The Wright Mistake(74)

We stayed on the phone until Heidi and Emery showed up at my apartment. Even though I knew they were outside and I’d just hung up with Heidi, I still startled at the knock on the front door. My heart beat through my chest. I felt like I was going to be sick. It could be Dillon. I knew it wasn’t…but it could be.

“Julia,” Heidi called, “you can let us in.”

“It’s all right. We’re here to help,” Emery said.

I took a deep breath, turned the locks, and then opened the door. My girls stood there with terror in their eyes.

“Oh, Julia,” Heidi whispered when she took in my appearance.

“You have a gun,” Emery noted.

“Why are you holding a gun?” Heidi asked.

I glanced down at the gun in my hand. It felt nice. Weighted and secure. Even with the barrel pointing toward the ground.

“Maybe you should hand that to me,” Emery said.

Emery stepped forward and gently extracted the gun from my hand. I felt empty without it. Like I needed the feel of it in my palm again. It was my new security blanket.

“Julia,” Heidi said, “why don’t we go sit down as we wait for the cops?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Sure.”

Heidi wrapped an arm around my shoulders and eased me back into the living room. Emery carefully popped out the magazine and set it down on the table. This was not the first time she’d done that.

“Can you trash the flowers?” I asked.

Emery gave me a curious look and then did as I’d asked. I hadn’t been able to touch them. But I was glad they were gone.

She came to sit next to me.

“Do you want to tell us what happened?” Heidi asked.

“I’d really like to tell it only once. So…can we wait until the cops show up?”

“Sure,” Emery said. “Just…take a few deep breaths.”

“Do you need anything? Water? A change of clothes?”

I shook my head, and we sat in silence with just their presence working to pull some of the tension out of me.

The cops showed up a few minutes later. It was a tall female cop with cropped brown hair and an overly muscled guy whose eyes swept the apartment, as if expecting Dillon to pop out at any second.

“Hello, I’m Officer Matthews,” the woman said. “This is my partner, Officer Curtis. We came over about a complaint of an assault and a kidnapping of Miss Julia Banner.”

“That’s me,” I said, concentrating entirely on Officer Matthews.

“Why don’t you start from the beginning?”

“Okay,” I said. Then, I started from the beginning. The very beginning.

The cops took some notes and asked some questions along the way. Heidi and Emery gasped in all the right places. I had to show them the gun and where I’d fired the warning shot. They took pictures of everything and collected the shell.

Officer Curtis went back to the police car while Officer Matthews inspected my place. We were almost through with everything when another car pulled up in front of my apartment.

We all waited apprehensively. I ached for the gun once more. I might have finally told them the whole story, but that didn’t mean they understood. Then, Landon appeared, helping Austin through the doorway.

My stomach sank when I took in Austin’s appearance. His face was battered, almost beyond recognition. He had a tender split lip, and one of his eyes had already started to swell closed. His hand held his side. Broken ribs, Heidi had said. He looked…horrible. Dillon had done this. I wanted to cry.

“Jules,” he said, reaching for me. He tugged me into a hug, groaning at the impact. “You’re safe. Oh, fuck, you’re safe.”

I carefully wrapped my arms around his waist. I breathed him in and brought all of his warmth against me. I knew it would be the last time, and I wanted to remember the way I perfectly fit into him.

Then, I took a step back and dropped my arms.

“And you are?” Officer Matthews asked before I could say anything.

“Austin Wright.”

“And you were the one assaulted?”

Austin pointed to his face. “What do you think?”

I frowned. Not the time to joke. “Yes, he was.”

“I was cleared by an EMT and another officer already,” Austin said. His eyes darted to me. “Or else I would have already been here.”

Officer Curtis came back inside then. “Looks like this Dillon Jenkins has a warrant. He skipped his parole in Ohio and has been missing for a few weeks now. This is the first tip to his location.”

Officer Matthews nodded. “We’re going to get you an emergency protection order in place against Dillon. We recommend you take it in and file for a more permanent restraining order against him. We’re going to do everything we can to find him and stop this from ever happening again. It would be in your best interest if you stayed with a friend for a while. Also, you’ll need to keep us informed if anything else happens.”