He knew what they were capable of.
He took more sips. But he couldn’t stop thinking about Charly no matter how much he drank. He walked to his floor-to-ceiling window and looked out over the lake. He paced the floor, and paced some more. But nothing helped. His concern wouldn’t let up. It became so pronounced until he realized there was only one answer for it: he had to make sure she was alright.
He went back over to his bar, poured the last of his drink down the drain, went back into his bedroom, and dressed quickly. He grabbed his wallet, and the keys to his Ferrari, and took off. He would have no peace, none at all, until he made sure Charly had peace.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
When he arrived at the Scotland Arms apartments, he drove throughout the entire complex, slowly making his way toward her place. All was quiet, which he was pleased to see, and everything around her apartment looked just fine too. There was nothing to see there. Nothing to make him think that anything was amiss.
But that gnawing feeling was still there. So much so that he considered knocking on her door, to see for himself that she was okay. But he knew that could be easily misinterpreted. She’d think he was after a booty call. She’d lose a little more respect for him when the last thing he needed was to be a bastard in her eyes too.
Maybe his instinct was wrong this time, anyway, he thought. Maybe he was feeling so unsettled because he didn’t end up spending the night with Charly when he never in his life took a woman out to dinner and not ended up in bed with her. He just needed to get a woman, that was all. He had a thick book of them. All he had to do, he knew, was to choose which one.
But having any other woman that wasn’t Charly, he also knew, would be a mighty letdown.
But he also felt ridiculous to get out of his bed, in the middle of the night, just because he had some unexplained, unable-to-verbalize feeling. A whim, in other words. It was insane, and he needed to get himself away from there. He drove away from her place, and toward the exit.
But even as he approached the exit, he still felt unsettled. And suddenly it didn’t feel like a whim at all. Something was wrong.
Instead of leaving the complex, he drove back through it. But nothing had changed. Nothing was amiss.
Get a grip, Boone, he said out loud. She’s okay. Besides, she’s a strong woman. She can take care of herself even if something was wrong. What’s your problem? He wasn’t her man, not even her lover, and certainly not her keeper. Why was he acting as if he was all of the above?
He turned around once again, ready to head for the exit once again. But as he drove away, and glanced though his rearview at her section of the complex, he caught a glimpse of something in the woods beside her apartment that happened so fast he couldn’t figure out what it was he’d seen. A man, a woman, he couldn’t even say. Or was it even real? Was it a figment of his early-in-the-morning whacked imagination?
But in case it wasn’t, he turned around, anyway, and headed back toward her place. He felt like an unsettled fool, but he headed back.
But when he was almost to her place, he heard a sound that chilled him to his bones. A sound he knew like the back of his hand.
A gunshot.
And not just one shot, but a volley of shots in the back of the building where Charly lived.
His heart pounding, he slammed on brakes, grabbed the two loaded guns he kept in his glove compartment, and jumped out of his Ferrari. He was praying, literally praying, that it wasn’t Charly’s apartment. He ran toward her apartment, praying that she was okay, knowing that she wasn’t.
She didn’t know that she wasn’t at first, until the gunfire started. She had finally fallen asleep, after many hours tossing and turning, when gunfire awakened her with such a start that she thought she was having a heart attack. She leaned up from her pillow with a hard jerk-up. And then there was the sound of her window shattering as bullets flew through it.
She didn’t know what was happening, but she jumped out of bed and dropped to the floor. Then she crawled under the bed, crawling on her belly, as the hail of bullets besieged her. She could hardly believe it. How could everything go so crazy so quickly?
But she wasn’t trying to seek the reason. She was trying to stay alive. And when one of the bullets ricocheted off of the lowest part of the bed, as if the gunman knew she was underneath it, she knew she had to get out of that room.
She crawled from beneath the bed and decided, just like she decided all those years ago when that hitman was after her, that she had to make a run for it. No matter what, she couldn’t remain there and be a sitting duck for some crazed shooter. She had to get out.
And as soon as there was a momentary lapse in gunfire, as if the gunman was reloading, she made that run.
She got off of the floor and ran for her life, out of that bedroom. There was still no gunshots heard so she kept running out of the bedroom, down the hall, through her living room, and toward the front door. He was in the back of her apartment. If she could grab her keys off of the key rack in the living room and get to her car, she just might get away from there.
But there was no time for any of that because, just as she entered the living room, her front door was kicked open. She was just about to turn around, and run toward her back door, when she realized who had bust it open.
She’d never been happier to see a man the way she was when she saw Boone Ryan.
She ran to him, irrationally trying to tell him that somebody was shooting up her apartment, as if he didn’t already know.
And then the gunfire started again, this time in the living room. Boone immediately grabbed Charly and fell, with her in his arms, to the floor. They hit the deck hard. But Boone was on top, shielding Charly with his own body, and firing back at the gunman outside. He fired and he fired and he fired. His goal was to overwhelm that gunman with as much firepower as he could muster, knowing that it might be enough to scare him off. He shot every bullet out of one gun, dropped it, and then, without missing a beat, pulled out his second gun and continued to fire nonstop.
Until Charly didn’t hear another shot from the gunman. Boone was still shooting, but she didn’t hear return fire. “He stopped,” Charly said anxiously to Boone. “Boone, he stopped. Why did he stop?”
Boone had realized it, too. “I don’t know,” he said, getting off of her, “but I’m going to find out.”
He jumped up and grabbed her hand, lifting her with one strong jerk. “Lock the door. Don’t let anybody in but me,” he ordered, and ran out of the apartment.
Charly, not about to defy the man who just saved her life, quickly did as he ordered and locked her door. Then she took shelter away from all windows.
And Boone took off, out of the apartment and around to the side. He had to secure her first. Now he needed to get that gunman.
But the gunman hadn’t fired another shot. Which meant, to Boone, that his strategy of overwhelming him with shots fired back might have paid off. But he had to be sure.
When he saw that there was nobody on the side nor the back of the apartment section, he ran through the woods on the side of the complex. All he could think about was how close to death Charly had come. What if he hadn’t been there? What if there was no return fire and that gunman broke her door down to get to her? Boone’s heart was in agony.