He vibrated in rage when I barked the negative at him, and instead of letting the argument escalate or raising his voice and coming after me, he methodically produced a gun from somewhere behind his back and pointed it right at me.
I had lived in a lot of big cities and not always in a good part of town. I had seen guns before and even witnessed gun violence at a club here or there along the way. What I had never had happen to be me before was to be facing down the barrel of one with a man clearly ready to pull the trigger on the other side of it.
“Get. In. The. Car. Poppy.” Each word was hollow, deliberate, and laced with evil.
I could hear my sister whimpering and felt the tension between all of us wind up and scream with the need to break. My hands curled around the frame of the door as I stared unblinking at the gun.
“Move! I will shoot your sister. I should do it anyway as a favor to your father.”
I swallowed hard but refused to react. I had a feeling if I so much as twitched an eyelash the wrong way he would feel justified in pulling the trigger. Why hadn’t I thought this through? Of course, if he had followed me home to see where I lived, the lunatic would have followed me to Rowdy’s as well. Hell, the creep very well might have been lurking outside of the shop all day just waiting for his moment. I felt like an idiot, and my sister was the one who was going to suffer.
“Oh my God.” Poppy whispered the words and I saw her move out of the corner of my eye.
“Don’t!” I couldn’t stop the command and jolted when the gun went off in a thunderous BANG. I gasped and watched at the bullet skated across the hood of my car. I jumped involuntarily and couldn’t stop shaking in terror. I had always been independent and confident that I could take care of myself, but right now I was lamenting not just waiting twenty minutes for Rowdy to come with us. Not that I wanted him in danger, but something about having him close by gave me the feeling things would be all right no matter what, and that was a feeling I could desperately use right now as the gun was leveled at my face once again.
“I will shoot you. I don’t care about you. I just want what’s mine.”
Poppy had moved so that she was between me and the gun. I wanted to reach out and grab her and pull her back to me, but now I didn’t want to risk him pulling the trigger and shooting her.
“Poppy, if you get in that car he’s just going to shoot me as soon as you close the door. He’s going to hurt us both.”
She was shaking so badly that she could hardly stand up. Her honey-colored eyes were gigantic in her face and I couldn’t see any way this was going to end without bloodshed.
“No, he won’t. Put the gun down, Oliver, and I’ll get in the car.”
He laughed and it sounded as deranged and crazy as he looked. “You don’t get to give orders. I give the orders. Get in the fucking car, Poppy.”
“Listen, the police are already looking for you. You just fired a gun in a crowded metro area. How long do you think you have before you’re surrounded by cops? If you want me to go with you, put the gun down and I will. I’m not getting out of the way until you do. You’ll have to shoot me if you want to hurt Salem.”
Shit. This wasn’t good. Not at all. I went to tell Poppy to run, to move, to do something—anything besides getting in that car with a man that had already proven he could break her, but I didn’t get the chance. Oliver went back the driver’s door of his car and tossed the gun in the direction of the backseat. If Poppy did get in the car like she seemed determined to do, there was no way she could get to the weapon before he could.
“Now get in.” Apparently his desire to have my sister under his control outweighed his desire to threaten and harm me. “I’m not telling you again. An obedient wife listens to her husband.”
“Don’t do this, Poppy.” I was pleading with her in desperation.
She looked at me over her shoulder. “Get in the car and call the police.”
“He’s going to hurt you—kill you. You can’t go with him.”
“I have to. You’ll save me. You always do.”
She pulled open the passenger door of the sedan and slid inside. Oliver looked at me over the hood of his car and made a finger gun. He pretended to shoot me right in the head just as the faint sounds of sirens could be heard. He slipped inside of the car and raced off with my sister’s horrified face looking at me out of the passenger window.
I dove for my cell phone and called 911, Royal, Rowdy, my parents, and Sayer in that order. The police were already on their way, and before I screamed at Rowdy that I needed him and that he had to come hold me together, I was surrounded by detectives and patrol officers. They were all asking me a million questions.