Chapter Thirty-One

Brielle

I do not realize I have spoken aloud until Tony is leaning over me, then dragging me to my feet.

“How about we go set that fancy alarm of yours, Becka,” he growls, his face inches from mine, and I shudder at the sound of my old name passing his lips. “Wouldn’t want anyone else to crash our party before it even gets started.”

He marches me, staggering, to the front door and stations me in front of the panel.

“Set it,” he demands.

My brain is swirling with whatever Rita drugged us with, and as I giggle uncontrollably Tony shakes then slaps me.

The memory of Pete familiarizing me with the setup surges to the forefront of my mind as I stretch my hand toward the keypad.

Remember, Brielle, this system has a panic feature. If you enter your code in backwards, the alarm will set – but it will also send a silent notification to us and the police. Okay?

Backwards, I echo in my fuzzy brain as I try like hell to remember my code. One oh two two….

My fingers fumble as I press two, two, zero, then one, then the pound sign. Immediately the alarm begins to chirp, and Tony smirks at me.

“Good,” he leers as he drags me back toward the living room. “Now for the fun stuff.”

“What’s the matter?” Rita asks me with a strange smile on her face. “Can’t hold your booze anymore?”

“Huh?”

“Or should I say it like this, so that it sounds more familiar…”

She clears her throat, pauses, then conjures up a dead-on imitation of the mysterious Midwestern caller who harassed me.

“What…. how…”

“You never bothered to get to know me, Brielle. I was just a servant to you,” she snarls, her voice dripping with disdain. “Or what about this version…”

She clears her throat again, and the next time she speaks she sounds exactly like a middle-aged English man, followed by a raspy New York accent that is spot on.

“I can sound like anyone. I’m very gifted at it, actually, and it pays way better than schlepping for some snotty has-been who didn’t know a good man when she had him.”

I am dumbfounded.

“Him? You talking about Tony? Do you even know what he did to me?”

“I know enough to know you framed him for something he didn’t do,” she sneers, “because he told me all about it when we first met four months ago. Ain’t that right, baby?”

I shake my head in disbelief, fighting to stay awake long enough to try to turn her into the ally that I thought she was.

“Tony is the guy you’ve been dating? Man, does he have you snowed. What did he promise you to get you to sell me out?”

“It’s all about the ring, girlfriend,” she says snidely, lifting her left hand and waving my old engagement ring, a huge princess-cut diamond, in my face. “And money. Lots and lots of money.”

“Enough of this,” Tony rasps, cutting Rita’s confession short, then pins me against him and licks up the side of my neck as a fuming Rita glares at us. “How about I go introduce myself real good to your hot little friend over there? Or should I start with you?”

“Don’t hurt Mari,” I slur, my chin drooping. “Do what you want to me but leave her alone.”

“That ain’t the way this works, Becka, and you know it,” he intones, grinding against me. “I call the shots here.”

Allen

I take a break from catching up on my emails and head down the hall for another cup of coffee.

Eight-twenty, I note. I’ll stay just a little longer, then call it a night.

I have just poured a fresh cup when I hear feet pounding down the hall and someone shouting my name.

“Allen!”

I stick my head out into the hallway.

“What?”

Sam stops short and whirls around to look at me.

“We gotta roll, boss. The panic code was entered at Brielle’s place about forty seconds ago.”

My coffee mug hits the floor and shatters.

We sprint out to the truck, and I peel out of the parking space and haul ass down the road, barking instructions that Sam passes along to the team on the walkie-talkies.

“Get Detective Tucker on the line,” I tell him, then turn my focus completely toward making a usually ten-minute drive happen in less than half that time.

Hang in there, baby, I’m coming.

Brielle

Tony starts to manhandle me, sticking his tongue down my throat and groping my chest, when a horrible ominous thunk accompanied by glass breaking distracts him. He throws me to the ground and strides across the room to grab Rita by her hair.

“What did you do?” he demands.

“I heard what you just said,” she fires back through clenched teeth. “And I am not just gonna stand by and watch you screw Mari or Brielle or anybody else, Tony. You’re my man.”

I can see Mari still slumped on the couch, and I stealthily crawl on all fours away from a yelling Tony and Rita, each movement heavy and hard, like my limbs weigh a thousand pounds apiece.

I reach Mari’s side and only vaguely realize that I am kneeling in a pile of shattered glass. When I touch her hair, my hand comes away bloody, and in some deep recess of my brain it registers with me that Rita struck Mari over the head with the wine bottle in a fit of jealousy.

“Mari,” I whisper, and clumsily pat her cheeks. “Mari, wake up.”

Behind me I hear their argument crescendo into a frightened scream that cuts off abruptly, and I turn enough to see Rita clutching at her abdomen, her hands cupped tightly around the hilt of the knife that Tony just stabbed her with.

“The jealousy shit is getting old, babe. I think it’s time we break up,” he sneers, and laughs as he watches her stumble backward, then fall to the floor.

Gun in my purse, I finally remember through the drug-induced haze, and it gives me hope. At the end of the couch!

I begin to crawl again, hoping to God that Tony is still focused on Rita, and the bile rises in my throat when I realize that instead, he is closing in on a defenseless Mari with a predator’s gleam.

“Unconscious works for me,” he says, and the rage that builds in me helps me to stand.

I roar and stagger toward him, intent on defending the best friend I have ever had. But my equilibrium is still off, and Tony easily catches the right arm I try to punch him with and wrenches it behind my back. I scream as I feel and hear something ripping apart in my shoulder.

“Miss me that much, huh? Wait your turn,” he growls. “Believe me, I’ll be with you very soon. And then I will kill you both. But not before I make you watch me break in this hot little piece over here.”

He releases my now dislocated arm and shoves me away, and I cry out as I land squarely on my injured right shoulder. The pain clears away the pharmaceutical fog and with an excruciating clarity I see it – my handbag with the gun in it, only about twelve inches away. I drag myself over, grab the gun, and release the safety, grateful that Allen insisted I keep a round chambered and ready to go.

Tony has just ripped open Mari’s shirt when I get to my knees and shout, “Hey, asshole.”

He turns and looks at me, amused.

“Whatever. You’re not smart enough or brave enough to use that, Becka,” he says in dismissal, then starts to turn back toward Mari.

I know what I have to do, and I call out to him again as I sight in left-handed.

When he sighs, stands upright, and turns to face me a second time, I open fire, just as Allen taught me, and I keep shooting until the clip is empty.

Tony staggers back, eyes wide with surprise, mouth gaping open and working soundlessly, then looks down at his chest where a crimson fountain spews forth.

“You… bitch…” he wheezes before he falls backward, crashing through my coffee table.

Another loud crash has me swiveling my head, then dropping the gun and reaching out my good arm toward Allen, who has skidded to a stop on his knees beside me and is hugging me tightly.

“Oh, thank God, thank God,” I hear him say repeatedly as he kisses my forehead, cheeks, lips, hair.

“Hi, honey. Mari’s hurt,” is all I can force out before I faint.