Stronger By Your Side (Great Love Book 2) (19 page)

“Hey Girl. Looking good.”

My skin crawled and I couldn’t speak. The fear was paralyzing, but I couldn’t let it be. I couldn’t let him win. I took a long, deep breath, willing myself to be stronger than I was. It took all my power and concentration to speak. “I take it I owe you for my window visit the other day.”

His yellow grin was shadowed by the receding sun, but its chill factor was still very effective. “Bingo, Girly.”

I cleared my throat. “What are you doing? And you do realize that we’re on SJ’s land?”

He laughed. “Yeah, no shit.”

I bit my lip. “Stop playing whatever game this is and just come out with it.”

He laughed that nauseating laugh again and my stomach churned. “Don’t ya’ know how much I like playing’ with you though, girl?” I gritted my teeth. “Now come over here or the horse gets it.” My eyes widened to see Stew with a shotgun pointed at Buck.

I blurted out in fear, “No, no. I’m coming.” I looked back to see the shadows on the deck gone and prayed that Sarah and Charlotte had made it. Unless Stew wasn’t alone, they would have. “Wait, is it just you, Stew?”

He laughed again and re-adjusted the gun’s aim at Buck. “Like I would tell you that. Now get.”

I gritted my teeth again. “I’m coming.”

As soon as I was in reach, Stew grabbed my arm tight and snagged me towards him. I grunted at the rough pull up against his body. Buck kicked and neighed, attempting to free himself. I admired his attempt, but I didn’t want him to get hurt as well. “It’s okay, boy. Shh. It’s all okay.” Buck slowly wound down and then continued to complain, but much more softly and less stressed. “Good boy, that’s it. Shh.”

Stew laughed. “Nothing’s okay for you, girl, now let’s get going.” I thought for a moment about my options and then, as he roughly pulled me back with him towards the beat-up truck I spotted in the distance, I made my choice.

Travis, Cal and I were laughing about something stupid that Travis had said, when I heard a noise on the side of the house. I stood up and walked over, concerned when Sarah came flying around the bushes. She was smiling at Charlotte, who was also laughing and singing to her. However, something on Sarah’s face alarmed me. It was a face I had seen parents and loved ones make before. A face that I, as a firefighter, had used with children before. A face used when nothing was okay, but children didn’t need to know. The hair stood up on the back of my neck and a chill ran over my spine. Then I noticed that Megan was nowhere to be seen. I looked down at where they had been and couldn’t make out anything due to a tree that was slightly blocking my view.

Sarah placed Charlotte down and smiled at her. “Hurry, go inside with Auntie Em and watch Princess Sophia, I’ll be in to give you candy in a minute!”

Charlotte smiled up at her. “Yay!” Then she did as she was told.

As soon as Charlotte was in the house, Sarah closed the door and looked at us. All three of us men were already on alert and standing around her with concerned looks. “Sarah—” I began, she put her hand up, took a breath, and then huffed out in between panting breaths,

“Megan. Is. In. Trouble.”

I rolled my shoulders. “Trouble how? What happened?”

She took another breath. “She saw something, I don’t know what, and she gave me Lotte and told me to go around the brush to get help, so I wouldn’t be seen.” Cal grabbed his phone and began calling 911.

Travis stared down to where the girls had been. I took a deep breath and then focused. “If it was nothing, she would be on her way up now.”

We all knew that whoever broke into her place was most likely behind this. That realization made my stomach feel weak. Cal nodded and then began talking to dispatch. He gave the phone to Travis.

“Take Sarah inside. Lock all the doors, close the blinds, no one comes or goes. You keep all the girls safe, no matter what you have to do, Trav. I’ll call you when it’s clear, and don’t let the kids get wind. Talk in code to Em or write it down.”

Both Sarah and Travis nodded, and then once they were inside, Cal turned to me. “You okay to help me?”

I nodded. “I’m not a trained bad ass like you, but I’ll try.” Cal nodded and then quickly walked me through the plan. As we initiated it, my heart was beating through my chest and I could hear everything around me. A pain was in my chest, and I couldn’t think about anything other than getting Megan back in my arms and keeping her there, keeping her safe.
 

Megan

I’m not going anywhere with this dirt bag. Over my dead body.
On that thought, almost using it as my determination, I yanked my head back into his nose. Like the idiot he was, he reached up with both hands to grovel at his pain. In a swift movement, I picked up his gun and pointed it at him. We were now halfway in between the truck and Buck’s stall. “Seems you’ve gotten rusty with old age. Isn’t as fun when I can fight back, huh? Why are you here, Stew?”

He grunted. “You bitch.” I clicked the gun back, and in response, he shouted.

“Answer the damn question.”

Stew stuttered, “To g-g-get my money is all.”

I shook my head. “What money, Stew?”

He laughed. “You know I never understood why your mom was so attached to you, then when you left I found out, you were her fucking meal ticket! And that big check she was supposed to get? Well, it wasn’t from the damned government. It was from your baby daddy for your eighteenth birthday! It was your damned inheritance.”

I swallowed hard and repositioned the gun on my shoulder, keeping my eye on him. This made no sense. “What?” I yelled. “You think I’m an idiot . . . why would it be your money? Why the hell are you here?”

Stew laughed. “You think I’m going to tell you anything, bitch? You ain’t nothing!”

I laughed that sneer of a laugh back at him. “You think so, huh?”

He spit his blood towards me. “That’s right. You ain’t going to shoot me, I should just come over there and—”

I cut him off with a shot to the ground next to him. I had shot a shotgun before with Charles, but nothing prepared me for the giant kick. It felt like it may have broken my shoulder, but I could also be slightly dramatic at times.

I just rolled my shoulder and took a ragged breath. I enjoyed the way the loud boom and burst of dirt next to his feet had made Stew jump, then scream, “What the fuck!”

I couldn’t help the snort that left my mouth. “Just tell me why you’re here, Stew, or I
will
shoot you.”

He shook with fear. “I told you! Money! I was just going to use you as ransom for pretty boy, rough you up a little maybe, that was all I swear!”

I huffed. “Sure, Stew, I believe you.”

He squealed. “I swear it, I swear it! If you tell me who your dad is I can blackmail him, but if not then this is what I got to do girl! I need money! You don’t understand!”

I snorted. “I don’t have a dad, you asshole, I know nothing about him or a freaking inheritance, and you are not taking me anywhere or getting a goddamn dime from SJ! You hear me? You will not do this to me anymore!”

I cocked the gun again, causing Stew to jump up and squeal again. “No, stop, please stop! I’m sorry, okay, I’m bad but please! God please don’t! I’m not as bad as your mom okay? I swear I didn’t want to do it that night. I swear, she’s the one who said it would be okay, she said they would just go to the hospital, I didn’t know they would die I swear! I fucking swear it!”

I swallowed hard as my heart dropped and it felt like I couldn’t breathe. “What?” I huffed out.

Stew shook his head, looking confused. “I thought he told you, I thought that’s why you were so angry with me.”

I laughed again. “Are you fucking kidding me, Stew? You molest me for years, beat me, threaten me, come back here and try to kidnap me, and that isn’t enough reason to want to kill you?!”

He sighed and put up his hands again. “Okay okay just please!”

I sighed and tried to stay focused, even though my heart felt like it was physically bleeding. “Stew, who did you kill?”

He just shook his head at me with his hands up in defense. I narrowed at the gun. I needed to hear it. “Say it, Stew! Fucking say it!”

He yelled, “I didn’t kill them I swear! She did, your moms did, she killed them!”

I yelled back, “Who?”

He squealed out, “The Prescotts!”

I knew it. From the second he brought it up, I knew who he was talking about, but I needed to hear it from his mouth. I needed him to confirm it. Now that he did, I couldn’t breathe. His words hit my ears and traveled through my body like a wave until I felt my heart stop—literally stop beating—in my chest. For a split second, it stopped, and then it began beating faster than it ever had. My whole body felt like it was going to drop onto the brush in front of me. It took all my strength to pull the air in and out of my chest, to keep my eyes open and fixed on Stew. He was talking but I couldn’t hear him, I couldn’t hear anything. I could see his mouth opening and shutting and his arms waiving, but nothing else seemed to process. Rage started pulsing through my body and I narrowed my eyes hard on him. The tears that were pushing at the back of my eyes turned into fuel for my anger, and I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw something, shoot something. This man, the man who tortured me for years and made me leave Sawyer, he killed the only family I had ever known.

The man in front of me, the awful, sick, terrible man in front of me, killed the only parents that loved me. The parents I loved. Worse, he took that from Sawyer. He took Sawyer’s whole world from him. Everything he had ever had was gone in the blink of an eye, and it was all this man and Missy’s fault. Whatever they did, why ever they did it, I didn’t care, I would never care. Just as I was seething, Stew made a mistake and opened his mouth again. This time my rage was making the fog in my mind clear, and I could make out his words.

With a snarly smile he slurred, “Pretty little girl you had there, girly.” My eyes darted up to him and narrowed. Big mistake. I felt something in my chest, something more powerful and angry than I had ever felt. My body surged with rage and it pulsed down to my finger. It hovered over the trigger, and just as the anger released from my finger, pulling the trigger, I was thrown to the side. My head snagged in the opposite direction, and as the landscape flew before my eyes, the sound of a loud boom followed by rapid barking filled the air.
 

Sawyer

The sound of gunfire as we approached had nearly made my heart stop, and I prayed that it wasn’t Megan who had been shot. Standing here I could see my prayer had been answered. I didn’t have to see his face to know who Megan was pointing a gun at. Although I was pretty sure that Stew would be alone, I wasn’t one hundred percent, and Cal refused to assume anything. So we flanked Megan and Stew as we had planned. From the brush I could see their shadows cast by the sinking sun and hear noise. I couldn’t make out exactly what they were saying, but I knew it couldn’t be good. My hands were clammy and my face felt hot. I could feel my heart beating in my ears and I was breathing heavily. The fact that Megan had the gun pointed at Stew, and not the other way around, had my nerves slightly calmed.

The hairs on the back of my neck still stood up as I watched for only a second. Chase had been silently following me. He had been trained to follow strict commands in order to be a certified rescue dog. One of those commands was to be stealthy. I caught Cal from across the way and saw him give the signal. Just as I was about to rush Stew from the brush, I saw Megan’s body shift. I couldn’t see her face or hear her, yet I knew, I knew she knew everything. I knew she was about to do something that she could never take back. Commanding Chase to attack Stew, I holstered my handgun and ran full force at Megan, hoping that I could prevent her from making a huge mistake.

My body collided with hers and we both flew violently to the ground. I knew Cal could handle Stew alone, he was more than experienced. As the boom of the gun erupted into the night air, I rolled to break Megan’s fall. I only managed to make it halfway as her whole body and the solid gun slammed down onto my arm. I grunted at the sensation of a large, hard rock crushing my shoulder, but instead of screaming like I wanted to, I just gritted my teeth. Chase was barking frantically when I rolled Megan off of me and took the gun from her. I threw it behind her and then sat up to check her. She was sitting up, with her gray eyes wider than I had ever seen them. She was staring wildly at Stew.

I put my hand on her shoulder and whispered, “It’s okay. You’re okay, Meg.” I kept my hand there to comfort her, but mostly to keep tabs on her while I turned to see Cal holding an unconscious Stew at gunpoint.

“Good?” I yelled over to cal.

He nodded “Good. She hurt?”

I turned and looked at Megan, running my eyes over her, taking inventory of her “You hurt?”

She shook her head and then spoke in a raspy voice, “No. No, my shoulder’s sore but I’m okay.”

I yelled back at Cal, “She’s fine.” I put my hand on her cheek and noticed how pale she was. I lowered my head so my eyes were in front of hers. “Meg, Pumpkin?” Her eyes flashed to mine and a tear leaked down her cheek.

I tried not to frown, but I hated this, I hated Stew. If it had been me with the gun, I would have shot him and damn it, if she had been anyone else, I would have let her shoot him. But I couldn’t let Megan live with that, not after everything she had been through and not with the life she had made for herself. I couldn’t let him ruin it for her. I wiped her tears with my thumb and her bottom lip quivered.

Her fear was physically painful for me, so I spoke to soothe her. “Sweetheart, it’s okay, I promise—”

Her low voice interrupted me as her eyes stared into my soul and she stammered, “It’s—It’s not . . . it’s not okay, SJ. He—he did it. He killed . . . he killed them. Because of me. I—I killed them.”

My heart broke right there and nearly fell out of my chest. In one swift movement, I picked her up and wrapped her in my arms. “Oh, baby, no you didn’t, it had nothing to do with you.”

Her eyes flashed up to mine and she placed a hand on my chest. “Wait—”

I cut her off, sighing. “Yes, I know, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner . . . but Meg?” She just blinked so I continued, “We can talk about it later. Just know that it’s not your fault. I don’t blame you, I would never blame you. Okay?”

Megan just nodded blankly, and then fear flashed into her eyes. “Lotte?!”

Right on time, Cal said, “Just got a text from Travis. Cops are here, they are coming down now, and Travis and Sarah are taking Lotte back to my house for a sleepover with Em and the girls! She knows nothing, thinks Megan is riding Buck. They are all safe!”

I put a thumb in the air and then looked down at Megan, brushing her long, black hair out of her gray eyes. “Hear that?” She just nodded and then shivered. I rubbed her back and then placed a kiss on her forehead, willing her to calm down, willing her to understand how much I loved her. Chase was still barking at the unconscious Stew every few minutes, so I yelled over at him, “Enough, boy. Come.”