her chest.
Cooler heads prevailed and I made a compromise that we could all live with. “Zan, we don’t have car seats for them. Let’s go in the ambulance with them and I’ll call mom and dad when we get there, it’ll be okay.”
I growled at the EMT when he opened his mouth to object to both of us being in the back of the ambulance and he piped the fuck down. I’d walk my kids to the emergency room before I let them out of my sight.
Mindy was cuffed and taken downstairs and she put on a good show of being batshit crazy all the way. We could hear her screaming and using some of the foulest language I’d ever heard from the woman I used to think was so genteel.
It was no secret, who all that hate and rage was directed at and I kicked myself for not seeing it before. She hates Zandi, no two ways about it.
I had to talk Zandi out of stripping the kids naked. She didn’t want them wearing the clothes their abductor had dressed them in. Once again I had to promise to have mom and dad pick some things up for them.
I was still moving on autopilot when I called my parents while Mike followed us in his truck behind the ambulance. “Mom I can’t talk now, we’ll see you there.”
“Okay son, I’ll get what we need and meet you at the hospital.” Her voice sounded hollow, like she’d suffered a blow and I knew in the coming days her guilt was going to be as strong as mine. I couldn’t think about that shit now either.
Zandi was still vibrating next to me as we squeezed together in the ambulance on one side while the EMT sat on the other doing his thing. We each held a child’s hand in one of ours which made sitting back there even more constricted.
It finally dawned on me that my kids hadn’t cried once and I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. Were they so accustomed to upheaval that this shit didn’t faze them?
I let Zandi do the talking as she questioned the EMT all the way to the hospital. I knew he wouldn’t know shit beyond the fact that they were breathing, but she needed this so I let her exhaust herself.
Once at the hospital the police presence had grown and there were news crews blocking the entrance. “Run them over!” I yelled to the guy at the wheel who grinned and hit the gas like he’d been waiting to do some shit like that all his life.
“Who called them?” It was a rhetorical question but the guy in back with us answered nonetheless. “They have scanners, no doubt the vultures were listening in on the airwaves for something to pick over.”