Cold-Blooded Beautiful (10 page)

Without thinking, my body was airborne, sliding itself over the top of my desk, almost knocking my laptop onto the floor, and my hands were fumbling into his face trying to reach for my phone.  The wanker fought me back, slapping my hands away like we were twelve again.  Making matters worse, my shorts were now full of the spilled hazelnut coffee. 
At least my desk got cleaned
.

“Give it here, twizzletits,” I said, snapping it out of his hands,  “and I happen to love
Raise Your Glass
by Pink.  It was a highly enlightening song for me,” I explained, unlocking the code to my phone.

“Yeah, how’s that?” he laughed, backing away.

Pressing the callback button on the phone, I held it to my ear and listened to the rings.  “It was the song I got to watch Samantha do a striptease to with a mop.  Fell in love with her instantly.”

“Way too much information, mate.  You could have left out the whole mop thing,” he chuckled, walking out of the den.  “But I always said she could have been a stripper,” he yelled from somewhere down the hallway.  What a
twonk
.

Before I could bloody curse at him, the phone clicked in my ear, “Good morning, Sheriff’s Office.  How may I direct your call?”  A woman’s voice crooned through the speaker.

“Kade Grayson for Deputy George Tatum, please.”

“Sure thing, hold please,” the voice drawled. 
Bloody tart
.

After exactly two minutes and thirty-eight seconds of an instrumental hell that sounded a lot like
Call Me Maybe
, just as I was about to shove a pencil into one of my ears, George’s voice, urgent and serious, silenced the horridness of what the public ignorantly believed was music.

“Grayson?”

“Yeah, George.  I’m returning your call.  What’s going on?”

“Good news from the city.  They just arrested Samantha’s father, Doctor Michael Matthews.  He is being charged with a twenty-one-count indictment that included pharmaceutical fraud, identity theft, and federal health care fraud charges.”

Relief flooded through my body, as I collapsed onto the couch.  “Federal charges?  Wait, identity theft?”

“Apparently, Dr. Matthews, the president of the hospital, was still using Samantha’s identity to move money around and sign a host of implicating papers,” he laughed.  “They executed the search warrants at the hospital last night, both penthouses, as well as warrants to seize up to $245 million in alleged fraud proceeds from various bank accounts.”

“What about Stanton?” I hated saying his name. 

“They took him in for questioning.”

“What do you think is going to happen?” I asked.

“Don’t know all the details yet.  I just wanted to let you and the little lady know that they are both in custody.”

“Best bloody news ever.  Thank you for everything, George.  I mean it.”  My heart pounded.  I bloody felt like dancing. 

“You bet.  The jurisdiction is being all hush-hush about it, but I will definitely look more into it for you, and then call you back when I find out more information,” he said.

Hanging up, I raked my hands over my face, and tossed my phone to the side.  I wondered how the line of questioning was going to go in
that
interrogation. 
I guarantee they were going to blame everything on Samantha
. It didn’t matter though, because she was innocent, and both of those sick fucks would never know that she had a hand in taking them down. 

They thought she had died in a car accident.

They even thought they buried her.

They had to assume that somehow, after her death, another whistle blower came in.  Those two wankers held a lavish funeral for her, like she was some sort of celebrity in the city.   Even their mayor showed up, police escort and everything.

But now, she was finally safe.

I felt like a kid.  Balled up giddy happiness, last day of school excitement, hope, just the fucking unimaginable laid out future for us.  She will finally feel free…no more chains. 
Rewrites, happy endings.  I rewrote her life.  What happy ending could I give her?  That perfect life she wanted?
 

The one she didn’t get with him?

Could I be a
husband?
 

A father?

A dad? 

I wanted to give her anything, everything.

“Dylan!” I screamed.  “DYLAN!”

Fast heavy footsteps clumped down the hall, pants of an out-of-breath-I shouldn’t-be-running-I’m-still-fucking-healing-from-getting-shot filled the doorway.  “What…”
pant
… “what…the…”
pant
… “bloody…hell?”

“Do you know anything about engagement rings?  Or proposal things and such?” I barked.  “How about diamonds?  Like ENORMOUS bloody diamonds that sparkle from space.”

“Do I look like someone who would know about that stuff, mate?”

“Okay… then what is the most romantic way you could think of to ask someone to marry you?”

“Why?  Bugger!  Jen isn’t pregnant, is she?  Bloody hell, what do I say to her?”

Jumping up, I started pacing the room, tapping my hands along the surfaces of all the tables and desks.  I must have looked like a maniac.  “And it can’t be cheesy.”

Dylan, confused as always, stood perplexed in my doorway.  I seriously believed I got all the intelligent genes in our family; he was just given all the
pretty
.

With all the racket I was making, Jen came barreling into the office too. “What is all the commotion about?”

“Uh, um… do…do you have something to tell me,” Dylan asked her as I paced, folding his arms across his chest, nervously.

“Um, like what?” she asked, visibly perplexed. 

“Do I have to get diapers?” he asked.

“Why, did Kade shit himself?” she laughed.

Dylan huffed loudly.  Eyebrows knitted together, “DO I NEED TO GET BOTTLES?”

Jen rolled her eyes and shook her head as if he were crazy, “Don’t you think it’s too early to start drinking?  You just got up…”

“IS THERE ANYTHING IN YOUR OVEN?”

“I’M NOT BAKING ANYTHING, YOU MORON! WHY ARE YOU YELLING AT ME?”

My God, you have surrounded me with idiots
. 

It’s wrong to want to take a bat to their heads, right?  Maybe I could just hold the bat and sneer at them both threateningly, just to see what could come of it.  It might get them both to piss off and shut the bloody HELL UP.

Stepping in between them, I practically had to shove my body between the both of theirs. 
Did they even realize I was there?
“Mate.  Come with me.  I’m going to buy
my
woman a ring.  Then I’m going to go right to that hospital and ask her to marry me.  Or should I just say fuck the ring, and beat her to the hospital, ask her to marry me, and let her pick out her own ring?”  Then I turned to face Jen, who I could hear getting ready to rev up for a shriek, “If you
squeee
right now, I
will
shoot you.”

She bloody
squeeed
anyway.

Chapter 6

The cold leather of the steering wheel felt like a hard band of steel beneath my fingertips.  It ached a chill in my metacarpals, seeping glaciers into my marrow. It made me think of death. 

Its
finality
. 

Its
loneliness
. 

I craved to crush the wheel with my fists.  Feel it turn brittle and crumble through my fingertips. 
I will erase them for you, I’m going to kill them both, nobody…nobody will ever fucking hurt you again
, he had told me.  How long after the kill, would it take him to lose himself completely to the evil of it?  Again.  How long would it be until he thinks of himself completely as his old friend, Thomas, a vicious killer, without regret, and without a soul?

My head felt strange.  Thoughts blurred together, an alien kaleidoscope of shapes and emotions, both dark and haunting. My hands tightened around the wheel, gray clouds passed over the sun, darkening the world and my mood. 

A high definition slideshow of Kade’s bleeding hands from the night before clouded my vision, making it hard to drive.  Being with me healed him, but learning about my past was hurting him.  There was no good in him knowing any of it.  None.

In retrospect, I knew Kade would never be able to handle my past.  I knew going into this with him would burn us both, but there was no way of stopping it.  There were far too many beautiful moments we shared to look back and wonder when we should have stopped the unstoppable.  Now, I just needed to figure out how to move ahead, keep our heads above water, and help him through this.

He
can’t be my hero
.  There is no hero to my story.  There are just two people who need to live past it.

I could feel the interior of my car closing in on me.  My vision danced, and my lungs started playing a serious game of hide and seek with oxygen. Before I blacked out from a panic attack, I pulled over onto the shoulder of the road and turned off the engine. 
Damn
.  I squeezed my eyes shut. 
I needed to be at the hospital in less than twenty minutes and I’m having a major anxiety attack
.  Blood pumped fiercely through my temples, pounding an arrhythmia of unsteady throbs in my chest. Lunging across the front seat, the seatbelt constricted against my throat and chest.  I clawed my hands into the glove compartment for one of the brown paper bags I stored inside.  It seemed like millions of items sprung out when I opened the latch, scattering an array of first aid crap all over the passenger side.  The brown bags fumbled out last, and I clutched at them wildly, slamming one up against my lips, immediately inhaling and exhaling into it.

I’ll get through this.  I always do.  It feels like I can’t, but I sure as fuck will.  I just need to make sure Kade will be okay
. 

My phone beeped a text message inside my purse, and I tore through it with one hand searching, blindly searching, while the other hand still held the bag to my lips.  Inhale.  Exhale.  David that filthy-little-dicked-demented-son-of-a… Inhale.  Exhale.
COCKSUCKING MOTHERFUCKING DRYHUMPING PREMATURE EJACULATING PIG!
  Inhale.  Exhale. 
KADE SHOULDN’T have to DEAL with any more VIOLENCE!  I should have twisted that knife in David when I had the chance
.  Swiping open my phone, I read the message from Kade:

We’ll get through everything together, baby.

I love you. 

XOXO

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale.  Exhale.  I was practically sucking on the paper bag.

Staying with Kade was just going to make his obsession with David and me worse. He’s unraveling from my history, burning to know me, yet engulfing himself in flames with each minute detail he learns.  I didn’t want to watch him suffer.  What would Kade do if I left him right now?  Just left, went after David and ended it all.  Keeping Kade safe and sane, away from all this craziness?  Would he be able to heal?  Would he go on with his life, or would he crumple into his old, reclusive, self-destructive ways?

I found myself giggling into the bag, thinking he’d probably stalk me until I was old and gray, a strange menacing old geezer lurking in my bushes, always trying to protect me. 

I reread his text message. 
We’ll get through everything together, baby.

I inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly.  Yeah
, we would be okay, wouldn’t we?  Just look at how far he’s come in the last few months.  We’ll be fine.  He is absolutely right.  He’s strong, he’ll deal with my past, we’ve both walked through the fire, this was just remembering the flames.

I looked through my windshield and down at my watch.  Damn it.  I was twenty minutes late!  I could have driven back and forth from the house to the hospital twice in the time I tried to calm myself on the side of the road.  I needed to focus, and keep my head on straight.

Starting my engine back up, I continued my drive to the hospital, feeling more calm and hopeful, yet, still with a twinge of anxiety as if Kade was up to something wrong.  Just a small tickle in the back of my neck, an itch that was just out of reach, but something that needed my attention at some point.  I needed to make sure he was going to let the police handle everything, I knew it was only a matter of time before they found enough evidence to put David and my father away for the rest of their lives.

Yet, the closer I got to the hospital, the louder the uneasy feeling nagged at me.  I shoved it away though, tonight, Kade and I would talk. 
With clothes on
, that was the key.  Pulling into the parking garage, I swiped my hospital I.D. through the toll machine, and watched the lever rise over the windshield of my car.  My eyes were so heavy with exhaustion that I wondered how many pots of coffee I could get my hands on before having to see my first appointment.

Parking in my regular spot, I walked as if I were in a dream through the lot.  I knew I would be fine as soon as I started working.  As soon as I could shake the feeling that Kade was going to be doing something insane, like drive seven hours all the way into New York City, slit David’s throat, and somehow be back before dinner the next night.  As soon as I get to my office, I’ll call him, threaten him, and promise to tell him anything else he wanted to know tonight.  Maybe we could speak with the therapist, too.  That would guarantee we both kept our clothes on while we spoke.