Chapter 39

THIRTY-NINE

DOMHNALL

Isaak holds me in check the entire rest of the way to the airfield.

“There. There, ” I yell at Quinn.

“I see it,” she growls out through her teeth, spinning the wheel to turn down the gravel road towards the air hanger that’s lit up like a beacon in the darkness.

“Cut your lights,” Isaak says from behind us and Quinn immediately responds, the lights in front of us disappearing.

“There she is,” I breathe out, my eyes zeroing in on the tiny figure of Brooke where she stands near a fuel line feeding into a small luxury Cessna.

“There the plane is,” Quinn says. “At least it hasn’t left yet.”

“Great, but where the fuck is the bogey?” Isaak asks, reverting to military speak like he does when things really get tense.

“Step on it,” I demand. “And let me the fuck go.” This time when I wrench out of Isaak’s arms, he lets me free. Right in time, too, because just as Quinn stomps on the pedal, I see the bastard walking down the steps out of the airplane, both his and Brooke’s head swinging our way at the same time.

Quinn’s good at everything she does. So she expertly drives the car, even at top speed, and I can see she only intends to stomp the breaks once she’s inside the hanger, preferably after she’s put the car between Brooke and her father.

But neither of us see the saber tooth tire spikes allowing one-way traffic the fucker laid across the entrance until it’s too late.

The tires blow, and at the speed we’re going, it sends us spinning into the side of the hanger opposite the plane. The car blasts through the aluminum siding, but a central steel post stops us, immediately setting off the air bags.

I barely wait for the shocking thwack of the bag in my face to dissipate before I’m yanking out of my seatbelt and shoving my car door open.

“Everyone okay?” Quinn shouts, looking behind her to the back seat .

“Both okay back here,” Isaak says.

I glance back once to make sure my sister is nodding as Isaak helps her out of her seat belt and out the car door before I turn and start running.

“Brooke,” I yell, sprinting towards her.

She’s still standing where I first saw her. She’s unhooked the fuel line from the plane but is frozen, staring at me. She looks at me like she doesn’t know me, confused. Like she’s trying to remember why she recognizes my face.

“Mati,” her father yells from the steps of the plane. Her face snaps towards her father at his voice. “That’s right. You’re Daddy’s good girl. Now come. Don’t start being a bad girl now. Get on this plane.”

She hesitates just a moment. She’s standing equidistant between us, as easily able to run to him as she could turn and run to me.

She takes a step towards him.

“Don’t you dare,” I call out. “You’re not his. You’re my good girl. Mads. Brooke. It’s me, Donny. I love you.”

She freezes, her head swinging back towards me. It’s as if I can see the haze clear from her eyes.

Donny . I see her mouth my name.

“That’s right. You’re my best girl. Come back to me, kitty. I love you and you love me. It’s our chance.”

I hold my hand out for her to come to me. Will my control over her hold? Have I done my job well enough? Just fifty feet separate us.

“Our time is now.” I make her the same offer she did to me all those years ago. “Let’s run away together.” Except I’m not going to let anything separate us this time. “Now. Come with me now, kitty..”

I see light come into her eyes. She’s about to take a step in my direction when her father shouts, “You’re Daddy’s good girl. You know what happens to bad girls, Matilda. How many times have I told you? I will never let you go.”

She freezes and the brightness that entered her eyes seeps out just as quickly.

And I suddenly see how cruel I’ve been. Trying to own her at all.

Oh god, I’m such a fucking fool.

I thought that control had to be taken before it was taken from me. But I only thought that because it was the lesson he taught me.

What Brooke needed the whole time was for someone to trust her enough to choose for herself. Only in choosing me of her own will would she ever be free of her father’s monstrous grip on her mind. Right now, he’s just using her like a puppet between us.

She’s going to be ripped in half.

When he shouts again, “Be Daddy’s good girl, she turns away from me and begins hurrying towards the plane.

I all-out sprint to get to her.

I’m not a scrawny seventeen-year-old anymore. I train at the gym five days a week so that if it ever mattered again, I’d be too big a motherfucker for anybody to hold down. If I can just get my hands on the old man, I won’t stop until I’ve bashed his head into the concrete so many times he no longer has any teeth.

But Mads has a shorter distance to go, and once her father claps his hands sharply at her she starts to run. Feck me but she’s fast.

As soon as her foot touches the bottom stair, the stairs start lifting back up into the plane. She jogs up them as they go. By the time I reach it, the stairs are almost all the way up. I leap as far as I can, as if I’ll be able to catch the foot of the stairs before they disappear. But no, they close solidly into the smooth wall of the plane.

“Brooke!” I jump up and pound the bottom of the plane with both fists. “Madison! Open up. Open up this goddamn door. I’m not going to lose you again!”

But the plane’s engines have been roaring this whole time, probably one of the reasons they didn’t hear our car pull up until the last moment. Now they roar even louder, and the plane starts to taxi.

“Get out of there!” comes Quinn’s voice from behind me.

But I can’t move, just staring at the door of the airplane as it moves away from me. It’s Isaak again to the rescue, tackling me out of the way before the Cessna’s engine on its forward wing catches and drags me into its whirring blade.

Isaak keeps dragging me backwards until we can see the Cessna’s windshield .

The bastard himself is sitting there in the cockpit, grinning down at me.

I see him reach down to push the gear to start the plane down the runway, taking off with the woman of my dreams forever. I’ve never felt more powerless in all my life. If I thought running up and jumping on the plane would do anything, I’d try.

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, but not 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 will not let 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 where Brooke 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.”

I cradle my hands to her cheek so her darting eyes will settle in on mine, our gazes locking. Again, I’ve broken through the haze to see my girl. “I swear I’ll get back to you as fast as I can. I love you. He’s dead now. He can never hurt us again. But I have to get rid of his body and I need you nowhere fucking near any crime zone, you get me? You’re never to be near any darkness again.”

“But Donny,” she whispers, “I killed him,” looking down at her hands. There’s still blood caught in her cuticles.

“Says what evidence?” I demand. “It’ll be clean as a whistle in here and what can anyone do if they can’t even find the body of a man they never even knew existed?”

Moira’s wandered back our way, likely sent by Quinn. “What about the body in the cockpit?” she asks. She looks almost as shellshocked as Brooke, but I can’t deal with my sister right now. There will be time for her later.

“Not after tonight, there won’t be,” Isaak says, stepping in front of me. “Time to go, everyone. Plane’s fueled up, but we have to go now if we still want to catch the flight time they booked so nothing looks amiss.”

“Fuck,” I swear. I have to go even though I can’t stand leaving Brooke behind. Isaak can fly the plane, but I’m the only one who will have enough clout with customs to make any of this possible.

“Moira,” I call, but my sister’s just staring at the ground. “Moira,” I demand more sharply, clapping my hands to snap her out of it. She finally looks up at me. “I need you to be solid right now, you hear me?”

She nods. “I am.”

“Take Brooke back to my house. Can you do that for me?”

She nods.

“Swear to me you can do it.”

“I swear. I won’t let you down, Domhn.” Moira’s eyes are wide, and she’s got her hands clenched together, but I’ve got no choice but to trust her.

“Good.” I turn to Brooke, cradling her face in my hands again. “Tell me you’ll wait for me at the house. I’ll be back in a day. Two at most.”

She nods and throws her arms around me .

“I love you,” I tell her again, just like I’ll tell her every day for the rest of our lives.

…

…

…

But I’m not back in two days. Or even three. Not even a week.

And by the time I do walk back in the door of my mansion and up to the room where they’re keeping Brooke, it’s too fucking late.