She paused, saw the drool dripping out of my mouth because the gag was stretching my lips too wide, and leaned forward to dab at it with the ends of the scarf.
When she sat back, she beamed a wide, happy, high off her fucking face smile at me. “I’m thinkin’ Colombia. You know it’s the coke capital of the world?”
She laughed that giggling, raspy laugh that I’d hated since I could remember and then, over that, a hoarse shout.
My heart kicked up dust in my chest, stirring old hopes.
Renner had been on the phone while I was taken.
Maybe the police were there.
Instead, there was a creaking groan as someone joined Reaper on the metal platform outside and then the door was opening, and he was stepping through with a wild grin.
Not the police then.
But I still gasped, nearly choking on my gag, when I saw Dad bend slightly to step through the door, his huge presence making the trailer seem unbearably small.
“Hey baby girl,” he muttered softly, his heathen face creased into a slight smile.
God, Daddy.
I regressed to a little girl so instantaneously, I didn’t even try to hold back the tears.
It had been weeks since I’d seen his handsome face smiling at me. And now it was happening in a trailer in a cargo yard with fucking psychos present.
If I hadn’t been so tired, so sick to my gut with fright and grief, I might have laughed because our reunion was so Garro.
But I didn’t.
Reaper lifted a gun, his arm high above his head to aim it properly at Dad’s temple.
“You piece of shit. Thought you always deserved all the good, never thinkin’ anyone else was better ’an you. But now look, I got your woman,” Farrah laughed as she popped up from doing another line, rubbing her fingers across her gums to get the dregs of powder. “And your fuckin’ rat of a kid.”
Dad’s fists clenched slowly opened then closed to control the rage emanating from him like radioactive waves.
“You don’t deserve shit,” Reaper yelled at him. “Get on your fuckin’ knees.”
I yelled behind my gag as my dad locked eyes with me and dropped slowly to his knees.
No, Daddy, no, no.
Reaper pressed the gun to his temple and smiled at me. “This is for you, Farrah baby. For you and me.”
“He’s gonna kill ’er,” Dad rumbled. “Farrah, he’s gonna kill H.R. for rattin’ on ’im.”
“No,” Farrah laughed uproariously. “We’re gonna move to Colombia.”
Her eyes searched Reaper’s and slowly, her smile slipped, “Reaper baby?”
“We’ll talk about it,” Reaper hesitated then pressed the gun harder to Dad’s temple. “After I kill ’im.”
For the first time in my life, I was happy my mother was such an idiot. The scarves against my wrists were silky enough to work myself out of and I’d been twisting my wrists for the last forty minutes.
I broke free just as a gun fired and Dad dropped to his side.
I screamed behind the gag, tore off the scarf, ripped at the one around my ankles and was pulling off my gag when I noticed Dad roll and come up into a crouch against the wall, gun in his hands aimed at Reaper who was staring like he’d seen a ghost at the suddenly open door.
Dad shot him in the head.
I watched as Reaper’s head snapped back on his neck and then his entire body crumpled forward. Done.
I moved forward only to feel cool hands grabbing me from behind and the press of something small and sharp at my jugular.
Farrah was holding nail scissors to my neck.
“Drop it,” Dad barked at her, gun raised and trained unwaveringly on her.
She turned to face him and sneered, “No, you won’t do a fuckin’ thing to me while I’m holding your precious kid. You’re gonna let us go.”
Dad stared at me, his eyes filled with something I’d seen thousands of times and never once disobeyed even in my deepest days of rebellion. Trust.
Slowly, he lowered the gun.
Farrah laughed and did a little dance that punctured my skin with the scissors. Blood beaded and rolled into my hair as she leaned forward to whisper, “Come on, baby, let’s blow this place. You and me’ll go to Colombia. All I need is my girl.”
I let her walk me to the partially opened door, leaned forward to open it for us and immediately obeyed Dad when he barked, “Drop.”
I fell to the ground as the door crashed open.
Bang!
So loud, right over top of me.
“Huh?” my mother gasped then gurgled behind me.
I rolled to my back to see her clutching her throat, a hole right through the center of it, as she fell to the ground.
“Rosie.”
My eyes closed automatically against the burn of tears there.
“No,” I whispered, afraid I was stress hallucinating, or I’d inhaled too many nail polish fumes.
But no.
Rough tipped hands gently reached under my armpits to pull me up then planted on my shoulders to spin me around.
And he was there.
The green-eyed teenager playing guitar in a record store.
The rookie cop letting me get away with shoplifting.
The undercover biker who gave up his cover to save me.
My fierce, loyal, handsome Lion standing before me, holding me, looking at me like I was the lost treasure of Atlantis and he’d never need for anything again.
“Lion,” I whispered, the word all hope. “I did something bad.”
“Nothing to forgive, nothing to forget. I love you, rebel Rose. You hurt me to save me. You broke your own heart a million fucking times to keep me alive and I love you so fucking much for that.” He grasped my face in his hand and spoke against my lips. “My lion-hearted girl.”
And then he kissed me.
The sheet shifted slowly over the sleep-warmed skin of my back, bearing my ass to the cool air. Fingers followed, skirted the slopes of my muscles and the hollow of my spine, the two depressions at the base of my torso like a sculptor molding precious clay. Another hand moved the thick curtain of hair obscuring my face off to the side of my head on the pillow and warm lips teased my ear.
“Good morning my thorny Rose,” Danner whispered there, planting the words like a secret.
My heart surged with gratitude so warm, it sent a flush through my whole body.
Lion was back.
Back in my life, in my bed, in my arms.
My protector, my best friend, and my lover.
I finally had everything from him I’d ever needed.
I could still feel the echo of Hero in my heart, the loss of his head beside me in our bed, but I knew this is what he’d died for. To keep not just me alive, but this dream, his family together in bed again.
My mother was gone, dead by Danner’s unwavering hand. He didn’t seem to feel remorse and neither did I. But, we didn’t call the cops until Dad had taken Farrah’s body away to be laid to not-so-peaceful rest with the pigs at Angelwood farm. I didn’t want to get Danner in trouble for saving me.
And Dad didn’t want to be there when the men in blue showed up.
There was an ache in my thumb from the bullet graze and I knew Danner’s scar was still bright pink on his chest, fresh but healing.
We had scars.
We’d had battles.
But that was finally done, and I had to believe the horrors we’d been through only made us stronger, as individuals and a pair.