Page 46 of Her Billionaire Hero
My ears pricked as I heard soft footsteps coming down the hallway. The sounds were too soft, as if the person wore socks and not shoes. No nurse would be padding around in socks, or at least I thought none would.
But who was I to say?
I went back to playing my game so I would stop thinking so much about things that were out of my control anyway.
My eyes were drawn away from my phone screen as the door slowly opened. I figured it was a nurse there to check on Sloan, but when the door opened a bit more, I saw that it wasn’t a nurse at all. The hospital gown moved around the knees of the person who was coming into the room. Hairy legs, yellow booties covering his feet, and a gun in his hand. Preston.
“You,” he growled. “Why are you here with her? She isn’t yours, you fucking prick.”
I had nothing on me to protect her with. The hospital had stiff rules about bringing guns in the hospital. Preston must’ve gotten the one he was holding off the cop that had been guarding him.
“So, you’ve killed a cop now, Preston? Do you think that’s a smart thing to do? I mean, you’ve got the murder charge to face for killing Sloan’s mother. You’ve got two kidnapping charges and attempted murder charges from what you did to Sloan and her father. You’ve probably got even more coming once the district attorney gets your file. Adding in something to do with fucking with a policeman is sure to get you the death penalty.”
“You don’t seem to realize that I don’t plan to go to jail or face any jury of my peers, you fuck-tard.” His hand shook as he held the gun up, pointing it at me.
I’d shot him in the right shoulder for a good reason. I’d noticed that he held the knife in his right hand, making him righthanded. Holding the gun wasn’t an easy chore for the injured man. “How many stitches did it take to close up the holes I made in your shoulder, Preston? Ten, fifteen, twenty?”
“Fuck off, jackass.” He moved into the room, the door closing softly behind him. “You weren’t going to be a part of this. Since you’ve decided to hang around, you’ll join us all in the afterlife. Only you won’t be a part of what we’ll share. Audrey, Sloan, and I will be together for eternity soon.”
“You’re most definitely going to hell,” I let him know. “I don’t know if you thought about that or not, but you won’t be in Heaven with either Sloan or her mother. Murder victims always go to Heaven, Preston. Murderers always go to hell. It’s just the way it goes.” Stalling him with my theories of the afterlife, I knew I had to come up with something to keep him from shooting anyone until I found some kind of weapon of my own. So far, I hadn’t seen a single item in the room that I could use.
Leaning against the wall, he showed signs that the walk to Sloan’s room had taken a toll on him. I was sure the nurses had given him something to help him sleep too, and something for the pain. The room was probably spinning for him. “You don’t know shit. I don’t know what she sees in you. But that won’t matter anyway. Maybe I won’t kill you. Maybe I don’t want to chance having to deal with your ass on the other side.”
“You’re really crazy, you know that? Sloan told me about your sick plan. So, did you entice her mother into having an affair with you or what?”
“I spotted Audrey at the grocery store. She was buying copious amounts of wine. I saw the wedding ring on her finger and knew immediately that her marriage was on the rocks. No happily married woman drinks that much alcohol. But that wasn’t going to be enough for me. I wanted a woman with a daughter. A daughter who resembled her, so I could have the best of both worlds. The older, mature, experienced version, and the young, fresh, virginal version.”
“How’d you do it, Preston?” I had to keep him talking to distract him. “How’d you get Audrey to do what you wanted her to?”
“I followed her through the store until weaccidentallyran into each other when we both went to grab a carton of eggs.” Smirking, he seemed proud of himself. “I asked her how she was doing, and she huffed and said she was doing okay. I really wanted to know if she had a daughter, so I asked if her kids were getting her down. She said she only had one kid, a girl in fifth grade who wasn’t any problem at all. That made me incredibly happy. So, I went one step further, asking if life was getting her down. She was quick to say that married life wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be. And from there we went to lunch, grabbed some drinks at a nearby bar, then headed to a motel to finish the deed. She cried afterward, saying she didn’t know what made her do what she’d done.”
“Let me guess, you put something in her drink.”
“At lunch, yes. A little ecstasy was all it took to get her to loosen up and give into me. But Audrey proved harder to manipulate than I thought she’d be. Even with the drugs I fed her, she wouldn’t bring her daughter to me. Not that I told her what I wanted with the girl. I wasn’t going to be honest about that.” He grinned, clearly thinking he was the smartest man in the world.
“You wanted Audrey to think that you wanted to take care of her and her little girl.” I could see right through him. And it occurred to me that Audrey may have begun seeing through him, and that’s why she wouldn’t bring her daughter around him. “She was too smart for you.”
“She was,” he agreed. “But, when all was said and done, I ended her anyway. And I got her daughter. Sure, I had to wait a few years, but I was the one who had the first taste of her. It was a nice consolation prize. And now, I will take her life, then my own, and you can sit there and play the role of the witness in this whole thing. You can tell everyone what I’ve said, and you’ll become some sort of a hero for doing it too.”
“I’m not cool with any of that, Preston.” Sloan began to stir, as Preston had begun to raise his voice. I put my hand on hers, stroking it to lull her back to sleep. I didn’t want any more bad memories to lurk in her poor tortured mind.
It was becoming obvious to me that I would have to use the only weapon I had—my strength—to get the gun away from the insane man. But just as I was about to jump up and make my move, the door flew open, hitting Preston in the face as he’d been leaning on the wall.
Frozen in place, I saw another man in a hospital gown come into the room, holding something shiny over his head. Preston stumbled forward as the door bounced off him, then slammed shut again. “What the fuck?”
Sloan’s father must’ve heard Preston’s voice as he was resting in the room next door. He slammed what looked like a stainless-steel bedpan down on Preston’s head. “Fuck you, Preston Rivers!”
Sloan sat up in bed with fear in her eyes. “Dad?”
The gun slid across the floor and I dove for it as Preston crumbled to the floor in an unconscious heap. I grabbed the gun, pointing it at him. “You okay, Richard?”
He slumped into the chair I’d vacated, pale and shaking. The bedpan made a hellacious sound as it fell from his hand, landing on the floor. “I think I am. Sloan, honey, will you press the button to call the nurse?”
“What the hell happened?” she asked as she pressed the button.
“He came back to finish the job,” I told her. “I should probably just shoot him now.”
The door opened and two male nurses came in. “No, you shouldn’t,” one of them said as the other held his hand out for the gun.
