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She grinned. “Can’t even boil water, and I’m proud of it.”
The ladies descended the stairs. We quickly started swapping suggestions and propositions of Chad’s next move, tactics we’d use to counteract them. Cherise had dealt with him the most, and she predicted he’d called to gloat about the literal run-in with us that he got away with yesterday. No sooner than she said that, her phone rang in her terry-cloth robe’s pocket. It was a strange number. She had a business, so strange was the norm.
Cherise
Midway to forking fluffy scrambled eggs in my mouth, the stupid phone rang. Almost one hundred percent sure it was someone calling the office, I picked up though I had no intention of going to work. “Johnston Psychiat—”
“Cut the shit, Cherise,” Chad barked. “How did you like my first lesson I taught yesterday?”
I wondered how he’d like being recorded by the cops. Not about to ask, I activated the speakerphone and put it in the center of the round, glass table. The others leaned over their plates to hear clearly. Andre sent out a text, likely to Detective Cortez, who I hoped was already listening in from the bug he placed on my phone lines already. Hopefully, he was up as well at nine in the morning.
Tobin rubbed my back, giving me just a little more courage to face my demon. “I’m not sure exactly what you were trying to teach me, Chad. Why don’t you be clear about it?”
“Don’t question me. Don’t disobey me. Don’t date other men, or there are dire consequences. I told you don’t make me get rid of him. Yesterday, was to scare him off. Next time, it might be a bullet coming through the back of his truck. Save his life and put him out of your home now.”
Alarmed, I looked Tobin’s way. He was struggling to stay quiet and thumping the side of his fist on a knee bouncing harder than a basketball. I tried calming him by running my hand over his back while entertaining Chad.
“How do you know he’s with me?” I stalled.
A shuffling sound ignited in the background. “Because when I’m not with your friend Eva.” A muffled scream aired through the line then was cut off abruptly.
I screamed, “Eva! Let her speak to me, Chad!”
“You haven’t learned that you don’t tell me what to do, have you?”
Another muffled scream blasted from God knew where into the kitchen. Somehow, it was louder. He was hurting Eva because of me.
I rocketed to my feet. “Chad, dammit—”
Tobin grabbed me, towing my face into his neck, cutting off my next unpleasant words before I made the situation worse. So many emotions crowded me—fear, anger, but most of all, retaliation. This monster would get what was coming to him one way or the other. I couldn’t wait until the moment that he was on the receiving end of what he dished out.
“I’m watching you, Cherise. I guess you know I’m not watching you right this moment, but I was. Your date from the carnival never came out those gates last night or this morning. If you don’t come to me, then well, I guess I’ll have to take my frustrations with you out on Eva again.”
Eva’s muted terror filled the line again. I shuddered when it stopped as fast as it happened, biting into my knuckles to keep from screaming myself. Tobin waved his hand for me to continue to play my role; get Chad out of his comfort zone into ours. It took everything within me to hold it together.
“Okay! Okay!” I wiped wearily at my forehead. Malaysia navigated the table, coming to my side to pick up my chair and invite me to sit in it. As wobbly as my knees were, I really needed that seat. She kneeled at my side, stroking my arm. I resumed my end of the most terrible conversation ever. “Okay, Chad, but you can’t keep Eva. I don’t share. You keep her, she’s all you’ll have.”
“You’re making demands? You have no power here,” boomed back at me.
“I have all the power if I have what you want. Eva and I were never great friends. You took a wild chance on using her against me. Ask yourself, who’d I rather keep safe more, me or her?”
“If you’ve learned your lesson, you’d stop trying to tell me what to do.”
“You want me, you can have only me. That’s my final answer, and you can keep attempting and failing to kidnap me too.”
A cemetery-quiet reigned over the line for half a minute.
“I think you’re up to something, Cherise.”
“What can I be up to? No one knows when you’re coming until you show up. What is there to plan for?”
“You’re right.” Stroking this man’s ego should be a sin. “I am the best at what I do, and I’ve bested your soldiers too. The better man is me.”
A look passed between Andre and Tobin. They were not loving the insult of being bested or called a mere soldier when they were Marines. They were more fierce than any other military branch, according to them.
“What do you want me to do, Chad?” I asked warily. We came to the conclusion that adapting to whatever he wanted was best.
The distinctive crunch of a chair giving beneath a body reclining in it sounded off. “You know I never really got to see your office here. How about meet me there alone, and I can get to know the place?” He had to figuratively piss on that site too, marking it as his.
