Stolen Course Read online

  Stolen Course

  Copyright © 2014 Aly Martinez

  All rights reserved. No part of this novel may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted without written permission from the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. If you would like to share this book with others please purchase a copy for each person. This eBook my not be re-sold or given away to other people.

  Stolen Course is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and occurrences are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, events, or locations is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design by Ashley Baumann at Ashbee Designs https://www.facebook.com/AshbeeBookCovers

  Edited by Mickey Reed at I’m a Book Shark

  http://www.imabookshark.com

  Formatting by Self Publishing Editing Service

  Table of Contents

  WARNING

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Epilogue

  Read more

  tattoo

  Acknowledgements

  About The Author

  WARNING:

  This content contains material that may be offensive to some readers.

  Including graphic language and adult situations.

  For Mandy

  It’s been way too long since we lost you. I still remember the smile on your face when you walked away from me that last time. I have no idea what we were talking about, but I can almost still hear your laugh. I miss it.

  “She isn’t weighted down here on earth the way I am. She’s soaring, I’m sure. Manda never knew how to do anything else.”

  “IT’S NOT fucking them!” I punch the dashboard and scream at my partner, Brett, as he weaves through traffic.

  Just moments ago, we received a page that will destroy one of us forever. It said a bunch of words, but the only four I can remember are “one fatality, one injury.” I reject the very possibility that this has anything to do with my Manda, but the vise currently holding my heart still twists even tighter. I drop my head to my hands as I wage war with reality. If that message is accurate, I have a fifty-fifty chance that my life is over. Done. Finished. I’ll never survive losing Manda. Never.

  It can’t be her. We haven’t even gotten married yet. We are supposed to get married and have a life together. We have a plan. A knife lands hard in my stomach as I try to reason my way out of this mess. It can’t be her. Manda is strong and healthy. No accident in the world could steal her from me. Yeah, she’s tough. She’s got to be the one who’s injured. Something simple, maybe a broken arm. We can fix that. I just need her to be alive—anything else, we can deal with together.

  The car barely slows before I’m out and sprinting toward the twisted metal on the side of the highway. Every hope I have of this being a big misunderstanding vanishes into the night when I recognize Sarah’s car. Reality slices me open, but the promise of only an injury keeps my legs moving forward.

  “Detective Jones!” I hear shouted, but I continue to run. I slow only when I get to a group of officers.

  “Where is she?” I demand, but deep down, I’m terrified to hear the answer.

  “Caleb, take a second and catch your breath.”

  “Where the fuck is she!” My eyes scan the faces lining the road, desperately searching for Manda’s fiery red hair and green eyes.

  But instead, they land on a white sheet covering what I know is a body. My heart begins to race as I once again try to fight all rational thinking that tells me that it’s her.

  “That’s not her,” I say, desperately trying to catch my breath, but the panic that has lodged itself in my system prevents it. “Oh God, someone please tell me that’s not her.” Tears well in my eyes as I glance up to see my good friends, Stephens and Perez, step up beside me. From the look on Stephens’s face, I know I don’t want to hear whatever he has to say.

  “She didn’t make it, Jones.” With one sentence, the little breath I have left is stolen. My legs buckle, forcing me helplessly to my knees.

  “No.” I refuse to accept that my Manda no longer exists.

  The earth starts to tremble as my world begins to crumble around me. It only takes a minute to realize that my body is violently shaking as the physical pain of reality courses through my veins. This is not happening.

  “That’s not her,” I begin to repeat.

  She can’t be gone. My eyes never leave the body that used to house my soul mate. This isn’t real, and any minute I’m going to wake from this horrible nightmare. I’ll roll over in bed and pull Manda hard against my chest. I close my eyes, willing myself to wake up, but it never comes.

  I rise to my feet and take a step towards her. “Manda!” I yell. I need to see her. To touch her. It’s fucking cold tonight and she’s just lying there under a sheet. Oh, fuck. That’s not her.

  Perez grabs my arm, effectively halting me. “Don’t do this to yourself. You don’t need to see her like that.”

  “Get your fucking hands off me. If that’s Manda, I need to see her.”

  “Not now you don’t. Let them get her to the hospital and clean her up a bit.”

  The pain in my chest is quickly being replaced with anger.

  “Get off me, Perez,” I say calmly while leveling him with a menacing glare.

  “Not happening. I won’t let you do this to yourself.” He pulls me back a step, and that is all it takes for me to lose it. My rage needs somewhere to go, and it just so happens that it chooses Perez’s face. My hands fly, landing directly on his jaw.

  “I need to see her!” I scream, landing punch after punch. Stephens jumps in, tackling me from behind. He uses his weight to pin me to the ground.

  “Goddamn it, Jones. Stop fighting. We’re trying to help you.”

  “She’s not fucking gone!”

  “She is, and you don’t need to see her.”

  An image of her laughing at dinner flashes behind my eyes as once again reality takes hold. This is not happening. The temporary shield of anger fades away as devastation settles in. As I’m lying facedown on the side of a highway, gut-wrenching sobs spring from my chest.

  “Oh, God. Please, not Manda.”

  “PERFECT. OH that’s great. A little to the left. Little more. Tiny bit more. Yes, yes! Now hold it!” I yell at the dumbass blonde I’m photographing.

  I know I probably shouldn’t think like that about my clients. After all, they are paying me. But this woman really is frustrating. She is paying me to take pictures of her stupid historic
house for a dumb, ridiculously popular home magazine. I have no idea why she needs to be in every shot. They are just going to crop her out to focus on the house, but regardless how many times I tell her that, she still squeezes into every shot. I just took a picture of her ugly King Charles spaniel sitting in a rocking chair on her front porch. Fuck my life.

  My phone rings with a Chicago area code. I don’t recognize the number, and my heart begins to race at the very idea of what this phone call could be about. Just another update from Brett? Or maybe it’s the call I’ve been dreading since the night that changed everything.

  My sister, Sarah, was involved in a car accident five years ago. It completely fucked her up, and then it fucked me up. About six weeks after Sarah’s accident, our father died. He wasn’t exactly young, but that didn’t make his stroke any less unexpected. It was the worst day of my life. When it came time for his funeral, on a day when I needed her more than ever, Sarah wasn’t there. I would have been a heartless bitch if I’d said that I didn’t understand her reasons. She had just lost her best friend and was suffering from a pretty serious head injury herself. But I can’t say that it didn’t hurt like hell when she told me that she couldn’t make Daddy’s funeral.

  A few weeks after the wreck, Sarah tried to kill herself. I’ve never been able to wrap my mind around why she would cross that line, even with as many times as I have tried to put myself in her shoes. When I got the phone call about her first suicide attempt, I was pissed. I knew she had been dealing with guilt, but she and I were always close. And after the accident, I really tried to be there for her. If she had emotional stuff going on, she could have reached out to me. Hell, she should have reached out to me. One phone call—that’s all it would have taken. I would have been on a plane the same night. I could have helped. But she never once picked up the phone. It was bad enough that she'd moved almost a thousand miles away, but she could have fucking called.

  So on the day we buried my father, I stood with my mom and said goodbye, praying that I didn’t have to say goodbye to my sister soon too.

  After Sarah’s accident, she didn’t just change, she lost it completely. Her husband, Brett is a total sweetheart. He has been taking care of her for the last few years, but for reasons known only to Sarah, she hates him—has ever since the accident. He’s a really good guy, and he doesn’t deserve the shit she gives him. He’s done nothing but stand by her side, waiting for her to reemerge. But Sarah is hidden so deep inside this new woman that I’m not sure anyone can reach her—at least that is what I tell myself.

  As the phone rings in my hand, I suck in a quick breath and prepare for the worst.

  “Hello.”

  “Hey, Emma. It’s Brett.”

  I listen closely to his voice for clues on how bad this call is going to be.

  “Is everything okay?” I chew on my lip, waiting for his response.

  “She’s fine,” he says, reassuring me right off the bat. “A lot of stuff happened today. She tried…again.” I know exactly what he means by tried.

  Brett is the big brother I never knew I wanted. I love him, and he’s super protective of me. He and Sarah started dating when I was only sixteen years old. I’ve grown up with him watching over me from afar.

  “How bad?” I immediately jump to the heart of this phone call.

  “She’s okay. But this one isn’t going to be brushed under the rug. She did some really shitty stuff yesterday, babe. Stuff that will have legal consequences for her.”

  “What?” I shriek across the line.

  He lets out an audible sigh, and if I know Brett at all, he’s pinching the bridge of his nose. “Emma, she tried to shoot me last night. She locked herself up in an apartment, and when I went in after her, she actually pulled the trigger.”

  “No,” I whisper in disbelief. “Shit, are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Her aim is shit.” He tries to reassure me with a joke. That’s what Brett does, he makes jokes. But the absence of his laugh makes me worry more than anything else he just said. “When can you get up here?”

  “Are you asking me that, Brett? Because if you want me there, it must be pretty fucking bad.”

  “You’ll call me when you land?” he asks, both answering and ignoring my question.

  “Yeah. Where is she right now?”

  “The hospital,” he answers shortly, offering no more information.

  “The one by your house?” I digging a little deeper.

  “Please just let me pick you up. We need to talk anyway.”

  “The one by your fucking house?” My voice rises from the frustration. I know he is trying to protect me, but Sarah is my sister. If he won’t give me the story over the phone, I’ll get it from somewhere else.

  “Emma, we need to talk, and not over the phone.”

  “I’ll call you when I get there,” I say, knowing that I have no intention of calling him. I’ll see him at the hospital when I get there.

  If this is as bad as he says, I don’t want him to leave just to come pick me up. She may pretend to hate him, but I know Sarah, and a part of her still needs Brett.

  I hang up the phone and stare into the annoyed eyes of my client.

  “Are you done chatting?”

  I let out a laugh, turning off my camera and twisting off the lens to pack up. “Yeah, I’m done.”

  She rolls her eyes at my non-apologetic answer. “Well good. I’d like to get some more out in the garden.”

  “No, I think I’ve gotten everything the magazine will want.” And probably a week’s worth of editing her ugly ass out of pictures.

  “But I wanted some in the garden. Our time isn’t up yet,” she whines in the most ridiculous way.

  “Something came up, but I have more than enough pictures for the magazine. I took every picture they asked for, and because I’m leaving early, I’ll even send you a few of the stupid ones with the dog in the rocker.”

  “What!” she yells, but I just continue to pack up. I can’t be bothered with this forty-year-old spoiled brat of a woman. I need to get home, book a flight, and get my ass to Chicago.

  “Sorry. I’ve got to go.” Without another word—and especially not the attitude I want to give her—I head out the door.

  I make the short drive back to my house. My mind is racing with plans the entire way.

  “Hunter!” I yell when I walk through the front door.

  “In here, sugar,” he calls from his office/our living room.

  I roll my eyes at his stupid use of the word sugar. You have to be either an eighty-year-old man or a pimp to use that one successfully, and Hunter Coy is neither of those.

  “Hey, can you take me to the airport in about an hour?”

  “Yeah. What’s up? You planning a little vacation and not inviting me?” he laughs with a sexy grin.

  “My sister tried to kill herself last night,” I blurt out.

  “Fuck, Em.” He immediately stands and pulls me into a hard hug.

  Hunter gives good hugs. He’s a really good guy and hot as hell—a combination so rare that, when I met him two years ago, I snatched him up. Unfortunately, three months later, he admitted that he was still in love with some girl back home. We stayed up all night talking about her and how she ended up with his best friend. Poor guy was really struggling and I’d had no idea. After that, we decided to just be friends, but Hunter has become so much more than that. He’s my best friend. I don’t know what I would do without him.

  “She’s okay, I think,” I say to his chest.

  “You want me to go with you?”

  “No. I don’t know how long this is going to take. You stay here.”

  “You sure? I’ve got some vacation days saved up. I’ve never been to Chicago.” He pulls away to look me in the eye.

  As tempting as the idea of having Hunter with me is, I know this is something I need to do alone. “I’m sure.” I offer him a fake smile and back away. “Okay, be ready to go in one hour.” I head to my bedroom
to pack.

  An hour later, I’m Chicago bound to try to help my broken sister, who I haven’t seen in over two years.

  “CALEB,” I hear from behind me as Jesse hugs me around the waist.

  I can’t help but smile. No matter how tough things get, Jesse Addison always makes me smile. She is so tiny and innocent. If she weren’t my best friend’s girl, I would keep her for myself. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have feelings for Jesse or anything, but she’s low drama and low maintenance. I need a woman like that. Manda was nothing like that, yet I loved her harder than any person should be allowed. If I’m really being honest with myself, I still love her like that. It’s been almost five years and Manda Baker still owns my heart.

  But that’s before I was robbed.

  Manda was stolen from me. Stolen from herself. Stolen from a world that is clueless as to what they are missing but will be nonetheless be worse off without her. She lost her life, and it’s all Sarah Erickson’s fault.

  Oh, Sarah didn’t intentionally kill the love of my life. What she did was far worse. She was drinking and decided to get behind the wheel, essentially playing Russian roulette with every man, woman, and child on the road that night. It was just my luck though. Sarah didn’t kill herself that night. No, Manda was the one who paid the price for Sarah’s stupidity. And I was the one who had my life ripped out from under my feet. Not fucking Sarah. Me. Yet here I am, in a poorly lit hospital waiting room, trying to find out what the hell is going to happen to that bitch.

  This isn’t the first time I’ve ever been here for Sarah, but it is the first time I actually feel okay with it. Sarah has tried to kill herself four times since the accident. Last night was her most recent attempt. Before today, it was always her husband—and my best friend—Brett who came to pick up her broken pieces, but today, I sit in this waiting room alone. No one else is here for her. She has long since forced everyone who loved her away.

  Last night, with a gun in her hand, she ran off the only person who would never give up on her—Brett. It was a long time coming. He should have walked away from her years ago. But Brett has a bleeding heart. According to him, Sarah suffered some bullshit traumatic brain injury as a result of the accident. While that really sucks, I have trouble feeling bad for her when my entire life is buried six feet under. Brett was insistent that something was wrong with her. Her personality changed, and she didn’t want anything to do with him anymore. I just call it guilt for killing her best friend, by making the ridiculous decision to drive drunk.