Wild (23 page)

Finally, long after Jeremy had gone limp on the floor, blood marring his once beautiful features, I dropped the crow bar and slumped on the ground next to him. I held my head in my hands and cried. I felt the release of being free of him. The anguish dissolved from my body as heartache set in, but before I could succumb, I remembered Lane just outside the door.

I scrambled to my feet and launched out of the small entrance to the lighthouse, pain radiating through my body.

“Lane, oh God, Lane.” I turned his head in my hands and ran my thumbs along his soft cheeks. “Please don’t be gone. I’m so sorry,” I whimpered and held him to my chest as fresh tears streamed down my cheeks. He felt so cold, so still, so terrifyingly still. The wind whipped around us, the waves roaring up on the pier as I turned my back on the man who had taken me with force, to embrace the man that had loved me through everything.

I sensed that I was drifting in and out. Lane curled in my lap, his heavy body limp in mine, I lost time. I wasn’t sure how long we’d been there, all night, a few hours, a few minutes.

It was so cold.

So freezing cold with the wind and water biting at my skin. I heard a scrape from behind me, a foreign noise, not the wind or the waves and I realized that I wasn’t even sure if Jeremy was dead. I hadn’t been thinking straight, I’d only wanted to get to Lane. I hadn’t even called the police.

Lane’s phone.

The realization hit me that Lane must have his phone on him. My cold fingers fumbled through the layers of his coat, searching for a pocket. I heard another loud scraping noise just as I spotted the screen of his phone glinting in the moonlight on a rock just out of my reach.

Another scrape.

Dragging.

What the fuck was that?

It was as if the cold had seeped into my brain, had it moving slower, the thoughts unable to process. Maybe this was hypothermia. Like that moment between wake and sleep when your mind starts to fire off incomprehensible thoughts.

My fingers wrapped around the phone just as heavy hands clutched at my throat and my head was plunged under the freezing seawater.

My heart raged in my chest.

I scratched and struggled for release.

The fingers tightened around my neck, pressing at my windpipe as I choked on my last breaths of air before I inhaled a gulp of freezing cold oxygen.

“You’re dead to me, you slut.”

I tried to thrash before my head was plunged back under the ice-cold water. The waves battering the rocks had me unable to catch my bearings.

Jeremy pulled me back from the water and I guzzled in air, as much as I could.

“I’ll kill you just like I did your mother, and that fucking prick can watch.”

I tried to force my brain to maneuver a way out of this situation but it was impossible.

How had I married such a monster?

How had I not known?

How had I been so foolish?

He pulled me from the water and I gulped erratic breaths, the winter air stinging my lungs.

“No one takes what’s mine.”

Tears seeped down my cheeks before Jeremy’s fingers tightened. I gulped another breath of air as he plunged me under the water for the final time.

He held me, his fingers tightening, and this time I knew.

I knew he wasn’t letting me go.

I knew this was it.

The lack of oxygen burned my lungs. Every beat of my heart seemed to echo through my whole body. The blood slowed, the lack of oxygen and freezing water settling into my system.

The waves continued to batter the rocks as the last of the oxygen vacated my lungs. They squeezed and ached until it felt like they would burst.

Suddenly my entire body relaxed, my limbs limp, my chest expanded as the water consumed me.

This was it.

This was dying.

I woke to a struggle. Waves crashing, groans, grunts, but the black night made it so hard to see, and the pounding at the back of my head made thinking nearly impossible. I lifted my body and realization dawned.

Jeremy Walsh.

Kat.

He had her.

He was drowning her.

Killing her.

Taking her away from me.

My mind jumped into overdrive when I remembered the small knife I had tucked in my pocket. My fingers curled around the cold metal as I pulled it out and silently flicked it open. Just a few feet ahead of me, leaning over the dark granite, he held Kat under the water. My mind raged as I pulled myself to standing. My muscles twitched, the rage infiltrating my blood stream as I stood behind him.

I was prepared to slit his throat, throw him aside and grab for Kat. I had to do both simultaneously, otherwise she would be lost to the waves.

Just as I reached a hand out to grip at his head, a form materialized and suddenly blood was everywhere.

Warm red blood, wet on my hands, my body, my face.

I no longer saw the black of night surrounding me.

My vision was engulfed in red.

Blood red.

And I feared who it may belong to.

“Where is she? Get this shit off me. Where is she?” I roared as I ripped cords off my body. I’d woken up in the hospital, my brain muddled and struggling to compute the circumstances of my being here. Words like concussion and critical and dead were the only things I heard.

“Calm down, Wild.”

“Fucking where is she?”

“Listen, if you keep this up I’ll have to sedate you.” Nurse Andrews placed a firm grasp on my arm. I’d known her since I was a kid, but her nurturing presence did nothing to calm me now.

“Tell me. Tell me what happened to her.”

“Just let me get this back in and I’ll bring Slade in.” She gestured to the IV I’d ripped out.

“Slade’s here?” I swallowed the lump in my throat. The thought of my best friend here tore at my chest.

“And Ridge,” she murmured. “If you want to see him. He hasn’t left since he got here.” She knew our history, just like everyone else in this town did.

“How long have I been here?”

“You’ve been in and out for two days.” She rubbed my arm after reinserting the IV.

“Christ.” I clenched my hand into a fist. “I don’t remember what happened.”

“I’ll let them tell you.”

I only nodded in response. She finished correcting the damage I’d done before she left and my best friend and brother stepped in.

“Tell me how she is.” My eyes bore into Slade’s and then my brother’s. They glanced at me, pity radiating from their eyes.

“Oh Christ no.” I choked as my chest heaved with terrified pants. She was dead. All I could remember was him. Her. Drowning. “She’s dead.”

“He is.”

“What about Kat? Fucking tell me about Kat.”

“She was critical, but the doctor finally deemed her stable enough this morning to move her out of ICU. She’s going to make it, Lane. He came just in time. Another minute and she . . . she wouldn’t have survived it.” Ridge stepped closer.

I’d hardly registered his words, all that ran through my head was that she was alive. My girl was alive. “I need to see her. Take me to her. I need out of here. I’m fine, just let me out.”

“Lane . . .” my brother stepped up to the bed and placed one hand on my shoulder. “They had to do a rape kit,” he said so softly, I could have imagined it.

“He . . .?” Tears pricked behind my eyelids. I balled my fists and pushed them into my eyes, trying to ease the ache that had settled there. “He raped her?” My chest heaved with painful pants. I gritted my teeth together and thought of the pain she’d endured at his hands.

I wanted to kill him. Wanted him dead. Again. I wanted the pleasure of making him suffer at my hands for what he’d taken from her.

“I don’t think it was the first time.”

I looked up at my brother. His blue eyes, a perfect reflection of my own, bore into me. I blinked and swallowed down the lump in my throat. How could she not have told me? I could have been there for her, held her against me, never let her out of my sight. If I’d only known.

And then the sense of failure seeped into me. I’d always listened to the things she’d told me, but I should have listened to the things she hadn’t said. Her defensive words, unwillingness to talk about her past, even saying she’d had a bad divorce. And the flowers. Fuck, the flowers. I should have never let her push me away after that, never let her push me off.

The one girl that had brought my aching heart back to beating and I had let this happen to her.

“I need to see her,” I whispered as pain seeped through every muscle of my body. “I need to see her.” I growled and grabbed for the IV lodged in my hand.

“Just stay calm, the doctor will be here in a minute now that you’re awake, and then the police chief will want your statement.” Slade wrapped a hand around my wrist to stop me from tearing the lines out of my arm.

“Fuck the statement, I don’t even know what happened. The last I remember is seeing her under the water.”

“You don’t know what happened with her ex?”

“No, I just remember blood, and then nothing.”

Slade and Ridge glanced at each other.

“Kat’s dad killed him.”

“What . . . what the fuck are you talking about?” And then I remembered the shadow that’d come up from behind me.

“When Kat left, her ex tracked down her dad and threatened him. He knew they were after her. He searched for her, everywhere she’d ever been as a kid, places she’d talked about, he even hired a private investigator. He’d finally found her here, but he also discovered you. Their relationship had been hurt for so long, he hadn’t been in her life, he thought if she had you it would be enough. You could protect her like he never could. Then the PI said she’d disappeared. Just gone. Her dad came.”

“Fuck.” I ran my free hand through my hair.

“He saw your tracks to the lighthouse so he followed. He saw you fumbling with the knife, but you had hypothermia, Lane, you were disoriented and dropped the knife and he grabbed it and killed her ex. He pulled her from the water. You’d passed out.”

“Where is he?” My mind struggled to comprehend all the new information.

“He’s given his statement. They’ve asked him not to leave town,” Slade finished.

Just then the doctor entered the small room and shooed my brother and best friend out.

“Glad to have you back, Wild.” I narrowed my eyes at his cheery attitude.

It was Dr. Ballsack, the fucker that had been out on the date with Kat at the restaurant.

Upon arriving at the hospital, they’d discovered that she had two broken ribs and a few more that were bruised, a fractured ankle, and a mild concussion. She’d also been talking to the on-sight counselor every day about the psychological effects of him kidnapping and raping her.

She was in rough shape.

The thought that after all she’d been through, she’d managed to take her ex down; save herself and me . . . I was so fucking proud of my strong girl. She was a fighter; I’d known it from the start. After escaping him, she’d still been worried about me more than herself.

They’d insisted on keeping me for a few days under observation after I’d awoken. I was fine with that. I was fine with anything as long as I was set up in the same room as Kat. The nurses had been huffy on that, but it was the only way in hell I would let them keep me, so they’d relented.