Jacked (72 page)

“Or else what?” I snapped back.

She sneered at me. “You have no clue who you’re messing with.”

“Oh, I think I have a good idea.”

Melissa scowled, pushing the last of her weight against the door. “I will sue him, understand? Him, his entire unit, everyone.”

Her aggressive behavior was alarming. “Go for it. Leave or I’m calling the police.”

“He needs to
fix this
. You tell him to call me immediately.”

I gave the door a final shove, which made her stumble back on her high heels.

The deadbolt snapped in place, assuring it was locked.

She smacked the door and called me a few nasty names.

Screw her. I didn’t have time for her nonsense. I had laundry to do—that’s about as important as she was to me. Adam needed to deal with her because as far as I was concerned, her showing up at his
home
crossed the line. I took the laundry out of the dryer, stewing as I folded. She had some nerve! And she called me a bitch on top of it. Wait until I tell him what she called me. He’ll want to rip her head off.

The doorbell rang again, making my anger blister into fury. She just wasn’t going to quit.

I flung the front door open, completely incensed. “What do you
want
?”

Instead of seeing Melissa Werner, I was staring at the barrel of a gun.

I should have tried to close the door; I should have tried to do a lot of things. Scream. Run. A flash of clarity told me that any of those choices would get me shot. My first instinct after the flood of panic was to back up—put distance between it and me.

The girl pointing the gun at my face followed me inside, shoving the door closed behind her.

My mind raced trying to recall if I knew her. She looked familiar but my panicked mind could not place her.
A past patient?

“Please don’t shoot.” My hands rose in front of me. I kept backing up. I knew if I tried to run, I wouldn’t be fast enough.

“Shut up,” the girl ordered.

She was rail thin and petite. Straight brown hair fell past her shoulders. I bumped into the leather chair in the living room. “What do you want?”

Vacant eyes that held no remorse stared back at me. She looked strung out, possibly on drugs.

She shook the gun at me. “You couldn’t just go away, could you? You just kept at him and at him and at him and at him. He’s mine! Understand? MINE!”

“Okay, calm down.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down. You stole my boyfriend, you fucking bitch, and now he doesn’t even come to see me. He wasn’t yours! He was mine!” She rubbed her head, pulling on her own hair. “Why would you do that?”

Her mouth continued to tremble as though she were having a conversation with herself.

“Easy. Let’s talk about this.” I’d dealt with enough mentally ill people over the years to recognize the signs. “You’re talking about Adam, right?”

She shook the gun again, scowling. “Do not say his name. Do not. You have no right. No right to say his fucking name.”

“Okay, sorry.” I kept my hands up, scrambling for my own sense of clarity. One wrong step and I knew I’d be dead. “I didn’t know he was yours. You have to believe me.”

Her head tilted, regarding me anew.

“He’s not here.”

She rolled her eyes. “I know that. And I know you know who I am.”

I took another step back. “He, um, never said anything to me about you. I swear.”

“Liar!” She scoffed. “You knew. He paraded you right in front of me at the diner so do not stand there and lie to me.”

“Diner?” My mind reeled. “The Parkway Diner?”

The gun rattled in her hand. “He used to come in every morning to see me. Every. Morning. For months we saw each other. He was falling in love
with me
. And then you come along and suddenly what? I don’t exist? I don’t matter? I’m supposed to just take that?”

I found myself shaking my head, agreeing with the psychopath. “I’m sorry he hurt you.”

“You’re sorry?” She charged forward, forcing me deeper into the living room.

I shielded myself, fearing she’d strike or shoot. “Yes. Stop. Please.”

“You’re fucking around with my man and you’re sorry. Did you know that I’m pregnant?” Her face twisted, landing somewhere between pride and righteous rage.

I glanced over her flat, shapeless body. “You’re pregnant?”

She nodded at me as if I were stupid. “That’s right. We’re having a baby, me and Adam, so you need to quit interfering and leave him alone. Get out of our lives.”

Impossible.

Adam had stated their “one time” had happened months before we’d started dating. I cautioned her to stay where she was. “Does Adam know?”

“Of course he knows. I text him every day.”

“You text him?”

“You think you’re special? He’s mine.” She growled at me. “We want to be together but
you
just won’t go away. He told me over and over again how he was going to leave you but he’s too afraid of how you’d react to do it himself.”

She was beyond delusional.

“So I’m doing this for him. He doesn’t love you, got it? He loves me. He. Loves. Me.”

I shrank back, fearing that her gun would discharge. “Okay. I got it. Let me get my keys and I’ll go. I’ll leave here and you’ll never see me again. I promise.”

She wiped her cheek with the heel of her hand, panting hard while muttering to herself. I’d hoped she was considering letting me go.

My cell rang in my back pocket, startling her. She shook the gun at me. I didn’t know if she’d shoot if I tried to reach for it. I decided to slip it out of my pocket anyway. “It’s him.” I showed her the screen, taking another risk. “Let me just answer it, tell him I’m leaving and you two can be together. Okay?”

I thought she was going to pull the trigger. “You try anything, I swear I will fucking shoot you.”

I hit the button, hesitantly lifting it to my ear.

She stepped closer, sending ripples of terror through my nerves.

“Hi.” My voice cracked.

“Hey, Doc. What are you wearing?” Adam joked. “Listen. Cherise and Marcus want us to come over for dinner on Saturday. We got anything going on?”

My hands were trembling, knowing I’d never see his smile again.

“
End it
,” she mouthed.
“Now.”

Would this be the last conversation we would ever have before I died?
I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to him. To anyone. He was my sunshine. My lover. My heart. And yet I knew, one false move, one wrong word from my lips, and this crazy person waving a gun at me would pull the trigger. “I can’t do this.”

“Why? You scheduled to work?”

Work was the last thing on my mind when faced with having to say goodbye forever to the man I loved. “I can’t do this…”

He drew in an exasperated breath, probably growing tired of my indecisions. “Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”

The tear felt cold against my cheek. “Everything.”

“Are you okay?”

I bit my thumbnail, at a complete loss for how to answer. “No,” quaked out of me.

Psycho girl slammed her hand against the wall.

“Babe, what’s wrong?”

I flinched while thousands of answers barraged my brain all at once, adding mayhem to my terror-addled confusion.
How do I tell him goodbye?

“I can’t…”

I love you so much.

Life is so unfair.

“You can’t what, Erin? I’m not following.”

She stepped closer, jabbing the gun in my direction, making me jump.

I can’t… meet you in ten or in fifteen.”

“Sweetheart, what are you talking about? Was I supposed to be someplace? Are you crying?”

I wiped my face and sniffed. “I
said
I can’t meet you in
ten
or in
fifteen
. You’ll just have to go without me.”

“Okay, Marcus and I are leaving the courthouse now. I’m confused. Where am I supposed to be going?”

I cleared my throat of fear and doom, needing him to understand. “Do you remember the story you told me about that kid, Casper?”

My captor’s eyes scrunched.

“Casper? Yeah but—”

“I’m in the same situation.”

“Situation?”

“You’re a smart detective. I would have thought you’d see that by now. You belong to someone else.”

“
Excuse me?
Baby, what the fuck—”

“Stop!” I interrupted, panicking. “Just listen. Don’t come home because I won’t be here. Just like Casper the ghost.”

“Wait. Casper put a gun to my head,” Adam said roughly. “Baby, please tell me you’re joking.”

“I wish I was. I can’t meet you in fifteen.”

“Ten fifteen?”

“Yes.”

“Are you…?”

I tried to mask my relief. “Yes.”

“Oh fuck. Okay, stay calm. Is someone there now?”

“Yes.”

She shook the gun harder, getting impatient, but I couldn’t see any other way out of this.

“But… but I can’t stay with you anymore. You belong to someone else.” It killed me to say that. The words physically pained me beyond all reason.

Adam was frantic. I could hear the rustle of fabric, the sound of doors opening and closing. “I’m on my way. Where are you?” Adam spoke to someone around him, mentioning hostage situation.

“I can’t live with a liar,” I bit out, trying to sell it for all it was worth.

“House? You’re in the house? Where? Where in the house?”

I glanced around quickly, feeling pressured and terrified. A rustic picture dominated his wall. “Don’t call me ‘deer.’ I’m not a furry animal.”

“Don’t call you dear. Deer. Living room. You’re in the living room?”

“Yes.”

“There’s a gun in the kitchen above the microwave. Can you get it?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Stay on the line with me. I am on my way. I swear to Christ.” I heard a car door slam, the crackle of his radio, calls to dispatch. Orders for Marcus to fucking drive. “How many in the house?”

I stared at my captor, trying to understand the mania that drove her to this point. Desperation, mental psychosis, all without control, or fear of the repercussions of her actions. To allow your psyche to snap to the point of drawing a gun on someone and considering cold-blooded murder…

“I thought I was your only woman. You want more than that? Isn’t
one woman
enough?”

“One armed,” Adam repeated aloud. “Armed. Female. Yes, armed and dangerous. Has my girlfriend at gunpoint.”

The stress was getting to this girl, making her pace and ramble to herself, as though several people inside her mind were having arguments.

“It is Nikki?”

“No.”

“Stay calm, baby. You’re doing great. You said female. Do you know her?”

The female in question was leaning and snarling at me, ready to lunge.

“Sort of? I’m sorry I didn’t make time for you. I can’t be
texting
you all the time like your other women.”

“Texting?” he questioned.

I heard their siren echo through my cell. So did my captor. Her gun lifted to pointblank range. I flattened the phone as close to my ear as possible.

“Hang up,” she ordered low, jabbing me with the barrel of the gun.

I tried to back away, refusing to end my only connection to Adam. She grabbed for my phone; playing keep-away wasn’t the smartest idea, but fuck her, I wouldn’t go down without some sort of fight. I aimed for her face, shoving her back a step.

“Hang up!” she ordered louder, swinging violently at me. She smacked the phone out of my hand; it flew through the air, sliding after it hit the kitchen floor.

I thought about diving for it.

I thought about hitting her.

I thought about wrestling her for the weapon.

But all of those thoughts ended when she pulled the trigger.

“TEXTING?”

It had to be another clue of some sort but it didn’t make sense. Erin and I texted all the time, every day, every time we were apart. My mind was so consumed with getting to her that deciphering the details was becoming muddled.

“Hang up!” I heard a crazed female voice order in the background between Erin’s petrified breathing. I tried to concentrate on the voice above our sirens, but it was so brief that I couldn’t identify it.

“Baby, I’m on the way. I’m coming. Stay on the line with me.” I was praying, clinging to each one of Erin’s sounds with a level of desperation I’d never felt before. Each passing second that it took to reach her was sheer agony.

“Hang up!” the female ordered again. This time I could tell she was much closer and yet I still could not place the voice.

Agony turned into utter helplessness, hearing a tousle, hearing Erin’s grunts and groans as she struggled.

A loud thud cracked in my ear. “No! Erin!”

Everything accelerated—time, space, the forward momentum.

I gripped the handle bolted to the ceiling as Marcus drove faster. The scenery outside the windshield blurred into streaks of random shades of light and dark, pulling me under the confusion of adrenaline overload. If I could have beamed myself through the phone, I would have.

“Erin!”

My world shattered when I heard the gunshot.

“Erin!” I screamed. “No, baby, NO! ERIN!”