“I’m so glad you’re back!” a voice screeches off to my left.
The she-devil appears from the hallway, a gun hanging limply by her side. Her face is a mess of bruises, but she smiles like she’s not batshit crazy, which makes her even more so.
I take a step toward her, my hands clenching at my sides. Ellie’s in front of me, about fifteen feet away with a table and chair between us. Maisy is to my right about ten feet away, the same distance Sierra is to my left.
“What in the hell is going on, Sierra?”
She tilts her head to the side, expression perplexed. “What do you mean?” She looks over to Ellie, her countenance changing to delight. “Oh! You mean this?” She waves the gun in Ellie’s direction.
“Sierra!” I bark, taking a couple of steps closer to her. If I can get near enough, I can tackle her to the ground.
Sierra flinches, but turns to face me again, her arm dropping back to her side. I dart my eyes to the gun and see her pointer finger on the trigger. A soft squeeze could cause the gun to go off. And the safety’s not on.
Motherfucking hell!
She frowns, a deep groove forming between her eyes. “Why are you angry?”
The question is so damn ludicrous, but apparently, Sierra isn’t too bright.
“Why am I angry?” I growl through gritted teeth. “Because you’re holding the woman I love and our daughter at gunpoint, and I don’t have a damn clue why.”
Her lips turn down into a pout, the dried blood by her mouth cracking.
“How can you love her? She kept you away from Maisy for eleven years. You can’t love someone like that.”
“The hell I can’t. What I can’t do is allow you to threaten them.” A couple more steps puts me about five feet from her. “Now tell me what in the hell you’re doing here.”
Her chin begins to wobble, and her eyes turn glassy. “You were supposed to love me,” she whispers. “I was going to help you raise Maisy. We were gonna get married and have other babies.” Her eyes narrow, turning dark and malevolent. “You ruined fucking everything! You owe me!” she shouts, so loud it echoes off the walls and the tendons in her neck bulge.
She lifts the gun and points it at me with a shaky hand. Maisy whimpers, but I keep my eyes on the psychotic bitch in front of me.
My muscles bunch and scream at me to rush her. To take her down and terminate the threat, but she’ll get a shot off before I make it to her, and no matter how bad of a shot she may be, there’s no way she would miss.
“Sierra,” I call, keeping my voice calm when my blood feels like lava rushing through my veins. “I have no clue what you’re talking about. Why don’t you put the gun down, and we’ll talk about whatever’s bothering you?”
The look that crosses her face sends icy shards down my back.
“You owe me, Judge,” she says again. “You fucking killed him and took him from me. I forgave you because I thought you could take his place, but not anymore. Now I get to take something from you.”
She takes several steps back and swings the gun in Maisy’s direction. My heart jolts against my sternum, ripping away my breath.
Over her shoulder, I notice a shadow in the hall and know it’s either JW or Emo. I trust they won’t make a move until Maisy and Ellie are out of harm’s way. Even so, fear has me frozen in place, and I send up a prayer to every God there is that my family will make it out of this alive.
“Wait!” I yell.
Keeping the gun trained on Maisy, she slides her eyes my way.
“Who did I kill? Who did I take away from you?”
Her eyes turn into hard slits. “Gary.”
I don’t attempt to hide the shock from my face. Gary Watters was a sick son of a bitch who suffered the Expiration Penalty almost a year ago after being caught sexually and physically abusing his two children. Brittney was ten and Jacob was four. He had been abusing them for years.
“He loved me,” Sierra states, sniffing. “He promised me that we would be together; me, him, and his kids. But then his bitch of a daughter had to go and ruin it for us.”
“He was raping her, Sierra.” I can’t keep the acrimony from my voice. “She was ten years old.”
“So fucking what?” she spews. “She would have learned to love it, just like I did.”