Unbridled and Untethered [The Double Rider Men's Club 10] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (21 page)

Lenny was high on something that made him paranoid, manic, and difficult to communicate with. Emma Rae did her best to remain calm as she worked on freeing herself. All the while, she tried to stay small and forgotten so as not to earn his paranoid and delusional wrath.

He paced the room and peered out the window on occasion to check to see if Detective Rollins still waited outside.

“Fucking cops,” Lenny muttered from behind the parted curtain in the living room. He paced into the bedroom and back out then he circled her small apartment checking each window for only
he
knew what. She didn’t know if Detective Rollins was still even out there. Or if Lenny’s delusional mind saw other threats to his well-being in his drugged-up state.

All of a sudden he whooped and laughed.

“All right. Finally! He’s leavin’. Good.” Lenny marched back into her bedroom.

The gun went under her chin. Fearing he’d just discovered her plan to escape, Emma Rae ceased movement of her hands. She tried to make herself tiny and not worth his effort.

“Now you be a good little captive and sit tight here for a few minutes. No moving. No screaming. Nothing. You got me?” He didn’t seem to want an answer, so she didn’t give him one.

The gun pulled away from her skin slightly. He wiped a hand across his mouth, taking a deep breath. He looked behind him and to either side, as if someone was about to jump out and scare him. “I need a little hit of courage. Then you and I are taking a ride together out of town.” His glassy-eyed expression was a stark reminder that he was completely unstable. She wished his “hit of courage” would send him into an overdosing death spiral or at the very least an unconscious state so she could run, or possibly hop to freedom, without fear of a bullet in her melon.

But surely she wouldn’t get that lucky.

Emma Rae ground her teeth together so she wouldn’t speak out of turn. For the first time in her life, she’d been ready to settle down and be a part of a family. Two men who loved her also wanted her to live with them. And now she’d likely die at the hands of a man who didn’t even deserve the freedom he had in this world.

She wanted to rail at Lenny for the unfairness of this situation. She wanted to bang his head into the wall until it was bloody. At the very least she’d love to kick her foot in an upward direction between his legs so that he fully understood her fury. But she didn’t. It would be satisfying, but he had the gun. She wouldn’t provoke him into killing her faster than he already had planned.

Emma Rae closed her eyes and took in a deep, calming breath. After a long moment, he removed the gun from her chin and shuffled out of the room. She opened her eyes but couldn’t see him from her vantage point. Tugging at the cuffs again, she resumed her efforts to free herself. She was so close.

From the other room she heard him banging around in her kitchen. Then silence.

The sound and scent of a match being struck soon drifted into her bedroom. What was he doing? Setting her apartment on fire? Another pungent odor she didn’t recognize soon floated past her nose. What was he burning?

She pushed at the handcuff with renewed alarm. Then suddenly it was stuck and wouldn’t move forward or back on her hand. She took a deep breath and yanked with all her might. The pain grew until she thought she might have broken a few bones. Then all of a sudden her hand slid free of the metal.

She was free.

Emma Rae leaned forward as far as possible on the bed but still couldn’t see Lenny. The stench of whatever he was burning grew stronger. Where was he? She quietly placed the empty handcuff in one hand, taking care to keep the chain from clinking together. She then reached down to quietly free her legs. Unfortunately, the masking tape was stubborn. Her hands were sweaty from the effort to remove the cuffs and she couldn’t tear it from her jeans.

Lenny moved in the other room. She heard the squeak of the rocking chair.

Shit
. Was he moving? Was he coming for her?

Emma Rae stood up and wobbled. She couldn’t run with the tape around her jeans. She kicked her shoes off as fast as she could, realizing suddenly that she hadn’t bothered with socks this morning. She then quickly unbuttoned and then quietly unzipped her pants. As she moved the jeans fabric down her legs, the loose handcuff link dropped and made a sound.

She stopped dead and didn’t budge.

“What are you doing in there?” he called out. “I told you not to move around.” More accentuated squeaking from the rocking chair.
Shit
. Was he coming in here? He coughed several times but didn’t say anything else.

Not wanting to lose this premium advantage, she went as still as the dead.

Jeans now crowded around her ankles, Emma Rae stepped from them carefully. Silently. Barefoot, sans pants, and ready to get as far away from Lenny as she could, Emma Rae stepped closer to the door. She made ready to run down the hall and out the back door. If he was still in the rocking chair, his back would be to her as she made her way past the living room and down the back hall to the rear apartment door and freedom.

She moved slowly. A glance out the door, and she saw him in the rocking chair. He was hunched over, faced away from her, and waving a match over the bottom of a piece of foil. Whatever noxious fumes rose from what burned, he was breathing them in. It smelled terrible.

Emma Rae glanced down the hallway and suddenly realized how he’d entered her apartment. He’d broken the glass out of her back door. It was scattered in many hundreds of shards all over the hallway floor.

With a glance down at her bare feet, she decided she didn’t want to chance going back for her shoes.

Suddenly, Lenny coughed several times and stood up. He turned and saw her framing the doorway. The glassy expression of his drug-induced high didn’t seem to make sense of her being there. He frowned.

Distracted by her freedom, the match he held suddenly burned down close enough to his finger. He yelped and dropped the match, swearing a blue streak and shaking his injured fingers. As he was sidetracked, she realized he no longer held the gun.

Where is it?
She searched only a second before she saw it on the lamp table next to the rocking chair. Three long steps and she’d have the weapon.

Lenny’s gaze also went to the gun and then lifted to her face.

She had two choices. Fight or flight.

Emma Rae chose fight. They both lunged toward the gun.

“You fucking bitch,” he screamed at the top of his lungs.

Grappling for only a second or two, she had her fingers on the handle before it was snatched from her. She scrambled backward and tried to keep from falling as she ran toward the back hall. She almost fell on her ass.

Once he got the gun in hand, he’d shoot her either in the spine or in the back of her head. She had no doubt. She saw the broken glass scattered across her only viable escape route. She lunged forward anyway.

Suddenly, she heard a loud boom echo and reverberate across the room.

Was that the gun? Was the bullet headed toward her back? Her skull? The room brightened all of a sudden.
Am I dying?

Emma Rae lost her footing in the scramble for freedom. Or she was dead, her limbs no longer worked, and she was beyond feeling. She slammed against the wall with one shoulder. A striking splinter of pain ran down her arm. She lost her balance and slid down the wall the rest of the way, falling to her knees. A small stray piece of glass cut her where she landed.

It hurt. A lot.
Maybe I’m
not
dead
.

Then she heard the unmistakable roar of a gunshot at the same time someone screamed her name in a tone filled with unrelenting fury.

* * * *

Zeke and Luke had been the very best of friends for the bulk of their lives. Zeke recognized every one of his friend’s expressions, from elated to enraged. After Luke hung up from talking with Emma Rae, Zeke knew he’d have to catalogue a new one. He’d never seen an expression like he saw on Luke’s face. A cross between borderline despondence and unholy disbelief, Luke blinked a couple of times and then went straight faced and calm.

“Something is very wrong.” Luke stood stock-still.

Having only heard half the conversation but getting the gist that Emma Rae wasn’t coming back nor was she interested in moving in with them or getting married, Zeke couldn’t comprehend her abandonment. It didn’t compute.

So he watched and waited to find out what Luke planned to do.

It didn’t take long for him to decide. Luke wanted to meet with her face-to-face.

If she had second thoughts about their lifestyle, they wanted to talk to her and alleviate any sudden fears she’d developed in the short drive to her home. Somehow, Zeke didn’t think that was what was going on. Something didn’t feel right, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

Luke grabbed his keys and headed outside. Zeke barely had time to call in a personal day at work before climbing into Luke’s passenger seat. He didn’t even have his seat belt on before his friend took off.

They didn’t speak on the way, but Zeke developed a very bad feeling. Luke was right. Why would she suddenly change her mind?

In fact, the closer they got to her house, the worse Zeke felt.

His gut churned with ill ease.

Once there, they saw her car parked in its normal spot. They walked toward her front door. Luke was ahead of him by only a few steps.

When they’d gotten within earshot of her front door, they heard a man’s muffled voice scream loud enough to hear, “You fucking bitch!”

Before Zeke barely registered the curse or that the voice sounded incredibly familiar, Luke ran to her door, lifted one leg, and shot his size-twelve boot just left of the knob. The door exploded inward, and Luke blasted through the door like a bullet as it opened.

Zeke was right on his heels.

Inside, Zeke took in the scene, but his reaction time was off. He was slow. The tender space on his chest from his wound throbbed. Across the room he noted that Emma Rae was on the far side of the apartment near her bedroom door. The more notable change being that she had a set of handcuffs dangling from one wrist and her legs were bare.

Thankfully, Luke wasn’t slow or injured. The foul, acrid stench of something burnt filled the air. Zeke saw a strange man with a gun. It was aimed at Emma Rae.

Before he could take a breath, he saw Luke charge the stranger, who had extended his arm to fire the gun in his hand. Luke jarred the guy’s elbow upward just as he fired. The shot hit across the room in the wall near Emma Rae’s head. She suddenly fell to her knees on the floor. She leaned one shoulder hard against the wall and didn’t move.

“Emma Rae!” Zeke screamed and ran for her. Was she shot? Was she dead?

Luke tackled the stranger and knocked the gun from his hand by the time Zeke got over to Emma Rae. The two men only wrestled for a second before Luke got the upper hand and started beating on him. His fist drove into the man’s face before Zeke put his attention on Emma Rae.

Zeke grabbed her shoulders and squatted down next to her. “Emma Rae, are you hurt? Are you shot?” His hands ran down her arms. He looked for blood but didn’t see any.

She seemed to snap out of her trance. She looked over her shoulder, but he wasn’t sure she saw him at first. When her gaze finally focused, she squinted. “Zeke?”

“Yes. It’s me.” He slid his arms around her and pulled her into a tight embrace. She buried her face against his chest. Her fingers dug into his arms. “It’s the third gunman from the bank,” she whispered against his throat. “He was waiting for me.”

In the distance, Zeke heard the wail of sirens coming closer. Luke had finally stopped punching the intruder.

Luke stood and wiped an arm across his forehead. He approached the two of them slowly.

Zeke helped Emma Rae stand up. “I didn’t mean anything I said on the phone,” she said before he made it all the way across the room.

Luke smiled. “Of course you didn’t.”

“I only said it to keep you both away. He threatened to kill you if you came here. I didn’t want you hurt.”

He nodded. “I know that, too.”

She glanced at Zeke then back at Luke. “But you came anyway.”

“And we always will.”

Luke walked closer. She released Zeke and flew into Luke’s arms. Their exuberant kiss warmed his heart and soul. He was glad they’d made up.

The sirens once in the distance had grown steadily louder. Zeke heard a car arrive. He left them kissing in the room, pulled his badge, and walked out to greet whatever law enforcement was about to enter.

If nothing else, he had the capacity and experience to deal with fellow lawmen coming onto the scene.

Luke eventually exited with Emma Rae. She’d found some new jeans to put on, but the handcuff was still fastened to her wrist.

Zeke insisted it be removed before she spoke to anyone. Once free, she made a brief statement about what had happened and also who the man was. She only spoke for a moment to the officers, but neither Luke nor Zeke left her side during the questioning.