Broken Wings (A Romantic Suspense)(16)

“No, hon, I’ll ride in the back. You kids sit up front.”

It’s awkward with him sitting behind us, but she smiles sweetly at me as she pulls on her seat belt. I duck toward her and pull back. I can’t kiss her in front of her dad. That’s just weird.

I turn the key, but the key remains motionless. The car spins around it, throwing me against the door. It’s starting and I can’t stop it. The car continues to roll and Ellie screams, the sound cutting into me like a hot wire through my heart. The roof reaches for her in a shower of broken glass and something grabs me around the middle and pulls.

Glass shatters against my back like falling into water from a great height, and pain slams into my thigh so hard it makes me want to wake up, but I can’t yet, it’s not over and the dream has not surrendered me.

There’s a tire iron in my hand and Ellie is screaming my name over and over, the pitch of her voice rising until it turns into an anguished, wordless wail as the fire spreads, reaches for her with greedy, incandescent fingers. I ram the tire iron into the gap between the door and frame and shove my weight into it, agony ripping out from my leg in both directions, flaring deep into my chest to crush my heart in sharp fingers. I push but the door won’t budge.

I hear a roar and lean back. The car twists and opens, and I see her, fire licking her face with sharp tongues that tear away the skin to show charred bone beneath. The car crunches and twists, and jagged teeth of metal and glass open wide as Ellie slides down a razor throat of barbs and slivers, screaming before the teeth come down and crunch and there’s nothing left but a hand, cold and limp in mine.

Then it lets me go and I bolt upright, out of the bed and onto the floor, choking back the dinner of cold hot dogs and orange juice I procured from the kitchen before I crawled into bed last night. I hold on to it long enough to make it into the bathroom and let go into the toilet.

I fall back and my head hits the wall. Angrily I thump it with my elbow.

It takes me a moment to stop shaking. That f*cking dream, again. I have to sit there and remind myself again and again that she’s alive, it didn’t get her.

Except it did. I saw that already. The monster did get her. Didn’t eat her, just chewed her up and spit her out. Nice job, Jack.

I need to see her. I shower and scrub the taste of puke out of my mouth and dry my hair, eat a cup of yogurt from the fridge, dress, and head for the door.

When I open it, Frank is standing outside.

“Watch out, I’m—”

“Going to work,” he corrects me.

He claps my shoulder and then squeezes, hard.

“I’m going to work,” I sigh.

As we walk toward the elevator—an old service type with a gate—I ask him something.

“Frank, you have a wife, right? You’re married?”

“Yeah.”

“If your wife was in pain and alone and you—”

“Stop it,” he says sharply. “This is not a conversation I’m having with you. That girl is none of your business. I got strict orders to keep you two apart. Just like when you tried to start this conversation yesterday.”

Frank pulls the gate shut and jabs the down button with his finger. The floor glides up in front of me.

“Look,” he says. “I like you. Always did. I liked your mom, too. Lot more than the third one. God, what a bitch.”

“Yeah,” I nod. “She was.”

“Point is, I want what’s best for you, and that’s to go along with your dad. Don’t let me catch you trying to go after the girl.”

He tugs on his coat and jerks his neck from side to side.

Was… Was that a hint? Nah, couldn’t be. Frank is many things, but he’s loyal.

“Wreck wasn’t your fault, kid.”

“So they tell me. If it was, you think my dad would let anybody put that down anywhere? Officially?”

Frank sighs. It’s more of a volcanic rumble. “Why do you have to fight everything like this?”

“I guess I’m my father’s son.”

“Nah,” Frank says as the elevator jerks to a stop. “You ain’t. Come on, I’m driving you to work and you’re going to stay there.”

I have nothing further to say as I mount up in Frank’s car and he drives through the city. The traffic is a mess and we get cut off twice. Nothing ruffles Frank’s feathers. He takes it all in stride. Steady as a rock, that’s Frank.

The world is still damp; the city smells like wet dog even on a cool, crisp day after light rains. It’s rush hour, so the streets are packed.

After driving half an hour to go maybe three miles, we arrive. Frank drives through a private gate onto a ramp that leads right to the top of the parking garage and to a reserved spot.

I step out before he shuts off the car and walk to the railing to look out over the city. It’s just like I remember it. The sun catches the river, turning it to gold. I’m not close enough to pick up the smell, so it’s a lovely illusion.

Frank grunts and I follow him into the private elevator like a good boy.

“Your office is on the twenty-eighth floor. Very swank.”

“Great, I’m thrilled.”

The elevator is more plush than some people’s houses. Real gold on the trim, thick carpet, gilded mirrors all around. The f*cking buttons are mahogany. It rises so smoothly I barely feel it at all, and yet it takes us from the fifth floor to twenty-eight in about thirty seconds. I can really only feel motion when it comes to a stop.