“Tell her to text me the address,” I told Cole as I caught Cord and Colt and walked over to the kitchen table to get out of earshot of Suzy Q.
“I think Cord and Cole should go with me to Tulsa. I’m gonna need the help in bringin’ this crazy asshole down. We’ll leave Clay and Colt here to protect Suzanna. Larry’ll be here in a couple hours. Surely to God that little bastard won’t fuck up again.”
“I think that’s a pretty good plan, but you need to lay off Clay, he didn’t mean for this to happen,” Cord said.
“He shouldn’t have been drinkin’ when he was supposed to be watchin’ her. He fuckin’ knew better.” I couldn’t believe Cord was stickin’ up for that little bastard.
I shook my head and checked my texts. Lisbeth had kept true to her word and sent me the address in Tulsa. It was just about a two and half hour drive from Dexter.
Lookin’ in at Suzy Q made me sick to my stomach. She had her knees pulled up to her chest and Clay had his arm around her. I didn’t understand how in the hell she could stand to be near him. When I got closer I saw that he was cryin’.
“I swear to you, Suzanna, I never woulda drank that much when I was watching Izzy B. You have to believe me. I love that little girl so damn much. I don’t know what the hell happened.” He was pleadin’ with her.
“Get the hell away from her, haven’t you done enough tonight?” I grabbed him by the arm to pull him away from her.
“Cade, leave him alone. Can’t you see he’s sick over this? He didn’t mean for this to happen. Branch is evil. This is all on him.” Suzy Q looked at me with those whiskey colored eyes filled with tears.
“Cord, Cole, and me are gonna go find her, hon. Clay and Colt will stay here to keep an eye on you and Larry will be here in a couple hours.” I sat down next to her and put my arm around her.
“I need to go with you, Cade. I need to be there when you find her. She’s gonna be so scared.” She was sobbin’ again.
“Hon, the best place for you to be is here, safe. I promise the minute I find her, I’ll have her on this phone callin’ you.” I pulled my phone outta my pocket, and waved it in front of her.
“You can’t leave me here, Cade. I’m her mother. I have to go with you.” She was standin’ up and startin’ toward the door.
“I can’t let you go with us, Suzy Q. He’s crazy and he wants to hurt you. I can’t let him ever hurt you again.” I took her face in my hands. “Look at me, hon. You have to stay here and keep yourself safe for Izzy B and me. We need you. I fuckin’
need
you!” I kissed her cheek, “Please trust me to do this. Know that I’ll bring her home safe. Knowing your here safe will make it easier for me to do what I have to do.”
She grabbed me by the shoulders. The terrified look in her eyes was ‘bout to break me. “Cade, I know what you plan on doing. Please don’t. Killing him won’t do anything but cause you to spend the rest of your life in jail.” She placed her hands on my face and pulled me down toward her. “I fucking need you too. I won’t survive without you, Cade. Please don’t kill him.”
I didn’t know how she could ask that of me, but I would promise anything right now. I needed to get on the road.
“I won’t kill him, but I will hurt him,” I said, knowin’ that I still wouldn’t hesitate to kill his ass.
I led Suzy Q back over to the couch and covered her with the blanket again. Colt was sittin’ down beside her and put his arm around her protectively. “She’ll be fine, Cade. We’ll take good care of her. Go do what you need to do,” Colt said with a wink and a nod. He understood exactly what I needed to do.
I followed Clay into the kitchen. I grabbed him by the back of the neck and pushed him up against the fridge. “You little bastard. You have no idea how much I wanna kick your ass right now. I am fuckin’ trustin’ you to take care of Suzanna until I get back. Can you fuckin’ do that?”
“You know I can, Cade. I didn’t drink more than one beer. I can’t remember a damn thing, but I wasn’t drunk, Cade. I swear to God I wasn’t. I must’ve just been fast asleep. You know I’ll never forgive myself for this. Nothin’ you say can be worse than what I’m already tellin’ myself.” He was tearin’ up again. I hated to be such an asshole to him, but I needed him to understand the importance of the situation.
“Colt, is still in bad shape from the fire. He cain’t move as fast as you can. Larry won’t be here for a couple of hours. You need to not let her out of your fuckin’ sight. Can. You. Do. That?” I growled.
“Yes, sir, I can. I’ll keep her safe or die tryin’.” When Clay said the words, I wanted so hard to believe them, but right now I was havin’ a hard time believin’ anything he said.
“We need to get on the road. We don’t know how long he’s been on the road. We need to find her before he does somethin’ we can’t fix.” I grabbed my truck keys from the counter. “Let’s go.” I motioned to Cord and Cole as I started toward the truck.
Suzanna~
My baby was gone. That monster took my baby. I knew in my head that I needed to stay here. I wouldn’t do anything but slow them down. Cade wouldn’t let anything happen to her. He would keep Isabella safe. In my heart all I could think about was my baby in the arms of that monster without me there to protect her. I had never even left him alone with her. She was with me or her grandparents all the time. That shoulda been a sign of how screwed up our life was, but I never thought another thing about it. I just knew not to let her out of my sight
“He’ll make sure she’s safe, Suz. He won’t let that bastard hurt her,” Clay said as he placed his arm around me and tried to calm me down. My heart was racing and I hadn’t quit crying since the guys left.
I nodded and laid my head down on his shoulder. These Walker boys really knew how to make you feel safe. The fact that he had a shotgun at his side kinda helped with the safe situation too. That boy had been hunting since he was a kid. If Branch showed up here, well heaven help him if he did.
Colt still wasn’t himself after the fire. That poor boy had been through so much. He had told us how tired he was and Clay insisted he go lay down. We were just waiting for Larry to get here. Cade had explained that Larry was trying to get more information on Branch and then he would be over.
Everything after that happened so quick. One minute I was sitting on the couch next to Clay and the next minute the door was kicked in and Branch was standing there with his shotgun cocked and ready to shoot. Before Clay could grab the shotgun from his side, I heard the most horrific sound I’d ever heard. Branch took a shot, Clay screamed, and then I was being pulled by the hair out the door. I was covered in blood and I was kicking and screaming and trying to get away from him. “Stop fightin’ me, bitch. You are mine. I am only takin’ what the fuck is mine.” He growled at me as he pulled me out onto the front porch. I tried to look back toward the couch, but the way he was pulling me, I couldn’t see Clay.
God, please let Clay be okay!
When we got to the porch, Colt had made his way to the shotgun, I heard it cock and then I saw him standing in the doorway. He was shaking and Branch was laughing that crazy maniacal laugh he had when he knew he was doing something evil.
“Put the gun down, asshole. You’re shakin’ like a fuckin’ leaf. Do you even know how to use it? You’re the pansy twin, right?”
“Oh, I fuckin’ know how to use it and I suggest you let go of her now!” He started to charge out the door. Then everything went black.
When I came to, I was on the ground and Larry was standing over me crying. What the hell had happened? I was trying to remember, but I was blank. The last thing I remembered I was sitting on the couch with Clay feeling safe and comforted.
I tried to sit up and Larry stopped me. “Honey, just stay where you are. You don’t need to see what’s goin’ on in there.” That’s when I noticed the ambulance and the police cruisers.
Oh my God, NO!
“Where are they, Larry? Where’s Clay and Colt?” Then somethings started coming back to me. I looked down and saw the blood all over me. Then I remembered Clay screaming and then I saw a flash of Colt standing in the doorway with the shotgun and Branch’s crazy blue eyes. Those crazy eyes would haunt me for the rest of my life.
“Honey, please stay here. I don’t want you to see this.” He was holding me down, but I had to know. I made myself stand up and just as I did, I saw the gurney being rolled out of the house. The person on it was apparently dead. They were covered in a white sheet and there was blood all over it. It was sopping through it.
“Who’s on the gurney, Larry? Who’s dead? TELL ME!” I ran toward the paramedics that were rolling the gurney toward the ambulance. I pulled back the corner of the sheet and that’s when I dropped to my knees. This was all my fault. How would I ever forgive myself for what I’d done? If I had just stayed with him, he wouldn’t have hurt anyone but me. I would take all of that pain, all over again, to bring him back to us.
“Oh my God, Cade…he won’t survive this. What have I done?”
Cade~
We were about an hour out from Tulsa when Cord’s phone rang.
“It’s Larry,” he said as he answered the phone. “Hey, everything okay?”
“Turn around. Cade…turn the fuckin’ truck around!” he screamed as he held the phone in a death grip.
“What’s goin’ on, Cord? What the fuck is wrong?” I turned around and was headin’ back toward my place. He wouldn’t fuckin’ answer me. I was gonna jump outta my hide if he didn’t start answerin’ my questions. “Is she okay?
Fuckin’ answer me, Cord
!”
He was cryin’ and he finally answered, “She’s fine. It’s not her, Cade. It’s not her.”
By the look on his face, I was scared to death to hear what had happened. “Who is it? Cord, tell me what happened.”
“He’s dead, Cade. My brother is dead. That fucker killed him and then took off. Larry tried to save him, but he was too late. He was already dead.”
~Chapter 22~
Suzanna~
They made me go to the hospital to be checked out. Branch hadn’t done anything to me, but pulled out some of my hair. The pain he caused me today wasn’t physical, it was emotional. He broke my heart and crushed my spirit. He had taken my daughter from me and then killed a man that had been like a brother to me my entire life. He knew what he needed to do to break me and he did it. And as a bonus for him, this would also break Cade. Possibly, to a point that he couldn’t come back from.
I was scared and shaking not knowing where Isabella was and having flashbacks of what happened tonight. I didn’t know how Cade was going to survive this. I didn’t know how we were going to survive this. For the first time in so many years, I had been happy. It just wasn’t meant to be for me. I wasn’t supposed to experience happiness.
I was sitting in the exam room at the hospital, holding my head in my hands, waiting for the doctor to come in when I heard him. “Where the hell is she? I need to see her now! I have to know she’s okay. Just tell me where the fuck she is!”
I climbed down off the table and slid the curtain open. “I’m here, Cade. I’m right here.” His eyes met mine and I saw so much sadness and fear there. Those piercing green eyes looked broken. Branch had won. He finally broke us. He had tried for years to break me and came so close to doing it. It hadn’t taken him long to figure out how to break Cade. Killing his cousin did it.
Cade ran to me, pulling me into his arms. “You okay, Suzy Q? He hurt you?” His voice was almost unrecognizable. That country drawl that always made my knees weak, sounded so sad and heartbroken as he spoke to me.
“He didn’t hurt me, but...” I couldn’t hold it in another second. I wrapped my arms around his waist and broke out in a chest heaving sob. I couldn’t make it stop. My whole world was crashing down around me. And as safe as Cade had always made me feel, he could never be with me after this. We could never be together with him knowing I caused this. “I’m so sorry, Cade. I’m so sorry. This is all my fault. Please forgive me.”
Cade~
I had to know that Suzy Q was safe. I had to see her for myself. As I held her, I knew she would never forgive herself for what had happened. She was askin’ for my forgiveness? This wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t her fault that Branch was fuckin’ nuts. I would find him and he would die. As soon as I made sure Izzy B was safe, that mother fucker was dead.
When the doctor came in to examine Suzy Q, I went with Larry to see for myself. To see what that the crazy bastard had done.
Larry and me headed down the long corridor in the basement to the room I had been in once before...when I was nineteen years old. When my dad was killed, they brought me down to the morgue to identify his body. It was somethin’ a man would never forget. This room had been the background for many nightmares over the years. I prayed that I wouldn’t ever end up in this room again, but here I was. About to identify the body of a man that was so much more than a cousin to me, a man that deserved so much better than what I had given him through the years.
The morgue looked just like you’d see on one of those damn annoyin’ crime shows. The walls were lined with metal boxes that you knew were full of dead bodies. It was so cold and dark. The smell seemed like a mixture of cleanin’ supplies and dead animals. Yeah, real fuckin’ pleasant.
We walked in and there was a man standin’ in front of us with blue scrubs on. “Mr. Walker?” he asked.
“Yes.” I responded, really not wantin’ to see what I was about to see.
“Are you ready for this, sir?”
“I don’t think I’ll ever be ready for somethin’ like this, son. Just show me what I need to see.” I needed to get this over with.
He turned his back to us and we followed him over to the metal table on the other side of the room. There was a white sheet coverin’ the body of my cousin on the table. When we reached the table, he started to pull back the sheet and I saw that blonde hair and I really thought I was gonna pass the fuck out. He pulled the sheet back the rest of the way and the tears started to fall and my chest was heavin’. I think that was the exact moment that I actually felt my heart break.