Page 40 of Out of the Darkness

“You’re joking,” Bernie deadpanned.

“Oh, I wish I was joking. That would make the fact that I’m pregnant a little easier to swallow.”

Taking her arm, Bernie weaved it through his and pulled her close. “Do you want me to kill him? Because I’ve been a cop a long time. I can do it and easily get away with it. I know what to watch out for.”

At that, Madelyn laughed harder than she had in the last several days. It felt odd, foreign considering all she was going through, but she had needed it. It provided a hint of reprieve from the darkness threatening to consume her whole.

“I’m sure you could, but that’s not necessary.”

“There she is,” he commented. When they finally reached the car, she turned and looked up at him. He poked her nose with a smile. “I missed that pretty smile of yours. In all seriousness though, Madelyn, you are going to be a wonderful mother.”

Color flooded her cheeks as she averted her gaze to the ground. “That’s very kind of you to say, Bernie, but I’m not too sure about that. My parents?—”

“Hey, I’m not talking about your parents. I’m talking about you. I know what kind of person you are, and despite what you’ve been through in your past, you have one of the biggest hearts of anyone I know. And I?—”

All of a sudden, a big black van skidded to a stop in front of them where they were standing next to Bernie’s station wagon, cutting off whatever Bernie was about to say. As the back door of the van flew open, Bernie shoved her behind him protectively, but then she heard a strange popping sound, and Madelyn found herself splattered with warm, sticky blood. Bernie’s blood.

Everything happened so fast that she didn’t even have the chance to scream. All she could do was stare stupidly at the gaping hole in the back of Bernie’s head. She realized that she was looking at parts of his skull and brain too. She had seen much worse on TV and in movies, but it was somehow vastly different when seen in person.

It seemed to take his body a few moments to catch up to the fact that he was dead too. Then, when his body finally collapsed onto the pavement at her feet, Madelyn found herself facing none other than Colby, the guy who was after Xavier, and the gun he had just used to kill her friend.

Lowering said gun, Colby smirked at her, pinching the claw marks that ran down the side of his face, which Xavier had given him the day she found out what Xavier was. Half of Colby’s face was scarred now, and it also looked to be infected.

“Hello again, Madelyn. Long time no see.”

“What did you do?” she gasped, her eyes filling with tears.

Two guys grabbed her arms, her purse clattering to the ground next to Bernie’s body, and they began pulling her toward the open back door of the van.

“What did you do?” she screamed again, struggling against the guys’ grasp. “What did you do?”

“What I had to,” Colby told her as they passed.

The guys tossed her unceremoniously into the back of the van and climbed in after her to hold her down. Colby climbed in last, closing the door behind them. Within seconds, they were speeding off. The whole ordeal felt like it had taken forever when it had happened within a matter of seconds.

One of the guys zip-tied Madelyn’s hands together while the other did the same to her ankles after she had kicked him in his face. Colby just sat there, his back resting against the back of the passenger seat, watching the scene unfold.

A gag was placed over her mouth, though it wasn’t necessary. Whether it was the shock of watching Bernie die so suddenly or the knowledge that she was being kidnapped by trained assassins, Madelyn had given up. She stopped struggling and trying to scream for help because both were just a waste of energy.

Bernie was dead. One minute, he was saying the nicest things to her, things a father should have said, and the next, he was gone. His life had been stolen by a man who had come for her. She just wished she knew why.

“We’re clear, boss,” the man behind the wheel said after a while. “No one’s following.”

“Good, take us back to camp then,” Colby replied, tapping his gun on the side of his knee while not taking his eyes off of her. “I’m sorry about your friend, Madelyn. Collateral damage, you understand. Just like you, I’m afraid. Since I’m unable to reach Xavier myself, I have to be able to draw him out somehow. What better way to do that than by using the woman he loves, right?”

Madelyn didn’t even give him the satisfaction of acknowledging that he’d spoken to her. She didn’t even look at him. What was the point? It wasn’t like it would change anything even if he believed the fact that his plan wasn’t going to work. He would probably kill her on principle. He had said it before; no witnesses.

To Colby, she wasn’t a person right now. She wasn’t a human being with feelings or emotions, nor was she a broken woman who just found out she was pregnant with her stalker's baby. To him, she was just a tool, a way for him to get what he wanted. However, once he realized that using her wasn’t going to get him any closer to Xavier, she wouldn’t even be that anymore. She would just be a liability. There was no way she was getting out of this. She knew that now. Death was imminent, for both her and her baby.

Chapter Nineteen

Xavier

The first thing he noticed as he began to regain consciousness was the silence. It was too quiet, especially with as many guys as Colby had with him. He knew enough about these guys to know that they were only ever quiet while on a job, and this wasn’t a job. Not a sanctioned one anyway. Rodrigo’s place had never been this quiet because, when guys like them got together in one place, fights were inevitable.

The next thing he noticed was the intense and excruciating pain, causing him to take account of his injuries. It felt as though every bone in his body had been shattered and was slowly fusing themselves back together, particularly in his head. It had been a very long time since he’d felt pain this severe, but he would heal. He had done it before and was clearly doing so now.

It took him a few moments, but he managed to pry both of his eyes open. They felt like sandpaper, and one was still swollen, but his shifter healing was seemingly working overtime. The last he remembered, he couldn’t open one eye at all.

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