“9-1-1. What’s your emergency?” The disembodied voice answers.
“Please help them. They’re screaming and … they’re screaming!” I plead with her.
“Who’s screaming, sir?”
“Rylee and Zand…” I can’t fucking think straight; ice floods my veins and my only thought is I need to get to them so I don’t even realize I’m not making any fucking sense. “Please, someone is there and—”
“Sir, what’s your name? What’s the address?”
“Co-Colton,” I stutter out when I realize I don’t even know the fucking address. Just the street. “Switzerland Avenue.”
Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Hang on, baby. Hang on. I’m coming. It’s all I repeat in my head—over and over—as my body shakes.
“What’s the address sir?”
“I don’t fucking know!” I shout at the 9-1-1 operator. “The one with all the goddamn paparazzi out front. There’s no one else in the house but her and a little boy. Please! Quickly.”
And when I look up from ending the call, I have to slam on the brakes as I hit fucking road construction.
“Fuck!” I yell, laying in on my horn like it’s my fucking lifeline.
Rylee.
She’s my only thought.
Rylee.
Please God, no.
“Spiderman. Batman. Superman. Ironman. Spiderman. Batman …” Zander repeats it over and over as he sits balled up in a corner behind me in the backyard. It’s the only thing I can hear over the buzzing in my head right now from the force of the punch. Zander’s hands are over his ears and he rocks back and forth as he chants, withdrawing into himself. Into the world he wants to exist, where there are no bad men wielding guns or fathers holding knives cutting their wives apart.
The problem is that in Zander’s world, they are one in the same.
I notice all of this in the split second after I’m punched in the face, my body flinging and twisting from the impact to see my sweet boy shrinking into himself. Time stands still then begins to move in slow motion. The pain in my cheek and eye does nothing to abate the fear in my heart as I look up to meet the eyes of the man that’s been a constant presence in my life over the past few weeks. His hat and dark glasses have been knocked off and it hits me.
I know this man.
I’ve seen him before.
He’s the man who gave me the creeps in the Target parking lot. He’s the man from the dark blue sedan parked outside of The House and my house, following me. Without his hat and sunglasses I can see Zander in him. I know why he seemed so familiar in the parking lot that day. He has the same color eyes, the same features; his hair is longer and a bit darker, but the resemblance is unmistakable.
My eyes skim over the matte black metal of the pistol he has pointed at me and then to his eyes—dark pools of unemotional blackness—that are flickering back and forth from me to Zander and his incessant chanting of superheroes in the background.
“What did you do to him?” he shouts at me angling the gun over to Zander and then back to me. “Why’s he doing that? Answer me!”
Stay calm, Rylee. Stay calm, Rylee.
“He—he’s scared.” You did this to him, I want to scream at him. You did this, you useless piece of murdering sack of shit, but all I do is repeat myself, trying to hide my fear and keep myself from stuttering. I try to focus on the pounding of my heart, counting the beats thumping in my ears to keep me calm. I can feel the rivulets of sweat trickle between my shoulder blades and breasts. I can smell the fear and my stomach revolts, knowing it’s mine that I smell—mixed with his.
And I hold onto that thought.
That he’s scared too.
Think, Ry. Think. I need to keep him calm but protect Zander, and I have no clue how to do that. The unfettered fear I feel is scattering my thoughts, robbing me of coherency. Of what in the hell I should do, because I know he’s murdered before. Murdered the mother of his child, his wife no less.
What’s going to stop him from murdering me?
He has nothing to lose.
And that more than anything scares the shit out of me.
I force a swallow, my eyes flicking all over the backyard. I see his camera and fake press pass on the ground by the gate. I see my cell phone in the edge of the grass, where it scattered when he hit me, and I immediately think of Colton.
I instantly grab on to the hope that he heard me, knows we’re in trouble, will call for help—because if he didn’t, I have no chance at protecting Zander against this madman. Of protecting myself.
My tears sting, and the swelling in my eye from where he ambushed me, hurts like a bitch. My hands are shaking and my breath hitches in fear, while the increased volume of Zander’s chant is adding a heightened level of stress to the whole situation.
It’s the only sound I can hear in the early morning silence—the chants of a little boy knowing he has no hope left. And with each passing moment, the whispered words get louder and louder as if he’s trying to drown out the sound of his dad’s voice.
“Wh—what do you want?” I finally ask over Zander’s voice, sensing his grasp on reality is long gone. And I don’t know how to rationalize with a crazy person.
He steps toward me, his eyes running down the length of my body, and even though my nerves are already on high alert, the look in his dead eyes when he scrapes them back up causes new ones to hum. Warning bells go off and my stomach squeezes violently—so much so that I have to fight the nausea that threatens.
He reaches the gun out, and I freeze as he runs the tip of it up and down the side of my cheek. The cold of the steel, the hard reality of the metal on my flesh and what it represents, causes the blood in my veins to turn to ice.