It was the first time since I’d taken over working for myself and not just as a subset for Merrick that I actually felt a little defeated. For some reason, I felt that if Avion were there, I wouldn’t feel so out of my depth, but I’d never been in such a dire situation before. It was the specific reason why I chose to start the architecture company, so that most of my work appeared legal.
I hated dealing with cops.
Even though I was actually half-willing to give the Narzand brothers the benefit of the doubt on the first attack, the follow-up police raid witha warrant made me more certain than ever that it was them. They were the only ones capable of pulling off such a risky raid. My dad was notorious for dodging warrants, so they had to have pulled strings in order to get a judge to sign off on it.
My dad coughed and a splatter of blood came out of his mouth. He was so much closer to death than I ever imagined. I didn’t have time to waste. It was true, I didn’t want to add a police death to my record, but it didn’t look like I had any choice. They were just outside battering against the door. Any second, they’d be smashing in anyway, I could undo the latch and give myself an advantage.
Which was just what I planned to do.
I pulled my gun out, undid the safety and cocked it, then I took a few cautious steps towards the door. I listened to a few of the rams, trying to gauge the timing between them. My best chance was going to be to unlock the door between rams so they slammed in with unexpected inertia and I could shoot them in the imbalance. There were about two seconds between rams, so I timed my shot, reached up and slid the latch aside and held up my pistol.
But the following ram never came.
In fact, all of a sudden, all of the chaos came to total silence. All I could hear was Merrick struggling for breath behind me. I put my hand on the handle of the closet door, knowing that I was out of time to wait and pulled it open. My finger was on the trigger, prepared to shoot if I had to, but not only was there no one waiting outside the door, there was no one in the room at all.
“Tamryn?” I called out, but got no response. Carefully, I stepped over splintered wood from the bed and broken pieces of glass from the fight. My heart was pounding so hard I damn near thought I was having a heart attack. “Tamryn? Are you here?” Creeping towards the doorway to the rest of the house, I looked around to see if there was a sign of her anywhere.
Her or anyone else.
“Avion?” I called out. “Milli?” Panic and dread were starting to fill me that maybe they got Avion and arrested Tamryn and Milli and decided to take the win and run for it. “Mom? Mom?!”
“Giovanni!” My mom came running into the room with her gun in her hand and let out a sigh of relief. “I don’t know what happened, they just left.”
“They didn’t say anything?” I asked.
“One of them said they got a call that the warrant was revoked. The supposed kidnapped person was no longer in danger.”
My heart dropped into my stomach. “What? Like… Avion went back?”
“I don’t know. I can’t find her anywhere.” All of that fear that I’d been storing was starting to bubble over. It was the idea realized--that if Avion were given a chance to leave, she would. Those police came wanting to take her back with them, and she went. That was the only explanation for the raid suddenly stopping when Merrick, Tamryn, Milli and I were all still criminals with extensive records. “Can’t you call her?” Tamryn asked.
Some of me was very afraid to do that. What if I called her and she told me that she was leaving? Even if part of why she was doing it was because she was a help to me, if she told me that she was gone and she wasn’t coming back, that would crush me.
I’d probably go blind with rage and wouldn’t stop until both Narzands were dead.
“Dad,” I said suddenly, and looked back towards the closet.
“I’ll get him,” Tamryn said, then ran past me to where my dad was. “You call Avion.”
Before I could even get my phone fully out of my pocket, it started to ring. My body lifted and fell through a flurry of emotions, from the moment I saw it was Avion’s calling meto the moment I could hear that there was an evident strain in her voice. From the moment I was so happy just to hear from her to the moment I realized I had to ask her the question I least wanted to ask at that moment.
“Are you… with the police?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “I’m with Milli.”
Never before had I felt like relief was going to make me physically ill, but that came pretty damn close. “Where are you two? Are you okay? You sound hurt.”
“I’m okay…ish.”
“Ish?” I said. “Where’s Milli?”
“He’s here.” There was a shaking to her voice. “He’s okay…ish.”
“Avion. I need you to tell me what that means. Are you okay?”
“We’re halfway back to your estate and are going to have the doctor look us both over, just to be safe, but we’re here. We’re breathing. Everything is fine. We just have to make a quick stop.”
“A quick stop, no. No quick stops. Go home. Go straight home and talk to Dr. Aurora.”
