Jayden’s gun lay on the floor where he’d dropped it. At least ten feet away. Chances of him getting there before Kyle shot one of the women, or him and then the women, were pretty slim.
He had to get Kyle to come closer to him. To create a chance to grab the younger man, to take his gun.
Suzie had turned on the television and was standing next to Kyle. He’d wrapped his free arm around her neck, holding her close to him.
“Let’s just go, Kyle,” she said softly, looking up at him. “Just me and you. We can go out the back door and get away from here. Go where nobody will ever bother us again.”
Kyle glanced at her for a second, almost as though he was considering the option.
“You’re the kid from the neighborhood,” Emma said from beside him. “Isn’t he, Suzie?” she asked.
Jayden had figured as much, as well. Was more focusing on being poised to cover her body with his if he saw any hint of movement in that trigger finger. Something told him the guy wasn’t going to kill Suzie. He loved her.
And he was emotionally unstable, too. The odd way Suzie was holding her arm, had propped it on her wrist when she’d had to use her good hand to hold the TV remote, was evidence of the young man’s propensity for violence.
Suzie didn’t say a word.
“What’s she talking about?” Kyle pulled his arm tight around Suzie’s neck. “You got someone else now, too?”
“You know I don’t, Kyle,” Suzie said, staring up at him. Jayden wasn’t a great expert on relationships but it looked to him like the woman really loved the guy.
“Then who’s this neighborhood kid?”
He was looking at Jayden when he asked the question, but the way he pulled against Suzie again made it clear who he was talking to.
“You,” she said. “I told them I met you in our old neighborhood. They don’t know...”
Know what?
Emma’s leg pressed against Jayden’s. Maybe she knew. Maybe she was just scared. He had to get her out of there. To make certain that she had a chance to have her baby.
She’d lost one already. She wasn’t going to lose a chance to have another...
“What don’t we know?” Jayden asked quietly. There was no point in threatening Kyle. Their best hope was to get him to relax enough that he’d come closer. If nothing else, they had to do all they could to diffuse his panic as much as possible. He was like a bomb; any little change could set him off.
“You really don’t know?” He was looking at Emma, a sneer on his face. Like he had one over on her.
“I didn’t tell anyone, Kyle,” Suzie said. “Not then, and not now. I told you so. I told you I’d protect you and I always have...”
He looked at Suzie then, as though what she’d said really mattered to him, and Jayden leaped. He didn’t think. Didn’t plan. Just leaped off the couch and toward that gun, knowing that he’d either get to it in time, or feel its spray mutilate his insides.
Either way, he was giving Emma and Suzie a chance to run.
Emma heard the shot ring out before she realized what Jayden was doing. He moved. Blood spattered. Horror filled every sinew of her body.
And she saw Kyle drop to the floor with Jayden going down on top of him.
“Kyle!” Suzie screamed, blood on her clothes, her chin.
Emma rushed toward the bodies as Suzie dropped to her knees beside them. It took Emma a second to realize that Kyle was free of Jayden. That Jayden was kneeling over the fallen young man, his fingers at Kyle’s throat. And that officers were piling in through the front door like someone was throwing a surprise party.
Her gaze landed on the floor where Jayden’s knee rested beside Kyle’s hand. His gun was still tangled up in his fingers, and it took her a second to realize that it had fallen to the floor, too. Kyle still had his gun?
Nothing made sense for a second.
Jayden was alive. Moving. And reaching for her. He slid his hands around her waist and they stood up together. “You okay?” Jayden asked, his voice strong. Sure.
She didn’t know what she was. Before she could find words, Chantel was there, standing beside the two of them, while a female officer led a hysterical Suzie outside and officers surrounded the body on the floor.
“You two okay?”
Not trusting her voice, Emma nodded. Jayden was fine. Alive. Standing next to her. His shoulder, clear down to his wrist, touching hers.
“I’m fine,” Jayden said aloud.
“I thought you’d been shot!” The words sounded strangled as Emma finally got them out. She needed a small dark place to go hide so she could curl up in a ball and cry.
“For a second there, I thought so, too.” Jayden sounded relieved, but dead serious. “What...how did you...?”
“We were outside,” Chantel said. “When we got here, saw him with Suzie in a neck hold and you two at gunpoint, we surrounded the place, and everyone had orders, if anyone saw a shot, he or she was to take it. Period. When he dropped his guard to look at Suzie...” She shrugged. “I can tell you I about swallowed my heart when I saw Jayden jump on the chance, too...”
He’d just jumped right up there, willing to get himself killed...not knowing the police were outside...
Like he didn’t value his life enough to...
“If they hadn’t been outside, you might have been killed.” Emma got those words out loud and clear.
“But you and Suzie would have had a chance to run for help.”
Chantel nodded. “You deserve a medal for that one, Powell,” she said.
A medal, hell. What he’d earned was Emma’s fury.
Emma was clearly pissed. Anger was a common response to extreme fear. That was what Jayden told himself as they walked outside to give their statements.
“How did you guys get here so fast?” Emma asked, walking more with Chantel than with him as they exited the house.
“Fate,” the blond detective said, leading them to an unmarked car with doors opened. “Or people doing their jobs and it all coming together at exactly the right time,” she added, looking back at the house. “One of the neighbors you saw today, you told him Suzie had been hurt again...”
“Camden Harris. I was impressing upon him that it was urgent he tell me anything he knew that could help us or he could possibly find himself an accomplice to charges he didn’t want to face. He didn’t budge.” Jayden was at Emma’s side again. Where he planned to stay. For a while at least. Until he could convince himself that she was really safe. Alive and safe.
“Not with you, but you got to him. That call I got when I was on the phone with you...it was him. Camden Harris.” They’d reached the unmarked car. Emma sat sideways on the back seat, her feet on the ground. Jayden stood beside her, his leg touching hers, while Chantel shielded them from a news car that had pulled up. “He said you gave him my number and that he had information. Turns out he knew a lot more than he was saying. He’d kept quiet because he didn’t want to jeopardize his marriage...”
“His marriage?” Emma asked, standing again.
“He’d seen Suzie with bruises in the past,” Chantel said, nodding. “He called out to her once, asked her if she was okay. He knew Bill, liked him. She told him he wasn’t hurting her and he believed her. Or tried to. Sometimes people let themselves be convinced. He knew Bill had a tendency to be overprotective, that he was jealous of anyone looking at his wife. Bill had even asked him a time or two if he’d ever seen anyone over at his house. Asked him to keep an eye on the place. But at the same time, Bill was a decent guy. Fair businessman. Gave jobs to guys down on their luck. Helped out in the neighborhood anytime there was a problem. Fast-forward to a week when Camden’s wife was out of town and Suzie and Bill had another fight. He went over after Bill took off and one thing led to another...”
“Harris was the one she slept with?” Jayden asked. Bill had had legitimate reason for his jealousy. He’d said more than once that a man knows these things. Jayden had just put it down to the man’s insanity where his wife was concerned. Nothing would excuse the hell Bill put Susie through, however.
“It only happened that once,” Chantel said. “But that’s why the neighbor never said anything to anyone about what happened later. He truly loves his wife and he was afraid if he ever said anything, the fact that he slept with Suzie might come out. While he was over there that night, she got a phone call. It was Kyle. Bill’s son.”
“What!” Emma screeched while Jayden’s jaw dropped.
“His son?”
“Illegitimate,” Chantel confirmed, “but yes. He’d lost his mother. His stepfather didn’t want him around, and he’d come to Bill for help. But Bill didn’t want a teenage boy around his twenty-four-year-old wife and told him he couldn’t stay. So Suzie helped him behind Bill’s back. After Bill was sent to prison, she let Kyle move in with her and eventually they became a couple.”
Jayden felt like he was on some other planet. “There’s nothing in Bill’s records about having a son.”
“He didn’t believe an ex-girlfriend when she told him she was pregnant and the baby was his. She moved on, married, and raised the boy with her new husband. He just found out Bill was his father when his mother died.”
Damn. Jayden was guessing Bill still didn’t consider the boy his own, which was why he hadn’t told Jayden about him.
But...
“So did Camden Harris confirm that Bill was hitting Suzie four years ago? Or not? He’d let a guy go on beating up his wife just so that he didn’t have to tell his own wife he’d screwed around on her?”
“Suzie never admitted it to him. He figured, without her testimony, there was no way he could prove it...”
“Detective?” The female officer who’d led Suzie out walked up.
“Yes?” Chantel faced her.
“I just thought you’d want to know.” The uniformed woman included Jayden and Emma in her look. “She gave us a full confession...said she’d testify to all of it. She’s got proof that Bill hit her and killed their baby. Kyle was at their house at the time. He got roughed up pretty bad, too, trying to help her. But he got video on his cell phone of at least part of it...”
That, if Suzie had shared with them, would have been what Emma had needed to win her conviction. But then Suzie would have exposed Kyle...
“She was already half in love with the kid, though she wasn’t acting on it,” the officer said. “Bill guessed that she had feelings for Kyle, but other than that one time with Harris, she wasn’t unfaithful to her husband. She and Kyle didn’t start anything until after she divorced Bill and Kyle had turned nineteen.”
Jayden had heard enough. He’d been had. Emma had been right. He’d refused to turn his back on Bill, had insisted on being there for the guy...because he hadn’t been there for Emory?
Or just because the older man had been that good at seeming sincere? He’d really believed Bill had changed. That the man had been honoring his second chance.
Not sure to do with that, Jayden had never felt more lost. Emma could have died because he’d been wrong...“And when Bill got out from prison, and found out they were still together, he started in again,” Emma said. The conclusion was obvious.
“No.” Chantel’s words yanked Jayden’s steely gaze straight to her. He couldn’t look away. “Bill left them alone. Except that he started sending Suzie cash every week. Turns out the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, even though they hardly knew each other. She didn’t tell Kyle about the money. Said she knew he wouldn’t want them to have it, but they needed it so badly. Of course, he found out and couldn’t stand that Suzie was taking money from his father, her ex-husband, and he got it in his head that she still loved Bill. He was as jealous of his dad as his dad was of him. The night he found out about the money was the first time he hit her.”
Wait. “So Bill hasn’t been near Suzie since he got out?”
“She says she hasn’t seen him since he went to prison.”
He’d been right about Bill.
Dear God, he’d been right. Weak with relief, and sad, too, Jayden stood there, allowing himself to give himself a little credit.
“But the lipstick...?” Emma said, frowning.
“Bill admitted that he left that threat on your back door,” Chantel said as a flash from a news crew’s camera went off, not far from them.
Jayden stepped closer to Emma, keeping her out of sight, as officers moved in the yard, and police cars, many with their lights still flashing, continued to block the road.
“When Jayden started questioning him,” Chantel continued, “he thought you were gunning for him. After I got off the phone with the neighbor, I went in and told him what I knew. He let me know that he was protected by double jeopardy for whatever happened four years ago, at which time I told him that if we tied him to the current crimes, and we could, you could use the past to make his sentence more severe. I wasn’t sure you could—” she looked at Emma “—but at that point I didn’t care a whole lot about telling him the truth. That’s when he told me that all he’d done was write that note on your back door. He didn’t know Suzie was being beat up again. He was really shook up when he heard that.”
Because he’d really changed? Because the second chance mattered? Or because he thought he was the only one allowed to punish his woman? The whole thing left Jayden feeling like he needed to puke.
“So the truck running me off the road...?”
“That was Kyle.” The female officer—Jayden couldn’t make out her name badge—spoke up. “He’d gotten home before Suzie on Monday night and was threatening to beat some sense into her if she didn’t tell him where she’d been. She told him that she’d talked to you—” the officer nodded at Emma “—about Bill, thinking that that would appease him, but he knew how you’d gone after his dad and was certain that you were now gunning for him...”
“So...wait a minute,” Emma said. “None of this explains how you all came to be outside when—”
“Bill swore to us that he hadn’t seen his ex-wife since he got out and said that if anyone was hurting Suzie, it was Kyle. Said the kid had a vile temper. I’m guessing he inherited his father’s temper,” Chantel told them, “and depending on how much he witnessed between Suzie and Bill, or how much Suzie told him, he learned it at the hands of his father. He wasn’t violent with her until Bill was released and Kyle found out about the money. Bill is the one who told us Kyle and Suzie lived together. We knew the two of you were heading over to tell Suzie that Bill was locked up. I tried to call to warn you. When you didn’t pick up, I brought a backup team just to be safe. When we first arrived, Kyle had the three of you on the couch. Protocol said we had to call in a hostage team to try to talk him down, but before the team got here, he had Suzie by the neck. I made the call to shoot at first opportunity...”
Emma shook her head. Frowning.
“But the baseball caps...”
“Suzie works at a printing shop,” Chantel said. “They do promotional items for businesses.”
“Like hats,” Emma said.
Chantel nodded. “She’d given Bill one of the hats. Said he looked sexy in it. I can only assume she thought his son looked sexy in one, too.”
“They both loved her,” Emma said right about the time Jayden was ready to lose his lunch. “And sadly, she probably loved them, too.”
“I think you’re right about that,” the female officer said. And then, looking at Chantel, she said, “They’ve read her her rights, and have her in the back of the car. You want us to book her?”
Chantel looked at Emma, who shook her head. “She had a one-night affair with a neighbor. There’s no crime in that...” Emma was saying.
“She withheld evidence...talking to you as she did Monday night. Not telling you the truth about Kyle...” Chantel interrupted.
Chantel seemed to think that her words might change Emma’s mind, but Jayden knew better. No one was perfect. But Suzie was the victim here.
It wasn’t pretty. In fact, the whole thing was damned ugly.
But Emma was going to try to give her a second chance at life.