Page 4 of Hideaway Whirlwind
Priscilla’s laughter is unhinged, and she shakes me, knocking my head back and forth on my neck while I claw at her hands uselessly with my chewed fingernails, unable to reach her knife in my dizzy state. No matter how much noise we make, Priscilla won’t stop unless she wants to. We both know none of my neighbors will miraculously come to my rescue or, at the very least, call the cops. Everyone here has something to hide, with lives as miserable as mine, and no one will risk the police coming down on them.
It’s when she drops to her knees, crushing my upper thighs beneath her frame, and flattens me on the floor with her hands around my throat that I let go of any hope that I can lie my way out of this mess. For the first time in my life, I truly fight with all of my strength, knowing that if I don’t, this will be the end. Our third chance at life is riding on this one moment in time. My kids’ futures. Mine. Mine and Quincy’s unborn baby that I made sure Quincy never knew about. The one Priscilla stilldoesn’t know about.
“I told you!” she screams several times while tightening her grip, my blood rushing in my head that swims with the lack of oxygen. “I told you what would happen to Dustin and Sydney if you ever tried to leave!” She rears back and tries to slap me across my face, giving me the chance to draw in a life-saving breath.
And there’s Sydney, ripping at Priscilla’s hair before Priscilla can bring her hand down. Sydney screams at Priscilla to get off of me while Kendall clings to Dustin, but Priscilla easily throws my daughter back, only for Sydney to come at her again. My beautiful baby girl’s face is mottled with rage no five-year-old should ever have to feel, battling her fear as she fights for me.
It’s a position I never should have put her in, but did so anyway, simply by chance, when I met Quincy three years ago and fell for his knight in shining armor mask, rescuing a nineteen-year-old single mother of two a year after I made it to Las Vegas with only the clothes on my back. A mask that started to dissolve the minute I got pregnant with Kendall. He was the pot of water that slowly began to boil, and I was the desperate, naive frog who didn’t notice until it was too late.
Sydney strikes Priscilla across the head with the chopping board left on the counter, though Priscilla took all my steak knives and any other sharp objects long ago. When Priscilla twists around, screaming obscenities, shifting the full weight of her unrelenting, maniacal cruelty from me to my daughter, I take the one and only opportunity I have while she’s distracted to sit up, reach under Priscilla’s jacket, and grab the hilt of her knife.
Elliott
Teagan’s apartment complex looks like it ought to be condemned. Of the six two-story buildings, three have roofs missing close to half their shingles, their gutters sagging or having come loose completely from one side or the other. Maybe at one time, this place was nice, the decorative swirl designs in the metal fence perhaps bright and shiny, but now it’s rusted straight through, gouged by wind, dust, and neglect.
Each step up to Teagan’s unit on the second floor groans, the bolts used to anchor the stairs to the side of the building threatening to come loose beneath my bulk, irritatingly leaving me unable to move silently like I usually would be able to do. I don’t have to check the apartment number to know I have the right one when children’s wails reach my ears above the sounds of a vicious fight, and I quicken my steps.
I pause briefly to press my ear against the door with chipped off-white paint, doing my best to discern if the kids are standing in front of the door or not. Praying that I’m not wrong in my conclusion, I pull the sawed-off shotgun I’m legally not allowed to own or travel with—but never go anywhere without—from inside my jacket. I back up a pace, then slam my steel-toe boot against the door. It gives way as easily as if I’d kicked an empty tin can down the road.
Swollen red eyes swing toward me from where a boy and a tiny girl are huddled together. A woman’s scream and another woman’s howl from the other side of the wall opposite have the little hairs on the nape of my neck standing on end.
The boy’s face crumples beneath his short black hair. “My mommy needs help.”
Chapter 3
Teagan
Priscilla’s eyes flare wide with alarm when I rear my arm back and bring the knife down toward her chest, but she deflects it at the last moment with her forearm, her thick jacket protecting her from the slash of the blade. It’s enough of a shock, though, to have her howling and throwing herself to the side to avoid my next strike.
I launch myself off the floor and scramble toward the living room, screaming at my kids to run. Anywhere is safer than here, even out on the dark streets on the seedier side of Las Vegas’s outskirts. But I don’t make it one step out of the kitchen before Priscilla grabs my hair from behind, ripping long black strands from my scalp. She locks one forearm around my neck, and I lose my hold on the hilt of the knife when she digs her manicured nails into the underside of my wrist beneath my cuff. I scream with fury and frustration that I botched my only attempt to get away.
And then we both go still when a massive silver bear of a man blocks the opening, holding a shotgun aimed at my head, a black ball cap pulled low over his face. I didn’t know Priscillahad brought backup, and now it doesn’t matter if I’m able to escape her or not. Not with this beast ready to blow my head off. A current of horror sweeps me off my feet when I think about Priscilla punishing me tenfold for what I’ve done. Punishing mychildrenfor what their mother has done.
I should have just let her kill me.
But then the bear shifts his aim up at Priscilla. “Let her go,” he demands.
It takes a few seconds while she probably calculates her next move, but she eventually draws her arm away from my throat and takes a step back.
Without taking his eyes off Priscilla, he says in a deep, gruff growl to me, “Move, Teagan.”
I hang my head for a brief moment, my shoulders caving in and my eyes fluttering shut. I hadn’t known until now if he was a random passerby, butting in when it would have been in his best interest not to, or if he was the trucker Marigold sent to pick us up and smuggle us out.
I cling to a knife’s edge of hope that we’ll finally be safe when I suddenly crouch to grab the chopping board Sydney had dropped on the floor, jump up on a spin with the board raised high above me with both hands, and bring it down on Priscilla’s head as hard as I can, cutting off her screech when she realized what I was going to do a half second too late to dodge the blow.
“Damn, girl,” is all the bear says under his breath.
“It buys us time to get away before she wakes up,” I tell him, watching Priscilla with narrowed eyes, sprawled on the kitchen floor. Oh, how weak and feeble she is, in the end. Just as they all are.
Our gazes collide when I look up and up and up into thebear’s eyes, shadowed by his hat’s bill, waiting to see what he’ll do. A beat passes, and then he lowers his gun and steps out of my way.
I swerve around his huge body, dropping the chopping board when I crash to my knees in front of my children, holding their little sister in a group hug beside the front door, which is lying face down on the carpet. I crush them together in my arms, bowled over by the sheer force of my relief that they’re ok. That we’re all going to be ok.
Blue eyes as cold as a predator’s meet mine when the bear silently appears over my shoulder and works his jaw beneath his big silver beard while he stows his gun and Priscilla’s knife inside his dark red plaid jacket. Wordlessly, he holds out the tattered remains of my garbage bag with any shoes and clothes that weren’t tossed out, along with a new garbage bag. I reach for them after wiping my clammy hands on my sweatpants and snap open the new garbage bag when the bear grunts impatiently, and the kids frantically help stuff everything we can inside. Squatting down, he drops the chopping board in the bag last. When I tie the drawstrings together, he stands and throws the bag over his broad shoulder at the same time as he scoops Kendall up into the air on the crook of his arm.
Startled and shaking uncontrollably with tears and snot running down her cherubic red face, Kendall grabs onto his jacket with both fists, clutching her teddy bear between them, to keep from falling back. She doesn’t cry out for me, even as the bear forces us through the front doorway ahead of him, so tall that he has to duck beneath the frame.
He levels an unexpectedly approving look at me when I grip Dustin and Sydney’s small hands, one on either side of me, and then he says in a low southern drawl, “You did good. Nowrun.”
