Chapter 14
There was a murmuring in the room that I heard before I actually woke up. In a room now apparently and not on the forest floor as I had last remembered. Whatever I was lying on smelled like old cigarettes and attic. I groan and reach my hand up to touch my throbbing head, only to stop at the wrist. My eyes flew open and saw the problem. My wrists still bound, now newly secured to an old bed that I was laying on. My legs also bound at the ankles; each leg tied to a post. My clothes were missing, leaving me in just my underwear.
I looked around in panic and found my capture pacing the small room we were in on his phone. There wasn't much light except what was coming from the open door of the bathroom, but it looked as it were a hotel room. Although I couldn't think of one hotel in town, which means by some miracle, he has managed to get me out of our small town, probably heading for the city. If he gets me to Seattle I'm lost for good. My heart suddenly ached as I reviewed the events beforehand. Paxton, oh Paxton, if only I wasn't such a coward, then I would have told him I was stupidly in love with him before he died.
I felt fat tears rolling down my cheeks and relished in them. They will fuel me in getting out of here. I will use Paxton's strength to get myself free and I will kill this man.
"You and your cunt sister cost me $50K and my brother's life. Since I now have Ms. Stanley here for my brother's life, I want my money Evan, or you will find yourself being charged with a whole new set of murders!" Jyran's pacing stopped and he was flailing his arms with punctuated points to his conversation. I half closed my eyes, pretending to still be too out of it to be bothered with at all.
"I don't care about her family; it was never about her family." Jyran growled into the phone. "Do you think that I am afraid of those faggot ass Brady bunch mother fuckers'? I am not! They can't be all that smart if they are anything like their sister here!"
Oh, that prickless…
"All I had to do was use a fake southern accent and drop some compliments and she was all over me. Maybe if they cooperate, I will leave her alive with my kid in her to remember me by."
He wasn't wrong about the accent and compliments, which burned me even more. I was stupid to think I could just jump out there into the dating world and reel in Mr. Perfect right off the bat.
But I did, I found Paxton…Stop thinking about Paxton!
I opened my eyes not caring if he saw me awake now and glared at him. I'll show him just how stupid I can be. I groaned again, a little louder now, making Jyran stop and look at me with a nasty grin. "Oh well my little collateral is up now, so you have your choices, make your decision."
He hung up the phone and threw it on the small shoddy table that was in the corner of the room. "Well Princess, welcome back. Don't worry, I didn't do anything while you were out, it wouldn't be nearly as fun."
I kept my voice calm as I look right into his eyes. "You know you're a dead man walking, right?"
Jyran rolls his eyes and crawled over the bed making every cell in my body want to jerk away, but I held my ground glaring at him. "Because of your brother's, yeah so I head. Quite honestly, they don't scare me Princess, so if you got something else up your sleeve." He gave a nasty laugh and wiggled his brows. "Oh right, you don't have any sleeves right this minute, do you? You know what I had up my sleeves? A mole." He grinned and looked very pleased with himself. "That easy woman who is fucking one of your brother's, she gave up anything I wanted about you. So, you see, she has been making all this so very easy for me."
I smiled giving him the same hooded look I give Paxton before we fooled around. "Oh, big boy, you forgot one thing."
Jyran was no longer paying attention and that was good because I had just seen three large figures walk past the hotel window and though the curtains were drawn, the silhouettes looked suspiciously familiar. He bit his lip and glided his body over me, rubbing his already tented jeans against me painfully. "Oh yeah, what's that my little slut?"
I leaned up right when his face got close to mine and I paused inches before our faces touched. "I have brothers, five of them. All of them work construction, so none of them are weak." I smiled watching his eyes. "I have two best friends, one you stuck a knife in today and the other, his name is Jake. He works construction with my brothers." My smile turned into a grin when I saw the hotel door slowly open and could have wept with relief, but I didn't react. I kept my eyes on Jyran's. "Oh, and the last thing you forgot is my daddy. He is the Police chief and," I leaned in to the side of his face touching my lips to his ear. "He is right behind you."
As soon as I finished the last word, daddy pumped his shot gun and touched the barrel end to the back of Jyran's head. "Well, hello their kid."
Jyran, the ever-ready man, spun fast grabbing the shot gun and smacking my dad with it leaving a sick cracking noise in his wake. He put the barrel to my head and looked around the room. All there was, was a small orange glow in a chair across the room in a chair against the wall. There was an ominous cock of a hand gun and I froze.
I was not in a good position for a shootout.
"Hello there Jyran, boy have we heard an awful lot about you." That was Shay, by the sound of the voice and he was casually pointing a gun that glinted in the low light of the room at Jyran who was still holding a shotgun to my head.
"Hey guys, can we not point the guns at the naked woman tied to the bed?" I said in a light voice, flinching when Jyran pressed the barrel harder against my head.
"Shut the fuck up." He hissed. "You gentlemen do know that no matter how many guns you point at me, this is the only gun that matters? If you try anything, I will shoot her, really I plan on doing it anyways and seeing how I won't survive this I might as well take her with me."
"You won't get that far." Shay said calmly, smiling at Jyran as if he just told the funniest joke in the world.
Jyran nodded and sighed. "You're right." Jyran did some sort of fast movement next to me and a shot went off, making my ears ring.
Jyran went face first onto me and must have hit hard because an ache was spreading in my belly where his head was now laying. Well most of his head.
Yuck.
"Oh, fuck guys, seriously?" I whined. I will never be able to wear this underwear set again.
I heard Ash laughing from somewhere outside and Ember whining that he had gotten there too late. Sam was trying to get my dad off the ground and Jeremy…Jeremy had just pulled Jyran off of me and quickly came closer, putting his hands on my face and looking into my eyes. Not letting me look anywhere else. "Just hold still alright? Don't move."
I frowned confused wincing when his weight caused the pain in my belly to sharpen. Shay was in my view now too, hovering over my face. "Jeremy… Shay, just let my hands go and…" I trailed off looking behind them seeing the rest of the boys who were all now crammed into the small room, looking back at me with a look of horror and panic on their faces. I looked back at Jeremy starting to panic too when I saw tears in his eyes. "What's wrong? Jeremy? Shay? Please, what's wrong?"
Jeremy shook his head blinking fast. "You're going to be fine. Just a little cut, but hey, do you remember when you fell out of that tree when you were nine and landed on the metal shed out back? The shard, that went through your thigh?"
I nodded and started to cry; the ache in my belly was burning now and getting worse.
He nodded too trying to keep me focused on him. "It isn't even as bad as that, alright? You're strong; you're going to be fine."
"Jeremy… he killed Paxton." I said randomly and he shook his head smiling some as he carefully freed my hands. As he shifted to work off the buckles, I saw the buck knife that had taken Paxton was now nothing but a handle sticking out of my belly. He sliced me from hips to the bottom of my ribs. It was sickeningly humorous looking. "No, Paxton is at the hospital. The tough bastard followed you guys and then called for an ambulance only after calling us to let us know what happened. He is alive; Parker baby and you have to stay that way too, okay?"
I started to cry hard, now with relief. Paxton was alive! Paxton was alive! I nodded hearing a faint ambulance somewhere in the distance. I guess that was for me. I pulled Jeremy to me kissing his cheek. Then I remembered something important. Jeremy needed to know now. "If I live through this, remind me to kill your girlfriend."
Jeremy rolled his eyes and started to open his mouth but shook my head, which was not a good idea because I was tasting blood in the back of my throat and starting to feel dizzy. "No, I am not just being a bitch. She was a mole; Jyran was getting info on me from her from the beginning."
The dark look that passed across his face shared with the one that Shay held and it made me glad to not be the one in trouble with them for once. "Then remind you I will. Look honey, the police and ambulance are coming, you hear that? You are going to be fine."
One by one, my brother's faces appeared around me, kissing my face and murmuring encouragements and telling me how everything was going to be fine. It was a fucked-up time to realize just how much I had missed them, seeing them every day and taking care of them and cooking for them. I am going to allow them back into my life again. I needed them back into my life again.
The world was quickly starting to go black and I am pretty sure I coughed up blood by the time the EMTs had walked into the room, but none of the boys never left my side. I heard the EMTs snapping at the brothers that only one could go with them because there wasn't enough room. Daddy, wanted to by the sound of it but they said he needed to stay to get his nose checked out by the second ambulance that had showed up.
I was in and out from there, flashes of Jeremy and the EMTs and the ceiling of the ambulance. There was a hard bump that made me groan and I saw florescent lights flying across the ceiling as I got wheeled into the hospital ER. From there things stayed black. I heard people but couldn't force myself to open my eyes or do anything else for that matter.
I was not sure how long has passed. I felt nothing, heard nothing other than distant whispers that I couldn't understand. I couldn't get my eyes to open for more than a blurry second and then I was thrown into darkness again.
It was this way for a long time and then, one blessed time in trying to open my eyes, they stayed open. I couldn't focus on anything and my vision was only fuzzy shapes moving around, but they were open none the less.
"Parker?" I wanted to answer but it felt as if I swallowed a pound of sand while I was out of it. I nodded blinking until I could get my eyes to focus enough to see the person talking to me. It was Ash, holding my hand while he spoke. "Okay, don't try to talk just hand signals, okay?" I nodded again, although I was unsure if I could even accomplish that.
"Do you know how long it's been?" he asked, watching my face. I shook my head slowly. "It's been four days."
I frowned thinking hard. My memory was blurring into the dreamy fuzzy state I was in and now I was unsure of what was real or not. Ash nodded, assuming I was frowning at the length of time that had passed. "You got an awesome new scar though."
I started to sit up and look but Ember was suddenly at my side, lightly keeping me back on the bed. "It's probably better you don't try and move right now. They have you on some pretty strong stuff, little sister and as tough as you might think you are, you haven't eaten in four days so if you sit up now, you will throw up."
Guh, throwing up did not sound like something I wanted to do at the moment, so I listened to the twins tell me everything that had happened while I was out of it.
Jyran, obviously, he was dead now, but with Evan's, Amy's and Paxton's statement, the FBI and the state police have cleared out Evan's record completely and issued an official apology to him. The boys and Evan bonded and it seems as though I have now gained yet another brother. Sigh.
Paxton had gone through several surgeries to repair the damage that Jyran had done when he stabbed him, but he was awake and well and pissing everyone off with wanting to get news of me.
One by one the brothers took turns coming to the side of my bed, but with every new brother the more energy I was trying to use and soon, I am sure it was rudely in the middle of someone talking, I fell sleep. I fought it at first, a little scared that I would be sucked back into the half sleep half-awake state I was in before, but it was blissful unconsciousness and I didn't wake again until the next day when I felt someone playing with my nails.
I slowly peek an eye open and see Paxton, sitting in a wheel chair with my hand in his and him looking hard at my nails, cleaning them with the plastic tooth pick that comes with the food they give here.
"They are going to move me in here with you today." Paxton said randomly, I watched his face without comment before I realized, he was talking to me, but didn't know I was awake yet. "You still have a long way to go, I am told, but they haven't changed your dressing while I was here yet. I think they think it might send me over the edge."
He sighed, now picking up a nail clipper and gently started clipping my nails. I almost smiled. "They might be right; if Jyran wasn't dead already I would have done it. They told me you were fine, they got to you in time and then…" Paxton stopped for a second and took a few deep breaths before continuing on. "Then you went and got yourself stabbed."
Paxton paused again and I closed my eyes lightly, just listening to him breathe. "I can't take care of you if you are constantly running head long into trouble the second your given the opportunity." I felt his face on the back of my hand and I did actually smile now, although there wasn't any reaction from Paxton so I assumed he didn't see me yet. "I am going to marry you properly when this is all over. I already asked your dad. He said no, but I don't plan on listening to him."
"I wouldn't think you would." I said quietly, opening my eyes again. Paxton's eyes snapped to mine and his hands started to shake. "Parker?"