Hunter
It didn’t take long for the sirens to reach him. When Hunter had called 911 and said he thought Vanessa had been drugged and was overdosing, they’d promised to be there immediately, and it looked like they were keeping that promise.
“Hunter?” Opal’s little voice came from under the bed. She peeked up at him through teary eyes. “Is my mommy dead?”
“No, honey.” Hunter gently pulling Opal from under the bed and covered her eyes.
He cradled her against his chest and ran from the room. Had she peeked and seen something she shouldn’t have? He hoped not. The kid had been through enough.
The smell, though. He couldn’t hold her nose and cover her eyes. But the place stunk. There was blood everywhere and the distinctive smell of a body dying—like feces and urine and vomit. He’d smelled it once or twice after a hit, but never in this quantity. He dodged the bodies on the floor and hurried to get Opal outside.
He took the stairs, climbing down them as quickly as was safe. When his feet hit the ground floor and he burst out through the emergency doors, he saw swarms of police and the ambulance.
Someone else must’ve called about the gunshots. Someone in the hotel, maybe. They might even have surveillance. His running caught the cops’ attention and several of them charged at him.
“Freeze!” they shouted.
Hunter stopped. “I have no weapons.” He’d left them all in the room. He walked closer so he was in earshot. “Listen, please. I called 911. There are a lot of dead bodies in there, but the emergency is the woman in the back bedroom—my girlfriend. She’s overdosing and she needs help immediately.”
One of the officers nodded to another and he took off toward the EMTs standing near the ambulance.
“I acted in self-defense,” Hunter continued. “There were a lot of men up there shooting at me and the child and her mother. I killed the men in order to protect them.”
He went to the closest officer. “Take her, please, and get her to help. I have to go check on Vanessa.”
The officer met his eyes. Hunter could only imagine what he saw there. Panic, terror. He didn’t have time to think too much about it. If they weren’t going to chase him down and throw cuffs on him, he had to get to Vanessa.
“I’m going back in to check on her.” Hunter turned and ran for the door, not pausing as he yanked it open and took the stairs two at a time.
By the time he reached the bedroom where she was, EMTs were already there, working. He couldn’t get close to her. As much as he wanted to hold her, he didn’t want to get in the way of anything that would save her life, either. He prayed that they would be able to save her.
He stood back, watching helplessly. They shouted things to each other that Hunter didn’t understand. Codes and long words that sounded too scientific and medical to be anything but medications or processes. It sounded like a loud clatter of words and was a dizzying blur of actions.
They injected something into her arm. Apparently, they expected it to do something different than what it did. They didn’t seem happy. He heard one say that it wasn’t enough, she needed more. What had Jeremy given her and how much? Was he trying to kill her?
“Do you know what she took?” one of them asked him.
“She didn’t take anything. She was forcibly injected with something.” Hunter pointed to the needle lying on the floor by the bed, where it had rolled in the commotion of all that had happened since Jeremy injected her.
The EMT picked up the needle carefully, turned it over in his hand, and held it to the light, then sniffed it. “Test kit,” he said.
“More naloxone,” another called EMT. “We’re losing her.”
Hunter’s mouth ran dry. All he could think was no, no, no, no. She couldn’t die. Not now, not after everything. Not now that Jeremy was dead, and she and Opal were finally and forever free.
The EMT injected the next syringe full of liquid and Hunter held his breath. Vanessa coughed. An eruption of shouts broke out among the EMTs and in seconds, they had loaded her onto a stretcher.
“Vanessa,” he called out as they whisked her from the room, but he doubted she could hear him over everything.
He followed the stretcher out into the hall. Someone had already pushed the button for the elevator and they wheeled her on as they kept working on her. The last thing he saw as the elevator doors closed and she disappeared with the EMTs, was a bag of oxygen being squeezed into her mouth, forcing her to breathe.
He wasn’t going to wait for the next elevator. Hunter ran back to the stairs, this time able to fly down, hanging onto the railing to keep from falling. He could move much faster not carrying Opal. He was out the door in seconds.
His feet took him right to the ambulance, but he was too late. The doors closed and it drove off as he stood there, watching her go, wondering if he’d ever see her alive again.
# # #
“Excuse me, are you Hunter Perrin?”
Hunter turned to the officer asking him the question and nodded.
“We need to speak with you. We need to take a statement, and we may have a few questions.”
“Where’s Opal?” Hunter asked.
“She’s with another paramedic, being treated.”
The officer pointed and once Hunter saw her, he gave his attention the man in uniform.
“Can you tell me exactly what happened in there?”
The cop wrote as Hunter spoke. He started at the beginning, explaining how Jeremy had hired him, how he’d discovered the truth, but then CPS had come. He told them about the set up and how things had started to go wrong. Then he gave them as many details as possible about the day. Finding Mari’s parents and the Kevlar vest, killing the thugs there, who had pulled guns on him and tried to kill him—even if that part was a slight exaggeration since he’d fired first.
He described in the most detail the scene that had taken place upstairs in the hotel, since it was the freshest in his mind. He didn’t leave out killing Jeremy, how he’d tried to kill him and Vanessa and had hired people to come after them. He had to make it clear that this was all self-defense.
“And the best part is,” Hunter said. “There are hidden cameras all over that captured most of this.”
“You set up cameras?”
“Nicholas, the man from CPS, and I set them up in the hotel room where I was staying, where Jeremy confessed to hiring me; where I shot him. Though he was wearing the vest and didn’t die.”
The officer reviewed his notes. “Looks like that matches up with what Nicholas Johnson said in his statement.”
“Yeah, it matches because that’s the truth.” Hunter had to remind himself to be polite, that he was on the same side as the cops right now. He was a good citizen, doing his duty, and acting as protector. At least, he needed it to come across that way. He couldn’t afford to get rude or lose his temper.
The officer gave him a look that warned he might be pushing it. Hunter changed his tone.
“I want you to have the complete truth so that you can let justice prevail. A very bad man was taken down today, along with many of his hired guns. There may be more out there, though. I don’t know for sure, but I’d guess.”
“If only you’d left one alive to talk to us.”
Hunter thought he was being sarcastic, but it wasn’t too obvious. “Well, I couldn’t take the chance that one would be alive to kill us. And the video should help.”
“Those and the video from the hotel here should give us a clear picture.”
So there was surveillance in this hotel, too. Hunter nodded. “Good.” But it was anything but good. It would show him killing the thugs, sure. At least then, they had pulled their guns first. That was self-defense, easy. But when it came to Jeremy, it was less obvious. Time to make a calculated move. “I’ll tell you right now that I might have taken things further than I needed to with Jeremy. It was certainly self-defense when I killed him, but I drew it out longer than I needed to. I’ll admit it. I just want you to know that upfront, before you even review the footage.”
The officer inspected him for a moment. Hunter tried to look innocent, whatever that looked like. He hoped this was the right move. They’d see on the video what he’d done. There was no talking his way out of it. He’d shot Jeremy many times in places that wouldn’t kill him, then slashed him up and beat him. It might be harder to prove self-defense. But admitting to it should make him seem more trustworthy and honorable. He hoped.
“You’re free to go,” the officer said. “We’ll ask you to stay in the area the next few days. There’ll be a massive investigation, and we may need to get more details from you.”
Hunter nodded. He wasn’t about to leave with Vanessa in the hospital. He needed to take care of Opal now. He would step up and do whatever he had to.
“I won’t be going anywhere. I’m going to make sure Opal is okay and take her to see her mother before we get home and try to get some rest.”
“Umm, hang on a minute, there.” The officer flipped through some papers. “You’re not the parent or guardian of Opal. I can’t let you take her off the property.”
“What do you mean? I’m her mother’s boyfriend. I’ve been staying with them for days. I’m going to take her to her mother.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t allow that to happen.”
“Her father is dead and her mother is in the hospital. I’m the closest thing she has to a guardian or parent right now.”
“I’m sorry. I know it’s difficult, but especially with an ongoing CPS investigation, I can’t let her go with someone who has no legal right. She’ll have to spend the night in CPS custody.”
“No, no, she’s been through too much for that to happen. Hang on.” Hunter pulled out his phone. There was one person he could think of that might be able to help him.
She answered and the relief flooded over him. “Mari. I need your help. They won’t let me take Opal, because I’m not a guardian. Do you still have that paperwork that Vanessa gave you?”
“Yes.” Her voice sounded weak.
Then it hit him that she probably just found out that her parents were killed. “I know this is a hard time, but they want to put Opal into CPS custody for the night. After all she’s witnessed, I can’t let that happen.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Hunter gave her the address, then hung up and explained to the officer that Mari had been the safe house for Opal and that Vanessa had set it up legally to be covered if something like this happened.
Hunter waited with Opal. Nicholas was there, probably because CPS had been called, but Hunter didn’t feel like talking to him. He was still pissed at the fact that he’d been there when Vanessa was taken and had done nothing to help her. No way was Hunter going to let him be the one to protect Opal. No. Fucking. Way.
Mari arrived within a half hour. Her cheeks were red and her eyes puffy, but she ran to them and hugged Opal tight. She took several minutes to talk to her, to make sure she was okay. Then, she showed the officer the paperwork from Vanessa.
They finally let them all leave together. Hunter drove them to the hospital.
“I think we should have her looked at,” Hunter said, glancing in the mirror at Opal, who was staring out the window like she was in a trance.
“Didn’t the EMTs check her?” Mari asked. She turned in her seat to look at Opal, then turned back around.
“I mean a psych eval to make sure she’s okay.” He tapped his temple. He didn’t want to say out loud that he was worried it might make her go crazy or fall into some sort of mental instability because of all this. Shock was a powerful thing and it affected children deeply.
Mari nodded. “Good idea.”
When they got there, Hunter explained what they had just been through. The nurse already knew of the situation and they already had Vanessa. They ordered someone from psych to come to the ER. Then they sat to wait.
Hunter had been told when they first arrived that Vanessa was in critical condition and they wouldn’t be able to see her for a while. He sat in a chair beside Mari while Opal was in the other room with the doctor. At least this evaluation wasn’t keeping them from time with Vanessa, but that didn’t make his heart ache any less. He needed to see her and know she was okay.
They had survived it. For now, they were all alive and doing okay. Vanessa should pull through this, they’d told her. Once overdoses start to respond, they almost always recover. And she didn’t have a history of drug use with chronic conditions to contend with. She was young and healthy, and this should be easy for her to bounce back from.
He believed in his heart that she would survive. The joy and comfort was outweighed by what they’d been through. So much blood and so many deaths. He might kill for a living, but that didn’t mean it didn’t affect him at all. It did. And knowing how Opal had been affected, and having to look at Mari as she sat crying quietly, it was all too much. He wanted nothing more than to go home and curl up with Vanessa and sleep for hours. But he wouldn’t be able to do that anytime soon.
For now, he tried to focus on the fact that she was alive, Opal was alive, and he was alive. And that was the most important thing.