Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 69511 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69511 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
By lunch, I’d almost forgotten to worry.
But by four, with three hours left on my shift, my stomach was in knots.
Maybe I was more worried than I was willing to admit.
By five, I was convinced I wasn’t getting a call.
By five thirty, I knew I wasn’t.
Just before six, though, my phone rang.
I hit pause on my calls and answered it.
“Hello?” I asked, voice quivering slightly.
“Hello, Ms. Murphy?” a female voice asked.
“Yes, that’s me.”
“This is Karrah Rhodes from North Texas ODA,” she said. “How are you?”
“I’m doing well, you?” I asked, despite not wanting to have small talk at all.
“Good.” I could hear the smile in her voice. “I just wanted to let you know that your blood work was fantastic. You’re a healthy individual and you’ll be a perfect candidate for NTODA.”
I didn’t hear much past ‘you’re a healthy individual.’
My heart soared as I thought about what that meant for me.
I wasn’t sick.
I wasn’t going to die.
The little niggle in the back of my brain the last two days—one I refused to acknowledge—was no more.
“Thank you, I appreciate you calling.” I smiled, my heart once again light.
We hung up, and the first person I called was Gable.
“Hey,” he said distractedly. “Are you okay?”
“I’m healthy,” I answered.
He paused, and I could hear the relief in him as he let out a long breath. “Fuck.”
“I have an hour left of my shift,” I said. “Gotta go.”
“Love you,” he said quietly.
My heart stopped. “What?”
“Love you,” he repeated.
Yep, it’d definitely stopped.
“Do you think you can call 911 from 911, and someone would respond?” I teased. “Because I feel like my heart just stopped.”
“I said what I said, honey. Now go back to work,” he teased. “Love you.”
Love you.
Love. You.
“I love you, too,” I breathed.
Then I hung up.
Of course, now that I’d hung up, I couldn’t stop myself from squealing at my desk as I did a shimmy shake in my computer chair.
Which caught the attention of all my coworkers, and my boss.
Pat took her headset off and said, “Care to enlighten us?”
“He told me he loved me!” I called out.
Pat’s smile was breathtaking.
I loved Pat.
“Score!” Porfirio called out.
Marta gave me a thumbs up because she was on a call.
Speaking of calls, my phone rang in the next instant, and I answered it as professional as I could manage.
“911, what’s your emergency?” I recited.
“Oh, thank God,” I heard breathlessly said. “It’s me.”
It took me a couple of seconds to understand, but then I gasped. “Maven?”
“I really, really hate to do this to you. I really do. But I have two problems,” she gasped.
“What?” I asked, already pulling up my dispatch screen.
“Well, the first thing is, I was running by Gavrel’s place. Nastya wanted to check it out, and I knew that you wouldn’t care if I showed it to her. So I let myself in using the code via the garage door. We were both inside, and there was this man in there.” She paused. “I didn’t see him at first as I started showing Nastya around.”
I was already typing in my brother’s address to have several units respond. I then started sending out a text message to the Carters.
Me:
Maven. Gavrel’s place. Emergency.
It was short and lacking in information, but I sent it anyway.
Everything was always shorthand when I was working.
I couldn’t help it.
“What happened?” I asked as I watched the texts start to roll in.
The first one being from Gable.
Gable:
10-4
Hollis:
Someone let me know what’s going on when they find out. I’m at work and can’t leave.
Pepper:
She’s with Nastya.
I half paid attention to them as I listened to Maven continue to explain.
“And so we’re walking quietly down the hall, and we get to the bedroom, and a naked man pops up off the bed, covered in tattoos, and starts running at us,” she continued. “Nastya and I both told him to stop, but he didn’t.”
Dread started to bloom in my stomach.
“Is everyone okay?” I asked. “You and Nastya are both fine?”
“We’re fine,” she emphasized, “but he’s not. He’s going to need an ambulance.”
I breathed out a sigh of relief at her words.
“When he didn’t listen, both Nastya and I, um, shot him,” she finished. “Then, my water broke.”
I shook my head in disbelief.
“You’re a month and a half early!” I cried out.
“I know!” she continued. “I think I’m okay. But I wasn’t sure if I could leave… and this is really bad. I’m okay. Nastya is okay. The baby is coming. And this man who’s calling himself Madman is definitely not okay. I think Nastya’s bullet to his throat is going to kill him.”
I started typing away, my brain furiously working, while I also said, “I want you both to get in your car. Keep your guns, though. Just in case.”
Normally I would tell people to be cautious, because cops didn’t like armed people when they knew there were active shootings happening.