Whimsical Diva (A Whimsical Dreams Sapphic Romantic Suspense), page 19
“Lys. Holy crap, girlfriend. I swear, you are more bloodthirsty than the bad asses are.” Delaney looked at Alyssa with her eyebrows raised.
Alyssa snorted. “You forget I know you, Del, and I know this is not cool with you on any level. Therefore, I’m willing to make book on the fact that you’re patiently waiting for the show, popcorn in hand.”
Delaney snickered then sheepishly shrugged in agreement.
The women were in Nova and Trill’s apartment, riding out the tropical storm. According to the last weather update from The Weather Channel, they were about an hour from landfall, which was expected to take place just south of them in Sarasota County. Although the weather was squally and the rain bands coming through had produced some fairly gusty conditions at times, the three native Floridians knew this was a very minor tropical event and they were as safe as it was possible to be where they were.
Nova was still a bit worried about Isadora, but she consoled herself with the fact that Isadora was sheltered in a large, solidly built hotel that could withstand almost five times the amount of wind and rain this storm would produce. Unable to help herself, she kept peeking occasionally at the app on her phone to check on the movie star. Isadora was apparently reading in the living room of the large suite, ignoring Chad Lancaster, who was pacing back and forth. Nova frowned at his peculiar behavior but chalked it up to the fact that the Californian had never weathered a tropical storm before and was most likely just freaked out.
“I need this shit to be over with.” Nova blew out a deep breath as she forced herself to minimize the app. “I’m about to break out in motherfucking hives from nerves. Now, this bitch,” she gestured at Alyssa, “has me wanting popcorn. With butter and parmigiana cheese on it, so my ass can explode…because, why the fuck not?”
Alyssa and Delaney burst out laughing.
“Do you have the stuff to make it? If you do, I’m on it.” Delaney rose from her seat on the couch as Nova got out of her armchair and went into the kitchen to help her.
About thirty minutes later, just as they had finished eating their snack, Nova’s cell phone rang. She looked at the display and frowned. “Jesus. It’s Isadora.” She rapidly answered the phone. “Hey, what’s up? Where’s Chad?”
“Nova! Oh, my God, Nova!” Isadora whisper-screamed into the phone. “It’s Chad, and I think he’s lost his mind! I stood up from the couch and walked toward the bathroom, disconnecting my earring because I needed privacy to, you-know. As I got to the bathroom door, though, he grabbed me and threw me down onto the floor, saying that I’m a problem he should have gotten rid of years ago! He has a gun, Nova!” Alyssa and Delaney sat bolt upright from the look of horror on Nova’s face. She quickly put her phone on speaker so the other two could hear the conversation.
“I managed to kick the gun out of his hand and escaped into the bathroom. I’ve locked the door, but he’s…he’s turned into some kind of lunatic, hammering on the door and screaming at me to open it. He’s acting like he’s pure evil! Now, he’s yelling through the door and saying we’re going to take a drive to the set, where he’s going to make it look like I had a deadly ‘accident’ in the storm!” Isadora whimpered and choked in terror. “The door is splintering, Nova, and I don’t know how much longer it’s going to hold him back! Help me…dear God, help me!”
Nova felt a fear she had never felt before freeze her in place for a moment. “Isadora, listen to me. The twins and the Seven are out doing a safety sweep of Whimsy, but I’m going to send them to you right now!” She nodded frantically at Delaney. “Del just pulled out her phone and she’s going to text Teagan so I can stay on the line with you. I promise you, we’re not going to let that bastard son of a bitch hurt you! Hang on for me, honey! We—” Suddenly, Nova’s phone went dead.
“Isadora! Isadora!” Nova screamed into her phone. She pressed the ‘end’ button then tried to call Isadora’s phone back to no avail. “Jesus Christ, what the hell just happened?!”
“My phone’s dead too. I have no idea if my text to Teagan went through or not.” Worry and fear were evident in Delaney’s voice as she tried to call her spouse. “Damn it, it goes straight to voicemail. The only thing I can think of, based on what Teag has taught me, is that the cell phone tower took a hit of some type. They’re usually pretty invulnerable in a little storm like this one, but it could have gotten hit by debris or big tree branches or something like that. All it would take is the exact right strike at the exact right time to disrupt the communications.”
“I have to go after her! She said he’s going to take her to the set and make it look like she had some kind of fatal accident.” Nova flew into her bedroom, stripped off her shorts, and pulled on a pair of jeans. She threw a warm hoodie over her T-shirt, yanked on her sneakers, and went back out into the living room to find Alyssa doing the same.
“Shut the fuck up, homeslice.” Alyssa poked her forefinger in Nova’s direction at the look on Nova’s face then glowered as she pulled on her own sneakers. “The fuck I’m letting you go out alone in this, especially if we need to deal with that motherfucking maniac. Del can stay here and watch for the bad asses.
“Actually, it would probably be better if Del went back to her own apartment because she’s in a corner unit and her apartment looks right out onto Dunbridge. Yours doesn’t. That way, she can keep a lookout for either anyone who goes into the APS complex across the street or comes back here.
“Almost all the APS bad asses are out patrolling, but they have to come back sometime. Right now, it’s not like any of us can call the skeleton crew that’s on the inside over there in the complex or anyone sheltering with them to tell them what the fuck is going on either, because hello? No. Fucking. Phones.” Alyssa was pissed through her worry.
“Okay. Okay. My car isn’t huge and will probably slide on the roads some because it’s pretty lightweight and it’s windy as fuck out there…but we should still be all right.” Nova went charging into the office then returned and stuffed a large wooden board into her backpack. She arched an eyebrow at Alyssa who was looking at her as if she had lost her mind.
“What? It’s a photography background board we use for food-styling photo shoots. Tell me I won’t slam that motherfucker right across the head with it if I get a chance, Lys. Isadora said he had a gun, but something tells me that jackass has no idea which end of it to actually use.” Nova was trying to cover her fear with snark.
“We’re out of here.” She grabbed Delaney in a tight hug then stepped back as Alyssa did the same. “Trill is probably going to kill me, but I can’t leave Isadora out there all alone. If we could have reached them, any one of them, we would have kept our happy asses here and waited for them to do what it is they do. But they’re not here, we can’t reach them, and I refuse to let that evil son of a bitch take anything more from that sweet woman.
“I promised her she was no longer alone.” Her voice wobbled a bit. “I could never live with myself if something happened to her and there had been even a slim chance I could have prevented it but didn’t.” Nova swallowed down the tears that were starting to drip down her face.
Delaney was openly crying. “I get it. Just please…please be careful. Lancaster is unhinged as hell and if he has every intention of killing Isadora, he won’t have any qualms about taking you out, too. He hates you, Nov, and you know it. I’ll keep trying to get ahold of someone while I watch for them.” She ran out of Trill and Nova’s apartment and navigated down the hallway with the other two then opened the door to her own apartment as Nova and Alyssa headed out the front door.
“We’re taking my SUV, homeslice. It’s heavier than your car and won’t slide as easily. Desi gave me a remote when I got here yesterday, told me Jaime said to keep it in my vehicle for now, so I’m parked in the APS parking garage across the street.” They ran across Biscayne Street South to the APS complex, hunched against the wind and rain, and Alyssa let them into the garage through the north entrance. When they got into Alyssa’s SUV, Nova pulled the seat belt across her chest, buckled it, then gave Alyssa a grim look, her honey-brown eyes dark. “You ready to do this thing, Lys?”
The corner of Alyssa’s mouth lifted with no humor as her own light blue eyes darkened as well. To Nova’s total shock, she pulled a gun in a shoulder holster out from under her driver’s seat and handed it to Nova. “I was born ready, sister.” With resolute, determined intention, Alyssa put her vehicle in gear and the two femmes sped off into the storm—determined to save a broken, battered woman from the man who was equally determined to take her life and permanently snuff out the hopes and dreams he had shattered long ago.
Chapter 17
“I can’t believe communications are down,” Trill grumped as she, Jaime, and Kenn made their way back to the APS complex. The SUVs carrying the other two teams had met up with them in downtown Whimsy and they were all headed back to the APS complex together. Tropical Storm Audrey had made landfall about thirty minutes before on Longboat Key, a barrier island south of Anna Maria Island between Sarasota Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, and reports of flooding and damage to the Whimsy area were minimal. Although there was currently no way to reach them, the management team assumed their crews would be coming back shortly as well.
“We did dodge a bullet, though…despite losing our phones and comms, which has sucked,” Kenn remarked, crossing over Biscayne Street as she headed east on Dunbridge to the north entrance of the APS complex. “Who would have thought a measly little pissant storm like Audrey could take down a fucking cell tower? I’m sure Teag will tell us the details as soon as she finds out what happened for sure.”
As she turned into the complex parking garage, however, she suddenly slammed on her brakes. “What the fuck? Is that Delaney? What in the motherfucking hell does she think she’s doing?” The three APS butches peered through the driving rain at a small figure dashing down the street toward them. They saw Teagan jump out of the SUV behind them and run to meet her, scooping her up and heading into the garage out of the weather.
When they were parked and back inside the complex, the APS management team found Teagan and Delaney in the back hallway that led to the north parking lot, Delaney crying and clutching Teagan’s biceps as Teag banded her arms tightly around her wife’s waist. She was clearly shaken by Del’s uncharacteristic panic. “Slow down, angel. Slow down because I can’t understand a goddamn word you’re saying. Why the fuck were you out in this shit? And where’s Nova and Alyssa?”
Delaney took a deep, shuddering breath and forced herself to calm her panicked words as the management team surrounded them. “Isa-…Isadora called Nova earlier,” she hiccupped. “She was locked in her bathroom at her hotel, completely hysterical because Chad Lancaster had pulled a gun on her! She said he was raving and screaming at her that she was a problem he should have gotten rid of years ago!
“I don’t know how, but she managed to kick the gun out of his hand, got into the bathroom away from him, and locked the door. She pulled out that little prepaid phone Nova had gotten for her—the one she’d told Isadora to keep hidden in her tampon box in the bathroom—and she called Nova. Chad kept yelling at her through the door that he was going to force her to go to the movie set with him, then he was going to kill her! He’s going to make it look like she had an accident in the storm.”
An angry silence swept through the group.
Delaney wiped her streaming eyes with one hand. “Isadora said he was trying to smash his way into the bathroom and that the door was starting to splinter. We knew he was determined to make her go with him to Madeira Beach where the set is, but we had no idea what his plans were past that or how he was going to make it look like she’d had an accident. Nova promised her we were going to find you all immediately and send you to her, but then the phones went out! Nova lost touch with Isadora and we couldn’t contact anyone else, no matter how hard we tried. Our communications were completely gone.”
Delaney turned in Teagan’s arms and looked at Trill, still shaking. “Trill, Nova headed out in the storm to go to the production set to find Isadora herself. Alyssa went with her because she said there was no way in hell she was letting Nova go up against a maniac like Lancaster alone. And Nova said…Nova said,” she drew in another deep, choking breath, “she said that she could never live with herself if something happened to Isadora because she ignored even a tiny chance that she could stop whatever it is that Lancaster was planning to do.”
“Baby, when did they leave?” Teagan’s voice was calm in the midst of the rage that surrounded them.
“About an hour ago. Audrey was about thirty minutes from making landfall when Nova heard from Isadora. She and Alyssa took off for Madeira Beach in Alyssa’s SUV, and my job was to wait for you all and grab you the minute I saw you. Grab anyone I saw from APS, whether it was someone coming out of the complex or coming into the apartments, and tell them where those two had gone and why.” Delaney started to cry again.
“I am so scared for both of them, and for Isadora. Lancaster is fucking psychotic and I told Nova he would kill her just as easily as he would Isadora, because he hates her with a passion. And he has a gun. He can’t make this look like a simple accident if he shoots them, but I honestly think he might be too far gone to care. He is determined to get rid of Isadora, and he’ll kill Nova with no qualms whatsoever if she gets in his way.”
“If that motherfucker touches even one hair on my woman’s head”—none of them had ever heard the kind of deadly rage that was emanating from the normally cool, calm, collected Trillian Dacanay before—“I will burn Madeira Beach to the ground. Chad Lancaster is a dead man.” She started to walk rapidly toward the Recon Room. “I need to grab one of my sniper rifles and then I am fucking out of here.” Her fury shimmered in the air around her as she strode angrily down the hallway, seething hate in every line of her body.
In the next moment, however, Trill found herself slammed face first against the wall and pinned by Drew, Casey, and Riley. “You three need to get the fuck off me before I do something I might regret.” In a flash, Trill’s voice went from red hot rage to one coated in ice. “I have never in over thirty years raised my hand to any one of you motherfuckers in anger, but today just might be the goddamn exception to the rule. What part of the woman I love is in danger and might lose her life if I don’t get to her now do you fucking bastards not understand?!” Trill was screaming by the end, struggling violently.
“You think I don’t understand, when my wife was kidnapped by one of the vilest pieces of shit we’ve ever gone up against? One who was planning on raping her and forcing her to become pregnant? You think I don’t get it?” Riley spoke calmly into Trill’s ear, holding firm against Trill’s savage attempts to get free. “Broki, I get it. Bryn gets it. Teag gets it. I hope to Christ none of these other assholes ever has to learn what it’s like…but if God forbid they ever do, we’ll be there for them, the same as we’re here for you.”
“Don’t make us drag you to lockdown, cuz, please.” Drew’s voice was equally calm. “It would kill me to do it if I had to…but I’ll do it if it means keeping you safe from yourself. You know I will. You need to focus and get your shit together because Nova needs you right now, and we can’t take you to go get her if you don’t get your fucking head back in the game. You know that.”
Casey spoke up last. “You have one of the smartest women I’ve ever seen in my life, Trill. The APS femmes are absolutely amazing. You saw what she and Alyssa accomplished in Hades, and you know that motherfucker is going to be eating his own dick by the time the two of them are done with him. You need to calm down, realize you have your posse at your back, and remember that none of us are going to let the first fucking thing happen to those two.
“But Drew’s right, cuz. You need to get your goddamn head back in the game.” Casey squeezed Trill’s arm in support as they all finally felt Trill’s body start to relax. “We need to get there now, but we have to do it as the cohesive team we’ve always been. There’s no room for error or bad judgment on this, Trill. None.”
Trill slumped against the wall and leaned her forehead against the wall after a long moment, blowing out a deep breath. “Okay. Okay.” She felt the red haze of rage that had fallen over her dissipate as she became more clearheaded and stood up. “Fuck. I’m sorry. I don’t know what the hell came over me.”
“I do.” Delaney, who had still been standing with Teagan, went over and hugged Trill fiercely. After a moment, the APS team lead hugged her back just as hard. “You love her, Trill. You love her, and you want her to be safe, and it makes you crazy to know that she’s not safe at the moment. That’s why you lost it for a minute there.
“I’ve known every single one of you since I was in kindergarten, and it’s amazing to me how much you’ve always had each other’s backs. None of us is perfect and we’ve all done things we aren’t especially proud of…but that’s just one of the reasons you all have each other. At the end of the day, you keep each other sane when this kind of insanity happens in your lives.” Delaney stepped back and squeezed Trill’s hands warmly even through her worry.
“You said you’re sorry, I can already tell they know it was just a blip on the radar screen, and now all of you are going to find Nova and Alyssa. And may the Goddess have mercy on Lancaster’s soul, because none of you sure as hell will.”
ɚωɚωɚωɚ
“There’s his rental car.” Alyssa switched off her lights in the murky, rainy gloom and stared at the Mercedes-Benz S-Class sedan parked in the middle of the deserted lot. “Does he have her in her own personal trailer or are they in his production trailer? Fuck, I can’t tell. There are lights on in both of them.”
