Page 94 of Cherry Auction

But action movie stunts aren’t real. I don’t know how to get into a plane once the door is shut and locked.

I roar in fury as I realize the humbling truth: I can’t save her. I’ll never be able to save her.

As if to add insult to injury, suddenly she pops up there behind her father in the window. I go silent, trying to drink in my last image of her.

I’ll find you this time, Mads, I swear.

But just then, something glints as she reaches her arm down as if to help her still bent-over father adjust something with the navigation.

He wrenches up violently, though, holding his hands to his throat. We all watch in stunned shock as Brooke yanks her hand back.

Blood splatters the window.

“Jesus fuck!” Quinn says, then reaches down into the leg of her thigh-highs. “She knew I carried a knife in the top of my boot. She must’ve nabbed it when you two were arguing at the club earlier.” She looks up at me. “Right before she went out to her father.”

Holy shit. My eyes are glued to Brooke as she jerks back out of the window’s frame. For several moments, her father just sits there, hands struggling not to let the spurting blood out of his slit throat. It only takes a couple of moments for him to lose the battle, though, his blood draining out down over his chest. He slumps over where he sits.

In the next moment, the door and stairs start descending back to the ground.

Brooke looks shell-shocked, still holding the knife, blood covering her hands and the jacket-robe she’s still wearing.

I get to her first and wrap her in my arms, careful of the knife. Behind my back, I feel Quinn slip it out of her hands.

I can’t believe all that’s just happened. Is she real? Is this actually her in my arms? I’m half sure this is a fever-dream. To be so sure I’d lost her, and now to have her back in my arms. I squeeze her to me, flooded with relief.

“Oh my God,” Moira whispers from behind me. “What did I just let happen?”

“How do we get rid of it?” Quinn asks Isaak, voice low. Then, more tense, she asks. “And the fucking body?”

“Leave that to me,” comes Isaak’s brusque answer. “But we have to act quickly.”

“Are you okay?” I ask, pulling away only far enough so I can see Brooke’s face. She’s all I can care about. I mighta done a shite job of taking care of her so far, but I swear on my life I’ll protect her from now on.

“I- I think I killed him.” Her eyes are a little distant, butnot totally gone. “My friend at the shelter always said if her ex ever came back to threaten her…” Brooke mimics running a finger across her throat, “… She wouldn’t take any chances.”

She looks down distantly at her hands that are still dripping with blood.

“Come on, we’ll get you cleaned up.” I yank off my undershirt and start wiping her hands clean of blood. I get most of it off, but it’s turned the white undershirt red.

Fuck. This whole air hanger is a crime scene. I put my hand on my head, looking around, ready to freak the fuck out. I usually whip myself when I get to feeling out of control like this, but I already broke one fist, and that was on a fucking dashboard.

My love was the one who had to face and kill the monster, all on her own. I can’t fail her again by losing my shit now when she needs me most.

I willnotlet her go down for this body suddenly appearing, with her prints all over the murder weapon. No motherfucker ever deserved more to die than this evil kid-didler. I’d happily burn his body and dance on the bones. But even that feels like too much evidence left behind, when I wasn’t the one who actually pulled the trigger. Or sliced the knife, as it were.

After all the ways I’ve failed her, I can’t let Brooke go down for the most justified murder in history.

I look up to find Quinn’s already got a ten-foot wide mop out, pouring out bottles of bleach all over the section of whereBrooke stepped, bloody, from the plane. Moira’s clumsily trying to help her.

I nod, finally clueing into the fact that my team is way ahead of me on planning and it’s time for me to catch the fuck up.

I squeeze Brooke tight one more time. “You did the right thing, love. You’re such a good girl. You did the right thing. But now Quinn, Isaak, and I have to take care of something very important. We have to take the plane.”

She nods. “I’ll come.”

“You can’t,” I say quickly. “I’m so sorry, you can’t go with us. You have to let Moira take you back to the house.”

Brooke shakes her head, frantic. “No. You can’t leave me behind. Not after everything. I need you.” She clings to me desperately. “I need to be with you.”

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