A Safe Place To Fall (The Fall Book 1) (22 page)

Lana jerked her arms frantically in a
lame attempt to get free. Things were not going as she had hoped.

“Why are you doing this?”
she begged to know through tears.

With one tug of his hands the fabric of
the dress tore apart leaving her bared to his prying eyes. “Because
you don't want me any other way and it's time that I get what I
deserve.” His hands moved to her breasts squeezing them
painfully hard. “These are mine.” His knee forced its'
way between her legs pressing against her most intimate part. “This
is mine. You belong to me.”

She turned her head away. If only she
could detach herself from the scene unfolding. There had to be a way
out of this!

**********************

Drew punched the steering wheel in
frustration and tossed his phone to Shawn. “Keep calling until
someone answers.”

The
traffic remained at a stand-still due to a bad car accident.
Damn
it!
He did not have time for this bullshit. Tracie had not answered any
of his thirty phone calls. Something had to be wrong. He needed to
get to them.

“Shouldn't we be calling the
cops?” Shawn suggested, pressing the redial button on the
phone.

“They're supposed to be on their
way,” Drew informed him, slowly creeping the truck forward.
“But they're probably dealing with this shit too.”

“No answer,” the man in the
passenger seat confirmed. “If he hurts her, I'm going to kill
him myself.”
“That's funny coming from the guy who
raped her,” Drew said, not bothering to disguise his hatred for
the man.

“I regretted that night as soon as
I woke up the next morning,” Shawn admitted once again dialing
the number. “I should've gone to her then and apologized, but
I was too much of a coward.”

Drew's hand squeezed around the wheel in
irritation. The guy could say whatever he wanted; it would not
change Drew's opinion of him. A guy could not rape a girl and expect
to be forgiven. That just did not happen. The only thing saving his
life right now was the fact he had alerted Drew to who had been after
Lana for the past few months.

“Save your breath,” Drew
said through gritted teeth. “If you both would've stayed in
Charleston this would not be happening right now.”

“My aunt asked me to come here
with him,” Shawn informed him. “He was determined to
come here all of a sudden. She was afraid he would get himself into
trouble if he came alone.”

Drew snorted. “She put the wrong
man on the job.”

The other man remained silent.

************************

Lana closed her eyes and tried to ignore
the fact that she could feel Devin's breath on her face. He operated
different than his cousin. At least Shawn had made it fast and as
painless as possible.

Her arms were starting to ache from
being attached to the headboard. She was not sure, but she thought
he had tightened the cuffs too tight.

She cast a glance at the nightstand.
The gun was mere inches from her; if only she could get to it.

Now laying fully on top of her, he
pressed his arousal against her. “I want inside you so bad.”

You
have to get to that gun..like now!

Lana pulled against the handcuffs once
again, praying her plan would work. “This isn't fair. You can
touch me but I can't touch...”

“You wanna touch me, baby?”
he interrupted, grinding himself against her. “I think we can
arrange that.”

She tried not to look relieved. Hands
getting freed was step one of her plan. Now all she had to do was
figure out how to reach the gun before he knew what she was about.

The handcuffs clicked open and her arms
dropped down to the mattress. Her hands tingled as the blood rushed
back into them. She would need a minute to recover if she ever
wanted to stand a chance at getting that gun.

You
have to go with it. Make him think you want this as much as he does.
If you don't he will never let his guard down.

Lana
pushed passed her revulsion and raised her hands to caress his now
bare chest. He had a skull tattooed above his heart. She traced the
tattoo with her pointer finger and arched her hips, forcing a moan
out.

“I want in now,” he told
her.

This was it! She had to move on with
the plan right this second. The thought of what would occur if she
didn't act was too disturbing to think about.

With more bravado than she felt, Lana
shoved against his chest forcing him over onto his back. Naturally,
he pulled her with him.

Lana pushed the disgust back and allowed
him to kiss her roughly.

Minutes later she pulled her mouth away
from his, and moved to reach down to the nightstand. “I'm not
on the pill,” she explained as she reached into the stand.

She felt around blindly for the weapon.
Finally her hands closed around the cold metal of the gun. Taking a
deep breath she ran through all of the steps that Drew had shown her.
Drew had promised the gun would always be loaded and ready to shoot.
All she had to do was pull the safety, aim, and shoot. Piece of
cake. She could do this.

“Hurry up, baby.”

As
you wish!

Lana
sat up quickly, pulling the gun out of the stand. She aimed the gun
at his chest. “I'm not your baby.”

His laugh sounded half-crazed. She had
a loaded gun aimed at him, and the jerk-face laughs? The urge to
actually pull the trigger was strong.

Quickly, without taking the gun away
from her target, she climbed off of the bed. She really wanted to
put a bullet in his chest, just because he was so sure she wouldn't
do it.

“Go ahead, shoot me,” he
mocked still laughing. “I dare you.”

If she listened to the voice in her head
she would pull the trigger. That would be murder and she couldn't
sink to that level.

“I will,” she lied, backing
slowly to the door.

“No, you won't,” he
confirmed. Apparently, he was completely insane, because he got off
of the bed and began to stalk her.

You
can't let him take this gun!

Knowing
she had no choice Lana closed her eyes tight, and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened!

What the....

Devin laughed. “You forgot about
the safety, baby.”

She opened her eyes just in time to see
him charging at her.

They went crashing to the floor in a
tangle of arms and legs, both fighting for the gun. Devin easily
over powered her by wrapping his hands around her neck. Instinct
made her drop the gun to struggle to pull his hands away from her
neck.

She realized her mistake when he grabbed
the handgun. A shot rang out into the quiet of the room.

It's funny how in the split seconds
before impact she could resign herself to the fact she was going to
die. Not exactly how she had wanted her life to end. Somewhere in
the back of her mind she thought she would live to be an old lady
with Drew by her side as she took her last breath. Was that not
meant to be?

**************************

Chapter 23

It took Drew an hour to get to the
apartment. He still couldn't get the picture of Lana laying in a
pool of blood out of his head. Devin was gone by the time Drew with
Shawn right behind him, busted through the bedroom door.

The police got there after it was over.
The responding officers immediately took off in hopes of locating
Devin before he could get too far away.

Everything had happened in such a blur.
Drew refused to leave Lana's side, so he sent his car to the hospital
with Shawn, and rode in the ambulance with her. Her moans of pain
were enough to make him want to run after Devin and take his time
killing him.

The bullet had gone into her right arm,
shattering bone on contact. It was amazing she had not blacked out
from the pain alone. Somehow she had managed to be able to tell the
cops and paramedics exactly what happened.

Chris, Tammy, and Tracie beat them to
the hospital once they were informed of the situation. Tammy took it
upon herself to call Lana's parents, because Drew couldn't bear to
make the phone call. How did you tell a mom that her daughter was
about to go into surgery, because you could not protect her from a
crazed stalker?

Drew paced in the surgical waiting room.
He did not know if he actually believed in God, but he found himself
sending up silent prayers. The doctors had promised it was not a
fatal injury; she should even gain full mobility in the arm. Even
knowing this he could not help but worry.

Tammy nudged his arm with a coffee cup.
“I thought you might need this.”

He accepted the cup out of politeness.
The last thing he needed was caffeine. “I should've known.
The way he looked at her in class...”

“There's no way that you could
have known,” she argued wrapping her arms around him in a
sisterly hug. “He was dating her friend.”

Drew wrapped his arm around his sister's
shoulders and looked over to where Tracie was curled up in a chair
staring into space. “Has she said anything?”

“She's blaming herself because she
left Lana with him,” she informed him softly. “Lana lied
and told her they had been secretly seeing each other.”

That was his girl, always thinking of
everyone but herself. She had been more concerned about getting her
friend out of danger than getting out of there herself. Part of him
wanted to scream at Tracie for not at least coming and telling him
about the so called affair. If she had just told him what Lana had
told her, he would have been able to figure out the truth. Then
maybe he could have gotten there in time.

“It's not her fault,” Tammy
whispered, clearly reading his mind. “She came to tell you
that Lana had a sick friend she needed to take care of. She didn't
know that Lana was trying to send her for help.”

Drew rested the side of his head on the
top of hers. “I should've made Chris stay at the apartment
while they were getting ready.”

His sister sighed. “That's not
your fault either.”

“She's right,” Lana's mother
said, coming up to them. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to
eavesdrop, but you can't blame yourself for this.”

Lana's parents had gotten to the
hospital in record time. Drew was not sure what traffic laws they
had broken to get there. He was just glad they would be here when
Lana came out of surgery.

“I was stupid to leave the girls
there by themselves,” he told both of the women. “They
didn't stand a chance at fighting him, that's why Lana made sure to
get Tracie out of there.”

“You supplied Lana with the
ability to defend herself,” Tammy pointed out.

“And she got shot,” he
reminded her. “I didn't take her out more than that one time
to make sure she knew how to use the gun.”

“I love my daughter,” Sandra
stated with a faint smile, “but the girl has never been a quick
study. Chances are even if you had taken her out to shoot twenty
different times she still would have forgotten to pull the safety.”

It was kind of the older woman to try to
take the blame off of him but it still did not change the facts.
Devin was able to get to Lana, because Drew had left her alone with
another woman. He should have known better than to trust Lana
would be safe on her own for a few hours. The other guy had been
watching and waiting for the moment he could get Lana on her own.
Drew had handed that opportunity to him.

Lana was still in surgery by the time
Drew's dad arrived at the hospital with information about Devin's
apprehension.

“We finally hunted him down at
some night club,” his father informed the group. “He's
claiming they are a couple, and she got mad and tried to pull a gun
on him.”

“Bullshit,” Drew shouted,
moving away from his sister and beginning to pace once again. “He
cannot claim self-defense. They weren't dating!”

“I know that, son,” his dad
said patiently. “We have all of the evidence to prove that he
has been stalking her. He won't get away with this.”

“He is also claiming that a Ms.
Tracie Danvers was present when they began fighting,” the older
man went on. “According to him, Ms. Danvers told Lana the two
of them had been having an affair for the past couple of months.”

“He's lying,” Tracie spoke
up from her spot in the chair closest to the reception desk. “I
mean we had dated, but he wasn't cheating on Lana. That's not why she
pulled the gun on him.”

“He's also claiming his cousin has
knowledge of his relationships with Lana and Ms. Danvers,” he
went on.

“I knew he was dating Tracie,”
Shawn spoke up from his position by the big window as he stared out
over the parking lot, “but I had no idea he was stalking Lana
until it was too late.”