“Are you alright?” he frantically asked Maude who had been down on the floor of the SUV when the crash occurred.
“I’m okay,” she said as she tried to reposition herself. “You?”
“I’m fine,” Edmund said as he put his hands on Maude. And then he looked around. “Everybody okay?”
They all said that they were as Don hopped out and hurried to Wyatt, who had been barely conscious from his gunshot wound. He helped Wyatt get out of the mangled SUV.
But Edmund had been so terrified for Maude during that entire ordeal that his heart was still hammering. That was why, when she looked up at him and they made eye contact, his heart grew faint. There was no getting around it: He had feelings for her that had to be loved. He pulled her up and into his arms. And held her for several seconds.
But that was when they heard Don yellit’s on fire!
Fearing that he meant the Tahoe, Edmund grabbed Maude and hurried out of that SUV.
But they both quickly realized Don was talking about the Expedition. They hurried up the path to the main road and that was when they saw the wreckage too. And how the Expedition was now engulfed in flames. It was a sight to see.
“Natasha wasn’t lying,” said Maude as they stood there. “She’s got something on Ross Hampton that apparently nobody else has.”
Don agreed. “For them to go this far? To put so many people at risk?” He shook his head. “She’s got the goods on that man just like she said. He doesn’t just want her in jail anymore. He wants her dead.” When Don spoke so bluntly, they all looked at him. He was the expert. They knew he knew what he was talking about.
But then Don noticed who wasn’t looking at him. ‘Where’s Natasha?” he asked.
And that was when the rest of them realized she wasn’t in the group too.
They quickly began looking around for her. Edmund and Don even ran back down the path to the SUV and looked inside. But she wasn’t there. His heart began hammering again. Where was his sister? Had she been thrown from the vehicle when they crashed?
They looked around the SUV. But there was no trace of her. But where was she? Where on earth could she be?
And then they both realized, in that moment, that while Edmund was focused solely on Maude, and while Don was focused solely on Wyatt, she must have wandered off. But where???
“There she is!” Wyatt yelled out as he pointed down the road.
Edmund and Don ran back up the path to the highway. When they looked, not in the direction where the Expedition had exploded, but in the opposite direction, that was when they saw Natasha. She was running along the opposite side of the road as if she was trying to get away from them! Then she hopped into what looked like a BMW that was parked on the side waiting for her. And then the BMW kicked up dirt as it sped away.
“What thefuck?” said a completely baffled Edmund as they all watched the getaway with nothing but astonishment on their faces.
But Maude had a revelation. “They weren’t there to kill Natasha,” she said. “Natasha’s in on it! They were there to kill one of us.”
Edmund looked at her with even more bafflement. “What do you mean?”
“What she means,” Don said, taking it further, “is that they were either there to kill one of us.” Then he looked at his boss. “Or all of us.”
That wasn’t what Maude said, but that was exactly what she meant. And that was the revelation that floored them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
After spending hours at the crime scene with the Dillon Police, Edmund and Maude arrived back at her apartment, ate carry out, took a long tub bath together, and then got in bed for the night.
Edmund was on top of Maude, and he was grunting so loud as he did her that he could only hope her neighbors didn’t hear him. But even if they did, he couldn’t stop. He was pushing in so far and so deep that when he came, his veins were showing. He felt as if he was straining every vein in his body as he poured into her.
It wasn’t his intention to cum before his lady came. That rarely ever happened. But he wanted her so badly. And he needed her even more. It couldn’t be helped.
But it didn’t take long at all before Maude was cumming too. Not as intensely as Edmund. She was still too emotionally spent to be that all-in. But it was intense. Her nails dug into his back as her legs wrapped around him because of the intensity.
After it was all over and they just laid there, Edmund finally eased out of Maude. And just that feeling of him leaving her left her with that sense of voidness again. Then he mustered enough strength to roll off of her. He laid on his back beside her. But both of them had the same thing on their minds. That sister of his.
Then his phone rang. When he grabbed it off of the nightstand and looked at the Caller ID, he swiped it and answered it. But it was a short conversation.
Maude was worried it was one of his women and he was talking in a cryptic way to avoid detection.
