Chapter Thirty-Four
Everett
“What on earth are you talking about, Panetti?” I asked, dumbfounded.
Panetti simply pointed to the pictures pinned on my board of Simon and Angie.
“That's Mr. Mask, and that's the girl who cooks the stuff up in her apartment,” he said. “I assumed you guys knew that. Why else would you have pictures of them on your wall?”
Then the implications of what this meant hit me like an uppercut to the jaw. Angie—the woman who had taken Vivienne away last night—was Simon's accomplice.
My heart stopped for a moment and then started pounding with panic in my chest.
“Panetti,” I said, my voice hoarse with anxiety. “One question: do you know where either of those two live?”
“I don't know about Mr. Mask, but I've been to that woman's apartment before to pick up drugs.”
I jumped out of my chair and grabbed him by the wrist.
“Then you're gonna show me where it is, Panetti – right now!”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Vivienne
“Get the hell away from her!” roared a new voice – a familiar voice.
Everett!
Simon spun around with surprise, and I craned my neck to make sure I wasn’t imagining things. There, standing in the doorway of the room, were Everett and Jimmy. Jimmy had Angie gripped with her hands behind her back and a gun to her head. Everett had his own gun aimed at Simon.
“You!” Simon hissed. “You're the hero trying to ruin my business, and, as it seems, steal my lover away from me!”
“The game is up, Simon,” said Everett calmly. “And you've lost. Drop the knife, drop your gun, and get on the floor with your hands behind your head. This is an arrest.”
“You can have the drugs, superhero, but I won't be parted from her again,” Simon growled, his eyes wide and white with a madness I hadn’t seen the depths of before. “I won't! Nobody can keep us apart!”
“I'm warning you, Simon, drop your weapons and get on the ground! Do it now, do it right now! If you do not comply, I will be compelled to use deadly force! This is your final warning!”
“If I can't have her,” Simon hissed. “Nobody can. And if we can't be together in this life... I guess we'll both have to journey to the next world so that we can be together there!”
He lunged for me with his knife, aiming to stab me through my heart, but a single booming crack resounded through the room, and the blade stopped just inches away from my chest. Simon's eyes froze cold on me, and a trickle of blood ran down his forehead from the gunshot wound in his head. He collapsed onto the floor, dead.
Everett holstered his gun and ran over to me, and started undoing the ropes that bound me to the bed.
I tried to hold it in, to come across as brave and unaffected, but the moment he placed his hands on each side of my face and looked me in the eyes, tears immediately overcame me, and I threw my arms around him and hugged him tightly. “You came for me,” I mumbled into his neck between sobs.
“Of course I did,” he said as he hugged my back. “You’re safe now.”
“B-but, what about Liza?” I asked as I pulled back and looked at him.
“I know you saw the text, but you couldn’t have seen all of it. If you had, you’d have seen that nothing happened. Liza was the specialist who came to take care of Jane. She also happens to be the woman I told you about who cheated on me in college. That text was her wanting another chance. I told her that could never happen for many reasons, but mostly because my heart belongs to someone else.”
Our eyes locked and I immediately knew how stupid I had been. “I'm so sorry, Everett,” I sobbed. “I'm so sorry.”
“It’s alright, beautiful; you have nothing to apologize for. Nothing at all,” he whispered, caressing my cheek as he wiped a tear away. “I love you. I don’t ever want you to doubt that. I will always come when you need me.”
He pulled me to him, and for the first time since my father had died, I truly felt loved and protected.