Mended Hearts (New Beginnings Series) (27 page)

He turned to the women, outraged. “What did you do? How did the police know I was here?”

They both flinched, and Gracie said, “How would
we
know, Rob? We’ve been here with you the entire time.” She winced inwardly as she realized that, in fact, they both hadn’t been there with him the entire time. She hurriedly went on—hoping he would ignore Kelli, “Maybe one of the neighbors saw—“

It was too late. He’d stalked over and grabbed Kelli by the arm, pulling her off the couch.

Gracie cried, “Rob, please! She has nothing to do with this. Let her go!”

Rob shook Kelli, then looked over to where she’d been sitting. The barest corner of her phone was poking out from the seat cushions. He grabbed it and looked from it to her, then flung it against the wall where it broke into two pieces. Both women cowered, but he jerked Kelli back to her feet and backhanded her across the face, knocking her
face first into the edge of the heavy coffee table. She slumped to the floor and the daisy bouquet hit the floor, water spewing everywhere and the vase shattering.

Gracie jumped across the coffee table to throw herself over Kelli, trying to protect her from his fists. She glared up at him.
“Rob! Do you want to talk to me or not?”

He was breathing hard, but that question caught his attention. He bit out. “That’s why I’m here you
, stupid b—“

“If you want to talk to
me, you have to let her leave. I mean it!” She got to her feet and forced herself to stand up to him. She looked down at Kelli, who was trying to get her attention. She was shaking her head at Gracie, as if to say she wasn’t leaving her there alone. But her eye was already swelling shut and she was bleeding from her lip and a cut on her temple. Gracie’s eyes filled with tears.

Rob bent down and grabbed Kelli by the arm again, dragging her across the fl
oor. He looked through the peephole and saw that the hallway was clear. He threw open the locks and shoved Kelli out into the hallway, slamming the door and locking it behind her.

She lay there sobbing and jumped when a man in SWAT
gear gathered her up and hustled her out of the building. He had been stationed on the stairs, where he couldn’t be seen through the hole on Gracie’s door.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Kelli refused to go to the hospital, so the EMTs waiting down the block patched her up with butterfly bandages after she promised to go in on her own later. All she wanted to do was talk to the police and give them all the information she could. They needed to get Gracie out of there as soon as possible. That Rob guy was completely unhinged.

She realized that Sonny had indeed gotten her message as soon as she’d sent it. The cops got organized really quickly and already had
evacuated the building quietly. The whole neighborhood seemed like a ghost town, except for the huge police presence. Rob hadn’t noticed the block being cleared, because Gracie’s apartment was in the back of the building and not even on the street corner side, but next to another house, with a privacy fence at the back of her building’s courtyard. The secluded position of her side door had helped Rob get into her place undetected, but that same secluded position of her apartment had helped the police take care of business in an efficient and stealthy manner.

After she spoke with the officers in charge at their command
post two buildings down from Gracie’s place, they offered to get her to the hospital. She refused again and asked if they knew where Gracie’s fiancé was. She’d expected him to be at the command center, but the officers had banished the “civilians.” Apparently they didn’t take kindly to a group of Navy SEALs telling them how they should be doing their jobs. The man in charge had one of his officers give her a ride over to Savannah’s, where Gracie’s friends were gathered. It was only a five minute drive, but it seemed much longer to Kelli.

She noticed the open sign was switched off, but the parking lot was all but full of cars. She tried the door, and sure enough it was unlocked. Pushing it open, the hushed voices in the room stopped. She saw Sonny surge to his feet and his chair fell with a crash to the wooden floor. His eyes filled with tears as he looked
at her. Everyone there had heard that Kelli had been thrown out of the apartment, but that Gracie was still with that monster. Sonny stumbled toward her and some of the others stood and stared at her in shock.

“Kelli . . .” Sonny choked out as he gently wrapped his arms around her.

She lost it, bursting into tears. She’d been proud of the fact that she’d held it together while the police interviewed her, but she couldn’t bear the look on Sonny’s face. She felt she’d failed Gracie. “I’m so sorry, Sonny!” she sobbed.

“No, Kelli . . . No! You did great! I’m so proud of you.” He tried to reassure her.

She choked out. “He found my phone . . . if I had hidden it better, I could’ve stayed to help Gracie . . .”

“No! This is better. It’s better that he let you go.” He helped her over to a chair and sat
her down, kneeling beside her. He reached out to touch her face, but was afraid to. “Oh my, God . . . Kelli. Your face.”

Her eye had swollen completely shut and
the whole left side of her face was swollen and bruised. The swelling was getting worse, causing the butterfly bandages on the cut at her temple to strain and threaten to come loose. The blood from that cut had dried in her hair. She had blood caked at the side of her mouth, her lip split open. Mathias walked up behind Sonny quietly and studied Kelli’s face. He wrapped his arms around his middle and bent over at the waist, sure he was going to be sick. He’d flashed back to Gracie’s face after Rob had put her in the hospital and rage filled him. Now he’d done it again. Hurt this sweet, quiet, shy girl whose only sin had been to befriend Gracie.

Savannah rushed over with a bag of ice wrapped in a bar towel and a glass of wine. Kelli stopped sobbing when she saw it and a tiny glint of amusement flashed from h
er right eye. “Wine?” she asked.

Savannah looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry,
sweetie.” She wrung her hands. “I don’t know what to do. When I have a
really
bad day, I want wine. ‘Course I never had a day
this
bad.”

“Thanks, Savannah, but I don’t think I could keep that down,” Kelli said.

Meg walked over. “How about some tea, then?”

“That sounds better, thanks.” Kelli tried to smile, but it
looked more like a grimace.

Savannah looked panicked. She whispered to Meg, “I don’t think I have any tea
bags.”

Jenna and
Trish stood up. “We’ll find some. Don’t worry,” Trish said. They both headed for the door to look for a twenty-four hour grocery store that stocked herbal tea.

Kelli looked around the room and noticed that the entire SEAL team and their wives were there. Meg’s best friend, Tobi, was there too
, along with all the other members of Sugar Creek. Here it was, almost two o’clock in the morning, and they had all gathered to support Sonny and Gracie. She’d always been impressed with this “SEAL family,” but this was impressive beyond anything she’d seen from them before.

Charley came over to fuss over her and berated her into holding the ice over her face.
He waved Titus, the team’s medic, over to check her out too, but she brushed him aside, informing him she’d already seen the paramedics. She noticed he didn’t go far, though, hovering behind her and keeping a close eye on her—muttering something about traumatic brain injury manifesting into something called “talk and die” syndrome. She rolled her eyes—well, her eye.

She answered as many questions as she could, and the impatience came off the SEALs in waves. They were usually the ones who went in and solved these kind
s of problems. They knew they’d have been in and out of there long before now. Granted, they didn’t have the same protocols law enforcement had to live by. But still . . . they were chomping at the bit to go in and do the job themselves. She noticed the team’s CO and his wife were present too. She knew he cared about his guys, but she wondered how much of his being there was to sit on them so they wouldn’t suit up and go over there to do something stupid.

After awhile the front door swung open and two figures rushed in. It was one of the bartenders and the cute blonde waitress—
Stevie, Kelli thought they called her. The two of them rushed over to Sonny.

“We just talked to the police at their command center,”
Stevie said. “About that guy. He’s been in here at Savannah’s—pretty regularly in the past couple of weeks.”

All eyes turned toward her. Sonny seemed stunned. “You’ve seen him in here?”

“Yeah. I didn’t know who he was, of course. I just thought he was some really creepy guy. He always had his cap pulled over his face and he kept to himself. But he kept watching everybody. In a weird and creepy way . . . and—“

“Wait a minute,” Sonny interrupted him.
“What kind of ball cap?” He got a sinking feeling in his gut.

“It was a
dark green cap . . . with some kind of letter on the front.” She looked over at the bartender.

“It was an Oakland A’s cap,” Jase said.

Sonny turned his attention to Jase. “You saw him too?”

“Yeah . . . he was here Saturday night and
Stevie asked me to wait on him ‘cause he skeeved her out so bad.”

Sonny ran his
hands through his hair and huffed out a sigh. “Saturday night. I think I saw him too. He wasn’t a foot away from Gracie and me at one point. Jeez,” he said in disgust. He looked over Mathias. “You know what this means? He’s been
stalking
her.”

Mathias’ cell phone rang. He studied the display
and punched the connect button. “What the hell’s going on, Anderson?” he demanded. “That scumbag, Chilton is holding my sister at gunpoint when he should be
rotting in prison
!” He was screaming by the time he got to the end of that sentence, causing everyone in the room to flinch. He listened for a minute. “You’re telling me the parole board cut him loose and didn’t notify you? There’re laws, Anderson, and even if there weren’t, there’s human decency.” He listened awhile longer. “Fine. Let’s just trot on over to my sister’s place and apologize to her for the fact that some freakin’ paperwork got lost on
somebody’s desk
! I’m sure that will make her feel
so
much better.” He slammed his phone shut and growled.

He looked around and noticed he had everyone’s full attention. “The prosecutor from Gracie’s case.” He shook his head in disgust. “The damn parole board awarded him parole after serving a whopping
twenty-eight months of a seven-year sentence. Because, you see, our Robbie was such a good boy and model prisoner, and he hadn’t yet gotten around to beating some other woman senseless before he beat Gracie half to death—which makes him a first time offender.” He looked regretfully at Kelli and shook his head. “I’m so sorry, Kelli, but it looks like he’s not a one-time offender now—at your expense.” He dropped into a chair. “Apparently the notification papers were buried under a mountain of paperwork on the wrong administrative assistant’s desk, or Anderson would have given us some warning. My God!” He chuckled humorlessly. “You’ll be glad to know that Chilton’s parole officer—who, apparently didn’t even know he’d gone missing—is on his way down even as we speak.”

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Gracie watched as Rob became more and more unglued. He was rambling on and on about how they could get remarried as soon as possible, and move back to their happy little townhouse and pretend none of these unfortunate events had ever happened. She quickly realized that he wanted to talk
at
her more than talk
with
her.

She
was
learning a lot, though. And a lot of her suspicions were verified. He swore the affairs—plural—didn’t mean a thing. She’d suspected there had been more. He also kept going on and on about how he
needed
her. He never once apologized or offered her any reason that their reconciliation would benefit her in any way. She just stared at him and wondered why she never saw him for who he truly was. How could she have not seen through the mask in all of that time?

She was shocked that he knew so much about her life in San Diego. It was obvious he’d been stalking her for a few weeks. Her skin crawled at that realization.
He’d even been in the same room with her during her birthday/engagement party.

The hours crawled by, and she quit even trying to talk him down. He wasn’t interested in anything she had to say. She realized that had probably always been true. Their relationship had always been about him, she thought with disgust.

The more disgusted she got, the more determined she was to get out of there alive and throw herself into loving Sonny with everything she had. In the first couple of hours, she started questioning her judgment again. But after awhile she came to understand it had nothing to do with her. This was all Rob. He’d shown her what he wanted her to see for years. It was true she’d made it easy for him, but she refused to take the blame anymore. She should have been able to trust him. The fact that he’d killed that trust was on him.