Then a lone siren pierced the silence of the morning air, causing the woman to whip her head around and stare fearfully at the door.
“Someone, go lock that,” the woman urged quickly. “Now.”
Fuck me.
My God, my language lately was deplorable.
I really needed to figure out a way to stop using those words before the baby came.
A movement in the corner of my eye had my eyes widening in surprise.
The man was a fucking giant.
And the scar on his face was very intimidating.
He had graying hair at his temples, but the rest of it was a pure, rich black.
The man looked uncannily similar to the man I’d met on our trip to Vegas, Sebastian.
He had the same facial features, as well as demeanor and build.
I’d heard Miller, as well as Silas, talk about the man.
I believed his name was Sam. Silas was Sam’s father, and Sebastian was Sam’s brother.
They didn’t look half as intimidating as this man did.
He had a look on his face that spoke a million words. Or more like screamed them.
He was pissed, and he wasn’t afraid to let it show.
He was also aware that I was looking at him, and that I had a phone in my lap.
He started spelling something in the air with his fingers, and it took three tries of him spelling it that I finally understood.
“Someone’s in here with me. He says the gun is fake,” I whispered.
I shouldn’t have felt relieved, though.
I should’ve known that if he’d known the gun was fake, that he wouldn’t have stayed where he was on the floor for so long.
He was on his belly with his hands up by his ears. His face was resting on the ground, and I could clearly see the outline of a gun at the small of his back.
There’d been ample time for him to shoot her if that would be all it took.
B-O-M-B.
He spelled it to me over and over.
In fact, he did it so long that I thought he was getting a little mad that I wasn’t relaying the information. The truth was, was that I was frozen in fear.
I pushed through it, though, to get the information relayed.
If anything else, the responders outside the room needed to know, otherwise that could mean the death of every person in the room, as well as some outside.
“The man. He says she has a bomb.”
The dispatcher cursed.
That was when I knew it was all going to hell.
A Charlie Foxtrot in the first degree.
Cluster. Fuck.
I’d gotten that term from Foster when he described something that was happening on the television. A show about cops in the city of New Orleans who’d been in the middle of a riot.
An hour later, I knew it to be true.
“It’s hotter than balls in here,” I growled.
I’d been sitting in the corner for so long that my legs were numb, and I was fairly sure that they’d turned the air conditioner off, too.
I was sweating. My mom was sweating. The man on the floor, Sam’s, entire back was drenched. I could see this mainly because his shirt was gray, and the sweat was staining his shirt a much darker gray.
It also didn’t help that the popcorn machine was still on.
I would’ve unplugged it, but the stupid thing had a light on it. The moment I did, the light would go out, and alert the woman to my presence.
I’d tried to go to sleep, but Sam kept trying to relay information to me when I dozed off, and started to get pissy.
Therefore I’d stayed awake, and sweated my balls off the entire time.
“I have to pee, too.”
I was fairly sure the 911 dispatcher thought I was crazy.
The desk phone near my mother rang, and my eyes widened when the woman’s head whipped around.
She’d just been standing there, pacing frantically in a tight circle with piles of money at her feet.
She hadn’t said a word, and that was what was the most disturbing.
“Answer it,” the woman said breathlessly.
The shit head, I mean Elbert, answered the phone with shaking hands.
“H-hello?” He squeaked. “Uh-huh.”
His eyes turned to the woman. “The man on the phone would like to speak with you.”
The woman screamed.
It was an enraged scream. One that was so full of hatred, madness, and pain that I winced.
What I also did, was widen my eyes shortly after as I finally realized who the hell it was behind all the black.
Sarah Higgins. My arch nemesis, and the woman that’d been tormenting me since my junior year in high school.
“Oh, fuck. It’s Sarah Higgins,” I whispered.
Somehow I’d moved from my spot, too, because Sam started shaking his head at me when I peaked around the cart to get a better look at her.
I blinked.
She’d lost quite a bit of weight in the time since the altercation at the diner weeks ago; now she resembled more of a department store mannequin. The ones that were only metal. Not meant to look like an actual human being.
Beee-dooop.
I froze as the sound of my phone going dead stopped everyone in their tracks.
Even Sarah.
She whipped around, turning her crazy gaze on me, pinning me to the spot.
“You,” she hissed, marching forward.
I came up to my knees first, tucking my phone into the back pocket of my jeans, before standing fully.
“Yep, me,” I agreed. “I’d say it’s nice to see you, but that’d be a lie.”
The big man on the floor went up to his knees the moment Sarah passed him, and I knew what he was going to do the moment I saw him come to his hands and feet.
I just had to keep her talking.
“What are you doing with that fake gun?” I snapped, pointing at the gun in her hand.
She lifted the gun, and aimed it directly at my face. “Care to find out how real it is?”
I blinked.
No matter what Sam said about it being fake, I didn’t have actual proof. He could be mistaken. He could be guessing. He could be freakin’ bonkers, too.
I chose to have trust in him, though. Especially since he was moving quickly towards the back of Sarah.