He stands over her with his gun still trained on her, and I look down at Taylor, knowing Rachel is no longer a problem.
“Sorry, babe. You okay?” I ask breathing heavy and heart pounding. I push her hair away from her face and see her eyes are closed. Another loud bang goes off, but it barely registers in my mind. Did I knock Taylor out? We hit the concrete floor pretty hard.
“Taylor?” I place my hand on her stomach to shake her. My heart stops when I feel wetness. I look down to where my hand and see it’s covered in blood. “Taylor?” I demand again as I reach up and check for a pulse. “TAYLOR!” I scream out her name when I don’t feel one.
Brecken is sliding on the floor as he drops to his knees next to us. “She has no pulse.” My voice shakes as much as my hand does when I reach up to feel her neck again. Maybe I was wrong; I feel nothing.
He places his ear down to her parted lips and his dark eyes look up at me. The look he gives me would take my breath away if I wasn’t already breathless. “Case,” he says sitting up. I watch him lean over her and rip off her tank top. “Case!” he shouts now removing his own shirt.
My heart pounds in my chest, and my limbs feel heavy. I can’t move, let alone breathe at the moment. She’s dead. The woman I fell in love with is lying dead in front of me, and I can’t move to help her. Tears sting my eyes and a knot forms in my throat. My chest tightens to the point it feels like it’s suffocating me.
“Case!” I hear Brecken yell and then the side of my face stings. I blink a few times and shake my head. “We’re gonna save her, but I need you to help me,” he growls. “Are you gonna help me or not?”
I look down at her and I can see the bullet wound now that he removed her shirt. It’s on the left side of her abdomen and the pool of blood we’re sitting in is getting bigger by the second. My face stings once again and my head snaps up to look at Brecken. “Pull it together, Tyler!” he demands using my first name.
I suck in a deep breath and my lungs burn. I blink rapidly and the tears that stung my eyes run down my face. He positions himself across from me and reaches over her as he applies his shirt to the gunshot wound and I place my hands on her chest, ready to give her compressions. My heart rips in my chest as I press down on hers. I feel a crack and then a snap as I start to perform CPR on her. My heart tells me to stop, that I’m hurting her. I’m breaking her ribs, but my mind tells me to keep going—her bones will heal. “Come on, baby,” I grind out as I push on her chest again ignoring the cracking this time. “Come on, Taylor,” I demand as the terror of not having her threatens to take hold.
Save her! I have to save her!
I push harder, needing to bring her back to me. It’s crazy how this beautiful woman came into my life. She walked into this club and changed it for the better. I refuse to lose her in this very building.
CASE
I stand in front of the gray concrete wall that holds the people who have passed away. It’s been a week since Taylor left me, called me in the middle of the night, and came up with her plan to show us who was behind trying to kill us. I wish I could go back to that moment. I would do it all so differently. I would take her seriously. I wouldn’t get mad at her or yell. I would have gotten to her faster and made her leave in order to keep her safe. But that’s not how life works.
Instead, Brecken and I stand here as we say our good-bye to Rachel. Today, Brecken and I buried Rachel. Well, we chose to place her in a mausoleum. I let him decide what he wanted to do with her. Rachel meant a lot to us at one point, but it didn’t matter in the end. Brecken had to take her life, and I feel bad that he will have to carry that burden for the rest of his. A part of him really did love her.
I look over at him as he stands there and stares at it as if she will appear. “I got a call while you were in the restroom a minute ago,” I say softly, but he doesn’t turn to face me. “The toxicology report came back.” I pause to wait for him to give me some sort of movement, letting me know he’s listening. When he doesn’t, I answer anyway. “It came back positive for methamphetamines and cocaine.”
The only sign he gives me is his hand he fists down by his side. “But you already knew that, didn’t you?”
Still nothing! I place my hand on his shoulder, and he jumps as if I just slapped him. “I tried to tell you when I saw that cocaine in her apartment.”
I knew he’d say that. It’s my fault that I didn’t believe him. “Brecken, she passed the drug test …”
“I don’t know how,” he says through gritted teeth. “She must have had someone change out the tests. Or she paid someone else to take it. Fuck, who knows how deep her connections went,” he hisses.
“I don’t understand how she …”
“This isn’t the time to discuss this,” he interrupts me.
“We don’t have any more time,” I argue. “She’s been dead for a week, Brecken, and no one has come looking for her.” As far as we know, no one knew Rachel was at Seven Deadly Sins to see me that night Taylor had texted her from my phone. And the department is keeping her death under wraps. We are still undercover officers trying to find a man who knew every move we made. As soon as Rachel doesn’t contact him, they will be looking, wanting to know what we are up to and how we got her to go away. We went through her phone, but there was nothing suspicious about it. She must have used a different phone to keep in contact with Cricket. And of course, nothing came up in her apartment. She was good. But we already know that. She had kept us blinded for four years. “We need to decide what to do when we reopen and people start to ask about her.” The club has been completely remodeled and will be ready to open next week. I had closed it down after the night he was shot and told everyone we were remodeling. Nothing that has happened has been released publicly.
“Tell them she left,” he says simply with a careless shrug. He turns to face me, and I see nothing but blackness in his dark eyes. “Hell, put an obiturary in the paper that she was found dead from an overdose. I killed her, Case,” he says flatly. “And don’t let my feelings I had for her make you think I care more than I do. The moment I saw her lift that gun, I knew I was gonna do whatever was necessary to keep her from killing anyone. I did what needed to be done. Just like I always will, no matter what the circumstances.” With that, he turns and looks one last time at the wall in front of him. He turns his back to me and walks off with his head held high and his hands in the front pockets of his black slacks.
EPILOGUE
CASE
“Taylor Williams.”
I stand from my chair as her name is called out. Placing my thumb and index finger in my mouth, I let out a loud whistle. A huge smile spreads across my face as I remove them and clap while yelling out Go, Taylor. I watch the love of my life walk across the stage at her college graduation, and I couldn’t be prouder of her. Today marks a year that I first met her in Seven Deadly Sins, and I never imagined she would be the one to heal me. To save me. She always thanks me for saving her life. She always tells me that she is lucky to have me and she would be lost without me. But I am the one who would be lost without her.
It took her weeks to heal from the gunshot wound when Rachel had shot her, but she survived it. It took many tears and endless hours of pain, but she got through them and I was by her side the entire way, holding her hand and telling her that she could do it.
“Yay, Tay!” Savannah hollers from beside me as she jumps up and down. She looks over at me and giggles. “Are you nervous about tonight?” she asks, shoving her elbow into me.