Baby Daddy (27 page)

I washed my hands, picked up the margarita glass and left the bathroom.

As I returned to the kitchen, I looked around and gasped.  Lying on the floor, as still as corpses, were the crumpled bodies of Dallas, Tulsa, Liberty, Reno, Harlan and Christopher.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Their eyes
were wide open and I could see no sign that their chests were moving.

“Oh my God
!”  I dropped to the floor and grabbed Christopher’s face.  His eyes were lifeless and unblinking, but when I leaned down, I could feel the soft whisper of his breath on my cheek.  My fingers were shaking as I tried to find a pulse.  It was weak and way too fast.  But he was alive.  At least for now.  What could have happened?

“There you are…
”  An eerie voice spoke from behind me.  I whirled around and jumped to my feet.  Terry stood in the doorway.  “I thought there was one more of you little bastards.”

“What did you do?”
I screamed.

“I told you my
margaritas were special, didn’t I?”

“What did you put in them
?” I demanded to know.  “Roofies?”

“Roofies?  Oh my
, no…far too barbaric…and that’s so 90’s.  I prefer what some people call Special K…personally I like the term Black Hole.  You know when a star implodes and not even light can escape.”

“You drugged them?”

“They just chugged it down.”  He laughed.  “Vets use it to put horses to sleep.  Looks like it works pretty good on bastards, too.”

I
reached for my cell phone.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he snarled.

“I’m calling 911,” I told him as I started to dial.  “We need medical help.”

He kicked my phone out of my hands and it skittered across the floor until it was stopped by the display shelves that divided the kitchen from the breakfast area.  “Nah, I think not.  Not yet anyway.”

I stood and faced him, trying to change his mind.  “I know what you want, but I won’t tell anyone.  I promise.  Just take the music sheets and go…,” I pleaded.

Terry
pulled a pistol out from his back waistband and pointed it at me.  “Your stupid brothers and sisters, Christopher and my old friend Harlan…they’re not dead.  See?  They know exactly what’s happening to them and with us.  They’re just paralyzed.  Normally, they would wake up and maybe have a little headache and a few holes in their memories…sort of like that black hole I was talking about.”  He laughed.  “Of course, after this awful kitchen fire burns their bodies to a crisp, they probably won’t be okay.”

“Let me call an ambulance…please!”  I was starting to panic.  I could see the insanity in his eyes.  He was a desperate man with nothing to lose…and without us surviving, no witnesses.

He looked at his watch.  “You should be going down any minute, girlie.  I guess it’s taking longer for you because you’re so tall…and hot.  Too bad about that.  I wish I had time to fuck Roger’s daughter.  Ha…that’d piss him off!”

I felt the bile rise in my throat.  He was expecting me to fall down.  If he thought I was weakened, maybe he would drop his guard.  I staggered a little and leaned against the display
shelves with what I hoped was convincing symptoms.

“Did you bomb the office?” I asked, trying to make my voice sound shaky.  It wasn’t such a stretch because I honestly felt faint, but not from the drugs.

“That’s a funny story,” he laughed again.  “I was in the Bahamas, getting wasted in the bar and losing a shitload of money on the Cowboys when this guy next to me tells me he’s from Austin.  We got to talking, and sure enough, Roger had screwed him over, too.  He’d just gotten out of jail and had slipped over to the Bahamas for some R&R.”

“Ralph Tanner?” I guessed.

“Bingo.  You’d make a pretty good P.I…if you would have lived longer.”  Terry smirked.  “Well, ol’ Ralph and I hatched a plan to blow up that damn warehouse and destroy all of Roger’s documents…just in case the old fool had kept those songs he’d scribbled down.  Stupid fuck, I should have known he would screw it up.”

“Those songs are in one of the boxes,” I suggested.  “You should go get them, then no one could prove you hadn’t written them.”

“I’ll get them before I leave.”  He motioned with the gun from me to the floor.  “Why don’t you stop fighting it and just lay down next to your family?  I need to get this barbecue started.”

Thoughts swirled frantically through my brain.  If he didn’t have a gun, I would have tried to overpower him.  I was taller, stronger and twenty years younger.  But the gun was a powerful equalizer.

I couldn’t go down without some sort of fight.  I wasn’t going to be a victim to Terry or Brandon or anyone ever again.  I thought about the baby and whispered a silent apology to it for not being able to give it life.

“Well?”
he asked impatiently.

I tried to fa
in the effects of the drugs I hadn’t taken. I’d never seen anyone on Special K before, so I wasn’t sure if they staggered around or just fell like a rock.

Terry was so certain of my fate that he swept all the bottles of alcohol off the island and onto the floor.  The liquid splattered everywhere, including onto the people on the floor.  Terry took a lighter out of his pocket
and flipped it open.  I knew I had to do something…quickly.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the reflection of
several softball-sized crystal orbs of the earth displayed on the shelf.

Thank
you, Roger…Dad.

I reached out like I was trying to catch myself before I fell.
Moving with a swiftness that caught him by surprise, I grabbed the crystal globe off its stand.  For the first time tonight I had the advantage.

He didn’t know that I was pregnant and hadn’t taken a drink, so I was wide awake and really pissed.

He didn’t know that I had the state record number of pick offs at first base in high school and led the NCAA this year.

He didn’t know that I could pitch a softball at 75 miles per hour and hit a dragonfly o
n a fence.  Thanks, Daddy Mike for that.

Unlike the old saying…what
Terry didn’t know
would
hurt him.

I spun and
pitched the three-and-a-half-inch crystal globe at full velocity and struck Terry between the eyes.
Strike!
Crystal exploded in a shower of glass and blood spurted from the bridge of his shattered nose all over the island.  His eyes bulged out in disbelief as he simultaneously dropped the lighter and the gun.  The lighter landed in a pool of alcohol and flashed into flames as Terry fell forward, slamming his head on the granite countertop before falling backward to the floor.

I
watched as the flames licked along the trails of alcohol and I ran to the cabinet next to the stove and grabbed the fire extinguisher I had seen there.  I pulled the pin from the handle, positioned myself between my family and the flames and started shooting a stream of white powder on the fire.

When I was satisfied that the fire was out, I picked up the gun, p
icked my cell phone off the floor and dialed 911.

“Yes,
” I gasped as soon as the operator answered.  “I need ambulances for six people who have been drugged at…”

“
You fucking bitch!”  Terry yelled as his head popped up above the island’s top like a crazed whack-a-mole.

I
backed up to the display shelf and set my cell phone down on it behind my back.  I then pointed the gun at Terry and held it with both hands, trying to keep it steady.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked.

“Because Roger ruined my life.  He had it all…the talent, the looks, the women.  When he broke up the band, we couldn’t survive without him.”

“So you stole Roger’s songs because you aren’t talented enough to write your own?”  I knew I was goading him, but I wanted to know the truth.

Terry shrugged.  “I look at it like they were mine.  I was part of the band when he wrote them.  But he was always stoned or drunk and didn’t even remember writing them.”  Terry threw up his hands in dismay.  “Fuck, it all came to him so easily.  Beautiful music…”  He shook his head.  “He’d play them for us, but we never got around to recording them.  I figured after all these years, he wouldn’t even recognize them.”

“But he did, didn’t he?”

“Hell, yeah.  I never thought that fucking song would get so much airplay.  He tracked me down and demanded that I correct the registration …but I couldn’t.  It would have ruined me in the business.”  He pressed his hand against his forehead, trying to stop the flow of blood that was still pouring into his eyes.

“So he knew about it…and the Grammy?”

“Fuck, yeah.  He’d always wanted a Grammy.”  Terry’s smile was evil and terrifying.  “Kinda poetic justice, don’t you think?”

“So you set up a meeting at that bar, and then you killed him?”

“It solved my problem.”

“And you made it look like he overdosed?”

“Like taking candy from a baby…or rather like injecting drugs into a former junkie.  A little Special K in his iced tea.  Our table was right by the bathroom, not accidentally of course, and I was able to get him to a stall.  I injected a triple load of heroin into him and left the paraphernalia behind.  No one questioned it.”  He shrugged with a complete lack of remorse.  “I knew they wouldn’t.”

“And you stole his key fob,” I accused.

“Yeah, nice touch, huh?  Ralph’s guy was able to drop the bomb off without anyone suspecting it.  We thought it would have time to burn everything in the warehouse, but you little shits were there.”

“So you came here tonight to Scandals on Lake Travis to kill us, too.”

“I had to.  You kids don’t deserve all this.”

“What about Harlan?  He was your friend.”

“Yeah, well Harlan was feeling guilty about never getting around to registering Roger’s songs like he was supposed to, and he wanted to come clean.  I can’t let him do that.
  I’m in the middle of a fucking comeback.”

He gave me one of his slimy smiles and while steadying himself on the bar, he started walking toward me, with his hand held out.  “Give me the gun, bitch.  Y
ou really don’t want to shoot me…do you?”

“I don’t
, but you drugged my family, were going to shoot me and burn the house down.”

He took another step closer.
  “Collateral damage.  I’ll write a song about you.”

“You can’t write a note to the mailman, much less a song,” I scoffed.  “That’s why you had to steal Roger’s.”

“Yeah, well, that secret will die with you.  It’s time for you to shut up and give me the gun.”

“S
tay back or I
will
shoot you!” I promised, hoping he wasn’t noticing how the gun was shaking in my hands.

“No you won’t…you’re Roger
Elliott’s kid.  He had no balls…and neither do you.”  He took one more step.  Now he was less than five feet away.

“Did
Roger suffer when you killed him, Terry?  Was it fun to watch him die?”

Terry
continued his slow move along the island to reach me.  He stopped for a moment and laughed.  He looked like something out of a horror movie with his flesh split open and blood dripping off his face and onto his shirt.  “Roger?  Suffer?  No way.  His heart was still pumping until the heroin kicked in…a thing of beauty.  He knew he was being killed by an old nemesis and he could do nothing to save himself.  He went out higher than a kite…until his heart exploded.”

He took another step, and
I automatically stepped backward, but my foot snagged on someone’s leg.  For a second I lost my balance and Terry took advantage of that distraction and launched himself at me, trying to grab his gun.

I
reacted automatically.  My finger tightened on the trigger.  The gun fired and jerked in my hand.  As if in slow motion, the bullet blasted out and buried itself in Terry’s groin.

He let out a loud blood-
curdling scream, so agonized that I almost wished I had killed him.  But that feeling quickly passed. He curled up on the floor, grabbing whatever was left of his package.  “Help me!”

I glanced down at the cellphone and
saw I was still connected.  I picked it up and held it to my ear while keeping a close eye on Terry.  I had seen too many horror movies where the villain seemed to be down, but somehow managed to get back up and kill the stupid chick who had turned her back to him.  I was not a stupid chick.

“Miss?
Miss? Are you okay?” the 911 operator was shouting.  “I’ve dispatched the ambulances.  Can you hear me?”

“
Yes, I’m fine.  Did you hear all that?” I asked.

“It came through loud and clear,” she answered.  “Did someone get shot?”

“He tried to take the gun away…”

“Where is he hit?”

“I’m not sure, but I think it was his nuts.  There’s a lot of blood.  Now we need seven ambulances…please tell them hurry…my family and friends still aren’t moving.”

Terry had exhausted himself with all his flailing around and screaming.  “You bitch, you fucking bitch!”

“
Look at the bright side.  Now you have something to write a song about,” I told him coldly.  “You ain’t got no balls either.”