Blindsided (17 page)

“Her? Who are you talking about? Who wants me dead? What are you trying to fix?” The back kitchen door slammed, and Roni whipped around. A face with mangled hatred stared at her from behind a gun’s black barrel. It had Roni wishing it was Guerra standing there. He’d never looked at her with such revulsion. Now she knew this was never about business.

This was personal.

EIGHTEEN

“H
ow are you still alive? I saw that car explode!” The words shook from Tanya Finlay’s snarled lips. “I should have put a bullet in you a year ago and skipped this whole setup. I should’ve known not to depend on others for
anything
!”

Roni jerked back in her chair as far as she could lean. The chair screamed for her, while her mind raced with what this all meant. Her fingers curled around her seat to keep her steady. She could show no fear.

“You’re the one who wants me dead?” she said slowly. To Jared, she said, “And you knew. Did you ever love me, or was it always just a ploy to get ahead?”

Jared scoffed. “Oh, please, you never loved me. You loved that you made me a success. You were already pulling away from the relationship before Miami. I knew the breakup was coming. I had to have something over you.”

“That’s not true. I wanted to see the man Cora told me was inside of you. I trusted her when she said you were a man of worth.”

“Worth!” Tanya snarled. “Look around you. Does it look like we have two pennies to rub together? We have
nothing
. All you had to do was say, ‘I do.’ Then we would finally have our portion. We would have even more than Cora, finally.”

“So, I wasn’t your first sale, then,” Roni shot back. “You sold your son first.”

Confirmation flickered on Jared’s face, but he said, “She only did what she thought was best for me.”

“Best for you? Maddie’s mom thought she was doing what was best for her, too. A lie whispered. Appearances made. People believe what they want to. Even if the reality is it will bring more strife to their loved one. A life of being a slave to your decisions and of having no identity anymore. That’s not what’s best for you.”

“Stop it!” Tanya screamed and waved her gun, reminding Roni she came to use it.

“You’re going to be caught, Tanya. Guerra and his men will squawk when they’re arrested. The authorities will find you. They’ll know you orchestrated everything, and they’ll come get you. That’s the truth. It’s all over now.”

“We’ll be long gone before they do.”

“You won’t get far with your two pennies,” Roni pointed out.

Tanya laughed, a sick maniacal sound. “Why do you think I took Cora’s offer to hide in your home?” Tanya lifted a small but hefty duffel bag. “I knew you had an emergency stash in that safe room of yours. Your emergency stash is more money than I’ve seen in my whole life. Once I was inside, it was easy to get what I came for...and have a little fun with you.”

The pictures.

Roni didn’t respond. She refused to give the woman the time of day. “Cora wouldn’t have let you walk out with my money,” she said.

Tanya feigned a look around the room. “Well, now, you don’t see Cora, do you?”

Roni’s lungs inhaled and squeezed tight. “What did you do to her? Your
sister
?”

“My sister wore out her purpose. She stopped giving me anything but her
prayers
.” The word was clearly distasteful to Tanya’s lips, but to Roni it opened her lungs with peace.

“I wish I realized sooner that her prayers were the best thing she ever did for me. That goes the same for you, Tanya. Please tell me you didn’t kill her.”

“I’m done talking. You should have been dead the night you went out to the track. Guerra knew you would be coming. Jared arranged for him to use the garage as a chop shop, and I waited until you found out. Only, to the public eye, it would look like you arranged it and got caught up in a world of crime. Racing queen burns herself this time, and dies.”

Dies
.

Roni knew she would have died immediately that night at the garage by Guerra’s hands if not for Ethan stepping in and saving her. He may have believed her to be guilty of all the crimes Jared set her up to take the fall for, but the undercover FBI agent sent to take her in put his life on the line for her that night.

And every moment since.

Somehow Ethan Gunn had melted her plastic exterior with the slow burn of his warmth, and she never even realized love could do that.

Love.

All this time, Ethan was loving her. Did he know that’s what his actions were? In these final moments of life, she held on to the belief that he did love her. She only wished she could have told him she loved him, too.

A gun clicked, and Roni snapped to attention, raising her chin in defiance.

Only this gun was Jared’s, and he wasn’t aiming it at her. Jared pointed his gun at his mother.

“This ends here, Mom.”

Then Jared did something Roni wouldn’t have ever believed possible of him. He stepped in front of the table, blocking his mother’s aim with his own body.

“No more lies,” Jared said. “You don’t want Roni dead for me. You want her dead because of the hatred you have for your own life. Killing her won’t change that fact.”

“I say it will,” Tanya said and charged at her son with a war cry that sent enough electricity up Roni’s spine to send her chair to the floor in the same moment a gun exploded.

* * *

Ethan pulled the unmarked car up to Tanya Finlay’s darkened row house. A cacophony of dog barks put him on alert. But lights from the neighbors’ homes flicking on one by one told him something just went down around here.

“They’re in the house,” he stated to Pace still sitting beside him. “Get backup here, and make sure these people stay inside their homes. And down. We don’t need stray bullets finding targets. I’m going in.”

Pace shot an arm out to stop him. “You’re not to go anywhere until backup arrives. Don’t forget I’m in charge still. I give the orders.”

“Not this time, Pace.” Ethan shook off his hold and jumped from the car. Pace opened the passenger door, but Ethan had already made it past the shrubs at the end of the concrete walkway.

Suddenly a force connecting with his back sent him sprawling to the hard earth.

“Pace! I will hurt you,” he shouted as he pushed himself up on one hand and tightened his hold on his gun.

“I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time, muchacho.” A familiar voice spoke beside Ethan’s ear.

Guerra.

A foot slammed down on Ethan’s wrist, and one look up showed Ramsey, alive and well.

“We meet again, Gunn.”

One look over his shoulder showed Pace on the ground grabbing his own head.

They’d been ambushed as soon as they exited the car. Two against two, and he and Pace were already down.

Ramsey kicked Ethan’s weapon away, then kicked him in the face before he could react. Blood spurted out from one of the pained places on his head. Guerra used the moment to haul Ethan up by the arms for another hit by Ramsey. Except the only grunt came from Ramsey himself when Pace barreled at him full force. The two men hit the ground and rolled, and Ethan didn’t wait to see what else happened. He had his own fight to deal with, one that had been in the making for a year.

A year ago, it had been about the investigation. Now it was about getting past the obstacle that stood in the way of rescuing Roni. There would be no joy in this fight. The joy would come when he had Roni safe in his arms.

Ethan let that fact drive his fists into Guerra’s chest as he went after his joy.

Punches and the sounds of splitting flesh could be heard from both sets of men, but soon one set slowed down and disappeared, leaving Ethan and Guerra the only two men left standing.

Barely.

Ethan’s legs gave out beneath him as he took another swing at Guerra, but his hand met only air. Ethan’s knees hit dirt and suddenly Guerra flashed a knife above his head. Ethan wasn’t surprised. He knew Guerra always carried his weapon of choice on him. He was only surprised that Guerra waited this long to bring it out. It meant he was done playing.

Ethan rolled to his back and kicked up with his legs. The heels of his boots connected with Guerra’s gut and bent him sideways. He swept his legs vertical, taking Guerra down to the ground with him.

An even playing field.

He made a grasp for the knife inches from his face, but Guerra whisked it away and rolled.

Suddenly a set of high beams ensconced their makeshift arena, exposing them for all to see in the early dawn of day. Guerra paused, then jumped to his feet to bolt. Ethan moved to go after him but saw instantly he’d made the wrong move.

Guerra’s knife left his hand like a flying dart coming in for a bull’s-eye on Ethan’s forehead.

Ethan paused a millisecond too long before he fell to his right. Hot, searing pain ripped through the flesh at his shoulder.

He reached for the knife but found it had taken off a layer of skin and kept sailing. The blade protruded from the dirt behind him, shaking with the impact of its flight.

A turn of his head found Guerra raising his fists above Ethan’s head for a final death blow.

“I should have killed the Spencer woman like I was paid to do in the beginning,” Guerra snarled. “But rest easy, muchacho. She’ll be next.”

Then two shots echoed through the night and Guerra froze. His face questioned the situation before the growing blood pulsing out of his chest made all things clear.

Guerra fell to the ground in a heap.

Pace lay behind him, his arm raised with a smoking gun. He dropped it in exhaustion.

“I only shot once,” he managed to say before dropping his head back to the ground.

Ethan understood instantly what Pace meant. If he only shot once, then the other blast came from inside the house.

Ethan pulled himself to his knees. He had to get inside, but his blood loss and most likely broken ribs slowed him down. Still, he pushed through and made it to the side door, an arm wrapped around his torso.

A woman’s wail cried out through the flapping screen door, stopping him in his tracks. It sounded like a cornered animal, and cornered animals had a way of attacking outright. But Roni needed him.

No, he checked himself. He needed her. His life of going solo wasn’t enough. That was the lie he’d always told himself because Ethan Rhodes was a nobody.

“You are going to pay for this!” the wailing woman screamed out.

Ethan turned the knob slowly and silently. Ethan Rhodes may be a nobody, but Ethan Gunn wasn’t. And if he died today as Ethan Gunn, then he would die a somebody. He would die knowing Roni lived and her dreams would come true.

NINETEEN

R
oni’s hands shook in front of her, the sight of blood on them halting full breaths from reaching her lungs. So much blood, but not a drop of it hers.

At the sound of the second gunshot, Roni had watched Jared fall to the floor beside the kitchenette table, two feet from her hiding place beneath. At first the shock stunned her immobile. Jared lay close, groaning and grabbing his stomach. Without thinking of the consequence, Roni crawled out to staunch the bleeding. Without her scarf, she grabbed the tablecloth off the table and found his wound.

“Help me save Jared!” she had cried out.

The answer was a gun in her face, its dark barrel menacing and lethal.

“Tanya, Jared needs help. Let me help him,” Roni said at the same time she backed her body into the living room portion of the small room. One of the two tattered sofas was her best shield, at least better than an open range.

“You had your chance to help him, and you failed. Now you’ll pay for killing him.” Tanya closed in.

“But he’s not dead,” Roni reasoned and dived behind the closest sofa.

Tanya wailed, a sickening sound of grief and lost reality, and Roni knew she wasn’t getting out alive. The blood on her hands would soon be mixed with her own.

The front door swung wide, and hope soared through Roni. It was an absurd thought, but Ethan filled her mind. Was it him here to save her?

But it couldn’t be. He was hopefully at the hospital by now being treated for his own wounds.

So then, who had just opened the door?

Roni shimmied along the back of the sofa, but the sound of voices stopped her cold.

“Tanya, you must stop this right now.”

Cora
.

“Get out of here, Cora,” Tanya yelled. “I have no more need of you either.”

“I won’t let you kill Roni. She’s a daughter to me, and I won’t let you take her.”

Roni swallowed at Cora’s confession. Her heart ached to hold her, but Roni knew that was her own selfish need to hold on to Cora for dear life and not let her live her own life. Cora needed to get out of here and be free. And Roni couldn’t let the woman be her life preserver anymore. It was time to take the step to stand on her own and meet her adversary first. Just as Ethan had taught her. Be the one to make the first move.

Roni stood before she could change her mind. She jumped over the sofa and threw herself in the air at Tanya. But once in the air, her mind computed all that transpired around her in fractions of airborne seconds.

Ethan was also in the air, but coming at her in the opposite direction.

Tanya fired her weapon.

Roni collided into her in the same moment Ethan collided into Cora.

Armed men and women stormed through every opening at once and tore Roni off Tanya, only to relieve her of her gun and cuff her facedown on the floor, someone’s knee pressed into her back.

Roni scrambled back, looking for Cora in the mayhem. A crowd of emergency personnel encircled someone on the floor. Was Cora hurt? Had the bullet found its target?

Suddenly arms engulfed her from behind, and Roni turned to find Cora. The woman’s arms never felt so frail, and Roni gratefully accepted a wool blanket from them. In a daze, she allowed someone to escort them to the front door and out of the craziness, but Roni’s feet tripped over themselves as she computed more fully what was happening.

“Where’s Ethan? I saw Ethan. Where is he?”

Roni gave the two groups of first responders working diligently on their patients her attention. One she knew to be Jared.

Her feet moved to the second.

“Roni, you need to leave.”

She turned to see the person who had draped the blanket over her. Chief Sylvie stood four inches below her, but Sylvie’s shorter stature didn’t undermine the authority in her voice.

Roni knew these row houses were what Sylvie called home, too. She was a single mom, raising a son by herself, but something happened after she had her son. Unlike Tanya, she didn’t wallow in her circumstances and point fingers. She didn’t guilt family and friends into supporting her. Sylvie put herself through school and the police academy. She worked her way up to chief of police for her town.

Two women in similar circumstances. Two outcomes to show proof of a better way.

Paramedics carried a stretcher through the front door.

“This one needs to go first. He’s bleeding out.” A paramedic spoke and Roni finally saw Ethan at the man’s feet.

They transported Ethan over to the cot, and Roni inhaled at the sight. His face paled to near white. She stepped forward, but Sylvie restrained her with a tight hold on her forearm.

As though Ethan knew she stood by, he opened his eyes with a few forced flickers. Their gazes latched as his head was fitted securely in the hold to stabilize him.

“Why?” The word spilled from Roni’s mouth. Of all the things she wanted to tell him, she couldn’t fathom why she said that.

Ethan closed his eyes but quickly opened them. “You can’t...lose Cora. She’s your chosen family.” A flicker of a smile twitched his lips, and she knew he did this for her. Not only would he take a bullet for her, but that carried over to the people she loved. He knew what losing Cora would do to her.

But losing him had her feeling as if she was standing back on that precipice again, teetering on the edge of the gorge.

The paramedics whisked the stretcher out through the door. Roni chased them. She needed to tell Ethan how she felt about him.

At the back of the ambulance, she raced up to the side of the stretcher as they prepared to push it in. She was able to touch a finger to Ethan’s arm. His eyes flicked open again, but this time life eluded them. Their glassy, near-vacant stare startled her and pushed her to say what she needed to before she was too late.

“I—”

“You’re safe now,” he rushed out, cutting her off. His eyes closed as the paramedics pushed the stretcher inside. The doors slammed on her, and the lights flashed and sirens blared.

Roni stood amid the chaotic fallout of all she’d been through, ending here in Tanya’s front yard. She stood alone with a blanket hanging over her shoulders.

The ambulance disappeared around the corner at the end of the street. More of them pulled out with the other injured people. Police cordoned off the area from the onlookers of the neighborhood, many of whom worked for her at the track. Most had never seen her scars. Did they see them now under the rising sun? There would be a lot for everyone to get used to seeing, she thought. Once the truth was out, there would be no more covering it up. Instead the truth would strengthen people to stand against the ugliness of the world. Bring it out of the darkness and into the light where God makes all things beautiful.

Roni swiped at tears spilling down her cheeks. Ethan had left his mark on her, but it was nothing compared to the one God was working in her. He was marking her as His. She stood exposed in the light, but for the first time in her life it didn’t scare her.

She hoped the people of her town would see God’s mark over the ones on her neck, but she also hoped her scars would actually welcome people around her, because scars were something everyone had in common.

Just like Ethan said earlier. Scars gave people a common ground to meet each other at. They allowed people to welcome each other with open arms and no judgment, because everyone had them.

Roni turned for Cora’s arms...but found her already in Uncle Clay’s. Roni startled at the sight, but quickly checked herself.

No more appearances. Only the truth.

She took slow but purposeful steps toward the two people who’d raised her but kept separate lives out of respect for her.

“I’m sorry I never realized,” she said, causing Cora’s head to lift from Uncle Clay’s chest. “Maybe I did, but it was just another thing I turned a blind eye to. If I ignored it, it didn’t really exist. Or, at least it would go away.” Roni took a deep breath and accepted the truth. “Consider your resignation accepted, Cora. You’re free to go.”

Roni turned but was quickly grabbed and swung around into Cora’s arms. Arms that all of a sudden had the strength of a mama bear. “One doesn’t resign from being someone’s mother. That’s a lifetime commitment, and it’s the one I made twenty-eight years ago. Do you understand, Roni? Retiring never meant leaving you. You’re still the daughter of my heart and always will be.”

Roni looked to Uncle Clay. His sheepish smile spoke volumes of the wedge between them. She didn’t know how that would ever be fixed or if she wanted it to be. But if Cora loved him, Roni would try.

“I remembered something from the car crash,” she told her uncle. The man’s arm from the crash filled her mind. At his nod, she continued, “There was a man at the scene. When Wade pulled me out in one direction, a man pulled Luke out through the other rear door.”

“That’s it? Do you remember anything else?”

“No, but I know now for sure that Luke’s alive. And if you say you are truly sorry for the pain you’ve caused us, then let this be a way for you to make restitution. Help me find my brother and bring him home.”

Uncle Clay nodded once. “Of course. I will do whatever I can to find Luke.”

“And I will pray for you both,” Cora said.

Roni wrapped her arms around her mom. “Thank you, Cora, for never stopping, even when I demanded you to. God and I have come to an understanding. He does want me, but right now, He wants me right here.”

Cora cried out with joy and squeezed tighter. “I am so happy to hear you say that. Stay with Him, Roni. He will never forsake you. He loves you so much. He
is
love.”

“Love. Yes, He is. But love came crashing in to my life in more ways than one this week. I need to get to the hospital and tell Ethan all about it. Uncle Clay—”

“You don’t even have to ask. Of course I’ll drive you there.”

Roni followed her uncle and Cora to the car, stopping off to let Chief Sylvie know that’s where she would be.

The twenty-minute drive felt like an eternity, but she prayed nonstop for Ethan’s care and healing. The paramedics had been on the scene, and she let that push her to stay positive about his well-being. She envisioned herself by his bedside when he woke up, and then she would lay out every truth there was between them. The first being she loved him.

The car pulled up to the ER entrance, and Roni jumped out before it was put in Park. She ran through the double doors and saw a small line at the reception desk.

A nurse in pink scrubs took people’s names. She had big round arms that looked as though they could take you down or lift you up, whatever a patient needed at the time.

Finally, it was Roni’s turn, and she rushed out her words so fast the nurse didn’t understand. “No, I said, Ethan Gunn. He was just brought in with a gunshot wound.”

The nurse looked at her chart, a puzzled expression twisting her lips. With a shake of her head, she said, “Sorry, dear, no one here by that name.”

“How about Jared Finlay?” Roni asked, thinking maybe she was at the wrong hospital.

The nurse nodded. “Finlay is under police custody. You can’t see him. But there is no Ethan Gunn.”

Roni stepped away, dazed. The full waiting room of various-aged patients stared at her as she circled the room. Her heart rate and breathing picked up as she turned and saw Cora walk through the doors.

“Roni, what is it? You look so pale.” Cora raced to her and took her in her arms.

“Ethan. I have no way of finding him. I don’t even know his real name. Oh, Cora, what if he dies? I never told him...”

Roni’s uncle went to the front desk and spoke quietly to the nurse. His solemn return face didn’t encourage hope. “She said there was a DOA tonight. The name is confidential, and she can’t access it.”

Roni let the weight of that information settle around her. The only thing she had left was the truth to deal with. “I have no way of finding out if it was him. He came into my life in a flash, and he left it the same way. I have to know. Cora, I have to know.”

“Come on, honey, let’s go home and call Chief Sylvie. Maybe she can help us track some information down.”

A bit of hope soared in Roni as Cora nudged her numbed body forward. They walked out into the bright light of a new day, their arms secure around each other, bound not by duty or even blood, but by love.

Roni leaned her head on Cora’s shoulder. “Thank you, for always being there for me. Because I think I’m going to need you more than ever before.”

Cora pulled her close. “I am always here for you, my sunshine.”