Cold-Blooded Beautiful (21 page)

Another tree started burning, and another, until the woods that surrounded the cabin were engulfed in flames.  The heat of the fire warmed my skin, almost to the point of singeing the fine hairs on my arm.  The snapping and crackling of the trees being devoured by flames became deafening. 
Shit.  I was going to have to climb down and get the hell out of this forest
. 

Snapping off a decent sized stick, I hurled it into a pile of fallen branches just behind David.  He spun quickly, his back towards me and lunged into the area like a crazed animal.  I climbed down the branches, sweat bursting from my pores and my heart slamming against my chest.  Losing my footing on the last fucking branch, my body collapsed against the ground, burning tree limbs fell beside me, and a monsoon of fiery debris came raining down.  A hot spike of adrenaline thundered across my chest and I was up and running through the trees, not looking back at all.

“
Sa…maaaannnnnn…thaaaaa!
” David’s voice sang over the crunch and swooshes of the flames.  Then, just to my right, about a hundred yards away, I don’t know,
fuck
I have no clue about distance and measurements, just not so close and not so far away, a huge mass of branches moved, snapped, hissed, and sizzled. 

“Hello, Samantha,” his voice said, tainted with rage and anger.

Then I heard them.  The pops and sharp savage cracks of explosions.
P-taff!  P-taff!  P-taff-taff-taff-taff-taff!
  Sadistic eruptions of gunpowder sounded as they ignited the inside of a round of bullets.

He’s got a gun
, I think to myself.

As the ground…

…slammed into my face.

Chapter 15

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

SLAM.

Back and forth.

That was me, pacing.  Wearing a hole through the carpet. Storm raging, stewing, bubbling, boiling, breathing in savage, vicious breaths.

SLAM.  SLAM.  SLAM.

That was my fist punching walls as if they were Stanton’s face.

I could do nothing.  I was being
detained
. 
Confined
to my own home under the watchful eyes of Deputy George Tatum.  Dylan, Jen, Mum and I, all
babysat
under hawk-like eyes.  He stepped aside to let me expand my pace, watching me sharply. He must have recognized the sparks of my barbarity igniting just from the haunted look in my eyes.  My family knew better and stayed well out of punching range.

Like a bear out of hibernation, I was raw and famished, ravenous for answers, for action.  All my senses exploded.  My thoughts twisted into my own personal volcano, surging, bubbling, and detonating into white-hot noise.  So palpable I could taste the molten rock inside my mouth, and the stench of putrid gases that boiled inside my mind.  My muscles coiled tighter and tighter until the ache under my skin was so agonizing, I wanted to scream.  Just before the pressure blew my heart right from my chest, George’s police radio crackled and buzzed to life. “Check and advise on a 10-59 working fire.  Got a Fire Tower saying trees are burning and there’s been an explosion.” 

I watched his expression closely, the pulled brow and pursed lips.  “Deputy Tatum, Copy.”  Loud static ripped through the line.  “Fire en route, we’re going to need all units.  Over.”

George immediately jumped to his feet, mouth against his radio, fingers pressing down the buttons.  “Copy, this is unit 4052.  Exact location?”  As he asked the question, his eyes fixed on mine.  Beads of sweat formed above his brow.  His jaw ticked at its hinge.  A small tight squeeze of his loose hand against his gun belt.
He knows this has something to do with Sam
.

The radio chirped to life again, “Behind Forest Home Road, above Lily Pad Pond.  We have a fully involved fire.  Need all units…”

George blinked once and answered, “Unit 4052 en route.”

I grabbed my jacket and shoved my arms through the sleeves.  He’d have to handcuff me to something to keep me here, and then I’d just saw my arms off, no bloody problem.  Grasping the keys in my coat pocket, I dragged out my hand and ran to my safe.  Dylan was behind me instantly.  So was George.  When I pulled out my firearms, George’s eyes went wide. “What are you doing, Grayson?”

“Can’t just stay here and go to sleep. I have be prepared in case Stanton comes here,” I snapped, handing Dylan a gun.

“Grayson, I can’t let you just pull out guns in front of me,” he hissed.

I sprang up at his face like a cobra. He was a good four inches shorter than I was, so I menacingly looked down on him. I had nothing more to lose.  “Piss off, George, I have a bloody license for every one of them.  Last, I checked, I lived in America, and that gives me the Second Amendment, the motherfucking right to bear arms.  I’m just going to sit here with my guns,
just in case
I need to protect myself.”

“I’m not stupid, Kade, you’re going to look for her.  Now we have a fire to deal with.  You can’t come with me and you can’t go out on your own,” he stated, eyes locked on mine. 

I offered him a wink, shifted my gaze to my gun, checked the fully loaded magazine, and slammed it in.  “Try to stop me.”

“You’re crazy.  You’re going to get yourself killed, Grayson.”

The most primitive part of my brain was telling me to shoot him, dead center in the chest, pull a Thomas on him, but experience has taught me that I have to think this through
clearly
, not give in to my urges, so I could keep my goal of getting Sam. 

His brows pulled down, lips tightened and pinched to an almost white.  “You are fucking insane.  I can’t let you do anything stupid, Kade.”

“Right now,” I growled,  “the only stupid thing I find myself contemplating is not shooting a friend.  I’m not insane, George, but I
have
to find her.”

I know. I know…at this point, I wouldn’t trust my sanity either, but what would you do?  What would you
really
do?  Observing it all together, my ideas point to only her defense, the logic being that I needed to keep her safe from
then on
.  I had fucked up royally with her; because of my idiosyncrasies and my issues. I was easily swayed to believe that she would just walk the bloody hell out of my life.  I lacked faith in us, and I guarantee for those last seven days, she paid for it.  I was getting my woman back.

“Grayson, I repeat, you’re going to get yourself fucking killed,” George said under his breath as he walked toward my front entrance.

“George, I don’t have much to live for if she’s not here anyway.  Just go, let’s pretend you have no idea what I have planned after you leave. I’m no longer your responsibility,” I smiled, as I nicely shoved him out of the door.  

I watched the weight of my words against his radio cackling emergency, sway his emotions.  “Kade, this isn’t a good idea…”

Then I slammed the door in his face.

Turning on my heels, I snapped, “Mum, you and Jen stay here. Dylan let’s go.”

Immediately, Jen’s red blotchy face was in mine, spitting and snarling like a rabid animal, “Fuck you, Kade.  I’m not staying.  It’s all of us here that doubted her, not just you.  You don’t get to be selfish now, I’m fucking coming too.  What if you need a fucking nurse, huh?  I’m getting her aid-pack and then we go!”

What do you mean if we need her aid-pack?

WHY the FUCK did Jen have to enlighten my already stressed brain with overload?  It was a given she’d be hurt, but the heaviness of having to use her aid-pack on her left me breathless.  My mind whirled with images so real and disturbing that I had to clutch onto the closest piece of furniture to stay standing.  The images weren’t flashbacks of my friends in a high school; they were of my Samantha, beaten and bloody, her beautiful body riddled with bullet holes.  Her blood in my imagery stunned me.  Made me feel the weight of her absence.  How it stretched down my limbs, melting them heavily to the floor.  Feet encased in concrete, I thought I was immovable, untouchable. I was so bloody wrong.  Toxic. Vengeful. Rage.  Pure and hot. Destruction decay.  Rip my twisted thoughts from my brain, physically claw and scrape them out until my head was fucking hollow, and I couldn’t remember these thoughts.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried rubbing away the visuals.  I couldn’t catch my breath, and my muscles knotted and ached to bathe in David Stanton’s blood. 
I needed to find her voice.  I needed to remember the way it sounded and calm the bloody fuck down. 

My thoughts shift and move, blur and hum.  And I’m standing in her trailer again; she’s leaning against her counter with barely anything on, mop in her hand.  I smile at the memory, but it burns my eyes, and makes the bridge of my nose sting and tingle. 
God, she was so beautiful.  The mop slipped from her grasp, and clinked against the counter.  Her eyes looked away, as if it hurt to look at me.  “Beautiful,” her soft voice whispered. 

My body was against hers instantly, soft skin, hot flesh, and those fucking delicious cinnamon apples.  “Yes.  Beautiful.  Stunning.  Bewitching.  Ravishing.  Fucking angelic.” Then her lips, moist wet, open against mine.  Hands tangled, fists in hair, skin on skin.

And then she’s gone. Faded away as her soft voice echoed, “Beautiful” in my head.

I needed to find her.  I shook my head of images, and blinked out the thoughts. “Let’s fucking go, I need to find her.  It’s cold out there and she’s mine. I have to go get her back,” I snapped.

Reaching back into the safe, I grabbed two more magazines full of bullets, and stuffed them in the pockets of my jacket.  Every one of them planned for a piece of real estate on Stanton’s flesh.

“Got it,” Jen’s voice panted.  “I got her aid-pack,” she repeated as she slung it over her shoulder, wildly.

“Jen, have you ever shot a gun?” I asked.

“Kade, really?  I’ve never even
held
a gun.”

Handing her the firearm, I rolled my eyes. She held it between her thumb and index finger as if it were a dirty diaper.  I raked my hand impatiently through my hair, “Look, if you see David, just point it in his general direction and keep pulling back the trigger.  The safety is on.  That little button right there.”

Dylan turned to Mum and jerked his chin in her direction. “Kade, do you think we should arm Mum, in case Stanton makes an appearance?”

“Did your brain seep out your ass?  Why would he come here?  Why would I give Mum a gun?”  I looked at our mother and shrugged, “Just stay here near the phone. We’re just going to drive around and look, okay?  I’ll put the bloody alarm on.”

The three of us storm through the door and run to my truck.  “Let’s go.  Let’s go,” I yelled, climbing into the driver’s seat.  Turning the key, the engine roared to life and the heavy cords of a
Mad World
song blasted through my speakers. 
Bloody hell, Samantha’s favorite band
.  I slammed the off button immediately. Silence exploded and stung at my ears.

Dylan jumped into the passenger seat and looked at me through narrowed eyes.  A white mist of breath puffed out of his lips as he spoke, “What are you thinking?”

I looked at him deadpan, “Mate, I’ve lived here for sixteen fucking years. Forest fires don’t start by themselves in the dead icy frost of winter, not unless someone fucking started it.” 

“Wait, you think David started a fire?”  

“No, mate, I think Sam did.”

“Kade, are you okay for this?  What if you can’t…”

I slammed my hands against the steering wheel, blaring the horn loudly.  “When it comes to Sam, I could do anything,” I said through clenched teeth.

“What if you can’t?” 

“I got this.” 

“You’re going to kill someone for her?  Is she worth it?  Maybe we should let the authorities handle it, because I mean, bloody hell, Kade,
all this violence
?  Losing yourself to it, going to jail for a woman you met six months ago?” 

“You know what,
you little fuck?
  In
one
day, back in 1998, something happened to me that changed my life forever. It took literary forty-seven minutes in that classroom.  Forty-seven minutes shattered everything and changed me completely.  So don’t tell me six months isn’t long enough to be changed or affected by someone.  She makes me sane.  She makes me calm.  She makes me not want to fight or slink away.  She makes me want to live.  So yes, I am damn fucking ready to do whatever I bloody can to get her out of there, and to be back with me.  Because without her by my side, I’m half a fucking man, and it’s the half I can’t live with.”

Dylan smiled at me and slammed his hand on the dashboard, “Bloody hell, you got this.  Let’s go hunting then, mate.”

Chapter 16