Page 55 of Beautifully Used
Chapter 45
Brodie
* * *
I stayed as still as I could, watching and listening to Jeff grow crazier by the second. The guy was definitely not right in the head, and I worried for Gabrielle. I had to get free, but even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to do much as he waved that knife around ready to slice the first thing that came into his path. I needed to be careful. I didn’t want him to cut her because I did something stupid. I thought of the old pistol of my uncle’s I’d always kept in the drawer of the pie safe. I prayed it was still there and fully loaded.
Jeff bounced up and down on the couch. “This might be a good spot, but maybe the floor would be better. That way your boyfriend can get a bird’s eye view. What do you think, Skippy?”
I just stared at him, concentrating, waiting for him to put that knife down, move, and get distracted.
“Looks like I need to move this table out of the way. We’re going to need some viewing room.” Jeff stood and shoved the coffee table about five feet to the side of the living room. It was then or never. I took advantage of the noise of the table scraping across the hardwood floor and banged my hand on the floor, breaking my thumb. I may have dislocated it as well, which is what I was trying to do. It hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, but I managed to stifle the groan. With my thumb broken and dislocated, I slipped my hand out of the handcuff. While he was untying Gabrielle from the chair to move her to the floor, I untied my feet. When he turned his back and pushed her down on the floor, I charged him, sending both of us over the back of the sofa. I pounded him in the face as the handcuffs still attached to my right wrist flew along smacking him in the eye. We wrestled, rolling across the floor. He managed to get on top and slugged me in the jaw. Adrenaline must have kicked in because I didn’t even feel the pain in my thumb anymore as I yanked him by his hair and pulled him off of me. All I could think about was what he could do to Gabrielle if I didn’t succeed in taking him out. He got to his feet at the same time I stood, and he came at me swinging. I ducked and came up with a hard right cross to his cheek. The sound of bone cracking against bone permeated the room, and I stumbled backwards, shaking my hand from the sting. Jeff took a couple of steps toward me, but I charged him with all my might, sending him and me through the back screen door. We fell hard onto the concrete, but he was under me and took most of the impact. I jumped to my feet ready to go at him, when I realized he wasn’t getting up. I saw blood oozing from the back of Jeff’s head and the edge of the hedge clippers I’d left on the patio the other day sticking in the side of his neck. I suddenly knew how Lena had felt when she’d killed Troy. I raced back in to Gabrielle, her eyes horrified. I gently pulled the tape from her mouth and quickly untied her hands.
“Where is he?” she asked, tears streaming down her cheeks as I held her tightly against me, so thankful that he hadn’t gotten the chance to hurt her. Forgetting for the moment that I’d been angry with her about her mother, forgetting that she hadn’t had the courage to introduce me properly, forgetting that my thumb was killing me. “Did you knock him out?”
“You might say that.” I took my phone out of my pocket and called the police.
There would be no his word against ours this time. Jeff was dead. The police came and took our statements. They were the same two officers that had come into the bar earlier. Turned out they’d been keeping tabs on Jeff on a hunch that he was the same guy another woman had identified from a police sketch as the man who’d raped her a few nights before. But when they’d brought Jeff in for a line-up, the woman wasn’t able to identify him as the guy because she could have sworn her rapist had darker hair, but they still had their suspicions since he’d had that episode with Gabrielle, which restored my faith in our illustrious Turtle Lake police department. Unfortunately, the two cops had been called away on an emergency while they’d been at the bar, and they’d missed Jeff’s departure from there. They deemed his death an accident, which it was. If I had to do it over again though, I would have killed him before I ever let him put another finger on Gabrielle.
Chapter 46
Gabrielle
* * *
The police had turned on every light in the living room while they’d been here investigating. They’d said they needed the light as they searched the scene. As soon as they left, I slowly got up and began turning them all off. Brodie stood in the middle of the room, watching me.
I picked up a small battery operated candle and flipped the switch on the bottom. It gave us enough light to see each other, but dimmed the rest of the room.
“I’m not ready to look at this room in so much light yet,” I admitted.
He sat down on the comfy chair by the window. “We can keep the lights off.”
“For how long?”
“For as long as you want.”
“I don’t want to see the chair Jeff had me tied to or the table he slid across the floor to make room.”
“I’ll get rid of them.”
I nodded, and he stood and picked up the chair and tossed it outside. I think I heard it shatter into pieces. Then he went and picked up the table and took it out, too.
“Better?”
I nodded and reached for the glass of brandy Brodie had given me a few minutes ago. I sipped, letting the warm liquid burn and soothe at the same time.
“You okay?” Brodie asked, sitting across from me.
“Yeah. You?”
“Not exactly.” My eyes met his, and a dangerous burn tore through my soul. I wanted him to hold me, but he didn’t. He hadn’t really touched me since those first few moments right after Jeff had died when he’d come and untied me, holding me tightly, yet briefly. “Gabrielle, I hate that that monster was in my house.”
His house? Yeah, technically it was his house, but I’d been living here for three months, and in light of the last four weeks, I’d thought we’d moved beyond what was his and what was mine. I considered this to be my house, too. Maybe not on paper, but in our minds. Perhaps it was just a slip out of habit.
He drained the little cordial glass containing the brandy and stood. “It’s been an exhausting night. I’m going to bed.”
Without another word, he went to the front door and made sure it was locked, doing the same to the other two doors in the house, and then took off toward the bedroom. He was upset, I got that, but couldn’t he have given me a few comforting words at least before retiring, considering what we had just gone through?
