Physical.
The dread and the fear so intense I couldn’t see.
A cold sweat clogged my pores and saturated my soul as I mourned for what I could only process as loss.
Darius.
Mimi.
Jud.
Juni.
Juni. Juni. Juni.
Silently, I prayed that her little feet had carried her someplace safe. That she’d escaped this Hell. That someone good and kind and right had found her and come to her rescue.
Carlo rammed the barrel of his gun into the back of my head. He pressed it hard to my skull, the metal a painful threat.
I tried not to cry out.
Not to give him the satisfaction as he curled his fingers deep into my skin.
He faced me toward Trent who was across the street with his gun aimed our direction, fierce and hard and dark.
It was a stand-off.
Carlo was using my beating heart as a shield because if he killed me then, there was no question Trent would take him out.
Trent who’d slain the two men as if he were simply checking off a to-do list. The men caught unaware before they were on the ground.
“Let her go,” Trent ordered, “and I’ll make this easy.”
The threat curled through the atmosphere.
Carlo laughed an incredulous sound. “I think you’ve forgotten who I am.”
“Didn’t care then. Don’t care now.” Trent said it offhanded, though I could hear the venom that lined his voice.
The way his words were calculated. Meant to distract Carlo’s anger from me and place it on himself.
As if he were buying time. Precious moments for Juni to escape.
My spirit flooded with gratitude. With a small hope that after all of this, my daughter would be okay.
Then my ear tipped into the distance. To the savage roar of an engine that approached from somewhere beyond this trauma.
Out of place.
In perfect time.
A wicked savior I’d wanted to spare.
Behind the grumbling prowl of the motorcycle, I heard the whirring of sirens.
I immediately knew how Trent had shown at the precise moment we’d needed him.
Jud.
My pulse sped as a shred of hope pushed through the fissures of dried ground.
Sprouting.
Swelling.
While the fear and torment spun.
As if Carlo sensed the coming disorder, he held me tighter against his body. “Move and she’s gone.”
Trent scoffed. “And you and I both know what happens then.”
Trent moved to the right, and Carlo matched him, step for step.
The two circling.
A stalemate.
The motorcycle engine howled, carried on the wind, that hope springing higher while fear battered against it. The need to protect this man. The man I loved wholly. Trusted wholly. One who’d also been caught in the snare of my brother’s foolishness.
Then the sound of the motorcycle slowed and stopped.
No.
I wanted to weep when I realized I’d only conjured it. Imagined something that wasn’t there.
When I had to accept it wasn’t Jud.
That I’d stumbled deeper into the fantasy where I could be his and he could be mine. Where two broken souls could come together. Where they’d find a home.
Agony crushed.
Carlo and Trent continued the writhing, malignant circle.
“I guess I’ll have to take my chance then.” Carlo snarled it as he rammed the gun harder against my skull.
Pain fractured and the world started to tip to the side when I felt his finger tremble on the trigger.
This was it.
It was it.
Then a flurry hit.
The roll of the engine and a moment later the fury of the bike.
It all happened so fast I could barely digest it.
The blur of sound and glinting metal.
But I guessed it was my heart that recognized it. Processed what was happening as if it played out in slow motion.
Jud blew by.
A rifle drawn.
My mouth dropped open, and the gun trembled at my head.
A millisecond later, there was a deafening crack.
A scream tore from my soul as everything shook.
Carlo flew back, his arms no longer bound around me.
I slowly turned to see his lifeless body bleeding out on the ground.
Shock dropped me to my hands and knees. I gasped as I tried to see through the disorder.
To the motorcycle that skidded on the pavement, to the way Jud never fully stopped before he jumped off. The bike tumbled and rolled, while the mountain of a man stalked my way.
His boots a thunder on the pavement.
A pound, pound, pound that filled me to overflowing.
I wheezed and cried, “Juni.”
Jud knelt in front of me. “She’s safe, Salem, she is safe.”
“Oh, god.” I crumbled, no longer able to keep myself upright.
But it was his arms that supported me.
His arms that curled around me as he took me into the safety of his hold. He sank onto his butt on the road and pulled me into the well of his lap.
He hugged me and murmured and whispered, “I have you, I have you.”
I’d known there was something about the man that whispered of his darkness.
Of danger.
Of bloodshed and barbarity.
But I’d never been so sure of the goodness, of the righteous ferocity that burned inside of him—not until right then.
My wicked, wicked savior.
“I have you, Salem. I have you.”
A sob tore free. I released it at the warmth of his neck where I clung to him, my face pressed into his beard, into the disorder of his pulse that drummed so hard I could feel it become one with my being.
Massive arms encircled me.
Held me in their warmth.
Sirens screamed as three police cars arrived on the scene. An ambulance and a firetruck came to a stop behind them.
“Mimi,” I cried. My sobs were uncontrollable as my fingernails sank into Jud’s shoulders.
The loss.
The loss.
“Mimi.”
I felt the movement of him gesturing wildly.
Footsteps stampeded around us.
Curses and shock.
The horror of the massacre that had unfolded on our lawn.
An officer loomed over us.
Jud pressed his mouth to the top of my head. “I’m so sorry, Salem. I am so fuckin’ sorry.”
My head shook beneath his chin, lost beneath the cover of his beard and his giant heart. “You saved us.”
He’d saved us.
His shame had been mine and Juni’s saving grace.
That horrible night four years ago and again today.
Our wicked, beautiful savior.
And I prayed, he’d let me save him from the horror of the past I finally understood.
One that I shared with him.
Our hearts knitted and forever bound.
THIRTY-SEVEN
JUD
I hovered outside the intensive care room where the lights were cut dim and a slew of machines quietly hummed and beeped.
My goddamn heart pressed at my ribs and climbed to form a lump in my throat.
It was funny how Salem had said when she’d first come here that she’d felt like an outsider, like she didn’t belong, when I’d never been so sure of it for myself than right then.
But I didn’t know how to walk. How to turn and go.
Not when this enchantress of a woman had caught me up.
Got me spellbound.
Black-fuckin’-magic.
My feet moved of their own accord, unable to resist the lure.
Still, the shame slowed my steps. Hung my head. Ripped my already mangled heart to shreds.
I slipped through the door that remained open a crack and edged up behind the chair that was pulled close to the hospital bed.