The sound of the shot rattled off and around the room in a heartbeat—I was instantly taken back to that day in Addison’s house when we’d first encountered Ian again, when Mona and I had to make a break for it out of the window. But this time, there was nowhere to hide—I couldn’t see who he had hit, but he’d fired in the direction of the booth.
I tackled him to the ground, both of us landing with a heavy thump on the tiles. Ian’s head snapped back and he cracked it on the counter behind him, sending a dull, sickening thud across the room; I took his moment of disorientation and used it to my advantage, clambering on top of him and pinning his arms down firmly. But he was stronger than he looked, his arms skinny and lean, and he quickly twisted his wrists around and pulled them out of my grasp. I grunted with annoyance and went to catch him again, but he was wriggling away from me, sliding his body out from beneath me before I had a chance to figure out what was happening.
My knuckledusters lay on the floor not far from his head; I had thrown them at him to cause a distraction, but as his eyes landed on them, a cold rush of panic passed over me. Shit. If he figured out what those were…
I scrambled forward to grab them, but he got his hands on them first; he clutched them to his chest, and it was clear from the expression on his face that he didn’t actually know what to do with them, but he knew that they were important.
“What the fuck are these?” he snarled. I shook my head, refusing to answer, as he crawled towards me—he looked like some kind of animal, down on all fours like that, scrambling back to his feet as best he could. There was blood dribbling down the side of his head but he seemed oblivious to it. I stared up at him, and wondered how I ever could have lived next door to this guy; there was a monstrousness to him that I realized now had always been there, but that I had been too kind to name.
It was easier to pretend that he was normal and everything was okay than it was to suspect that he was capable of something like this. He got to his feet, and I did the same, and he slapped the dusters into his hand a couple of times as if testing them out. My eye was drawn to the gun, which had clattered down to the other end of the counter; it glinted uselessly in the light. There was no way I could get around him without him using those dusters on me—and I knew from experience that those things could do some serious damage.
I paced back a few steps, retracing the path I’d taken towards him—except this time, he was the one in control. I glanced over my shoulder; Ella was cowering between Mona and Lucy, but she was safe. She was alive. If something happened to me now, well, that wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world. At least she would be out of here and have someone around to look after her. That was a relief, something I could take some joy in as Ian advanced on me. He seemed to have forgotten the gun, but there was a wild look in his eyes that told me he could probably do just as much damage with his fists in the mood he was in.
“Why do you deserve all of this?” he snarled, his lip curling up to show off his teeth—as though he was a dog about to pounce on me where I stood. “How is that fair?”
“Fair isn’t how this work, Ian.” I held my hands up, trying to calm him down. “I just did my best with what I had.”
“I’ve seen the kind of man you are,” he snapped, cracked the brass dusters into his hand to punctuate his sentence. “You don’t deserve any of this. Any of this.”
“Ian,” I said his name again, hoping that I could snap him out of his little reverie if I tried hard enough. But he had had enough; there was nothing else I could do. He came to a standstill and, for a moment, everything stood stock still—my breath came to a stop in my chest, my heart apparently running out of steam where I stood. Ian didn’t blink, meeting my gaze coolly and calmly as though this was what he’d been waiting for all along.
And then, he lunged towards me—he spun the knuckles at me hard, hard enough that despite his lack of finesse they cracked me painfully across the jaw. I stumbled back, clutching my face, and tried to put some space between us, but he wasn’t having any of it. He went for me again, bringing the metal down on the back of my head—I heard Mona gasp from behind me, and I prayed that she was hiding Ella from all of this. I didn’t want this to be the last thing she remembered of her father.
Before Ian could bring the dusters down again, I glimpsed a little movement behind him—Addison. I had almost completely forgotten about him in the melee, but there he was. He had been frozen to the spot until now, but he seemed to have found his feet. He was reaching for the gun—I ducked Ian’s next blow deftly, managing to catch his wrists in my hands and hold them above my head—I could feel my jaw throbbing, already wet with a spot of blood. Ian gritted his teeth and tried to wrench himself free of my grasp, but I held firm. Not this time.
“Jazz!”
I looked up at the sound of my name, and saw Addison sending the gun skittering towards me across the tiles—his eyes were wide and full of fear, but he was trying to help me. Ian twisted his body around to see what had happened, and I took his moment of distraction and lunged beneath him to grab for the weapon. I stood up, cocked it, and pointed it squarely at his head. The dusters slid out of his hand, all but useless now. I was breathing heavily, my brain too focused on keeping him in my sights to come up with a zinger line now I had him under my control.
To my surprise, a few seconds later, Addison strode forward and caught Ian’s hands, pulling them behind his back and holding them there. I furrowed my brow at him. If he hadn’t been on Ian’s side, why had he taken so long to react in the first place?
“I’m so sorry,” he blurted over his brother’s shoulder. “I just… I couldn’t…”
Before he could get another word out, the sound of police sirens busted through the air. I jumped—usually, when I heard the cops coming, it meant bad news for me. But this time, I realized they were here to take away the man who had been threatening my family for what seemed like an eternity. And this time, I knew they would make damn sure that he didn’t go anywhere. Because if they did, they would have me to contend with.
Soon, the cars were close enough that the diner filled with flash of red and blue light, and half a dozen cops burst through the door; I put the gun down at once, not wanting them to get the wrong idea, and stepped aside to show them that Ian was here, and that he had been restrained. He was quickly cuffed and led out, without saying another word to me or anyone else. Appropriately, the look on his face was one of a petulant child who had been denied the toy he wanted most in the world. I felt a swell of relief as he was led out of the diner and into one of the cop cars waiting outside. He was gone. At last. Finally.
I slumped against the counter, inches from where I had placed down the gun—and realized that Ian had managed to let off a shot while I was freeing Mona. I swiveled around on my heel, and saw a neat bullet hole in the wall above the booth. There was no blood, no injuries—he had missed completely. Scott, Mary, and Paul were being tended to by a couple of medics who had arrived with the police, and they appeared to be shaken but unharmed. Declan and Lucy were conversing intently next to the door and I could have sworn I saw a little flirting go on if I wasn’t very much mistaken.
Addison was still standing next to me—the look on his face told me that he hadn’t expected any of this. He looked more shell-shocked than any of us.
“Jazz?” he asked, his voice small and fearful. I turned to face him. “I’m sorry I didn’t do more,” he muttered, looking at his feet. “I didn’t know… If I’d known that he was going to try and pull something like this, I never would have gone with him.”
“How much did you know?” I demanded. “Did you know he took Ella?”
“Not until he turned up at the house earlier this evening. I guess he wanted some back-up and assumed that because I’m his brother…” He shook his head, as if trying to put the pieces together in a way that made sense to him. It would be a long time before any of us were able to do that. “I was so scared. I didn’t want to get anyone killed,” he confessed. “But…I was never on his side. Just so you know.”
“I know.” I nodded. Honestly, no matter how much anger I felt towards Addison for not doing more—I didn’t have it in me to hate him. If someone had died, the story would be very different. But we had our happy ending. Well, almost.
“Will you excuse me?” I glanced at Addison, and he bowed his head agreeably. I turned, finally, and went to be with the two people I loved most in the world.
Mona and Ella were sitting in a booth at the opposite end of the diner; a police officer was sitting with them when I approached, but she backed off when she saw me coming. I smiled at her gratefully, and slid into the booth next to Ella. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her onto my lap, unable to restrain myself any longer.
“I’m so glad you’re alright,” I murmured into her hair. I wanted to say more, but I knew that I couldn’t possibly verbalize it right now—couldn’t find a way to say that if she had died I never would have forgiven myself, that I loved her more than anything in the world. I just had to hope she knew all of that. She squeezed me tight, and, as the adrenaline wore off, I could have fallen asleep right there and then; it felt as though a weight that had been pushing down on my shoulders for the last few months had finally lifted. I didn’t want the moment to end, but she extracted herself from me and looked very intently at my face for a moment.
“What is it, honey?” I asked gently. I knew that for the foreseeable future, we would have to treat Ella with kid gloves. I mean, we didn’t even know the full extent of what he had done to her yet; I wasn’t sure if I ever wanted to truly know, but I couldn’t help her through this if I didn’t.
“You have blood on you,” she remarked, reaching out to touch the spot on my chin where Ian had caught me with the dusters. I winced, and she drew her hand back at once. “Sorry!” she exclaimed, looking immediately guilty. I took her hand and squeezed it gently.
“I’m fine,” I assured her. “Nothing wrong with me.”
“You should probably go get that looked at,” Mona suggested. “You don’t want to go home with a concussion or something.”
“We all should,” I suggested. “Make sure nothing’s…wrong?”
I glanced down at Mona’s stomach meaningfully, and her hand flew to it protectively. I knew we would have to tell Ella about the baby at some point, but now didn’t feel like the time. Still, I wanted to make sure it was okay—that had been a whole hell of a lot of stress that Mona had been through along with the rest of us, and I needed to be sure that all four of us had come out of it unscathed.
I hefted Ella up into my arms and carried her over to the impromptu medical station that had been set up to deal with everyone. Mary and Paul were wrapped in blankets and holding steaming cups of something, while Scott was already on the phone—probably letting his colleagues know what had happened. One of the nurses turned her attention to me, and started cleaning up the wounds on my face and the back of my head.
“What happens now?” I asked. I had no idea what to expect in this kind of situation—one where I was on the right side of the law instead of the wrong one.
She shrugged. “They’ll probably take witness statements from all of you, and I know for a fact that they’re going to want to interview your daughter a whole lot more to get the full run-down of what happened with that guy. But they’ll do that later. She looks exhausted, she probably just needs her own bed and a good night’s rest more than anything.”
“Right,” I sighed. I knew that this didn’t end here—that we would have to put Ian away before this was truly over. But still, this was a start. And I could relax in knowing that with so many witnesses, there was no way he was getting away with this.
“You’ll be fine, though,” the nurse assured me. Even though it was more sentiment than authority, I couldn’t help but smile. I looked over at Ella, my daughter, being quietly attended to by another one of the nurses. She was sitting still so they could examine her, and she laughed periodically at their jokes. Seeing her smile again, after such a long time of convincing myself that it would never happen—there weren’t words to express the joy of that moment. This nurse was right; we would be fine, because we were all together again. And no matter what, we would find a way to work through everything that had happened, and come together as a family like we were always meant to.