Knocked Up By Love by Ella Goode
Chapter Twenty-One
Bear
My blood runscold at the scream. “Honey!” I yell into the phone. “Honey!” There’s silence and then the sound of a crash.
I slam the phone on the dash. “Get out.”
The two boys stare at me with dumb expressions on their faces. “Get the fuck out of my car right fucking now.”
I lean across the console and shove open the passenger door. Their feet barely clear the door before I take off again. The address Mad Dog gave me takes me to an isolated property to the west. I drive a quarter mile past the gravel drive and jog back. There’s fresh dust and the sound of a motor deeper into the land. I use the trees as cover and navigate far enough in that I can see the outline of a small dilapidated blue house with peeling blue paint and a sagging front porch. A shiny, expensive black SUV is parked out front. The driver door is open, and the vehicle is still idling.
A woman’s scream is immediately muffled.
“Let her scream. Ain’t no one around to hear her,” laughs a man.
I’m going to kill him first.
“Nah. If I wanted to hear whining, I’d just go home. Grab her legs, would ya?”
“Wait. I thought we needed to take her out back by the furnace?”
“Sure, but that’s after. Big guy doesn’t care when the job gets done, only that we get it done. Let’s have a little fun.”
Nah, he goes first.
Crouched down, I sidle up to the SUV. The two men are carrying a wriggling Honey up the stairs sideways. Good girl is giving them a fight. I’m proud of her, and I’ll be sure to tell her after I’ve taken care of the mess here. I wait until the first guy, the let her scream guy, backs into the doorway. The let’s have a little fun guy trails behind with a hand wrapped around each one of Honey’s ankles.
I burst around the SUV and up the stairs and tackle the guy in the rear to the ground, punching him in the face twice, then slamming it against the floorboards so hard the rotted wood gives way. I stand and stomp his head into the hole and then launch myself to toward the other man, who has tossed Honey to the ground to grab his gun from the back of his jeans. He fires as I launch myself forward.
Something sharp pierces my shoulder. I ignore it and power forward, pushing his arm up in the air. Another shot goes off, this time discharged above my head. Plaster rains down as I take the big guy to the floor.
“Stay down,” I yell at Honey. I don’t want her getting struck by a stray bullet.
The man takes advantage of my moment of distraction and slams his head against my shoulder. Pain screams down my spine. He rolls me over onto my back. This time it’s not a gun but a blade pointed at my face. I swing my arm up as a shield. The blade cuts into my forearm, and hot blood drips down to my elbow.
“Bear!” Honey shouts. “You’re bleeding.”
“You’re next, honey,” the hitman growls. He bears down, and I give in, leaning slightly to the side. The move takes the hitman by surprise. The blade slides into my shoulder, but he loses his grip. I flip him over and wrench the knife out, swing it around, and drive it into his eye.
His mouth forms a perfect circle in surprise, and he blinks once with his good eye. I hammer the hilt with my fist, and the light flickers out.
“Bear?” There’s an uncertainty in her tone.
“Stay back. You don’t want to see this.” I pull the knife out and roll the corpse over onto his dead face. I swipe the bloody blade against my pants and then tear a portion of the man’s T-shirt away to serve as a modified sheath. The blade goes in my pocket and another strip of the material covers my wound.
“Is he dead?” she asks.
“Yeah.” I don’t know how to approach it. Do I try to sound regretful? Because I’m not. “How’s the dude outside?”
“Um, I don’t know.”
“Okay. Stay here.” I don’t look at her, not wanting to see fear or disappointment in her eyes. The guy is still out cold. I fish him out of the floorboards and carry him inside, dumping his body onto the corpse. Guess it’s time to get rid of the evidence. The furnace out back will do fine, but Honey doesn’t need to know this.
Keeping my eyes averted, I take out my car keys and toss them to her. “I’m parked a half mile past the drive. Take my car back to the gym and sit with Randy.”
“Bear, why won’t you look at me?” She sounds hurt, maybe a little scared. I don’t know. She might have wanted me before, but fighting in a ring is a far cry from killing real people. She’s not one of those people who are into that. She’s too tenderhearted, too sweet, too wonderful for that.
I can’t bring myself to meet her eyes. “Get going or you’ll be here when the cops arrive, and that’ll mean a lot of questions we can’t answer. Paige needs someone to take care of her, so let me clean this mess up and I’ll meet you back at the house.”
“Is that why you came out here? For Paige?”
“For everyone, Honey. Now get going.”
There’s a prolonged silence while Honey’s eyes weigh heavy on my shoulders, but I keep my own gaze locked on the two men. Finally, she sighs and leaves. When the door latches shut behind her, I get moving. Out back, the furnace is cold. It’ll take hours for it to get hot enough to incinerate a body, and I find that now that my mad anger has passed, I can’t murder the other guy in cold blood. Instead, I doctor the evidence. I position the unconscious man slumped against the wall with the knife in his hand. The gun goes back in the dead man’s hands. I wipe down all the surfaces I’ve touched. My blood’s here, but there’s nothing much I can do about that. Hopefully, the police will look at this and blame it on the other guy.
I jog for a few miles to put distance between me and the house. Finally, light-headed from blood loss, I call Randy to pick me up. He doesn’t ask a question when he arrives other than, “You going to be ready to fight next week?”
I roll my shoulder. “Probably not.”
“I didn’t think so. Should I take you home after I stitch you up?”
“That’d be for the best.” I need to see if Honey has run off or if she’s still there, and if she’s still there, will she take me back? For the first time in my life, I feel real fear.
