Mile High (Up in the Air #2)(80)

I moved to my mother, having learned a very long time ago not to disobey him when he was in this mood.

He sneered at the two of us when I stood beside her. He towered over us. My mother didn’t look at me, didn’t reach for me. I knew she didn’t want to draw more attention to me. She tried to protect me, as I did her. “Look at my pretty girls. The daughter is even prettier than the mother. What use, then, is the mother? Tell me why you’re useful, Mama?” he asked her.

I didn’t hear her answer. My gaze was focused solely now on the object he was holding at his side. It was a gun. My gut clenched in dread. The gun was a new and terrifying addition to this violent scene.

My gaze flew back to my father’s face as a laugh left his throat. It was a cackle of a laugh, dry and angry.

I began to back away, shaking my head back and forth in denial.

“Wrong answer, cunt,” he said.

He waved the the pistol in front of her. “You can’t take your eyes off of this. Do you want it? Would you like me to give this to you? Take it, if you want it. You think I can’t touch you with a gun in your hand?”

My mother watched him, her eyes almost blank with terror. She must know, as I did, from the mocking tone of his voice, that he was testing her. She would pay dearly if she took the gun from him, even if he had told her to.

He laughed. “I insist. Take the gun.”

Unexpectedly, and horrifyingly, she did. She pointed it at him with hands that shook. “Get out,” she said, her voice tremulous and awful with her terror. “You can’t do these things, especially in front of our daughter. Get out, and don’t come back.” She was sobbing, but she managed to pull the hammer back.

He laughed again. With no fear and no effort, he grabbed her hand. His hand covered one of hers, ripping the other one away. He turned the gun, slowly and inexorably pointing it away from himself and pushing it into her mouth.

I had backed myself against the wall as I watched their exchange, but when I saw his clear intent, I suddenly rushed forward, sobbing, “Mama.”

I stopped as though I’d run into a wall when my father pulled the trigger, covering us and the entire room in obscene amounts of glowing crimson blood and gore.

My horrified eyes met my father’s. His showed no expression at all.

I awoke to total darkness, a harsh scream caught in my throat. I had no notion of where I was and I began to scramble off of the huge, soft bed, fumbling around in the pitch blackness for a wall, a lamp, a light switch, anything. I needed to wash the blood off. I was feeling along the wall and sobbing like a child when light suddenly flooded the room.

I finally got an inkling of where I was as James rushed to me, cradling me into his chest. “What’s wrong, Bianca? What can I do?”

I gasped in several breaths before I could speak. “Shower. I need a shower. I need to wash the blood off.”

He didn’t ask anymore questions, getting us both into the shower in a flash. He turned the water directly onto me, and the cold water that hit me for just moments before it began to warm helped bring me a few steps further away from the dream.

Slowly, my broken sobs turned into gasping breaths as I became clean in the water, my mind moving further and further out of the nightmare realm.

“Can you talk about it?” James asked. His voice was so vulnerable with his concern for me that I couldn’t resist him.

“It’s the same old dream about my mother’s death. I was in that room, not three feet from her, when it happened.” I felt the floodgates open, and I told him everything, every gory detail, of both the dream and the horrific event. He didn’t speak at all, just made sympathetic noises and gave me reassuring touches while I spoke. I was surprised to feel much better when I’d gotten it all out. It had actually helped to tell him about it.

He helped me out of the shower and dried us both off. We lay in a naked snuggle on the bed with only a sheet covering us. He was on his back and had pulled me almost on top of him.

I rubbed my cheek over my name on his chest as he stroked my wet hair back, arranging it over his arm.

“You’ve done all you can. You told the police everything you saw. It’s not your burden anymore, Bianca.”

“Yes, I know. I haven’t had that nightmare since that other time, over a month ago. I think it was learning about her, his wife, that got my mind back into that dark place again. I need to tell her what he did, to warn her. I don’t know the woman, but she deserves that much. Lord, I don’t want to speak to her. I don’t want anything to do with her.”

“You could always just send her an email, or hell, a letter. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

I mulled that over. It seemed so cowardly to be afraid of a simple phone call. “I’ll call her tomorrow,” I decided.

His arms tightened on me, his hold becoming almost painful. It was comforting to my twisted senses. “I need to stay in New York this week. Will you come back to be with me on your first day off?”

I thought about it. It didn’t take me long. “Yes. Do you mind if I invite Stephan? You have plenty of room, after all.”

I had felt all of the anxious tension leave his body when I agreed to come. “We have plenty of room,” he chastised. “And yes, of course. Invite Javier, too, if you like. Or anyone you want, for that matter. I’ll have to work quite a bit anyways. I’ve been putting some important meetings off that need tending to.