Chapter 3
3
It was afternoon by the time I finally left the hospital.
A few people standing near the entrance were giving me strange looks.
"That's him."
"The homewrecker."
I pulled out my phone. A local gossip blog was running a live stream. The headline was so absurd it made me want to laugh:
[Lieutenant Claire Bennett Cheating? Sick Ex-Husband Betrayed.]
In the video, Daniel’s eyes were red. His voice was hoarse but perfectly audible.
"Claire and I divorced because I got sick and I didn't want to drag her down. But she promised she would wait for me to recover."
"Evan is the guy she saved during the downtown bank hostage incident. I even comforted him back then. I never thought he would do this to me."
The comments were a bloodbath.
[Stealing someone's wife while the husband is sick? Disgusting.]
[Trash is trash, doesn't matter if it's a guy or a girl.]
[I heard Claire even helped his dad find a doctor. No good deed goes unpunished.]
[This is so messed up. Their kid is so young.]
I locked my phone.
A beat-up van suddenly screeched to a halt right in front of me. The side door slid open, and two men grabbed me from behind.
A rag reeking of chemicals was clamped over my mouth and nose.
The world went dark.
When I woke up, the first thing I heard was a child's piercing scream.
I was in an abandoned warehouse somewhere in Seattle's southern industrial district. My hands were zip-tied behind my back, and duct tape covered my mouth.
Lily was huddled in a corner a few feet away, her face streaked with tears, her tiny wrists bound.
When she saw I was awake, she sobbed harder. "Evan, please help me..."
In the center of the room, a massive guy wearing a mask was on the phone.
"Lieutenant Bennett. Your husband or your daughter. You only get to take one."
He had it on speaker. Claire's voice came through, shaking with tight, controlled panic.
"Don't touch them. We can negotiate."
"Cut the crap." The man pulled out a knife and stepped between me and Lily. "Your husband, or your kid. You have one minute."
Through the phone, Daniel's hysterical screaming echoed. "Claire, save Lily! She's our daughter!"
Lily curled into a tight ball, hyperventilating through her tears.
Two seconds of dead silence passed. Then, Claire spoke.
Every word sounded like it was being ripped from her throat.
"Let my daughter go."
I closed my eyes.
I wasn't surprised. But it still felt like something in my chest was being violently torn open.
The man pointed the knife at me. "Hear that?"
He jerked his chin at his accomplices. "Do what you want with the guy."
One of the men roughly sliced the zip-ties off Lily's wrists and shoved her toward the side door.
Officers waiting in ambush outside instantly swarmed in, pulling the crying girl out of the danger zone.
The second Lily was clear, the man holding me pressed his blade against my neck, screaming at the warehouse entrance. His two buddies hauled me up by my arms, dragging me toward the back of the warehouse.
They ripped the tape off my mouth. I gasped for air.
The cold steel pressed against my fingers.
"Got some nerve," the man sneered. "Too bad it won't save you—"
The main warehouse doors blew open.
SPD SWAT operators breached the room in a synchronized rush. Chaos erupted.
The man holding me cursed, dragging me backward, the knife digging into my throat.
"Nobody move!" he roared.
The tip of the blade broke my skin. Warm blood trailed down my neck.
"One more step and I slit his throat!"
I couldn't breathe. Black spots danced in my vision.
Outside, at the mobile command post, two officers were physically holding Claire back behind the police tape. Through the open warehouse doors, she saw the knife at my throat. All the color vanished from her face.
"Bennett, fall back," someone barked at her. "Tactical is handling it."
My captor seemed distracted by the shouting outside. His eyes flicked toward the door for a fraction of a second.
That was all I needed.
Using every ounce of strength I had left, I threw my weight backward, slamming into him.
His grip slipped.
SWAT took the window. Gunshots cracked through the air.
But as he fell, the blade dragged violently across my neck.
Blood sprayed.
As the gunfire ceased and the tactical team swarmed the suspects, the 'all clear' signal was barely given before Claire broke through the line. She sprinted into the warehouse and dropped to her knees beside me.
Her hands were shaking violently as she hovered over the wound on my neck, terrified of hurting me more.
"Ev, hey, look at me. Stay with me."
Her voice was completely shattered.
Paramedics rushed in to take over, and I finally let go, slipping into the dark.