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Unfortunately for Pete, he was a few seconds too eager to pounce on Charlie from behind. She spied the threat from her peripheral view and quickly reacted. She immediately pivoted as Pete was inches away and she braced herself for the assault. He was too close f
or her to reach for her gun at that moment, so she went pound for pound with him. A brawl ensued inside the hallway, and while Pete desperately tried to take her down with brute force, Charlie was urgently reaching for her pistol in her purse. It was life or death for them both—someone was going to die tonight, and they were both determined it wouldn’t be them.
Pete continued to try and overpower her and drag her into her apartment, but Charlie knew that meant certain death. She screamed and she fought.
“Help me! Help! Someone help me!” she hollered frantically.
Pete smashed his fist into her face repeatedly, immediately silencing Charlie by knocking her out. With the fight and her screaming, his plans of killing her inside the apartment changed. Cops were possibly on their way, and he was finishing what he’d started. He picked Charlie up from the floor, tossed her over his shoulder, and hurried for the exit.
Epilogue
July
Once again, familiar, hard banging on her front door made Bacardi ready to implode. When was she ever going to find peace?
She was in the kitchen seasoning meat for their 4th of July barbeque downstairs in the park. Her renters were helping load pans of macaroni salad and potato salad into the coolers, along with lemonade, bottled water, sodas, and ice.
Bacardi opened the door to a new set of detectives. Both were white males who looked to be in their mid-forties.
“What now?” she barked at them.
A Detective Henry asked, “Have you heard from your oldest daughter lately? Charlie Brown?”
“What has she done now?” asked Bacardi.
“She’s missing.”
“Missing?” She was taken aback by that information.
“Yes, and we have reason to believe she was met with foul play,” said the partner, Detective Mathews. “A neighbor called it in and said that there was some kind of struggle outside her apartment. There was some blood found on the walls and her door was left open.”
Hearing this, Bacardi reached for her cell phone and dialed Charlie’s phone, but it went straight to her voicemail.
“When did this happen?” she asked the detectives.
“Two days ago, ma’am. It took us some time to investigate and locate her parents.”
Butch came out of the bedroom, and upon seeing the detectives, he asked, “Bernice, what is going on now?”
Bacardi sadly gazed his way. Although Charlie was bad news, the thought of having to bury another child was disheartening.
“Charlie is missing,” she said.
***
Chanel sat alone in her doctor’s office and couldn’t help but to be nervous. She fiddled with her thumbs and fingers and tried to chase away the butterflies in her stomach. The reason she was hard pressed to quickly marry Mateo was because two days before he was released from the center, she and Pyro had sex. For the first time, he came inside of her instead of pulling out like he usually did.
Chanel didn’t know if Pyro did it on purpose or if he was caught up in the moment. Nor did she know at the time if she was pregnant. But eight weeks after her wedding, she was told that she was ten weeks pregnant. History was repeating itself. She knew that the baby was Pyro’s and it was also, as her mother had advised her, a secret she was prepared to take to her grave.
