Beyond Revenge (The Ransom Series) Read online

  In an instant, all thoughts of going into this prepared leave me and are replaced with sheer terror. Robert and I turn our heads to the sound that I’m much too familiar with. It makes my insides feel hollow and my skin solidify into ice.

  Even at our distance from the cabin, we can hear Morgan scream.

  I run out from behind the cover of the tree line and bolt toward the cabin. Robert’s quick steps follow closely behind me, and he practically runs into me when we reach the next window around the side of the building. The foundation is built up higher from the ground than where we’re standing so that we can’t reach the glass, but the window is low enough that we can still see inside through the small opening between the curtains.

  Morgan is being held by a fistful of hair face down on a bed, completely naked. She’s struggling, desperately trying to flatten herself to the mattress as Mark approaches her from behind. His chest is bare and his belt is undone as he pulls at her hips to bring her backside closer to him. He yanks on her hair and she screams again, her pain reverberating through the wall and directly to our ears.

  I turn to Robert, and the mortification on his face tells me without asking that we’re going in now, completely unprepared and without a plan, but we have to do something. I grab him by the arm and pull him with me as we run back around to the front of the cabin.

  “You get Morgan. I’ll handle Mark,” I quickly instruct as I run up the stairs of the porch to the front door. “No matter what happens, you get her out of here. Get her to safety, Robert!”

  I fire two shots each into the deadbolt lock and the door handle before kicking hard at the door. It swings open with a crash into a living room area, but all I focus on is the hallway straight ahead. In just a few long strides, I reach it and burst through the first door.

  The yellow glow of a lamp highlights the profile of Mark’s face and body hovering over Morgan on the bed as he’s taking the gun on the nightstand in his grasp. He points it at me as I enter the room, and we each fire a shot as I jump toward him. My body collides with his, and I grasp on to him, pulling him with me to the floor.

  In the momentary daze of reorienting myself after the fall, I hear Morgan sobbing from the other side of the room and Robert’s words of comfort to her. She’s in his arms. She’s finally safe.

  It’s time for my own revenge.

  I quickly roll over and bring myself to my knees, smacking Mark hard across the face with the gun that’s still clutched in my hand. I hit him over and over until his lip and nose are bleeding and his cheek and forehead are red and swollen. My throat emits a bellow of rage as my hand tightly compresses his neck, my body expunging all my hatred for this man and what he did to me and Morgan and so many other innocent people.

  When I finally realize that Mark isn’t fighting back, I notice the blood spilling out of a hole in his bare chest, dripping sideways down his skin to the floor. Then I see blood dripping down from me onto him.

  I don’t even feel it, though. I don’t bother looking for my wound, because I’ve just glanced behind me to see Robert standing in the doorway with Morgan carried in his arms and Jack standing behind him. They watch me with worry and pain and confusion in their eyes, looking at me like I’ve reverted back into some wild beast or vicious monster, exactly the man Mark is, but that’s not me. Mark may have raised me, but I’ll never let myself become him.

  I suddenly have a desperate need to physically distance myself from Mark to make it clear just how far I am from him in who we are as people. My hands are shaking and my breathing is erratic as I release my grip of his neck and scoot back to look at the man bruised and bleeding and struggling to breathe on the floor in front of me.

  “I gave you everything,” he growls out between coughs, “and look how you repay me.”

  “You killed my family,” I retort, my voice low and deadly.

  Mark’s eyes narrow toward me. “And you killed mine.”

  All breath leaves my lungs, my mind threatening to pull me into that dark place of guilt that still lingers within me, but I shut off the thought and put it away. I will not let Mark get to me again. I’ve moved beyond this. I’m not the scared little boy he used to beat into submission.

  Yet I can’t do it. As my most painful memory flashes before me, I can’t put a bullet between his eyes.

  I struggle to my feet and step backward toward the door. “Goodbye, Mark.”

  Jack and Robert move out into the hallway as I pull the door to the room closed behind us.

  “Jack. Lighter,” I ask, and he quickly grabs one from the jacket he’s carrying and hands it to me.

  I flick the lighter, starting the flame that will end this, all of this.

  “A slow and painful death,” I say in a whisper as I hold the flame, hungry and eager, to the wooden doorframe. The dry wood catches quickly, the flames already reaching the ceiling.

  “We have to go,” Robert insists, moving with Morgan in his arms toward the front door.

  Jack nudges me as he follows behind him, but I can’t seem to take my eyes off the burning door in front of me, the heat searing against my skin already with how quickly the flames have grown.

  “Leo, we need to go. Now!” Jack yells.

  He pulls on my arm until I finally snap out of it. I follow him to the door, and we’re out of the cabin just as the flames start to dance across the ceiling. By the time we make it to the car, the entire building is engulfed.

  I open the back door for Robert, and he carefully drops Morgan into the seat. He holds his hand out to me expectantly. “You’re bleeding. I’ll drive.”

  I hand him the keys without a word and jump into the back seat where Jack is already sitting on the other side and putting his jacket over Morgan’s exposed body. I pull her to my chest and hold her head against me protectively as she sobs into me, her breathing ragged and her body trembling. With each heave of her chest, my heart breaks a little more.

  “I’ve got you. He can’t hurt you anymore,” I say soothingly while caressing her back and running my fingers lightly through her hair.

  She reaches her hand up to my neck desperately, as if clinging on to me for dear life. My throat instantly constricts when I feel that it’s covered tightly in bandages. As I take in the similar bandaging on her other hand and remember the bruises and cuts on her face, I turn to Jack with concern. “How is she?”

  Jack looks at me uneasily. In his lack of reply, Robert turns around from the driver’s seat. He looks just as worried as I feel.

  I glance back down at the broken, crying girl in my arms, wondering just how successful Mark has been at destroying the most beautiful thing in my life, before returning to meet Jack’s gaze. “What the hell did he do to her?”

  “She escaped,” he says simply.

  My eyes instantly go wide. I want to know more, but I don’t want to talk about this in front of Morgan. I just need to be here for her, to make her feel safe and loved, to give her all the comfort I’ve been prevented from giving her for over three months. I tighten my grip on her, wishing desperately that I could take away her pain and fear, but I know it’s not that easy.

  Robert observes me holding his daughter, and some of the worry leaves his face. He looks forward and starts the engine. As he turns the car around, I take one last glance at the cabin, catching the moment the roof collapses down into the rest of the building just before Robert drives us down the rough and narrow dirt road. The burning house disappears from view.

  “I need to look at that,” Jack says quietly next to me, nodding at my arm.

  When I hear his words, I remember the drips of blood that came down from me when I was hovering over Mark in the cabin. I’ve not paid any attention to where the blood came from. The terrified woman in my arms has been my utmost priority.

  I look down at my upper arm and see the blood dripping down from a large horizontal mark in the skin.

  “It’s just a graze,” I say, returning my attention to Morgan in my lap.

 
Jack doesn’t shrug the wound off as easily as I do. He tears off a long piece of his shirt and ties it firmly around my arm over the wound to stop the bleeding.

  By the time we get back to the main dirt road, Morgan’s body is no longer shaking in my arms. She has mercifully fallen asleep, and other than the occasional tremor in her limbs and whimper from her lips, she is resting peacefully against me.

  I move a few stray strands of hair away from her battered face that glows in the light from the dashboard of the car. Anger swells inside me to see her new marks and bruises and the bandages on her hands, but I can’t give in to it. I have to maintain control.

  “Was this her punishment for escaping?” I ask Jack quietly.

  He shakes his head. “She injured her hands while escaping her handcuffs when we went into town this morning. She was out in the woods for hours before we saw her on the road on the way back to the cabin. She tried to run, and Mark chased her.” He pauses before continuing, lowering his voice. “He said she told him to do this. She demanded that he hit her.”

  A painful lump forms in my throat at the thought of this. I know exactly what she was thinking. Too many times before when Mark beat me I egged him on, trying to get him to hit me hard enough to knock me unconscious so I didn’t have to be awake to live through the physical and emotional pain he was inflicting on me. I don’t doubt Morgan experienced the exact same feeling.

  I want desperately to peek under the jacket that covers Morgan’s body to look at the rest of her and focus on her midsection in particular, but I don’t dare move for fear of disturbing her.

  “How’s the baby?” I ask Jack, trying to hold back the emotion that wants to spill out of me at the thought of the tiny human growing inside her.

  “Your baby’s fine,” Jack replies.

  I give him a sideways look. “She told you, then?”

  Jack nods. “She didn’t mean to, but it slipped.” He gives me a slight smile before his face turns more serious. “You’ll make a great father, Leo. You’ll both make great parents.”

  It’s impossible to hold back my emotional response any longer. I’m going to be a father. I have Morgan safe in my arms, my unborn baby resting comfortably in her belly, and we’re taking them both away from a hell I couldn’t save them from soon enough. I’m finding the pieces of my broken world and can start the slow process of putting them all back together.

  I can fix us. I just need time.

  “Thank you,” I say to Jack as tears roll down my cheeks and onto Morgan’s hair. “Thank you for everything you did. I’m so glad she had you with her.”

  Jack smiles at me thoughtfully. “She’ll make it through this. You both will.”

  I hope he’s right.

  I’ll do anything to make this right.

  17

  His Support

  ∞

  I was lost.

  Even before the upside down turn.

  The destruction and reinvention of me.

  Perhaps the finding of my true self.

  Discovery of life and love.

  And he led me there, holding on.

  Never letting go.

  My rock.

  He will bring me back.

  I am found.

  ∞

  My eyes shoot open. My entire body jumps as I feel like I’m endlessly falling and there’s nothing to stop me, but something catches me.

  A bed.

  A hand in mine.

  “Morgan?”

  The voice calls to me, and in the second it takes me to sit up and orient myself with my immediate surroundings through the rapid breathing of my chest, I feel completely lost and afraid.

  Then I see him and focus on him. I throw my arms around his neck, tightly shut my eyes, and sob against him. I hold on to him like he’s the only solid piece of land in the surrounding ocean of chaos that wants nothing more than to drown me, to pull me to its depths and never let me go.

  But I take comfort. I know Leo will pull me out of it, and he won’t let me go, either.

  “It’s okay.” Leo’s voice cracks as he says it. He’s grasping on to me just as tightly, though his touch still remains gentle and soothing, his skin warm against me. The familiar feeling of his deep breathing against my body slows down my sobs. My ragged draws of breath become more even, settling back into a normal pattern.

  My eyes open, and I pull back to take him in. His dark hair hangs down in his face, partially hiding his eyes. There’s scruff on his chin and jawline, adding to his overall look of exhaustion. I see relief there, too, though. I see happiness and the man who protected me and loved me and did anything and everything to save me. I see all of Leo and all my love for him in that one glance.

  “I just can’t believe it,” I say through my tears.

  It’s strange to be sitting next to him. I’ve dreamed of this for so long: what he would look like, how he would feel in my arms, how much comfort he would give me just with his presence. I’ve been waiting for this, and now that it’s here, I don’t know what to think or how to feel or what to say.

  We have so much to make up for. How do we possibly begin to put the pieces of ourselves back together?

  “You should turn around,” Leo says as he nods toward the other side of the room behind me.

  My head turns in that direction, and I’m immediately overwhelmed by a new wave of tears.

  Across the small motel room we’re in, on the other side of the second bed in the room, my parents are standing there, hand-in-hand, looking back at me.

  Mom rushes across the room, breaking out into heavy sobs the moment she has me in her arms. I hug her back and cry my own drenching tears into her shirt. It feels like it’s been ages since I’ve seen her and felt her motherly comfort and warmth.

  It’s then that I realize how much I’ve taken her for granted in my life. I should consider myself lucky to have a mom who cares for me as much as she does, someone who has always been there for me and will continue to be. Not everyone has such a loving parent in their lives.

  I feel damn lucky.

  When we pull back from our embrace, we both laugh slightly as we try and fail to stop the tears rushing down our faces. We’re just big sobbing messes, and it only gets worse when Dad comes up behind us and pulls us both against him into an enveloping embrace.

  “I’m sorry about everything. I’m so sorry,” I plead with them.

  Dad lets go of us and gives me a tearful yet serious look. “You have nothing to be sorry about. Absolutely nothing. You’re safe. That’s all that matters.”

  I nod my head in acknowledgement, but I still feel awful for the choices I’ve made. “I missed all of you so damn much.” I look from my parents back to Leo behind me and realize that it was true they were working together. “How the hell did Dad not kill you the moment he saw you?”

  Leo’s face forms into the most exquisite smile, bright and free. “He warmed up to me eventually,” he replies as he shares a look with Dad.

  They seem comfortable together, like Leo fits into Dad’s world perfectly even though they couldn’t be from more different backgrounds. It’s such a strange blending of my former life and the life I’ve been living the last seven months.

  It’s clear that I’m not the only one who has changed. I was at the center of it all, but this experience has inevitably affected more than just me.

  There are so many questions I want to ask. I can barely keep them all in. “You got my message, then? Did the pine needle help?”

  Dad beams at me. “It led us to California. You narrowed our search area from the entire world down to one state.”

  His words slowly absorb into me. “California…” I knew we were in the forest, but I never would have translated that to California. “How did you find me in the entire state of California?”

  “Jack,” Leo replies. “His cigar habit led us to you.”

  I stare at him blankly. “I don’t understand.”

  “I could smell the hint of his cigars
on your letter. It made me realize he’d make Mark buy more at some point, so we sent pictures and information out to every smoke shop in the state. When he took Jack out to get medical supplies yesterday morning, they made a stop at a local cigar shop. Your dad got the call from the store clerk who gave us directions into the mountains.”

  I sigh in relief then realize that someone from Leo’s story is missing from the room around us, and my words come out in a flurry of panic. “Where is Jack? Is he okay?”

  Leo grasps my hand, bringing me back down from my worried state. “He’s fine. He’s outside having a smoke as we speak.”

  “Thank God,” I say as my bandaged hand rushes to my chest to calm my racing heart. For the first time I take in the rest of my body, surprised to find myself wearing my own clothes: a baggy gray T-shirt with my high school’s emblem on the front and the hint of my favorite navy blue sweatpants around my waist peeking out from underneath the bed sheets. They’re so familiar and comfortable. They feel like home against my skin.

  When I bring up my hand to brush a few loose strands of hair from my face, my body instantly shivers. Mark’s scent is still on me. The remnants of how he touched me and violated me and tried to force himself on me in those final hours is still etched into my skin. I have to get it off even if that means scrubbing the skin raw.

  “I need a shower,” I say, observing the worried looks on my family’s faces around me. My eyes go to the one place that a child can always look to for support and comfort. “Mom, can you help me?”

  Her concerned face softens into a smile, and she looks ready to burst into tears again. “Of course.”

  Leo pulls the rest of the bed sheets off me as Mom helps me up from the bed and doesn’t let go of me. I give Dad and Leo a small smile before unsteadily making my way into the bathroom. Mom closes and locks the door behind us.

  The moment my eyes meet the mirror in the revealing fluorescent lighting from above it, I realize just how much of a mess I am. My hair is disheveled and its dark red coloring is almost completely gone, making me look like my normal self except for the large bruises and various cuts on my face. It’s impossible to look at my injuries and not remember the man who put them there.