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Chad and Andrew burst through the door to the tenth-floor moments later, but the floor was quiet. Eerily silent. It was a floor filled with offices that appeared to be empty for the weekend. The men stood and listened.
A shrill scream.
“Rooftop,” Chad said, pointing to another door at the end of the hall marked Rooftop Access.
Jill was barely hanging on by a thread. There were black spots at the periphery of her vision and her body felt sluggish. Slow to respond. She’d been unable to fight as her attacker dragged her from the elevator and up the stairwell.
She felt battered and bruised by the repetitive knocking of the stairs. Her mind grasped at threads of ideas, wisps of defenses, any way to ward off the blows and escape what was clearly a completely insane woman.
The woman dragged Jill out onto the roof of the building and let Jill’s body drop to the rooftop. The woman was winded and clearly agitated. She circled Jill, ranting about Jill’s manipulations, her scheming against Andrew.
Jill went back into possum mode and lay huddled on the ground, regaining her strength. Planning. Preparing.
She focused on her breathing, steadying it. She cracked her eyelids open to see where her kidnapper was and she watched, waiting for the woman to come close. Jill could hear the woman trying to catch her breath – as if she, too, were readying for something.
She didn’t want to know what that something was. She had a pretty good idea that it had to do with the edge of the roof and Jill going over it.
“Well,” the woman said, taking a deep breath, “it’s that time. Any last words before you go?” She laughed the laugh of a crazy loon as if she had made the joke of the century.
“You know, I wasn’t going to do this. I was going to let you confess all you’d done and record it so Andrew could finally learn the truth about you. But I can’t do that now that we’re here.”
She looked around. “I’ll tell them I followed you up here because I was worried about your state of mind. That I thought maybe you’d run your car off the road on purpose. That I tried to stop you from jumping but couldn’t.”
Jill watched through slitted eyes as the woman came toward her and bent over, placing her hands under Jill’s arms to prepare to lift her again.
Without hesitation, Jill struck. Thumbs gouged as hard as she could into the woman’s eyes. The scream of pain was all Jill heard as she got to her knees and crawled toward the door to the building. She felt one hand clutch at her ankle but she kicked out as hard as she could and then kept moving.
Move. Just keep moving, keep trying. Don’t stop.
One minute she was crawling and the next she was hallucinating. Jill’s emotions were ripped to shreds as she realized if hallucinations had taken over, she was probably done for.
She had no more fight left in her. She let her weight sink into her illusion that Andrew’s arms were really around her. That she could really hear Andrew whispering words of safety and love to her as she lay wrecked in his arms.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Andrew’s whole body shuddered with relief when he finally had Jill in his arms. She had fought. He’d seen her.
She’d gotten away long enough for Chad and Andrew to get to her. As Chad subdued a shrieking Theresa, Jill sank into Andrew’s arms and he dropped to the rooftop and held her tight.
He rocked Jill and whispered to her. “I’ve got you, sweetheart. You’re safe now.” Over and over he whispered the words. “I won’t let you go.”
And he didn’t. Not while they treated her wounds. Not while they began an IV to rehydrate her. Not while she finally slept. Andrew held her all through the night, laying kisses on her temple whenever she began to dream or toss in her sleep.
When Jill woke in the morning, she blinked up at him, confusion washing over her features.
“I thought you were a hallucination. I thought I imagined you. That you were a dream,” she whispered.
“The only dream here is you, Jill. You’re my dream, my heart, my future. I thought I’d lost you forever. Don’t ever leave me, Jill.”
Epilogue
Andrew didn’t let Jill out of his sight for a week. Kelly took Jill to the support group she’d found after her ordeal—a group for survivors of violent crime. Jill hadn’t wanted to go, but she had to admit, it felt good to meet people who had been through similar situations. Everyone’s story was different, but they shared similar emotions and struggled with similar obstacles as they tried to settle back into everyday life.
Theresa was arrested, but she was currently residing in a state mental health facility where she was receiving treatment for a host of issues. Jill knew it was a little odd, but she couldn’t help feeling badly for Theresa on some level. The woman was struggling with several mental illnesses.
She had apparently received treatment for them when she was younger, but had lost her insurance several years before. When she got on the Sutton Capital Insurance Policy, she never sought the help she needed. Most likely, by that point, she no longer recognized her need for help.
Jill felt Andrew’s strong arms come around her waist. She hugged his arms closer to her, reveling in the feeling of safety and security she felt when she was with him. Not only security from people like Theresa, but security for her future. She believed, with all her heart, that her love for Andrew would never die. And, she knew his love for her was strong enough to last two lifetimes. They would never part the way she and Jake had.
