Secrets (A Standalone Novel) (A Suspense Romance) (11 page)

I watched Chris leave my house and slowly make his way
toward the front door of his own house. He really did look like some sort of
professional police officer or military man. His eyes were focused and there
wasn’t anything that could distract him.

He had a gun drawn and pointed at his house in a
defensive position. I had never seen him look so serious since we met. It was
scary and invigorating all at the same time.

I thought that I should go back to the closet but then
I figured it would probably be just as safe to look out my window. Really if
someone wanted to kidnap me they would eventually find me in the closet
anyways.

I watched intently as Chris made his way around the
outside of his house. He would look in the windows when he thought he could see
something and then he would move around to the next window.

Most of the fight movies and other crime dramas that I
watched would have already had the hero blowing the doors up and just going
inside to see what was going on. I was waiting for something exciting to
happen, but Chris just kept looking around the exterior of the house.

He must have seen something when he looked through his
front window though, because he kicked down the front door very quickly. I
opened my window to see if I could hear what was going on and all I could hear
was a faint commotion.

But soon I heard gunshots ringing out throughout his
house and I ran down to the front door. I didn’t know what I would be able to
do and I certainly wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into, but I couldn’t
let something bad happen to Chris.

As I ran out of my house and toward Chris’ house a
black SUV pulled up. A man that I had seen at the airport with Chris a few days
before came over to me.

“Get back in the house. Lock the doors and don’t come
back out.”

I didn’t question him as he was carrying what looked
like a very large semi-automatic gun. I turned around and went straight back
into the house. I did feel a sense of relief that someone else was there and
that they would help Chris.

The thought came to me that the people in his house
must really want something bad if they kept coming back to his house to look
for it. I wondered what it was that they were looking for. Certainly it would
have to be worth a lot of money or important in some other way. Perhaps they
just wanted Chris and that was why they kept coming back.

I locked my door behind me and pushed a few things in
front of it. Then I went around the house and made sure all the other easy
entrances were locked and had a few things pushed in front of the doors. I went
back to the front window to see if I could figure out what was going on and
just then I heard a rain of shots being fired.

It sounded like one shot went on by itself and then
several shots went off right after that. I estimated that it was probably more
than one gun going off during the event because the sounds were closer
together. My heart sank as I watched the house for a clue as to what was going
on. But I just couldn’t take it. I finally opened my door and walked slowly
over to Chris’ house. I could feel the eyes on me, but I wasn’t sure if they
were good guy eyes or bad guy eyes.

I took a deep breath and moved closer and closer.

There was no more gun fire going on, and one of the
people that Chris had called came bursting out of the house and running toward
their SUV. I could hear him on his cell phone and that was what scared me to
death.

“Charlie tango
niner
, we
have an officer down. Unmarked only, but send assistance now.”

I stood still by the rock garden in front of Chris’
house and tried to look in the window to see if I could figure out what was
going on. The man went back into the house with a first aid kit and I could
hear a man grunting. I tried to just look through the window but I couldn’t see
anything. Instead, I ended up going to the front door. I didn’t know what was
going on, but I did know the man I was starting to have feelings for was in
that house.

There wasn’t anyone guarding the front door so I took
a step inside the living room of Chris’ house. What I saw was worse than any
television show or crime drama. I instantly saw why there was no need for
anyone to be guarding the front door.

There were two men lying on the ground who had been
shot. One of them had his face looking upward and the other had his face down
to the carpet. Blood was pooling up around the men and I felt like I was going
to pass out after seeing it. No one was in the living room and instead seemed
to be going back to another room, the second bedroom in the house. It was the
room I thought Chris had been keeping those ten large duffle bags in.

Another SUV pulled up in front of the house and two
men dressed in khakis came walking up to the front door.

“Where is he?”

I pointed to the back room. I wasn’t sure who the
person was that he was talking about but I was pretty confident he was in the
back room where all these other guys kept going.

I hadn’t seen Chris in all the men coming and going
from the back room and I was starting to get very worried. I needed to make my
way back to that room to see what was going on, but by this point there were
men standing in the hall so I certainly wasn’t going to be able to get past
them.

For the time being I stayed in the living room and
tried to look at the walls instead of down at the two dead men on the ground.
It was hard not to look at those men and I was sure that I would have the
memory of their faces burned into my brain for a very long time.

“Get him to the truck now!” I heard a man yell as the
other men moved out of the hallway. I was now trapped in the living room and
tried to move into the kitchen so I could be out of the way. My heart fluttered
with anxiety and fear as I waited for someone to be brought out of the back
room.

In my head I thought that Chris could certainly be one
of the med helping out in the situation. Just because he involved in a shootout
didn’t mean that Chris wouldn’t be perfectly fine. In fact, I was probably
being way too over dramatic and Chris was going to walk out of the back room
any minute. Then I saw him. The most horrible sight I could have imagined.

Chris was being carried by two of the men dressed in
black. Chris was wearing a blue t-shirt and cargo shorts and he looked so out
of place when next to the other men. He was covered in blood and looked like he
couldn’t even hold his head up and was about to pass out.

“Chris, are you ok?” I said as I tried to talk to him.

He didn’t respond.

“Chris! Chris!” I screamed.

The men continued to carry him out to the SUV and laid
him in the back seat.

“I’m coming with
you,
”
I said as I started to climb into the vehicle.

It was the first time any of the men addressed me.

“No, you can’t. We are taking him to the hospital.
Someone will let you know an update as soon as we know something.”

They closed the door and took off, leaving me standing
there in the middle of the street. I could see the two other men working
inside, but I didn’t want to go back in there and see the dead bodies on the
ground. I looked around the neighborhood and it dawned on me how isolated I
truly was living in Bain. There wasn’t anyone home during the daytime and many
people didn’t even come home
until
the
weekends. All the commotion that had just gone on and no one was even around to
call the police and report gunshots being fired.

My legs started to feel weak and I made my way over to
the stairs in front of my house. The adrenaline made my body shake and I
started to feel like throwing up. My hands vibrated with fear and I could feel
a cold sweat coming over my body.

I leaned over and put my head in my hands as I tried
desperately not to throw up. I hated the feeling of vomiting and would do
everything in my power not to give in to
the
nausea.

“Are you alright?” One of the men came over from
Chris’ house and stood in front of me.

“I’m not sure.”

“If you’ll let me, I’d like to help you inside.”

He seemed like a nice guy and I had seen him with
Chris at the airport before. I didn’t exactly respond, but I did try to stand
up and he reached his arm out and helped to stabilize me.

“I’m Katelyn,” I said as we walked into my house.

“I know. I’m Gunner.”

I smiled at him as he helped me over to the couch. He
put a couple pillows on one side of the couch and I moved over to lie down. He
disappeared into the kitchen and was back very quickly with some water and a
few saltine crackers.

“Thanks.”

My hands were shaking as I tried to drink the water,
so Gunner took the cup from me and held it while I drank. It was a very kind
thing to do. He was a very handsome man, not quite as handsome as Chris, but
still very close. Gunner had more of a baby face and looked to be close to my
age. He didn’t seem old enough to be doing whatever it was that Chris was
doing.

“You don’t look too well. Is there anything else I can
get for you?”

“I’ll be alright. I’d really like to know how Chris is
as soon as you know something though. He did not look very good.”

“Oh it looked like the bullet went straight through
the shoulder; he should be fine as long as they get the bleeding stopped.”

Gunner seemed like a pretty laid back guy to be in
whatever this business was. Although, Chris also was pretty laid back and was
shot in a hospital right now. Perhaps being laid back in their business wasn’t
the best personality trait.
 

His light brown hair was shaved tight on the side of
his head with some wavy length on the top. I found it difficult to take him
serious with the two large dimples on either side of his perfect smile. Gunner
seemed like a pretty intense guy, his eyes looked at me with a powerful desire.
But he stayed away from showing any of that desire. It dawned on me that Gunner
had said he knew who I was. I wondered how much Chris had told the guys about
me.

“You seem like you’ve seen plenty of
shootings,
” I said with a little bit of a
laugh.

Gunner didn’t look like he was going to respond at
first. Then, perhaps because he knew I was friends with Chris, Gunner told me a
little more than I could have imagined.

“Yes, I have seen some pretty horrible stuff. Saw a
friend get his neck cut once. Many of us have had other injuries like gunshots
or being stabbed or something like that.” Gunner said.

“Why do you do it? I mean it’s obviously a dangerous
job. Why keep putting yourself in the middle of things?” I wanted to know. Did
it pay really well? Did this job help with the ladies? Why would any man choose
a job where he could see his friends murdered?

“We are saving people. You can’t beat knowing that you
are taking these bad guys off the street and they won’t have anyone to lead
their cause.”

Their cause? I wondered who these people are that they
are taking them off the streets. It sounded like Chris and his friends worked
as bounty hunters or something like that. Maybe that was why they could afford
to travel on a private jet instead of like normal people. Or maybe they had
some big person who financed their operation and paid for
things
. I wasn’t going to keep trying to get
information out of Gunner though; he needed to get back to cleaning up the
crime scene over at Chris’ house.

“What are you guys going to do with those two dead
guys?”

Gunner just smiled. It was one of those smiles that
said to me, I didn’t want to know the answer to that question.

“I’m going to get back. You alright?”

“Yes, I’ll be alright. Thank you.”

Gunner let himself out of the house and I got up to
look at him out the window. He was much more my type of guy than Chris was. His
age and appearance fit more with the type of guy I found attractive. But that
was because Chris was beyond the type of guy I thought I could ever date. I
never, in a million years, would have thought a guy like Chris would be with a
girl like me.

Now I was sitting and shaking while I worried about
him. I had no idea where he was taken or which hospital. I didn’t even know his
last name! It was going to be really hard to get any sort of update on his
health.

Hopefully
Gunner would come back and give me the news as soon as they figured out what
was going on. I also desperately hoped that Gunner was right and the bullet
went through Chris’ shoulder without having any permanent damage.

I fell asleep out of exhaustion and didn’t wake up
until the middle of the night. I had a nightmare and was sweating when I sat up
straight. I looked around the room and could feel my heart beating out of my
chest. Beads of sweat filled my brow and I needed to check to make sure all the
doors were locked.

I got up and went to the front door which had been
left unlocked from when Gunner had left earlier in the day. My anxiety got
instantly worse. Slowly I walked from room to room, flipping the lights on and
then searching the room before moving onto the next. My body could not relax
until I had searched every corner of the house and was assured that there were
no intruders.

I’m not sure what I expected to do if I had found an
intruder, but surely I would have thought of something. When I sat back down on
the couch a flood of emotions filled me. I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted to
find out where Chris was so I could go see him. It was too late to go back over
to Chris’ house and I’m not sure I wanted to be back over there at all. Knowing
that two dead bodies had been on the floor in the living room was enough to
make me never want to go to Chris’ house ever.

The television offered a little distraction, but I
just couldn’t seem to get my mind around everything that was going on. I use to
be a lonely woman hiding away in my family’s home and grieving the loss of my
one true love. Now I sat staring at the television and trying to get over
seeing three men shot, one of whom I was starting to have feelings for.

I wanted to reach out to Rebecca and tell her
everything that was going on, but I didn’t know if Chris would like that. His
job seemed pretty secretive and I didn’t want to put him at risk by telling
people what I thought he did. In fact, I didn’t really know at all what he did
for work, so I should probably wait until I talked to him about it anyway.

Suddenly my heart started to race as I heard a noise
coming from behind my house. It dawned on me that those men who had come to
Chris’ house had been there to murder or hurt him. Now here I was sitting there
without any protection at all. What if they had come back to finish Chris off?
What if they knew I was involved now?

My body shook again with fear.

I tried to take a deep
breath,
but my lungs just couldn’t fill up.
 
I
closed
my eyes, and I tried again to get a full
breath, but it would not come. I heard a knock at the back door and almost
screamed. Surely no one would be coming over to my house at this hour of the
night; it was almost four o’clock in the morning.

I didn’t want to go to the back door. I didn’t want to
see who it was because then they would be able to see who I was. I breathed in
as deep of a breath as I could gather and I slowly walked toward the kitchen.

I peeked around the corner and I could see a male
figure standing on my back porch. Because I had all the lights on in the house,
it was difficult to see who was standing there. But since he wasn’t trying to
break in or anything like that, I decided to move closer.

“Chris!” I screamed as I realized it was him.

I moved quickly to unlock the door and was about to
fling my arms around him when I realized he had his arm in a sling.

“
Hey,
babe,” he
said with a wink.

“Don’t hey babe me! I have been going crazy. Where
were you? Are you alright? Who were those men? Why were they after you?”

Chris held his finger up to his mouth in a clue for me
to be quiet. Then he took a step into my kitchen and shut the door behind him.
His ocean blue eyes looked down at me and his lips moved to touch mine. All my
worry and concern was vanishing and I felt his passion as our tongues moved in
time with each other. My lip quivered and he calmed it with his touch.

I worried about where to put my hands, as I didn’t
want to hurt him or his shoulder, so I wrapped them around his waist. It felt
so good to be next to Chris and feeling him on my body. It felt so good to know
that he was safe and there was nothing that could take him away from me, at
least nothing there in that moment.

My body finally relaxed from the fear of the day and
melted into the comfort of Chris. His tall frame kept me safe as his muscular
body would surely keep the bad guys away from me. This was the perfect ending
to a horrible day. Now I just had to sit him down and get him to tell me about
what was going on.

My safety and the safety of my friends in town was very
important and I didn’t want this group of bad guys getting in anyone’s way. I
didn’t want them coming back to town to hurt me or the people I love.