Jermy, Marie - Together Forever [The Andersons 1] (Siren Publishing Classic) (11 page)

“Jessica Ferris,” she scolded herself as she wiped her face clean. “You’re a screwup.”

Crumpling the tissue into a ball and lobbing it out of the window, defying anybody to ticket her for littering, she turned the ignition and drove home.

Once there, and with the door secured behind her, she forcibly kicked her shoes down the hallway, went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of Chianti from the half bottle in the refrigerator. She then entered her bedroom.

The air in the room was stifling from being closed up all day, so she opened the window. However, the smell of garbage from the dumpster directly below had her closing it before she passed out. Thank God, the sanitation strike was over, and despite it being Sunday, a collection had been scheduled for that night.

She flicked the switch for the ceiling fan and relaxed on the bed, sipping the wine, her thoughts on Ross and what had happened at the airport. If she didn’t know any better, she’d say he’d been about to propose again. She would, of course, have said yes.

But how could she?

The hurt etched across his handsome features when she’d ended their relationship had been profound. She’d almost wobbled, but the very real possibility of him being killed kept her solid. There was no way she was going to be responsible for Ross’s death. The only church service she wanted was a wedding, not a funeral.

With the delightful image of being Mrs. Ross Anderson, Jessica drained the last of the wine, placed the glass on the nightstand, and wandered into her walk-in wardrobe. Using a small trunk to stand on, she popped open the concealed space in the ceiling above the shoe shelves at the far end. She was just about to remove the BlackBerry from the strongbox when the front door buzzer sounded.

She would have ignored it, but whoever was calling had their finger pressed firmly on the button. Somebody was pissed off. Somebody, she concluded, could only be Ross. Cursing with exasperation, she closed the concealed space and the wardrobe doors and hurried down the hallway before the buzzer got rung off the wall.

She peered through the peephole but saw only blackness. The moron had his hand over it. She again swore, slid the chain from the catch, and flung the door open.

“Take your finger off—”

The rest of Jessica’s sentence never made it past her lips, probably due to her jaw smacking the doormat. The blood drained from her face as she stared bug-eyed at the man standing before her.

Not Ross. But Blade Harknett.

“Good evening, Miss Ferris. I’ve come for my BlackBerry.”

Definitely Blade Harknett. The silky voice was too unctuous not to be him. But how could it possibly be him? Ross had put a bullet in his head. Fascinated by the neat, little bloodied, soot-edged hole, it occurred to her she wasn’t looking at him but
through
him.

Oh. My. God. She was face-to-face with a ghost.

Santa Claus and the tooth fairy exempt, she’d always been a firm believer in the paranormal. So at any other time Jessica would have been thrilled to discover ghosts actually existed. However, this was one ghost she’d rather not meet. Evil seemed to radiate from his every pore. Did ghosts have pores?

While she pondered that question, her eyes bugged further at the man who appeared behind, or rather through, Harknett. Dressed entirely in black, he was reminiscent of the Grim Reaper. She stepped back in fear, then was further helped down the hallway and into the living room by the “Grim Reaper’s” strong hand gripping her throat and cutting off any chance of screaming. Or breathing for that matter.

“Give me what I want and I’ll let you live.”

Starved of oxygen, white stars exploding before her eyes, Jessica couldn’t have answered even if she’d wanted to. Just as blackness descended, the pressure around her neck slackened and she slid to the carpet, gulping in massive and grateful lungfuls of air. Her ears then picked up the reason why she was still alive. Yet again, her door buzzer was about to be buzzed off the wall.

“Open the door, Jess, or I’ll boot it open!”

Her heart bottomed out and fell the five stories to street level. It was Ross.

The “Grim Reaper” yanked Jessica to her feet and propelled her down the hallway. “Get rid of him. Or he dies,” he quietly ordered, replacing the chain across the catch and sticking the barrel of a gun into her ribcage.

She nodded and opened the door as far as the chain allowed, her fingers white from clenching the handle. One hand resting on the doorjamb, the other on his denim-clad hip, Ross was so hot-looking he stole the breath she was still trying to recover. “What do you want?” she asked, surprised she sounded so calm when inside she was screaming.

“I want an explanation.”

The gun barrel pressed harder. She swallowed equally as hard.
Protect Ross. Protect Ross.
Injecting the nonchalance into her voice, she asked, “Explanation to what exactly?” He gaped at her, silent for a moment, before he blew.

“What d’ya mean, ‘Explanation to what exactly?’ I asked you to marry—”

“Look, Ross,” she interrupted, “I turned you down. Ended our relationship. Live with it.”

“You also said yes, remember?”

Jessica barked a harsh, bitter laugh, the sound alien to her ears. “So what? Now, fuck off!” The gun barrel pressed to her side getting deeper by the second, she tried to close the door, but Ross stuck his foot in the opening before she could.

“I will not fuck off, not until you—”

“Jeez, I’m surrounded by morons! Fuck off, moron!” She kicked his foot away and slammed the door shut, the sound akin to the final nail being hammered into her coffin. She had no doubt gotten rid of the man who could save her. With every beat of her heart she loved Ross, but to protect him, and no matter how much it hurt, she had to let him go.

Jessica stared at the evil smile plastered over “Grim Reaper’s” face and summed up her dire predicament with one word.

“Shit!”

* * * *

After leaving the airport, Ross had returned home, the intention of downing a whole bottle of Jack Daniel’s like a beacon cutting a path through the darkness of his mood. As soon as he’d unscrewed the cap, however, the vivid memory of Jessica lying in his arms, in his bed, accepting his proposal, struck him like a hammer blow. He knew then that no amount of alcohol would ever erase her from his head. Or his heart.

The bottle thrown, the amber liquid dripping down the kitchen cupboards, he’d stormed from his apartment, hell-bent on discovering why Jessica had changed her mind. What his fellow subway passengers had thought of his rigid-body-fists-clenched-talking-to-himself stance was anybody’s guess. Not that he’d cared.

But now, cross-eyed, his nose smarting from the door being slammed in his face, his anger was beyond control. She’d called him a moron. Again. He took a step back and raised his foot, intent on kicking the damn door from its hinges. Then, through the red mist, the rest of Jessica’s words registered.

“Jeez, I’m surrounded by morons!”

Something else registered. The pleading in Jessica’s eyes. Not the pleading from a few nights back when she was beneath him, legs wrapped around his waist, urging him to screw her hard, but the pleading of a woman in trouble. Her eyes were screaming, “Save me!” Not, “Screw me!”

His anger dissolved. “Well, fuck you, too, Jessica!” he bellowed, hoping her full Christian name would relay to her that he wasn’t deserting her. For appearance’s sake, he gave the door a kick, then left the apartment block and went around to the rear.

Directly below Jessica’s fifth-floor apartment was a large dumpster. Ross quickly looked inside. It was three-quarters filled with cardboard and garbage sacks, some of which had split open, the odors emitting from within truly sweet-smelling. Not!

He went over to the metal fire escape that served the whole building, jumped up, and pulled the ladder to the ground. Then he proceeded to make his way up and across to Jessica’s apartment, making as little noise as the creaky metal would allow, and thankful most of the residents were either not at home or had their curtains drawn. He could do without somebody screaming the place down because they thought he was a cat burglar or worse yet, some gun-toting Peeping Tom.

The reason for why he’d even brought his gun still eluding him, Ross made it to Jessica’s apartment without incident or scream and peeped in through a crack in the slatted blinds at the living room window. The red mist once again descended at what he saw. On the floor, curled up in a ball, Jessica was trying to shield herself from the fists and feet of a thickset, muscle-bound meathead dressed all in black.

There was another man in the room, casually perched on the arm of the sofa, watching the scene with a detached curiosity. Ross had to rub his eyes just to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. Either Blade Harknett had risen from the dead or he had an identical twin brother.

A small cry of pain from Jessica brought Ross back from a somewhat dumbstruck state, and he reached for the Magnum holstered at his hip. He preferred the Magnum over any other kind of weapon. He’d learned from Ray Ferris that the Magnum could blow somebody’s head clean off should the need arise. And the need had definitely arisen. He aimed at the space between “Meathead’s” eyes and went to pull the trigger, but the man suddenly picked Jessica up and slung her through to the bedroom.

Harknett’s ghost or twin brother threw his head back and laughed, the cackle that came through the pane of glass having all the hallmarks of 666. He got to his feet, but then seemed to change his mind and resettled himself on the sofa, his attention fixed on the ceiling rather than what was occurring in the other room.

Ross crept toward the bedroom window and looked inside. The view was not exactly pleasant and was reminiscent of Samantha’s ordeal at the hands of Mark Raven. His pants down around his ankles, his ass on full display, “Meathead” had his dirty hands all over Jessica while pinning her to the bed. It was obvious what was going to happen if he didn’t butt in. So to speak.

Without hesitation, Ross threw himself through the glass, the bullets from his Magnum scoring a direct hit up “Meathead’s” anal canal. Another second, and he grabbed Jessica, and they were flying back out of the window, over the fire escape railing, and with a disgusted grunt, on his part anyway, they landed in the dumpster, the cardboard and plastic sacks cushioning their fall.

Jessica sprawled over him and the fragrant smell of a split diaper bag filling his nostrils, Ross kept his Magnum aimed skywards, just in case “ghost/twin brother” showed his face. Though with the certainty that one of those now-screaming residents within the block had called the police, he was sure to have hotfooted it out of there, rather than stick around to be slapped with cuffs.

With a groan, Jessica crawled off him and sat back on her haunches, her pert nose wrinkling up with disgust. He ignored the torn-apart shirtdress and her dainty, bare breasts, her nipples pouting, he swore, in a direct line with his mouth. He needed answers, not a hard-on. Holstering his Magnum, he grabbed her wrist and yanked her into his face, snarling, “You want to tell me what the fuck is going on!”

* * * *

Jessica gaped at Ross in stunned disbelief. Had he had a personality transplant while back home in Silver Creek? With nostrils flared, lips stretched into a grim slash and eyes like shards of ice, she had never seen him so angry. Sure, it was probably because she’d slammed the door in his face—who wouldn’t be angry at that?—but this was something else. This was “I’m-gonna-fucking-rip-your-head-off-for-calling-me-a-moron” anger.

The sound of an approaching vehicle then caught her attention, and a sense of urgency gripped her. “Do you think we can get out of this stinking mess first?” she asked, trying to shake his hand from her wrist, but he tightened his grip.

“No! I swear, Jess, if you don’t start supplying answers right now, I’m gonna do something with this rotting apple core that you’re not gonna like!”

If Ross meant that as a joke, he didn’t show it. If anything, he looked ready to spit nails. Jessica opened her mouth. The vehicle grew closer. Then, with a jolt and a grind, the dumpster began to lift and tilt, sending her, Ross, and all its other lovely contents tumbling into a dark, smelly, yet more garbage-filled metal-walled vault.