Back to Life (29 page)

I
nodded, and he pulled out a picture from his back pocket. He handed me a little
black piece of paper, and on it was a white blob, a black circle, and a tiny blurb
of white dots. He pointed to the tiny dots and said, “That’s it,” and I burst
into tears.

“That’s
our baby? Oh Liam,” I cried, blinking away tears, “it’s so beautiful. Are you
sure it’s okay?”

“Yes.
The baby is safely snuggled away in your uterus,” he smiled, and I grinned. I
leaned and kissed him. “Everything is just fine.”

I
held the picture in my shaky hands and stared at my baby for a full minute.
“Our baby’s first picture,” I said. “I guess we can start that baby book now,”
I said, and he smiled. I handed him the picture and he placed it safely inside
his back pocket. “Okay, so that was the first thing you were going to tell me,
now what is the second?”

He
sighed, and his brows furrowed. “Well, I guess I’ll just come out with it. Your
father is here, Rory.”

I
blinked again, and my eyes went wide. “Excuse me, my who?” I had to have heard
him wrong…that can’t be right.

“Your
father. He heard what happened to you and Marissa from Brody and flew up here
from Indiana. He’s been here at the hospital and at your old apartment with
Brody for the past day and a half.”

My
dad
came to see me? I was so stunned. “Did he…has he seen me?”

Liam
shook his head. “No, he hasn’t yet. Brody said that after the way he and your
mother left things with you that it’s up to you to decide if you want to see
him. He said he was glad your dad stepped up when he found out you were hurt,
but that you needed to be the one to ultimately decide what’s best for you.” I
really hope my brother knew how much I loved him…I really did.

“Where
is he now?”

“The
last time I saw him, he was in the waiting room, I still think he might be
there. Do you want me to get him?”

“I
don’t know yet. I want to talk to Brody first, if that’s okay.”

“Of
course it’s okay.”

“Did
my mother come with him?” I asked, hoping his answer was no. I know that I
almost died, but my mother was one person that I knew even in a situation like
this that I would never, ever be able to forgive and definitely didn’t want to
see. My father was one thing, but that poisonous woman was someone that had no
place in my life anymore.

He
shook his head. “No. I will let Brody tell you about that.” Just then, there
was a knock on the door. “Come in,” Liam said, and the door opened. Grayson,
Vivian, Nick, Samantha, Brody, and a bruised and tired looking Marissa came
into the room.

As
soon as my eyes met Marissa’s, I reached my hands out for her, motioning for
her to come to me. “Marissa,” I cried, and she walked over to me and
immediately wrapped her arms gently around me.

“Rory,
I’m so glad you are okay! I thought…I thought she was going to kill you,” she
cried.

“I’m
okay. I was so worried about you. I thought that those men were going to…”

She
shushed me. “They didn’t, Nick and Liam showed up just in time. We’re both
okay,” she cried, and she pulled away from me. “I don’t know what I would have
done if she’d killed you, Rory.”

“Hey,
it takes more than a witch like Erica Darling to stop me, girl,” I said, trying
to lighten the mood. “I love you.”

“I
love you too, Rory.” Placing a hand on my stomach, she said, “So, I hear that
they didn’t just save our lives in there. They saved a little something else
too,” she said, still crying.

“I
know, Liam just told me. I already feel like a bad mother because I am
literally the last person in the world to know about this little one,” I said,
sniffing, and everyone collectively said, “Aw!”

“Rory,
you didn’t know. No one knew until after you were already out of surgery.” She
wiped a tear off her cheek and smiled a genuinely happy smile. “This is amazing.
You’re going to be a mom,” she said, and I smiled at her. “How do you feel
about it?”

“Elated.
Truly elated,” I said, and Marissa leaned in to hug me again.

Vivian
smiled. “I can’t believe what a great day this is. We have our girl back, my
son is smiling again, and I’m going to be a grandmother,” she cried, and I
smiled at her.

At
that moment, I noticed Brody had stepped back and was standing by the door,
smiling at me. His smile was sad though, and I motioned for him to come to me.
“Come and give me a hug, big brother,” I said, and he slowly walked over to me.
Marissa scooted down a bit and he sat on the bed, immediately pulling me into a
warm hug, and I could feel his tears hitting the top of my head as he softly
sobbed.

“Oh,
God, Rory, I’m so glad you are okay,” he said softly, and I began crying all
over again. “I thought I was going to lose you for good this time. I don’t know
what I would have done.”

“Hey,
you will never lose me, no matter what,” I said. “Who else is going to kick
your ass and make you act right?”

He
laughed and sniffed. “No one but you,” he said, and kissed the top of my head.
“So, did Liam tell you?”

“That
Dad is here? He might have mentioned it,” I said, quietly. “Is he still here?”

“Yes,
he’s been waiting in the lobby all day and most of yesterday. He really wants
to see you, Rory, but he agreed to let you decide if you wanted that. You say
the word and he’s gone.”

I
shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know yet. How long do I have to decide?”

“As
long as you need.”

 I
took a deep breath and sighed. “And what about ‘mother of the year’? Why didn’t
she come?”

Brody
looked down at my hospital bed and then looked back up to me. “Dad left her.”

My
mouth fell open and I tried to sit up, wincing in pain. “Rory, take it easy,”
Liam said.

“I’m
okay, babe,” I said, and I looked at Brody. “Dad left Mom? Are you serious? Why
did he do that?”

“Well,
apparently, Dad had wanted to contact you and make peace for the past few
months, but Mom tried to forbid it. Long story short, she gave him an ultimatum
that it was either her or you, and he chose you. He’s already filed for divorce
and everything.”

I
sat back, stunned. I can’t believe my dad is divorcing my mom because of me.
It’s sad to see any marriage end, but I felt a twinge of happiness knowing that
my dad chose his daughter over the woman that had made her life hell. I looked
at Brody and said, “Okay.”

“Okay?
Okay what?”

“Okay,
I will see Dad. But,” I said, taking Liam’s hand, “do you think he would mind
waiting until tomorrow? I just woke up to find out that everyone is okay and
safe, and I’m going to be a mother. I just want to spend the rest of the day
with Liam basking in the moment before I deal with any more heavy stuff,” I
said. Liam kissed my forehead.

Brody
smiled. “I’m sure he won’t mind. I’ll go tell him. In the meantime, you get
some rest, okay?” he said, and I nodded.

“Yes,
doctor,” I said. At that moment, everyone gathered around and bid me goodbye,
including Marissa. She and Brody were the last to leave as he took her back to
her hospital room. As soon as everyone was gone, I turned my face to Liam.
“Okay, now spill it.”

“Spill
what?”

“What
happened to Erica and those men? I need to know because I have to tell you
something.” If Erica was on the loose or even in jail, he needed to know what
she had confessed to me. I should have known (because Liam is amazing) that
everything I had bluffed about to Erica he had already figured out on his own.

Liam

The
last two days had been sheer hell waiting for Rory to wake up. I couldn’t
believe how fast everything happened and how close I came to losing her. As I
lay in Rory’s hospital bed with her, I told her every bit of what happened
while she was out…

I
left for work that morning with every intention of putting in a boring day behind
the desk. I didn’t think anything of it when two delivery men approached the
door holding a heavy box and asked me to hold the door for them. Little did I
know who they really were.

I
got to work that morning and after I sat down with my coffee, Nick put a file
on my desk. I had been waiting for this. I hadn’t told Rory the extent of it,
but Nick and I had been working non-stop on Mason’s case for the past three
weeks. The file Nick just gave me were the DNA results from the crime scene.
The initial investigators did a shitty job of, well, investigating because there
was a ton of tainted evidence that had to be thrown out. However, thankfully, the
crime lab still had Mason’s suit jacket he was wearing the night he was
murdered. They ran another round of DNA testing to see if there were other
fingerprints on the jacket other than his or Rory’s. I was with Nick in
thinking that this wasn’t random, and I had my money on that snake Erica.

I
nodded at Nick and he stood next to my desk as we opened the folder. “Here
goes,” I said, and flipped it open. I scanned the page with my eyes looking for
what I needed, and I could feel Nick’s breath on my neck. “Dude, can you back
up? Stop breathing on me.”

“You
know you love feeling my breath on you, big daddy,” he joked, and I elbowed him
in the ribs.

“Come
on, dude, this is serious. Stop,” I said, and he backed away a little and we
resumed looking. And then…there it was. DNA results…four different kinds were
found. I scanned the page looking for names…please don’t let this be another
thing the fuck-up investigators tainted too. I read the page carefully…DNA
matches…Mason Callahan, Aurora Shaw, Douglas Farmer…and Erica Darling.
Shit.
“Look, there it is. Erica Darling,” I said, pointing to her name. “That
bitch was there!”

“Calm
down, man, that doesn’t put her at the scene of the crime. How do we know he
didn’t already pick her up and she was with him or that he’d dropped her back
off at her apartment?” Nick said.

“Because
from what Rory told me and what the initial eyewitnesses reported that the
shooting took place somewhere between one fifty a.m. and two. We saw the surveillance
of Mason leaving the club he was at with Rory around one forty, and he was
heading to the bar Erica was allegedly at which was over a mile away. Mason was
shot and killed within ten to twenty minutes after leaving the club, and he was
shot only two blocks away from there. There is no way he could have gone to a
bar over a mile away and came back to a few blocks from that club in twenty
minutes on foot unless he was Flash Gordon,” I said. “And whoever this Douglas
Farmer is, I’m guessing this is our shooter.” I said, pushing away from the
desk. “Let’s go get our suspects.”

Nick
ran his hand through his hair. “I’ll go have them draw up a warrant,” he said,
walking away. Just as I was sliding back into my jacket, my cell phone rang. I
glanced at the caller ID, and it was Eclipse, Rory’s salon. Puzzled, I slid my
finger across the screen and held it to my ear. “This is Tanner.”

“Liam?
Hi, it’s Samantha. Listen, I’m sorry to be calling you, but have you heard from
Rory?”

Alarm
bells immediately went off in my head. I know I joked to Rory to take the
morning off, but her walk-in client days were by far her busiest, so I knew she
wouldn’t have played hooky. “You mean she’s not at work?”

“No,
she sent me a text this morning saying that Marissa had showed up at her
apartment right after you left and that they were going to spend the day
shopping.”

“What?
Marissa didn’t come to the apartment this morning.”

“Apparently
you let her up. That’s what the text said that Marissa sent her.”

“Wait,
how do you know that?”

“She
forwarded Marissa’s text to me along with hers so I would know, I guess. I
don’t know, Liam, I’m worried. Neither one of them is answering their cell
phones, and I can’t get a hold of either Brody or Nick.”

“Nick
is here with me. He’s securing an arrest warrant for Erica Darling and some guy
named Douglas Farmer. We think that they were both directly involved in Mason’s
murder.”

“Oh
wow, well, I’m sorry I bothered you, but Liam, something just doesn’t feel
right. It’s not like Rory to blow off a walk-in day thirty minutes before she
was scheduled to be here, and even if she did, I know for a fact that she and
Marissa would answer their phones, especially if someone has called them twenty
times each.” She was right about that. Something wasn’t right, and I could feel
it.

“Let
me try to call her, okay? I’ll see what I can find out and I will let you know
if I hear anything.”

“Please
do, I’m worried. There were two big guys here yesterday and they were asking
some strange questions about Rory, but I didn’t think anything of it at the
time.”

“Wait…did
you say two big guys? What did they look like?” Oh no.

“One
was tall and had spiky hair and the other one was kind of chubby with a bald
head. They were asking what times she worked and if she lived far from the
salon. I just thought they were admirers, she gets them all the time.”

“Oh
shit, those guys were at the apartment this morning. I thought they were
delivery guys and I let them in! Fuck!” I said, and I hung up the phone.
“Nick!” I yelled, and he came walking toward me with a paper in his hand.

“Calm
down, dude, I got the warrant right her,” he said, and then he looked at my
face. “What’s wrong?”

“I
think Rory and Marissa might have been abducted,” I said, panic racing through
me. “We have to go, now!”

“Why
do you think that?” I went over the story that Samantha told me, including the
two men that showed up at Eclipse and at our apartment this morning. “Fuck! Do
you know where they might have taken them?”

“Well,
if I knew, I’d be there right now wouldn’t I?” I said, nervously pulling my
hair.

“Look,
calm down, all right? We will find them. Let’s head to the apartment and check
for anything there, anything she may have left behind. I’ll have someone track
Rory and Marissa’s cell phones and see if we can get a location on them,” he
said, and I nodded and ran out the front doors with Nick in tow. We drove to my
apartment building and once we reached the front door, I found it was unlocked.
When I went inside, there were no signs of forced entry but Rory’s purse was
scattered across the floor. My heart sank and I thought I would swallow my
tongue. As I started to fight the rising panic, Nick’s phone rang. “It’s the
precinct, finally,” he said, answering his phone. “Ramirez. Uh huh, okay,
great, thanks. Yeah, we’re going to need back up. Okay, on our way, meet you
there.” He hung up his phone and tugged on my arm.  “They tracked both Marissa’s
and Rory’s phones to a warehouse in Brooklyn. We got squad cars en route, let’s
go!” he said, and we raced out of the apartment back to our car.

As
Nick drove as fast as he could, I fought hard to keep my emotions at bay. “I
swear to God, Nick, if those fucking guys harm one hair on her head…”

“They
won’t, Liam. We’ll get there, she’s going to be fine,” he said, trying to keep
me calm when I know he was panicking too. Eventually, we made it to a run down,
rusted warehouse and it wasn’t long before we had four squad cars pull up
behind us. We wasted no time and everyone got out of their patrol cars with
guns drawn. We made it to the door and some of the responding officers busted
down the door and I fought to move past them. As soon as I entered, I heard
Rory’s blood-curdling scream, Marissa’s cries of terror, and Nick’s voice
yelling, “NYPD! Don’t move! Hands in the air!” I stepped closer and saw both
Marissa and Rory tied to a chair. Marissa was flanked by the two men I
recognized from this morning, and they look like they’d been trying to rip her
shirt off. I looked over and saw Erica backing away from Rory with a bloody knife
in her hand, and then Rory’s chair fell over. Nick and the guys descended on
the scene pretty quickly and while they were dealing with the men and Erica, I
rushed to Rory’s side and tried to free her ropes. They were pretty loose and
her wrists had rope burns on them, which meant she was struggling to free
herself and almost made it. I couldn’t make out anything else but her and my
dire need to get her free, but I was told later that there was a struggle and a
whole lot of gunfire. Once I got her untied, she fell slack in my arms, and
that’s when I saw all the blood covering her lower back. I fought my urge to go
and kill Erica with my bare hands but Rory was starting to slip out of
consciousness. “Oh God, baby, I got here as fast as I could. Just hang on,
angel, help is on the way. Please don’t leave me,” I begged her, and suddenly
she was silent. I yelled and shook her, thinking I was too late, but the
paramedics came and Nick had to pull me away from her so they could check her
out. Thankfully, I heard one of them say they found a pulse, and Nick urged me
to ride with her to the hospital and that he would be there soon.

Everything
happened so fast but yet dragged on and on as I waited with Brody, Mom, Dad,
Samantha, and Brian and the girls from Eclipse for news while Rory was in
surgery. I had my head in my hands and Mom was sitting on my right, rubbing my
back soothingly and Brody was on my left, his hands in knots. “Why the hell is
it taking so long?” I demanded.

“It’s
only been three hours, son, calm down. It’s going to be okay,” Dad said.

“I
can’t believe Erica did this,” Mom said. “Why the hell couldn’t she just leave
Rory alone?”

“And
why did she take Marissa too?” Brody said, his eyes red from crying. As much
pain as I was in, I couldn’t imagine what he was feeling after almost losing
his sister and the love of his life in one afternoon.

“My
guess is that she took her as well because she attacked her too that day at the
Hamptons. She probably wanted to pay them both back for humiliating her,” Dad
said.

At
that moment, Nick came breezing down the hall. “Hey everyone, have you heard
anything yet?” he asked, looking at me. I shook my head.

“So,
what happened? Did they arrest that bitch?” Brody asked.

“Erica
is definitely in custody and she’s not getting out any time soon. Liam and I
already had a warrant for her arrest after finding her DNA on Mason’s jacket
the night he was killed, but after Marissa overheard her confession that it was
all a set up that had gone way too far and one of the men there was the actual
shooter, we got enough to charge her with murder, kidnapping, and a whole lot
more.”

“What
about the men that kidnapped the girls?” Mom asked.

“One
of them was killed in the struggle, and the other one, who turned out to be
Douglas Farmer, was wounded and is in custody at another hospital. He’s being
charged and going straight to jail once he gets released. Those assholes are
never going hurt anyone again,” he said, and he took a seat next to Brody.
“They didn’t get the chance to really hurt Marissa, and Rory is one hell of a
fighter, bro. They both will come out of this, I know it,” he said, clapping
Brody on the back and giving me a nod.

Just
then, a doctor came through the doors and was taking off his surgical mask.
Brody rose to his feet and extended his hand. “George, how is she?” he asked.

I
walked over to the pair of them. “Is she okay? I am her fiancé and I want to
know if she’s all right, now,” I said, a little harsher than I probably should
be.

Looking
at me with an amused look, he said, “I’m Dr. Kilpatrick, and I’m happy to let
you know that Rory made it through her surgery just fine,” he said, and
everyone breathed out a sigh of relief. “She’s currently in recovery.”

“When
can we see her?” Brody asked.

“Well,
you know the drill, Brody. She has to stay in recovery for at least an hour
before family can go back.”

Brody
nodded at him, and he continued. “I did want to discuss the results of her
blood work with you,” he said, still speaking to Brody. “Maybe we should speak
in private.”

I
was irritated. “Excuse me, I am her fiancé, and I think I have a right to
know,” I said, and Brody nodded at me.

“George,
it’s okay, he has every right to hear this. Just tell us.”

Dr.
Kilpatrick sighed and motioned us over to the corner. We followed him and he
stopped. “All of her blood work came back fine, but one thing showed in the
results. There were small traces of HcG in her blood stream,” he said, and I
was panicked. What the fuck was that? I looked to Brody, and he looked stunned,
but he was smiling.

“What
the hell is HcG? Someone tell me, please, because I’m starting to freak out.”