Maisie
The investigation into how my ex-husband wound up dead on the street in the middle of Rios was short.
Hunter, Wyatt, Elias, and Knox never stopped looking for me after I went missing. They went door to door. Everyone did. I had nearly the whole of Rios out looking for me.
Then someone called the sheriff to report having seen a strawberry-blonde woman in a pink diner uniform with a man wearing a navy hoodie. Both were walking away from the diner. She was on her way to the grocery store and had been looking around while stopped at a traffic light. She didn’t know where the couple had gone, but it was shortly after Nico had reported me missing.
It raised everyone’s hopes that I was still in Rios and Derek hadn’t shoved me into a car and sped away from town with me in his trunk. By the evening, they’d accounted for all the vehicles parked on the street. One car stood out. A black Toyota.
Since Rios has more than its fair share of tourists passing through, the rental parked near the diner didn’t immediately attract attention. But as the tourists in town left to get to their motels, hotels, or left town altogether, that car was still there. Untouched.
We found out later that Derek had rented the car under another name, using a stolen driver’s license, so no one could connect him to the vehicle. The sheriff had a feeling the car was important. And it was.
If a group of college-aged girls hadn’t stepped out of the diner as Derek was about to lead me to that car, forcing us to turn away, I’d be dead. I have no doubt that.
Wyatt spotted that the board covering my apartment door was ever so slightly tilted after they’d walked up and down the street three times and missed it, along with everyone else who’d passed by. I was sure Derek had secured it after he’d pushed me in through the gap he’d made in the right corner, but a gust of wind must have worked its magic, or Derek didn’t do a good enough job of securing the plywood after he climbed in.
Wyatt and Elias carefully removed both pieces of plywood covering the doorway, not wanting to alert Derek that they were breaking in. They didn’t wait for the sheriff and his deputies, creeping up the stairs just in time to save my life.
Derek would have shot me, or I’d have broken my neck falling headfirst down the stairs trying to escape him. It was stupid and reckless, but I was desperate. I knew Derek would kill me, or try to, and I wasn’t going to make it easy for him.
The official story is that after a brief tussle in my apartment, Knox charged Derek, and the gun went flying. Both went for the gun. Knox got to it, then stepped aside when Derek ran at him, and Derek went flying out of the window.
No one in Rios was cut up about Derek’s death, least of all me. When his parents turned up and tried to make a scene, the sheriff was ready with more than enough evidence that would have put him away for the rest of his life if he’d survived.
There were fingerprints linking him to arson and my attempted murder after he set a fire with me in the building.
The sheriff had contacted the badly beaten motel worker in Nevada, who was able to identify Derek from a picture the sheriff sent to the local police department. He’d worried about me and was relieved I was still alive. Because Derek had died, the motel worker contacted an attorney and intended to sue Derek’s estate for attempted murder.
After that, Derek’s parents were afraid there were more victims that might come forward, especially since Derek had served time for killing someone with his car, and they settled a wrongful death lawsuit for hundreds of thousands of dollars from the dead man’s family. They went back to Oregon with Derek’s body and to deal with a lawsuit from the motel worker who nearly died defending me.
I hope the motel worker gets a big payout. He deserves much more than money after Derek put him in intensive care for three days, leaving him with medical bills he was struggling to pay.
Theunofficialstory is that I don’t think the sheriff looked all that hard for proof that Knox might have thrown Derek out of the window.
“Some people will destroy themselves trying to destroy another person,” the sheriff said after Hunter had caught me when my knees turned to jelly outside the apartment. “You go on home, Maisie. I’ll swing by to take a statement from you tomorrow around midday. Sleep easy knowing he can’t hurt you anymore.”
“And Knox?” I’d asked the sheriff, worried he’d wind up in jail for saving my life.
The sheriff had nodded, his expression unchanging. “Looks like a pretty clear case of accidental death to me, which means no criminal charges foranyone. Get out of here and have that cheek looked at. You look exhausted.”
It’s been two weeks since my nightmare ended.
Two weeks of laughing with my alphas, of making love with them, of walking down Rios’s Main Street without looking over my shoulder. Of making plans for my sister and her family to come stay with us for a week, and I can’t wait for it.
My life was at a standstill for years, and I never believed I’d ever escape Derek. But he’s gone, and he’s never coming back to hurt me.
Three days later…
Wyatt has me stretched out on his workshop table.
I have my hands wrapped around the clamps when he nudges my thighs open and thrusts inside me.
My breath rushes out in a keening whimper.
If my body weren’t going up in flames and my pussy aching for his knot, he’d have given me the slow and gentle he thinks I deserve. But heat makes monsters of us, and monsters have voracious appetites.
I pant and writhe under him. “More. Knot me!”
