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It was farfetched that I would find her. I mean, by the time I got to the bank, they were gone. But I was on high alert and jetting to the pawn shop when I got another notice.
And then I had seen Becky and couldn’t stay quiet. Now, her mother was pointing a gun at me. My pulse pounded hard in my ears, and I raised both hands up. Adrenaline pumped through my veins as I approached. I wasn’t being held back, not anymore.
“Stop.” The woman shook the gun in my direction, her eyes wild and dangerous.
“Kate. Just put the gun down,” Becky said, her face a state of hysteria.
I gulped, wanting to hold her, wanting to take her home. I’d give this woman whatever she wanted just to have Becky right beside me.
“What do you need? What is it you want?” I tipped my chin in Kate’s direction. “More money?” Because that was nothing in the grand scheme of things. Not when Kate could obliterate my world with a shot of her gun.
“It’s yours,” I said, my voice firm and confident, bred and learned from years of negotiation from being Brisken Printing Corporation’s CEO.
She smiled then, her eyes crinkling at the sides. Besides the color of her eyes, there was no resemblance between Becky and her mother.
“Well, since you offered and all.”
“No!” Becky snapped, forcing Kate to tighten the hold on her weapon. “You’re going to leave. That’s what you’re going to do.”
“But”—she shrugged, unaffected—“since your boyfriend here is offering to give me a little cushion, then it would be rude not to take him up on his offer, no?”
“No!” Becky repeated, advancing toward Kate. “You are not involving them anymore. I refuse to let you take more from them. You’ve already taken too much.”
The hairs on the back of my neck rose because Becky was undeterred by the gun that Kate held in her hands. Reading her, how she was positioned in front of Kate and the look in her eye, I knew she had one goal in mind—to protect me.
And that scared me shitless.
“Becky, stop!” Before I knew what I was doing, I erased the gap between us.
And the next few seconds happened in slow motion.
Kate pointed the gun in my direction. Becky reached for the gun and forced it upward. They struggled, fighting for it.
I couldn’t get to them fast enough.
A shot rang out.
And then silence.
Chapter 43
Becky
The sound was deafening. Ear-splitting.
All I could hear was the ringing in my ears. All I could feel was the pain in my side as I tumbled to the ground.
But for the first time all day, relief flooded me.
Because I had the gun.
It was a toy, which I now had in my hand. It had never been real. The fear of this inanimate object was almost comical—almostbecause it wasn’t real.
The ear-splitting gunshot had come from Ben. He’d emerged from the store, seen us struggling, and shot his gun into the air to stop our fight.
My head fell to the right, to the cold concrete rough against my back. For a brief second, my focus was on the clear night sky and the stars twinkling above me. I took a breath and exhaled slowly. The grandeur of the expansive sky could almost give off the feeling as though this were a normal night, but it was far from it as I sat up and witnessed Ben and Charles pinning a struggling Kate to the ground.
They’d used rope to tie her hands, and once Ben had her pinned against the wall, Charles ran toward me.
