Page 34 of Rescued Dreams (Last Chance Fire and Rescue #8)

THIRTY-THREE

A melia caught a glimpse of headlights on the front window. The temperature in the house had descended far enough that she couldn’t stop shivering.

Cherry said, “He’s back.”

Amelia shifted in the cage and tried to look, but twenty feet away from the window, there wasn’t much to see. “He’s back.”

Maybe they both needed to state the obvious, grasping for the truth.

Not reality so much. Just a clear handle on what was happening.

He’d been gone a while, maybe an hour—possibly two.

Long enough that they might be outside of town.

And the PD jurisdiction. They could be in an area overseen by state police.

Cherry started to cry quietly.

Amelia was going to face him with her chin high, or she wouldn’t be facing him at all.

She was so different from the broken, scared woman who had left Benson and come back to Last Chance County with nothing.

That woman hadn’t seen the signs until it was too late.

She’d wrapped her self-esteem and her confidence up in Nicholas and allowed him to dictate everything.

When she’d begun to object to his treatment of her, things had deteriorated. He’d become even more controlling and, as she’d later realized, started drugging her coffee.

She wanted coffee.

Okay, so she wanted to get out of here first. Then she was going to have a cup of coffee, finally. She refused to live in fear anymore.

He entered the room, pushing two teenage girls in front of him. The girls were wide-eyed with cloth around their mouths and their wrists secured in front of them. That man wasn’t anyone she had ever loved.

“What did you do?” Amelia screamed the question at him, clutching the bars of the cage.

That’s who the cages were for.

She scanned them for injuries.

Maddie screamed behind the cloth, her cheeks flaring. Desperate for Amelia to help her. Tears rolled down Ella’s face.

“Let them go!” Amelia would break this cage apart and throttle him. “They have nothing to do with this.”

Nicholas didn’t look anything like the man she’d fallen for. He hadn’t been the same when she’d left Benson years ago, and now seemed more like a stranger. Had he suffered some kind of breakdown?

He jabbed something into Ella’s back, and the girl arched. She screamed behind the cloth, and Amelia saw he had a sort of cattle-prod-looking thing in one hand.

“Don’t hurt them! They haven’t done anything to you!” She rattled the cage.

He shoved them without pressing the button, and they stumbled forward. He swiped out with his boot and kicked her cage, laughing. “All part of the plan, sweetheart.”

That word. He’d used that word when he’d needed to justify getting angry or pushing her around. Tearing her down. Sweetheart.

“I’m not your sweetheart. And those girls are innocent. Let them go, they have nothing to do with you.” Anger burned in her stomach like a fire blazing. “Don’t?—”

“Get in.” He shoved them toward two of the cages.

The girls whimpered, finally complying with his instructions.

“Nicholas. Let them go.” She stared at him, fully focused on her mission to get him to let the twins go. If she looked at them, she would shatter. “You’re only here for me. Why are you involving all of them? Just take me. I’ll go with you. I’ll do whatever you want. Nicholas, please.”

He looked at her, that cattle prod in his hand. “You know I like it when you say please .”

She gritted her teeth. “Let them go, please.”

Two long strides brought him over to her.

“Nich—”

He stuck the cattle prod into her cage and jammed it into her side. Every muscle in Amelia’s body clenched at the same time, her nerve endings suddenly white-hot.

She fell against the side of the cage and slumped into a heap, curled up.

He walked some more. She could only stare at the far wall and listen to him stop. He clinked a lock. “Get out.”

The twins gasped. One whispered, “She’s pregnant.”

Cherry walked in front of Amelia, shoved along by Nicholas. If he used that cattle prod on a pregnant woman…

Amelia gasped. A tear rolled from the corner of her eye onto the mat beneath her.

“No one leaves.” Nicholas shoved the door closed, and the slam echoed through the room.

“Amelia.”

She tried to move.

“Amelia.”

“She isn’t dead, is she?”

She needed all her strength to get her arm out from under her, push herself up, and lean back against the side of the cage, facing the twins.

Relief washed over Maddie’s face, the cloth gag now around her neck. “Are you okay?”

Amelia shook her head.

“He killed Olivia.” Maddie gasped. “He hit her so hard there was blood all over her face. He put her in his trunk.”

Ella said, “He’s going to kill us, isn’t he?”

Amelia took a breath. “I’m not going to let that happen.”

She tried to sound certain when she was anything but. Who knew what Nicholas was doing to Cherry outside of the room? And Olivia? Was the officer really out in the trunk of his car, nothing but a cold body with no life in her?

Amelia inhaled a shuddering breath.

“Ridge will find us.” Maddie sat against the back of her cage, hands on her lap—still tied at the wrist. Ella was biting the ropes, trying to work herself free. Maddie said, “He’ll be here.”

A gunshot echoed through the house.

Maddie flinched.

Ella looked up from her ropes.

“Cherry.” Amelia winced. She needed to keep her feelings—and her fear—in check, even while she cried. He’d murdered a pregnant woman?

Nicholas came into the room, a gun in his hand down by his side. He had something in the other hand and took it to the window. He stuck the thing on the bottom of the window frame. Whatever it was looked like what Elam had used on the windows at the bank to keep the police from coming through them.

As she watched, he drew out what looked like a marker and wrote vibration sensor on the window. Backward, so she couldn’t read it. Like a mirror image—or something that could be read from outside. He bent and flipped a switch on the little thing.

He did the same with a couple of other windows in the room.

“Nicholas.”

He didn’t look at her.

“Nicholas, tell me you didn’t kill a pregnant woman.” She gasped. “Tell me you didn’t do that, and I’ll help you. We can leave here and run, and you can do whatever you want to me. None of them are involved.”

She didn’t know how to convince him.

God, help me. Please.

She needed a way to get through to him, but he was heading for the door again. He was going to leave, and she would lose her shot at convincing him to do the right thing for once in his miserable life.

“I love you!” She screamed the words as loud as she could. He wouldn’t be convinced. She didn’t even say it like she believed it.

He turned at the door. “You always were a liar.”

“Don’t leave me here. Take me with you.”

His eyes flickered, as if he was actually contemplating listening to her.

He felt more than heard movement behind him, and someone slammed into his back. Nicholas stumbled forward, falling onto his knees.

Olivia wrapped her arms around his shoulders, her legs around his waist, and her teeth flashed. Gritted as she struggled with him. Blood had dried down her face from a knot on her forehead, and she had the glassy eyes of someone with a concussion.

Nicholas toppled farther, and the gun skittered across the floor.

He roared, grabbed her arm, and twisted around, rotating Olivia’s arm the wrong way. Her knees buckled and she screamed. Bone snapped.

The twins screamed.

Nicholas dragged Olivia across the floor by her broken arm and kicked her into the cage. He padlocked her in.

Then he came to Amelia.

She backed up, huddled as small as she could.

“I suppose reinforcements will be here soon enough.” He glanced around. “I’ll have to speed this up.”

He dragged more of those window things from his pocket and placed them on the locks for each cage—except hers. Nicholas retrieved his gun and unlocked the padlock securing her.

He backed up. “Get out.”

“Did you kill Cherry?”

“She whined too much. It was annoying.”

Amelia’s whole body shuddered. He’d killed a mother and her baby.

“Get out!”

She scrambled forward. “Don’t hurt them.”

He dragged her off the floor. “Walk.” Pressed the gun to her side. “When your boyfriend gets here, everything needs to be ready.”

He thought Ridge was coming.

How would he know that? And how would Ridge know where to find them? “Don’t hurt him!”

Nicholas laughed. “He’s going to suffer most of all. He’ll have to live knowing he’s responsible for the deaths of you and his sisters. Sweet victory.”

He wanted to hurt Ridge.

But he was going to kill Amelia—and all the rest of them.

“You’re sick.”

He dragged her to the hall and through the open front door, kicking it shut. “Open that bag.” The duffel beside the door bulged with another of those devices, like the one Elam had used on the door.

“What is it?”

“Motion-activated detonation.”

“You were going to kill my brother.”

“That idiot deserves to die,” Nicholas said. “He only cares about money.” He told her what to do with the device, and she complied with shaky hands. “I get my sweet revenge, no one is left alive to come after me, and I get all the money.”

Amelia turned to him. “That won’t work.”

“Of course it will. I’ve thought of everything.” He smiled and his eyes gleamed. “This plan will work.”

Before she could say anything, he dragged her down the hall, through this maze of a house. The twins were in danger, locked in booby-trapped cages. Olivia, the same, and she needed medical attention.

She swiped at her cheeks. “What happened to you? You were a firefighter. You protected people. How could you do this?”

“I’m not a firefighter anymore. Thanks to you, I’m nothing.” He wrapped an arm around her, securing her to his side with a grip more powerful than anything she’d ever felt.

She struggled against him but couldn’t get out of his grasp.

“I lost my job. My friends. My house. All of it, all because you say too much and people think too much who have no business questioning me .” He slapped his gun hand on his chest. “It’ll take that money of yours to set me up. Get me to Bolivia so I can start over.”

“You don’t have to do this.”

Nicholas dragged her into a small room with a folding table set up and one plastic chair, the only furniture she’d seen so far. “I want to see the look on your boyfriend’s face when he sees it’s all gone. He’ll know how it feels. What loving you does to a man, leaving him with nothing.”

He shoved her at the table. “Sign that paper.” Nicholas backed up, holding the gun on her. “Sign it, Amelia Hilden .” He chuckled. “Think I would’ve liked your daddy. Sounds like he might’ve been my kind of guy.”

She stared at the paper. A transfer of funds, everything filled out but the signature box.

“Tick tock, sweetheart. Everything needs to be in place when your boyfriend gets here.”

Amelia lifted the pen and turned to him. “If I sign the money over to you, why don’t you just leave? You’ll have what you?—”

He fired a shot. It went wide over her shoulder.

Amelia flinched, curling her shoulders in.

“Sign it!”