Stoking the Embers (New Adult Romantic Suspense): The Complete Series (47 page)

Footsteps approach and I turn toward the door. Jerome appears, even more disheveled than before, this face streaked with tears, his hair standing on end.

He walks up to me and puts his hand at my throat, shoving me backwards against the wall.

“Promise me,” he sneers, pressing harder on my throat.

“Anything,” I manage to say.

He loosens his grip. “You’ll never leave me.”

“Never.” My answer is quick. Certain.

“You’ll obey me?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll love me?”

“Always.”

“Until death do us part?”

“Until forever.”

I grind my teeth together to keep them from chattering while he stares down at me for the longest time. His pupils are huge, his breathing erratic. The pulse in his throat is visible under his skin.

He takes a step back and pulls a set of keys from his pocket. He bends down and unlocks the shackle around my ankle. Once I’m free, he grabs my hand. “It’s time to go.”

I stumble after him, trying to keep up. Halfway up the concrete steps, the door ahead of us begins to open. Jerome stops, frozen, then slowly begins backing down the steps.

“What the…?” It’s a woman’s voice. It must be Anna.

“Smoke.” A deep voice. The huge man I ran into?

“What’s going on here?” A third voice. The buyer?

The door continues to grind its way open and Jerome and I are at the bottom of the steps before I’m able to see the faces that go with the voices. Jerome looks down at me, then wildly around. I know before he says it, there’s no place to run.

“Stay back.” It’s the deep voiced man talking at the top of the steps. I hear the sound of his feet coming down the steps, then he’s there, rounding the corner. He lifts a pistol and points it at Jerome.

“Clear!” the man shouts and heels click their way down the steps. It is the blonde woman, and her eyes never leave Jerome. A man in an expensive looking suit appears behind her.

“All this time, I thought you were the fool, but it is I who is foolish,” Anna says. “Foolish to see potential in you. You hide your stupidity well.”

Jerome shoves me behind him, but I peek around, watching, waiting. With everyone’s focus on Jerome, there might be the slightest chance I can escape.

“We’re leaving,” Jerome says. “You’ll never see us again.”

Anna’s beautiful face turns ugly as rage contorts it into a cruel mask. “You will be leaving, but not how you planned, you bastard. How dare you go against my wishes.”

“I need an explanation here,” the man in the suit says, and Anna’s face grows smooth. She plasters on a smile and turns to the man.

“A small hiccup,” she says coolly. “Seems this one is love sick and is allowing his dick to rule over his good senses.”

The man holds a handkerchief over his nose to ward off the smoke that still circles the hallways. Everything down here is concrete, so there is no risk of the fire spreading, but the smoke itself is cloying. My eyes water from its presence.

“Fix it,” the man says and coughs, waving his handkerchief in front of his face.

“Oh, don’t worry. I will.” She steps forward and takes the gun from the hulking man. “With pleasure.”

“No. You won’t.”

All eyes turn to me. Did I just say that? I did. Anger so deep I didn’t know this level of hate was possible overtakes me. I take a step around Jerome to stand in front of him.

Anna’s lip lifts in a sneer. “And how to you propose to stop me?” She levels the gun at me.

“Bitch, do you know how many guns have been pointed at me lately?” I say. “You might want to come up with another strategy.”

In that moment, I realize that everything I’ve feared in my life doesn’t really matter. Fear is elusive. It hides in our thoughts and whispers, ‘what if’. The reality of fear is much different.

“What if I point the gun at your little best friend?” she says, her head tilting to the right.

She doesn’t know Beth is gone, I realize and laugh. She narrows her eyes, but I say nothing. Her eyes flick to the cell that had been holding my friend. “Check it,” she tells the enormous man.

He walks to the cell and looks in. “Gone.” The word is a grumble.

“How could you?!” Anna shrieks so loud that her voice pierces my ears. She screams and screams before lifting the gun again.

She fires and I’m hurtled backwards, crashing onto the floor. Pain blooms and expands, becoming a black hole that sucks me into its void.

Chapter 22 – Ken

Screams echo throughout the warehouse as we step through the door. Then a gunshot reverberates all around me.

No!

Beth is running toward a hole in the wall. I follow and overtake her, hitting the stairs first. I’m down them and around the corner, taking in everything in front of me in an instant. A woman with a gun. Two men, one of them a giant. Oh God. Steph’s on the floor, Jerome’s on top of her, blood spreading across his chest.

I dive at the woman, taking her down, and the gun clatters to the floor. Gage comes from behind me and tackles the giant, his shoulder in the guy’s gut, reeling him backwards. I scramble for the gun, get a hand on it and roll to my feet as Beth surprises the guy in the suit from behind. She jumps on his back and they crash to the ground. She comes up fighting, hitting him in the back of the head.

“Stop!” I yell and point the gun at the giant. He’s the biggest threat—literally—and needs to be stopped. The man freezes as he faces the barrel and raises his hands in the air.

“Gage, put him in a cage!” Beth yells from her position on the other man’s back. “Make him empty his pockets. He has keys.”

“Turn around,” Gage instructs and pats the guy down, police style, and takes everything from him. He opens the door and thankfully the brute walks in. The door clangs behind him.

The woman on the floor is crying and cursing. Her face, hands and knees are bleeding from where I knocked her to the concrete.

I hand the gun to Gage, and then run to Steph. I pull Jerome off her. Her eyes are closed and she’s covered with blood. I fall to my knees to feel for a pulse. Thank God. I find it. I begin to check for wounds.

From the corner of my eye, I see Beth stand up. “Here, let me help you,” she says in a sing-song voice to the woman. She extends a hand and helps the woman up. When the blonde is on her feet, Beth swings, connecting a right hook to the woman’s face and knocks her back down. Beth then kicks at her before Gage wraps an arm around her middle and pulls her away. Beth shrugs loose and runs to where Steph lies.

“Is she okay?” she asks and when I nod, she bursts into tears. I can’t find any life threatening wounds although I can’t stop myself from continuing to look.

Seconds later, a clatter of voices and running feet float down the stairwell. Gage yells, “Don’t shoot!”

Ramsen comes around the corner first, gun drawn, and accesses the situation. He lowers his weapon and yells, “Clear!”

Grimes is behind him, followed by an army of feds. Grimes walks over to me, kneels down and places her fingers at Jerome’s throat. She yells, “Need a bus.” Shit. That means Jerome is alive and needs medical attention. I was hoping the fucker was dead.

Beside me, Stephanie moans and opens her eyes. Her eyes grow wide when she sees me. She looks around, sees Beth and grabs her friend’s hand, giving it a long squeeze.

She looks at me and tries to sit up, but I press her down, still hunting for the source of the blood. “I’m okay. It’s not my blood. I wasn’t hit.” She raises her hand to the back of her head and winces.

“You found me,” she says and tries to get up again. This time I let her. I pull her to my chest and she hangs on tight.

“I would have never stopped looking,” I whisper in her hair.

Pulling away, she looks around and sees Jerome lying on the ground. His eyes are open now and his breaths are coming with great effort. He turns his head and looks at us, then his eyes seem to focus on Stephanie. With a struggle, he reaches toward her. I try to pull her away, but she won’t let me.

“It’s okay,” she says and crawls over to where he lies. My jaw tightens when she takes his hand, but it loosens when she says to him, “Thank you for saving me.”

He tries to speak, but blood bubbles from his lips. He begins to shake and tries again, his lips quivering with the effort. “I…” That was it. He dies before any other words are formed.

Epilogue – Stephanie

Five months later…

“Stephanie Grace Vonnegut.”

As my name is called and I walk across the stage to accept my diploma, Ken and the guys go wild. Most of them are here, jumping up and down and yelling at the top of their lungs. Is Octavio crying?

I smile and wave, holding my diploma in the air. The guys go wild again and I see Ken’s camera flash another picture. Our eyes meet and he winks at me. My insides stir. He still does that to me.

His sister, Hannah, is standing beside him. She looks so much healthier. So much happier. Her hair is a bright scarlet today, to match my school colors. After everything settled down, we learned that, after she ran away to Vegas as a teenager, she’d been taken under Anna’s ‘wing’. If you can call being forced into prostitution and given drugs so you become an obedient zombie ‘protection’.

Once Anna had been arrested, she sang like a bird, spilling her guts in return for a reduced sentence and witness protection. When she turned, it busted a human trafficking ring wide open. Over two hundred people were arrested in connection with trading over forty thousand women and children over a period of twelve years. Some of those people have been recovered and returned to their families. Most are gone. Most likely forever. Not everyone gets a happy ending.

Captain Frank and his wife, Mary, are here. They’ve practically adopted me. Mary has taught me how to do things that mothers teach you... sew on buttons.... and cook things other than pasta. She’s knitting scarves for prostitutes still on the street. The nights can be cold here in Vegas and Mary goes around, places a scarf around a girl’s neck and kisses her cheek. I cried so hard the first time I went with her.

The captain helped me find a new place and the guys helped me and Beth get moved in. It’s a little three bedroom home. No picket fence, but it’s mine. There’s a small pool in the back and a wonderful place to barbeque. My house has become quite the gathering place. A real home.

I was able to buy my house because, surprisingly, when Jerome’s home was cleared out, they found a will dated over three years ago. In it, he left all of his possessions to me. They’d found a suicide note with the will. It was dated the same day as the will. It said:

My lovely Stephanie,

Please don’t be sad that I’ve decided to leave this torment of a life. You’ve been a bright light in the darkness, but even your glow can’t keep the shadows away. I don’t have much, but I leave everything to you. Have a good life.

Love Jerome

When Agent Grimes first handed me a copy of the letter and the will, I’d thrown them in the trash. I was appalled. I wanted nothing from him. Then, I went through the box that contained my journal and flipped back to the same date his suicide letter was written. I’d journaled the following:

I surprised Jerome today. I packed us a picnic and dropped by his apartment unexpected. You should have seen his face when he saw me. He even had tears in his eyes. We went to the park and then we went back to his place and made love for the first time. I’m no longer a virgin! We spent the entire night together. I’m so happy.

I pondered on that for the longest time and realized he must have written that letter and drafted his short will just before I’d arrived at his door that day. I’d saved him from killing himself, but I hadn’t saved him. Even now, I can’t help but wonder how my life would be different if I hadn’t packed those sandwiches.

I look up at Ken and realize we’d have probably never fallen in love and I shiver at the thought. I would have never had the financial resources to purchase a house just for me either. More than that, I would never been able to open a place like HEAL.

HEAL is Healing Exploitation through Acceptance and Love, the center Beth and I are opening in a few weeks. It’s how I used most of what Jerome left to me. Beth’s dad helped us get incorporated and all that legal stuff. Her mom did the decorating
with
our input. Hannah is going to be our receptionist.

The center is opening on New Year’s Day, appropriate I think. We’ll be providing a holistic approach to helping anyone exposed to sexual assault heal mentally and physically, prostitutes included. We have a wonderful psychologist who is dedicated to our mission. A medical doctor too.

I know you can’t un-rape a woman, but you can give her love and a place to know she isn’t alone. In the City of Sin, I hope we can offer a little peace.

I told Ken what I’d done with Jerome to save Beth’s and my own life. I needed to tell him, not let the secret consume me. Secrets lose their power over you when they’ve been shared. It’s like slowly letting air out of a balloon.

In my heart, I’d known he would be accepting, but I worried that he might look at me differently. He hadn’t. He put his hands on my shoulders and looked me directly in the eye.

He said, “You are a warrior and you did what warriors do. Survive. I’m proud of you and I’m damn glad you did what you needed to do to stay alive.”

Then, he undressed me and made the most tender love to me imaginable. He kissed every inch of me; top to bottom and back again. With each kiss, he said something:
I love you, I’m so grateful for you, I adore you
. In those words and actions, my shame was washed away completely.

Now, it’s graduation day. Another chapter closing. Another one opening. I look across the aisle and see Beth smiling back at me. I stand and throw my cap in the air. It gets lost in the sea of others.