Soul of Freeman. 3rd Book of the Freeman Series.

Chapter 6

This needed to end. Dean hadn't turned on the ignition of his car. His head had fallen on the steering wheel and his legs were numb. He heaved his phone out of his pocket and pressed it to his ear.

 "Hi, baby, did you see Allie?" Kathy spoke.

 "I should've told you to give her more money. Mom, she hadn't eaten in days. I saw inside her bedroom. She's sleeping on an old mattress on the floor."

 "More money?" Kathy laughed nervously. "What are you refering to?"

 "It's okay. I don't care if they're listening. I can't do this anymore. She hates me." Dean put his car keys back into his pocket.

 Kathy gasped. "No, my dear. I'm sure she doesn't hate you. You are the love of her life. Go! Go get my daughter back. Go tell her you love her."

 "Thank you, Mom. I needed to hear that."

 That cough medicine could wait.

 Dean opened the car door and leaped out of the vehicle.

 Chris pushed Allie against her mattress and began to duck tape her wrists together.

 The girl trembled, cursing herself for having let the man inside the house. She shouldn't have thanked him. She shouldn't have opened the door for him. Everyone was a psycho until proven otherwise.

 "Chris, Chris, listen, you don't want to do this."

 He was going to kill her to get back at Dean for throwing out his burrito.

 "I'm sorry if my husband made you mad," she said. "He's an asshole, okay? It was nothing personal toward you."

 "This is the last straw!" Chris finished tying up Allie's ankles and pulled her hair up, making her sit straight. "I knew there was too much at stake for us to take this job. We got too invested in it and look where it got us. But I swear on my life, you're gonna talk. You're gonna tell me everything, Allie Anne Freeman."

 "What's going on? What are you saying?" Allie raised her arms in front of her face.

 He had to be unstable.

 "Where is she?" He yelled.

 "Who?"

 Chris reached behind him and showed her the blade of a knife. He grabbed her pinky finger and placed it under it.

 "Oh God!" Allie closed her eyes.

 "Do you wanna keep your f*****g finger? Then don't lie to me. Where is she?"

 "I don't know who you're talking about. I swear, I don't know anything."

 "Then you lose a finger."

 Allie felt the sharp cold blade touch her skin, then the sound of bones colliding. She opened her eyes. Her finger was fine.

 Her ex-husband was banging the psycho's head against broken Sheetrock. He was so much skinnier than Chris, but he managed to dodge his kicks and force him down.

 "Dean!" Allie cried.

 To see him protecting her and to know of his true feelings inundated her in a mix of emotions. Dean kicked the strongman onto a corner and picked up the knife. He freed her legs with one s***h and helped her up.

 "My wrists," she lifted her tied hands.

 "There's no time. I'll help you in the car." He pulled her out of the apartment.

 She was missing one shoe and her hair was everywhere, but this was the happiest she had been in weeks.

"Did he touch you?" Dean stood in the parking lot, holding Allie's shoulders. "If he forced himself on you, I will go back in there and kill him."

 "No, no, no. He was rambling. I couldn't understand what he was saying," Allie felt his chest.

 "This is my fault. If I had sent you more cash, you wouldn't have stayed here."

 "You sent me money?"

 "Yes, the ten thousand. I asked Mom to bring it to you."

 That would have been all the confirmation she needed to jump on him and kiss him. But that didn't take away from seeing him in bed with another woman and seeing him sign the divorce papers in front of her.

 "So, it's true. There's something you're not telling me. When you mentioned New Zealand...the way you looked at me...the sudden way things happened...it was so strange."

 "Sweetheart," he held her jaw and sucked on her lower lip. "It was all a lie. I didn't cheat on you. The divorce papers aren't even real. The company's still yours. I'm...I'm still yours."

 "But I saw you and Meryl. Why did you do this?"

 "We had to make it look real. I was trying to protect you." Dean scanned the perimeter. He pushed her into the passenger seat of her car. "I can't explain here. We have to go home."

 Home.

 "Home to my babies," she whispered with a smile.

***

Grayson put a shovel and a hammer in the trunk of his old sedan. Around him there was only grassland and a silhouette was walking toward him.

 "She's not gonna ruin our plans, isn't she?" He asked as his cousin approached the vehicle.

 "You and your ideas." Wayne wiped his bloody hands on his jeans. "Lately, I feel like the more I hang out with you, the deeper I find myself in a hole."

 "It was either take her into the f*****g forest or get caught," said Grayson. "You want your money back or what?"

 "I do, but do you know the penalty for killing a cop in Texas?"

 "Yeah, dumbbass, I was a f*****g lawyer."

 "You were a s**t lawyer, then." Wayne sat in the passenger seat of the car and slammed the door.

 His cousin sat in the driver's seat and turned to him.

 "Are you still in?" He asked.

 Wayne rolled his eyes and looked through the windshield.

 "Yeah, plan's still going, but just so we're clear, I'm only doing this for Kai. I ain't doing s**t for you."

 "No problem," Grayson smirked.

 "Did you see Allie today?" Wayne changed the conversation.

 "Yup, same as every day. She looked like s**t, but she's still hot though. We got lucky she and her fuckboy got divorced."

 "She is hot, huh. We would've gotten married if the janitor would've stayed out of the way."

 "I told you Jay and Rebecca weren't gonna kill him. They were f*****g softies. Now, he's got kids with our piggy bank."

 Wayne held his stomach and laughed hysterically.

 "I like it when you call her that: piggy bank. Hey, before we execute the plan, do you think we'll have time to try her pink p***y one last time?"

 Grayson lifted his fist and Wayne tapped his knuckles against it.

 "My treat," Grayson smirked.

 "Hell yeah, cousin. Let's do this!" Wayne laughed as Grayson sped into the highway.

***

Allie almost jumped out of the moving car. She was overwhelmed by the sight of her two boys play-fighting on the front yard. Her feet barely touched the grass as she opened her arms then dropped to her knees in front of them. She didn't expect to see them awake so late at night.

The twins were one year away from becoming teenagers, but to Allie, they were as small and innocent as the day they were born.

"Mom!" Daniel dodged his brother's jab and wrapped himself around his mother.

Andrew gasped with a grin and greeted her with a loud kiss.

Allie wanted to express how happy she was to see them, but the knot in her throat didn't let her speak. Daniel unwreathed from her, feeling a wetness through his shirt.

"Mom, why are you crying?"

"Woah, who did that to your eye?" Andrew pointed at her and punched his right palm. His eyebrows furrowed, making him look like a miniature version of his father.

"Nobody, cutie." Allie sniffed and composed herself. "I fell and hit my face on the corner of a table."

"Is that why you're back so early from your business trip?" Asked Daniel.

"Uh, mmhmm," she nodded. "I missed you so much."

Then, she heard Kathy scream behind her. Her mother-in-law wiped her hands on an apron while scurrying toward her.

"My sweet sweet pie." The woman squeezed the air out of Allie's lungs.

The girl closed her eyes with a smile, knowing that she was finally home.

Kathy pointed upstairs and the boys raised to their bedrooms. Wanting to be the first one to get in the shower, Andrew pulled onto his brother's t-shirt, but Allie's disapproving look made him release the fabric.

The command had almost seemed telepathic as he never saw Allie's face. He knew she was doing it however.

"I love you, Mom," he sang upstairs.

"I love you, too, cutie."

"I love you, Mom." Daniel wasn't jealous. He knew he didn't have to fight for his mother's attention, but he did love pressing his brother's buttons.

"Hey! I said it first," said Andrew.

Daniel cackled all the way into his bedroom, making his parents and grandmother laugh.

Then, Allie's laugh slowed down and her smile began to disappear. She turned to her husband and Kathy.

***

Allie turned the pages of a file that contained construction and maintenance data. From the salaries of window cleaners to repairs made to the main office building, Dean had compiled it all for her.

 "I do like to pay my workers a competitive wage but forty dollars an hour to new hires..." She waved her hand in front of the file. "This. I did not approve this."

 "I know," Dean said from the chair beside her. "Look at Furaha, our chauffeur. He makes more than anyone in accounting."

 "No, no. That's not right."

 "It's not. This is what's being recorded."

 "I review worker's salary every month. I have regular meetings with accounting." Allie shook her head with wide-opened eyes. "Someone's screwing with the company, but how can that be possible? These numbers go through more than twenty people in a day. How is no one coming to me?"

 "That's the problem. Sweetheart, the Securities and Exchange Commissions thought you were the one making our accountants tweak those numbers, and since they know about the Wayne and Jay incident, they turned over an investigation on our company to the FBI."

 "What?" Allie held onto the dining room table. "Who told you this? Did the SEC contact you?"

 "No." Dean rubbed her forearm. "Meryl did."

 "Meryl?" She almost yelled.

 "Yes." Kathy was sitting across from them. "Apparently, after Dean broke up with her, she went to police academy and later became a federal agent."

 Allie gasped and coughed a few times. "That time we went to see her, she mentioned her husband worked for the government."

 "She met him at work."

 "Wh—"

 Dean interrupted Allie to answer all of her questions before she asked them.

 "When Meryl got involved in the case, she was convinced of your innocence, so she talked to her boss before they arrested you."

 "They were going to arrest me?"

 "I guess she was persuasive and they let her call me. When she explained what was happening..." Dean swallowed. "Allie, I promised God I would do anything to prove your innocence."

 "So that was all an act. You and Meryl in bed." She whispered the last sentence and moved her arm away from his reach.

 "We wanted to prove that those numbers still moved without you, so I had to make you and everyone else believe that you had lost all ownership of Wellington Farms."

 "And did they?"

 "I have no idea. The plan was to do this for three months, but I was too weak. I couldn't see you suffering and living in those conditions. Not to mention, that psychopath you had for a neighbor."

 "I have to get to the bottom of this. I'm not gonna let them—" Allie covered her mouth for a dry cough. Her face turned red from the pressure.

 "Does your throat hurt? I think you might have the flu." Kathy stood up and brought her a glass of water. She felt her forehead with her palm and went back toward the cabinets. "I'll give you some cold and flu medicine although you don't seem to be running a fever."

 The girl thanked her mother-in-law between coughs.

***

Allie entered her bedroom. The one where she had been sleeping beside her husband every day for the past two years until just a few nights ago. At the end of the busy days, she loved taking a warm shower, cozying under her blanket, and feeling Dean's warm skin pressed against her back. It was one of the best feelings she had experienced in her life.

 Growing up in a convent, the nuns there had taught her to pray. So she always thanked God for those little moments with her angel and for the miracle of his return after having lost him for eight years.

 "Sweetheart." Dean hugged her from behind and buried his face on her neck.

 Allie immediately separated his wrists and dashed toward a corner.

 "Are you all right? I understand, you're stressed," he said.

 "I am stressed," she replied.

 "We'll get through this, baby. I would never let them take you." He tried to get close to her but she raised her palm in front of his chest.

 "We. I'm not sure what that means anymore."

 Dean extended his hand carefully as if she was a ticking bomb.

 "Allie, you know I would never betray you. We just had to be naked in bed to make it more believable, but I swear, we never had sex."

 "Even if you were telling the truth, much of what you said was completely unnecessary. You didn't have to treat me like a piece of trash. You didn't have to deny me the right to see my children."

 "That was the only way to keep you away from the company and out of the house. I didn't want the FBI to think I had told you about the investigation."

 "I don't think that changes anything. The way you brought me down..." Allie placed her hand on her chest and lowered her head. She held her forehead. "I...I can't sleep in this bedroom. It's suffocating me."

 Dean tried to catch her, but she escaped from his fingers like water. She didn't see his facial expression as she left him there —not that she even wanted to make eye contact. It was as if her body was rejecting a limb.