Chapter 37 - Zoe
The old woman screams when my nails dig into her scalp. I drag her back as Mara grabs onto the rope and Aiden lifts Ethan up out of the water.
We’re all screaming. I’m screaming as Margaret slices her nails across my cheek. I’m screaming when I see Ethan’s limp body in Aiden’s arms. I’m screaming as Mara tries to pull the boat with our girls in it back to shore.
Mara is screaming at Audrey wordlessly, crying as she sees Hailey unharmed. Audrey is screaming. Hailey is wailing in her arms.
Aiden is yelling, slapping Ethan across the face to try to wake him up before he looks over to me and his eyes widen.
Margaret is screaming, too. She’s yelling like a deranged demon as I stumble backwards and she lands on top of me. She turns, her hair wild and her eyes cloudy as she wraps her cold hands around my neck. I struggle with her, pushing my fingers into her nostrils and eyes as I try to push her off me. My other hand is crawling around me, looking for a rock, or a stick, or anything I can use to get this woman off me.
This must be what everyone calls a survival instinct. There are no thoughts in my head. None of my movements are conscious, and I don’t see anything except Margaret, and the excruciating hold she has on my throat. Margaret tightens her hands around my neck and a terrifying smile appears on her lips. As the edges of my vision go dark, and I feel the strength start to leave my body, my hand finally finds a palm-sized rock.
I use every ounce of power that I have left, arcing my arm around and bringing the rock down as hard as I can on Margaret McCoy’s head.
It hits her head with a sickening crunch, and Margaret’s deranged eyes go dull. She collapses on top of me, banging her head against mine as I groan. Her hold on my neck loosens, and I take a deep, ragged breath. Aiden appears in my field of vision, pushing the woman off me and putting his hands on my face.
“You okay?”
He’s breathless. I roll onto my side and cough, holding my neck with one hand and clinging onto the rock with the other. I feel a hand on my shoulder and look up to see Audrey.
Tears fill my eyes and she wraps her arms around my neck. I wince as she hits the same spots that Margaret was hanging onto, but it doesn’t matter. Physical pain is nothing compared to the anguish that I felt before.
It only takes a moment for me to inhale sharply and sit up, looking over towards the spot where Aiden dragged Ethan. Panic washes over me again as I remember the limp, lifeless body that Aiden lifted out of the water.
My shoulders relax as I see Ethan leaning on his elbow, coughing and wheezing as he recovers. His lips aren’t a sickening shade of blue anymore, and his skin isn’t a deathly shade of white.
Mara is holding Hailey, silently crying and rocking her wailing baby to calm her down. Ethan looks up at me, and his eyes are filled with a million things we haven’t said to each other. I wrap my arms around Audrey, holding her to my chest as Ethan and I look at each other.
Finally, I glance over at Margaret McCoy. She’s still limp. Her eyes are closed and there’s an ugly gash on the side of her head. Aiden is crouched over her, feeling her neck with two fingers.
My breath catches in my throat as Aiden looks at me with dark eyes.
“Did I…” I say, not wanting to finish my sentence. Did I kill her?
Aiden shakes his head. “I feel a pulse. Pass me that rope,” he says to no one in particular. Ethan drags himself up and tosses the waterlogged rope over to his brother. He takes a few halting steps towards me and collapses next to me, wrapping his soaking wet arms around me. I melt into him, and he holds both Audrey and me in his arms.
“I’m sorry,” he says as he leans his face into my neck. His voice is muffled when he says it again. “I’m so sorry.”
I shake my head and reach back to stroke his hair. “Ethan, stop. You saved our girls. You were so brave. You figured out where they were. You,” my voice catches. “You almost died.”
Audrey takes a long, shuddering breath when I say the last word. She peels herself away from me and throws her arms around Ethan’s neck. He falls backwards, and she kisses his cheek.
“Don’t die, Ethan,” she says. “I like having you around.”
A smile appears on Ethan’s lips and my heart thumps in my chest. Ethan glances at me and his smile widens.
“Do you?” He asks, and Audrey nods.
“I don’t like it when you and Mom fight.”
“Me neither,” he says as he ruffles her hair. “I hope we don’t fight like that ever again.”
I lay back onto his chest, and Audrey snuggles beside him. He wraps his arms around both of us and lets out a long sigh. “My girls,” he says. He kisses the top of my head.
“You okay?” He asks.
“Yeah,” I reply, even though I’m not quite sure if that’s true. “I think she chipped one of my teeth when she collapsed on top of me though.” I thumb the sharp edge of my tooth before lifting myself up and smiling at him. “See?”
He chuckles. “Chipped tooth or not, you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. And a fucking badass, too.”
Audrey gasps. “Mom, he said ‘badass’!”
I laugh. “I think he’s allowed to say that right now. Just once, though.”
Audrey looks at me, wide-eyed, and then glances at Mara with her mouth hanging open. Mara laughs and then kisses Hailey’s forehead.
All five of us turn when we hear a crashing sound in the forest. Dominic comes barreling through the trees, his hair disheveled and his eyes wide as he takes in the scene in front of us. His eyes go straight to Mara and the baby and I see his face crumple as he starts to weep.
Mara goes to him, and the two of them cry together as they hold their infant. Aiden grunts, then, and I look over at him for the first time in a few minutes.
He’s got Margaret tied up just as her eyes flutter open. She starts to say something, snarling as she looks at me, but he stuffs a bit of cloth in her mouth. He glances at Ethan.
“You might want a new sock,” he says, pointing to the gag in the old woman’s mouth. “Fell off in the struggle.”
“I think I can manage that,” Ethan says, squeezing his arms around Audrey and me again. “I guess we’d better get back to town and try to explain this mess.”
“I called Bill,” Dominic says. “He’s on his way.”
“Explain this mess is right,” Sheriff Bill Whittaker says as he walks onto the gravelly strip of beach on the edge of the water. His boots crunch as he takes a few steps, hooking his thumbs into his belt loops and surveying the scene in front of him. “This’ll take more explaining than the fire at that fucking hotel,” he breathes.
“You managed that one okay,” Ethan grins. “This should be easy.”
“Fucking Clarkes,” he mutters, shaking his head. He walks over and looks down at Margaret, who struggles against the ropes with fury in her eyes.
Bill grunts and shakes his head. “We’d better get that one to a hospital,” he says, pointing his foot towards Margaret. “As much as I’d like to leave her here to rot, it wouldn’t be ethical.” He winks at me. “And I’m nothing if not ethical.”
Aiden chuckles, and shakes his head. “Ethical is one word for it. I’m just glad your ethics seem to match mine most of the time.”
“Bill,” I squeak, looking at the sheriff.
He grunts at me, nodding.
“I don’t want to go to jail.”
That seems to surprise him, because he stands up taller and frowns. His thick eyebrows draw together like two caterpillars on his forehead. I glance at Margaret, and then hold up the rock that I’m still clutching in my hand.
“I did that.”
Bill stares at the rock, and then at Margaret, seeming to take in the bloody gash on the side of her head for the first time. She’s got red rivulets running down the sides of her head, covering her forehead and ear. She’s stopped struggling, and her eyes are half-closed as her breathing becomes more labored.
The Sheriff takes it all in, and then he does something I don’t expect: he starts laughing. He laughs so hard his hat falls off behind him. He clutches his belly and laughs until all of us are laughing with him. At first, we laugh tentatively, and then the stress dissolves into an almost manic laughing fit. Margaret doesn’t react. I’m not quite sure why I’m laughing, but the emotion of the past couple hours releases in that moment.
Finally, Bill grunts as he leans over to pick up his hat. He brushes it off and places it back on his head, and then looks at me.
“Zoe Randall,” he starts. “The only person going to prison is the woman who kidnapped your daughter.” At those words, Margaret struggles against the ropes that Aiden bound her with. Bill and Aiden pick her up and drag her back towards the trees. I glance at Ethan, who smiles at me.
“You’re one of us, now,” he says with a grin. “Just a no-good criminal in a corrupt town.”
His smile reaches all the way to his eyes, and I smile with him.
If this is a corrupt, criminal town, it’s the nicest, most welcoming, most community-focused town of no-good criminals I’ve ever come across. I watch Bill and Aiden disappear towards their vehicles with Margaret, and I finally understand why Ethan started that fire. I understand him, because he’s just like me. He just wanted to protect what was his.
I trail my fingers over his cheek and wrap them around the nape of his neck. Bringing my lips to his, I kiss him with a ferocity that I didn’t know existed in me. I kiss him until I need to pull away just to catch my breath, and I lean my forehead against his. My heart beats for him and I smile.
“There’s nowhere I’d rather be.”