Chapter 74

My world got lost in a sudden high-pitched buzz as those words rang through my head. I was hardly aware of him tugging me along by my bound arms, catching me as I stumbled across nothing.

Did he just say…was that basically the job description of a pimp?

My skin prickled with the biggest goosebumps of my life.

“You…” I stared at him. “Were you…just going to make me another one of your whores?”

He shoved a ball of fabric into my mouth even as he opened his own to answer.

When a great crash of shattering glass came from behind.

I looked back. We were on our way to the front door. But I only had a second before Joshua was once more dragging me along, this time literally dragging as there was no way I could keep up with his pace.

I choked on the gag as my fumbling feet caught around a corner and twisted painfully.

Joshua kicked open the front door. It crashed, shattering, till only the ornate iron frame remained. Glass sprinkled across the carefully salted walkway to a waiting car.

The cold only had a chance to nip my bare, aching toes with a crack split the air.

Joshua staggered. Caught himself on a knee. Dropped me to the side to fall on a mix of salt, glass, and snow.

Another ear-splitting CRACK, and he was down completely, face first on the sidewalk, the back of his pale blue letterman jacket donning a new rose of red that spread between his shoulder blades.

Wrists bound behind me, I could only stare into Joshua’s face which faced mine as his wide, surprised eyes shivered, grew still, then darkened as the pupils relaxed into a dark pool.

For a moment that lasted long after it ended, all I saw were those unblinking blue eyes staring back at me.

Then they slipped away as a frantic man smelling of home and storms and the desert right after rain grabbed me and lifted me from the mess. The touch of his fingers set of stinging in my arms where the glass had cut me.

“Alaina? Alaina, say something, Alaina?”

And then those blue eyes were replaced with black, a warm black, curtained by messy black bangs that always happened during a stressful day, despite Reuben’s care in making sure his hair was neatly combed before heading off to work. He was still dressed in his black overcoat and shoes, buttons done up to the throat, but his face had never been so pale.

In the distance, I picked up the sound of sirens.

“Reuben?” I croaked.

“That’s right. I’m here now I’m so sorry, I—”

I dug my face into his chest and let out a high wail.

All the pain that had been held off by adrenaline came rushing in then. Cuts on the arm I’d fallen on, a twisted ankle, banged toes, aching skin wherever the cold touched.

And above it all, a gut-bending pain between my legs and the bottom of my abdomen, like a period cramp on steroids.

He shushed and murmured, “I’m here, I’m here,” as he gathered me into his arms, and my wails turned to whimpers of pain. It wasn’t until he’d gotten me back into the house and to the nearest bathroom, most likely in plans to get me into a warm shower and check out my cuts, that Reuben realized his arm which had been beneath my thighs was completely soaked through.

“Oh…” he said.

Oh indeed.

By the time the police came, my contractions had already galloped up to three minutes apart, and I had to bite a towel to keep myself from screaming—that is, when I could scream. More often than not, the contractions would steal my breath from me and lock all my muscles down until it was done.

The police desperately tried to get the details as to why there were, not one, but several dead bodies and a pair of pistols on his front porch, but Reuben had turned draconic. Anything of the awkward, cute, down-to-earth man vanished, and the black monster he always threatened with his cold business demeanor came forward. He was all barking threats and commands as he loaded me into a tub full of hot water in an attempt to ease the contractions, all while he swore and demanded to know where the ambulance was. It had been called with the police, hadn’t it?

At a particularly bad contraction on my part where I managed to see stars and let out a guttural shriek, he turned on the only cop left behind.

“Make yourself useful NOW or you’ll join the rest of the bodies!”

The cop squawked and scuttled off, only to return, helplessly, with an aging female cop who looked utterly fed up and ready for retirement.

“Mr. Czarn, there’s been a wreck, and the ambulance is held up.”

“WHAT?!”

“That’s what happens when it snows. Ice on the road. That business.”

Another contraction came, and I couldn’t help but choke as I clung to the faucet till my fingers had gone white.

I was scared. I knew it hurt, but this—and no ambulance. I was scared. I was so scared.

“Then call a helicopter!” he yelled.

“And have it land where? And with her contractions so close together, taking her out into the cold right now would be dangerous.”

The cop who had brought this straight-faced, dead-eyed woman had already fled, leaving his much more delicate-looking companion to the terror of a still coated Mr. Czarn with his hair sticking straight up from how much he’d pulled on it, and perhaps a bit from blood.

For a moment, Reuben just stared at her, his expression going dreadfully lost.

Then another sob forced its way up my throat and the faucet in my grip creaked, turning his attention back to me.

“What do I do?” He sounded so weak that for a moment, I thought someone else entirely had replaced him.

“For one, sanitize yourself. There’s damn blood on your coat. I can tell. Carl! Stop being a pussy and come collect some evidence!”

Reuben protested that this wasn’t a time for evidence but reluctantly left only to be back mere moments later dressed in clean pants, clean t-shirt, and red-skinned from having scrubbed himself madly from head to foot.