Never Say Never, Part Four (Second Chance Contemporary Romance, Book 4) (9 page)

Her phone tinkled to life and her heart leapt in spite of her thoughts. She still wanted to hear from him.
 

“Chase?”
She answered without checking the number.
 

Hysterical sobs answered her.
 

“Hello? Who is this?”
 

“He took them,”
Amanda screamed, “He took the kids.”
 

Emily’s heart went cold. “What?!”
 

“He beat me and he said he’s taking them. I can’t go anywhere, I can barely move, but he’s got them, Emily, he’s got them.”
 

“No,”
she whispered back, jumping up. “Where? Where’s he taking them?”
She rushed to the door and grabbed her bag. Fear was overcome by the burning rage, but it didn’t help. The emotions controlled her and she shook to her heels.
 

“I don’t know. I don’t know. He took them! He took them!”
Amanda continued shrieking it over and over again. It was too much for Emily to handle. She hung up and stepped towards the door, then towards the couch, then the door again.
 

What the fuck could she do? Where had the bastard taken her children?
 

Emily was overcome with the fury and need to harm the man who’d harmed her.
 

She fell to her knees and yelled until she didn’t have breath in her lungs. She should have acted sooner. She should’ve risked Chase –
she’d lost him anyway –
and had Brian arrested when she’d had the chance.
 

Now it was too late, and her kids were at stake. This was her fault. She was the problem, she’d destroyed everything, she’d…

The low hum of music met her ears, drifting from the parking lot outside. She froze. It was Latin music, the same kind they’d played in the restaurant that night, years ago, where she’d first realized her feelings for Chase. Where she’d finally let him in.
 

Clarity.
 

Calmness flowed through her, flooding the anger out and bringing logical thought. The first she’d had in what seemed like years.
 

The kids. The kids were all that mattered in this, and she had to get them back. She had to get them out of harm’s way.
 

Emily scuffled to her feet, pulling herself up by the table beside the door. How? How could she find out where he’d taken them? What would she do if she was Brian Ross?
 

Emily wracked her brain, but nothing presented itself.
 

“Come on,”
she whispered, then lifted her phone to stare at the screen, willing herself into a stroke of genius.
 

It came like a lightning strike instead.
 

She’d given Jared the phone in case they needed her. Emily dialed the number and pressed the phone to her ear.
 

It rang five times, then there was a click and a scratching noise.
 

“Hey there, bitch,”
Brian sang into the phone. The reception was bad, and the hum of the engine in the background told her what she needed to know.
 

“Where the fuck are you?”
 

“Now, is that anyway to greet your long lost husband?”
 

“Have I called the past? You’re my ex-husband. Where are they, Brian?”
 

“They’re where they should be, with me.”
The soft whimper of tears in the background swelled to a crescendo and Brian pulled the phone away for a second. “Shut the fuck up, Rebecca. Shut up.”
 

“Don’t talk to them like that.”
Emily spoke up, but kept her tone even. She wouldn’t let the panic or rage back in. It had gained her nothing but confusion and landed her in this position in the first place.
 

“They’re mine, I’ll talk to them however I want.”
 

“Let me speak to them.”
 

“You don’t need to speak to them, they don’t need you.”
 

“Mommy!”
Jared screamed, and Emily’s pulse raced. Her mind was clear, but the fear had set in again, taking hold as surely as a virus. She ousted it and took slow breaths in and out.
 

“You’d better shut up or I’ll make you, boy,”
Brian said.
 

“You harm a hair on their heads and I will equalize you, Ross. Do you understand me?”
Emily delivered it with crisp precision, and her ex-husband, the fucking psychopath, chuckled at her in return.
 

“You don’t have the balls, McDonald. You don’t have the guts to come out and do what needs to be done. The kids are mine, they’ll be mine for eternity.”
 

That didn’t sound good.
 

“Eternity?”
 

“There’s nothing more final than death.”
 

Becci screamed in terror and Jared joined her. “Help us, mommy, help us, please.”
 

“Listen to me, you bastard, you let those kids go right now.”
 

“Or what?”
Brian replied, laughing again, then pausing to yell at the children in the back. There was a crackle of bad reception and Emily’s heart stood still. She couldn’t afford to lose this line now.
 

Brian had gone mad. All that narcissism had spilled over into insanity. He wanted to harm her babies. Fuck that.
 

“Or I’ll track you down and make you let them go.”
 

“You think I’m scared of you, little girl? Ha! Ha! HA!”
He shouted the mirth at her, and the children pleaded for her again.
 

“I think you should be, dipshit, ‘cos once I find you, I’ll make you regret ever meeting me.”
 

“Oh really? That fits my plans just fine. Let’s have us a little family reunion, my darling.”
 

The collapse of public opinion had changed him. He’d lost everything and now he wanted to destroy her too.
 

“Where are you?”
Emily gripped her car keys, and placed one hand on the door handle. She needed a clue, a hint, an address, anything. “Where are you going?”
 

“To where it began.”
 

The line went dead.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

This was it. The place where it began.
 

The exact spot where Chase’s parents had died on the freeway. There were two small white crosses in the grass alongside the road, with fresh wreaths strung around them.
 

Brian’s Audi was parked ahead, and the two figures in the back bobbed up and down, shifting from one side of the car to the other.
 

The man himself stood beside the silver coffin, smoking a cigar. He grinned at her, eyes wide as they could go, and she parked her car behind his and gripped the wheel.
 

Her lawyer had brought her year after she’d posted bail, to see if she could remember anything about the crash. The most they’d gotten out of the experience was the vague remembrance of metal crunching on metal.
 

Emily got out of her car and slammed the door behind her, but didn’t walk towards her ex-husband.
 

“I’m glad you came, girly.”
Brian tapped the ash of his cigar onto the top of the Audi.
 

“Give me my children,”
she answered, shaking in the brisk evening air. The sun was a sliver on the horizon, they were moments from the purple haze of twilight.
 

“Emily, Emily, Emily, don’t you know the magic word?”
 

“Please,”
she replied, because she didn’t have time for ego with Jared and Becci at stake. She’d do anything to get them back safely. “Let them out of the car and you can go free. No one will find out about you taking them. You can drive and disappear and be free for the rest of your life.”
 

She’d do that much for them. She’d forgo her revenge and gratification, so they could live; that was how it was meant to be.
 

“It’s interesting you say that,”
said Brian, scratching his stubbly chin, “because I will never be free again. You destroyed that when you went to authorities and told them about my deal with Chase.”
He puffed on the horrid brown Cuban again. “I have to admit, I was impressed by that in spite of my anger. Quite a cunning move from you, bitch.”
 

Telling him she hadn’t done it was pointless.
 

“Brian, give me the kids, this has gone on long enough. They’re absolutely terrified.”
 

Becci pressed her nose up against the glass of the back window, crying hard. “Mommy!”
 

“Shut the fuck up,”
Brian snapped and smashed the front window with his fist. Blood dripped from his knuckles, and the screams inside the car redoubled.
 

“Calm down, Brian, don’t do anything you’ll regret.”
 

“Of course not,”
he said, laughing so hard his body shook. “I’d never do anything I’d regret.”
He reached through the space where the window had been and brought a canister, then unscrewed it and tossed its contents onto the bonnet of the car.
 

Petrol fumes met her nose.
 

“No,”
she whispered. “No, you’re not going to do this. Step away from the car, right now.”
Emily kept her tone as calm as she could manage, but he didn’t take heed. A low panic had built to a scream in her mind.
 

He wanted to kill them. He wanted to burn them alive.
 

“Mommy, please help us.”
 

“Open the back door, get out,”
she yelled back at Jared.
 

“Child lock’s on.”
Brian observed with a grin. “I covered my bases on this one. I should’ve done the same on the night I killed those two old fogies in their car. Dumb fucks never saw me coming.”
 

“Let the children go and I won’t tell anyone about that.”
 

“What does it matter, Emily? Everyone already knows about the debt, my public profile has been thrown into disarray. You’ve destroyed me already and that’s fine, because now I’m going to destroy you.”
He brought out a lighter and tossed his cigar butt aside. It landed on the grass nearby, smoking.
 

The sun fell past the edge of the world, that last shimmer of orange light disappearing. Reality was colored purple.
 

“Don’t do it, please,”
she said, stepping forward, kicking off her heels so she could run at him when the time was right.

“You wanted this all along.”
He moved the lighter through the air, burning a trail with flame which would remain in her memory for eternity.
 

He bent sideways and lit the petrol. Flames swept up the front of the car, and the kids shrieked and battered the doors and windows.
 

Emily sprinted towards Brian.
 

He drew a gun from the back of his pants and pointed it at her. “Stop right there.”
 

But she couldn’t do that. She wouldn’t let him destroy her children. It was over.
 

Emily charged forward and a guttural roar erupted from her lips, travelling from the depths of her soul, a summary of the pain he’d inflicted on her life.
 

She was moments from reaching him. She streaked past the back window of the car, the heat from the flames was unbearable.
 

Bang!
 

Agony sprouted in her left shoulder and she dropped to the ground, clutching at it. “Fuck,”
she whispered, and tried rolling away, but it was fruitless.
 

The pain was too much and she groaned.
 

“Stupid woman. You’ve never thought more than two steps ahead.”
Brian’s shoes appeared in her gaze.
 

The children’s screams intensified, and the sharp scent of burning petrol clogged the air. She coughed feebly and struggled against the injury to regain control of her senses.
 

He stood above her, and she raised her head to glare up at him. Brian pointed the gun at the center of her forehead and she ducked down. The kids. If they saw him shoot her in the head, there’d be brain splatter.