DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN VICTORiOUS. This chapter is from Jade's POV.
Chapter 24
Endgame Part Five: Takedown
Andre and I walk Julie out of the store and the mall. She's catatonic and is non-responsive. What did she do to her? I ask myself as we reach our car and carefully put her inside the back seat.
"I will tell you one thing." I tell Andre as we get in the front of the car.
'What?" he asks, as we fasten our seat belts.
"Tori is going down and she's going down hard." I snarl as I pull out of the spot.
I drive us back to Julie's house. Julie seems unaware of what's happening here. Andre tried to talk to her, but she would simply blink, her mouth agape, and say or do nothing. Andre tried to grab her hand, but she freaked out and slapped his hand away. That was the only response we got out of her. Her reaction almost caused me to crash too.
We arrive back at her house and I park in the driveway instead of the garage. Andre and I slowly help her out. She didn't mind this time being touched by us, but her reaction earlier during the ride did make me worried. As much as a cold bitch I might be, she's the mother of the love of my life and for that I owe her big time and I'm grateful towards her, even if I don't always say or show it. But, I truly care for her and want her to be safe.
Andre and I bring her inside the house through the garage door. We lead Julie to her bedroom upstairs. Andre opens the door and turns the light on. We help Julie onto the bed. Andre pulls back the sheets as I take off her shoes. I notice the injuries to her arms and legs. Minor, but nasty looking cuts. There's a 'tattoo' on her left shoulder with a heart and mine's and Tori's name in it. She's so fucked up. I just thought I'd let you know.
I lie her down on her bed and pull the sheets up to her and tuck her in. Her face is blank and her mouth agape and her eyes… her eyes, man, were vacant and staring. Making me uneasy and that's saying something. She blinks a couple of times. I guess she's saying 'thank you'.
"You're welcome I guess." I say uneasily. Andre and I exchange looks. He shrugs and we leave her room, closing the door softly behind us.
We go back downstairs silently. As soon as we are in the living room, I kick at the coffee table, knocking it over and spilling its contents on top of it on the floor. Andre doesn't object. In fact he kicks at the recliner, moving it forward a bit.
"Damn her! What are we going to do to stop her and this madness?" I ask rhetorically.
"We should probably head back to the hospital to see how Cat's doing. We need everyone to take her down, once and for all." Andre replies. I nod in agreement.
"Should we go back to the FBI?" I ask. I don't think we should. They are already looking for Tori. They'll probably put us back under protection. I don't want to be under their protection; I don't protection at all. I just want Tori to suffer just like I have. You know what they say, 'turnabout is fair play'. It's not just me who's suffered, she made everyone suffer. My friends and my family.
"We can't just stand around and not do anything." Andre said.
"I totally agree, but should we go back to the feds?"
"No, we should do this ourselves."
"Then it's settled. Let's go see Cat and get Sean back and stop Tori." I reply. He nods and we leave Julie alone in the house and get back inside the car in the driveway. We drive back to the Northridge Medical Center. I hope she's ok. She did lose quite a bit of blood from her fight against Tori.
She's very brave to stand up against Tori for Andre. I would've helped her. But, I'm glad she stood up for herself and fought for what she wanted. She fought for Andre. Just as I am fighting for Riley and Beck.
We arrive at the hospital in an hour. We have yet to hear from Tori to tell us where to find clues to get back Sean. That is if she'll still do it. We pull into a spot relatively close to the main entrance.
Andre and I walk inside to the front desk, asking which room Cat's staying in now. The lady behind the desk told us Cat's still sleeping in room 109. Andre and I go to the room and walk inside, where Cat is dead to the world. She isn't as pale as she was earlier when we got her here. The blood that Andre gave her is gone. Her arm's still elevated and her wound is looking somewhat better. There's some bruising there, but it'll heal.
We sit down around her bed, Andre on her left and me across him. Andre takes her small hand in both of his and holds her, sadness in his eyes. I study her face interested. She seems to be sleeping peacefully. I wonder how well she has slept the past month since the start of all this shit with Tori. I know I haven't slept that well.
I've been having nightmares lately. They all vary in subject and length and theme. Some are really short, some are several minutes long, dream-time. Some are about Riley's death; some about Beck's accident; some about Beck dying or having permanent memory loss. Some are even about me being killed by Tori. Some take place during the holidays or during average days, or weekends or weekdays. They just won't stop. I've tried the NyQuil and it somewhat helps. It knocks me out, no doubt about that, but it's not useful against the nightmares.
"How long she we wait for her to wake?" I ask Andre quietly.
"I don't know. But I don't think we should wake her." He replies. I nod. She deserves some rest. I deserve some rest myself.
"How has she been sleeping?" I ask him.
"She sometimes cries in her sleep and she occasionally has nightmares." He replies sadly.
"How about you?"
"I have the nightmares too. The most common one is her being killed by Tori. I sometimes even have nightmares about my accident." He replies. He looks up at me. "How've you been sleeping?"
"Not well. I have nightmares; I sometimes wake up screaming and crying. I sweat all the time. I use NyQuil to help me fall asleep, but it can't stop the nightmares."
"What kind of nightmares do you have? I bet they're really bad." Andre wonders. I hesitate a bit and sigh, not sure if I want to talk about it. I know I should, since it's not good to keep something like this bottled up, but at the same time, it's not a fun thing to discuss. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to." He adds. I smile at him a bit.
"They're mostly Riley's death, Beck's accident, and me being killed by Tori. Some are Beck dying from the accident or waking from his coma without his memory and some where he never wakes." I tell him. He looks at my sympathetically and he reaches across Cat's body to take my hand in his and he squeezes. I squeeze back. "I'll sleep better when Tori's gone for good."
"We should probably go and look for her and Sean then." Andre says.
"Don't you want to stay with Cat a little longer?" I ask him.
"I do, but I don't want you confronting Tori alone." He replies. "Besides, I think I might know where they're at."
"Where?" I ask.
"It's possible they're still at our place." Andre replies, motioning himself and Cat.
"Why your place?" I ask, confused.
"It's the only place she can go to. It's not like she can go to Sean's and Julie's place-"he replies and pauses. I raise my eyebrow at him.
"What?" I ask. A look of horror spreads across his face.
"What if she goes back to get Julie? She could probably have her hostage again and torturing them." He replies. My eyes widen from his thought. I jump up.
"We gotta go back to their place then." I say. He nods and stands up and kisses Cat on the forehead.
We leave Cat's room and run out of the hospital back to the car. I drive us back to the Oliver's house.
We keep hitting the damned red lights on our way back. Andre and I groan each time we get stuck at one and have to wait forever to move again. Andre and I are fidgeting and urging the lights to turn green so we can gun it.
We finally arrive back at the Oliver's house and I sloppily park the car in the driveway and I open the garage door with the opener. Andre and I leap out of the car and run into the house.
"Julie!" I shout as I run through the garage door. I look around and don't see anyone.
"In here." Julie called. We turn in the direction of her voice. It sounds like it's coming from the family room. Andre and I exchange looks and walk to the family room.
We arrive there to quite the sight.
Julie is there sitting calmly on the sofa. Sean is next to her and he does not look good. His face is red and black and purple from being punched a lot. Tori is standing in front of them looking at us, and pointing a pistol at Andre and me.
"Sit down." She orders, motioning us to sit in chairs with her pistol. Andre and I look at each other and, not daring to disobey her, sit down in chairs near the sofa. Tori eyes us all and lowers her pistol, but keeps her grip on it firm. She sits down on a chair that faces all of us.
She looks like shit. She seems even skinnier than the last time I saw her. Her face is slightly boney and her cheekbones are really pronounced. If she took off her shirt, you'd most likely see her ribs. All in all, she did not look healthy.
"You've looked better, Vega." I tell her. She looks at me and I simply shrug.
"You haven't changed one bit." She snaps at me.
"I try." I reply, shrugging again.
"So what do you want now?" Andre asks, boredom in his voice.
"Oh not much this time; just to torture you all to death." Tori replies conversationally.
"Well, at least you admit it." Julie points out. We all turn to her and she raises her hands in defeat. "Just sayin." I roll my eyes.
"So you're going to torture us to death?" I ask Tori. She nods. "You don't look that tough."
"Tell that to my face." Sean groans. I roll my eyes again.
"Oh, shut up!" Tori says, pointing her gun at me.
"Do you even know which end the bullets come out of?" Andre asks, dumbly. I groan and put my face in my hands.
Tori in response points her gun at Julie's leg and fires. A loud bang fills the room and Julie screams in pain as the bullet hits her leg, spraying blood and causing her to fall to the ground, clutching her legs.
"Julie!" Sean shouts, as he stands to go to his wife. Tori points the gun at him and silently forces him to sit back down. Sean raises his hands and sits back, eyeing the smoking gun. Julie continues to whimper on the floor.
"You'll live." Tori snaps. Julie groans in response.
"Smooth move, exlax." Sean snaps at Andre, who looks upset with himself for taunting Tori.
"At least I wasn't captured by Tori that easily." Andre retorts.
"You kidding me? You were taken easily!" Sean shouts back. Him and Andre start shouting at each other, causing Tori and I took look between them as they argued. Tori and I look at each other, disbelief on our faces. I shrug and she rolls her eyes and stands up and fires a shot into the ceiling to get the two men to stop arguing. Sean and Andre stop and take cover, raising their hands above their lowered heads and sitting back down slowly.
Julie is still on the floor, but she seems to have calmed down and is busy keeping pressure on her gunshot wound.
"Can we get this over with?" I ask, getting annoyed with Tori not doing anything. I'm egging her on so that I can tackle her and wrestle the gun out of her hand.
"Don't think I don't know what you're thinking." Tori replies.
"I have no idea what you're talking about." I lying.
"Don't bullshit me."
"Enough!" Sean said. As we all turned to him, he grabbed the table centerpiece, a small wooden bowl with wax fruit in it and chucked it at Tori. The bowl hit Tori, knocking her off balance. Andre and I use this window to attack her. I grab her pistol hand while Andre tackles her. The pistol goes off...near my ear, causing me to lose hearing there and to hear a high-pitched ringing noise. I groan and let go of her hand to bring my hands to my ear to protect it from further harm.
Andre and Tori roll around on the carpeted floor, wrestling over control of the pistol. The gun is eventually dropped and they both focused on trying to beat each other. They traded blows and rolled on top of each other to beat down before being thrown off and given a taste of their medicine. Sean comes over to me and grabs me. I wince as my ear hurts badly. I pull my hands back and I'm thankful I don't see blood so I know my eardrums didn't receive too much damage. But my ear is still ringing. Sean's talking to me, but it's hard for me to hear him with my good ear.
Andre kicks Tori off him. Tori gets to her feet and grabs her gun and instead of shooting us like I expected she would, she runs out of the house.
"C'mon!" Andre shouts as he gets to his feet. I turn to Sean.
"You two go to the hospital. We'll take care of her." I tell him. He nods and goes to his wife. It sounded weird me talking. I could hear what I was saying, but at the same time I couldn't.
Andre and I run out of the front door where Tori ran off and we run outside and see her jump into Andre's car and speeds off. Andre and I jump into Sean's car and we pursue her.
Sean's car being a much better model than Andre's is able to catch up to Tori. Andre, who's driving this time, hits Tori on her bumper. Tori in response pulls out her gun and points it at us wildly.
"DUCK!" I shout and we duck as she starts shooting. She hits the windshield a few times and it shatters, spraying us with tiny glass shards. She stops after a while and we straighten up. The windshield is almost completely gone.
Tori was able to speed up when Andre and I were ducking. She makes a hard right and Andre turns just as hard and the tires of both cars squeal as they make the rough turn. Smoke even comes up off the tar.
We hear sirens blaring and see a cop car from afar, speeding up to catch us. There's probably an APB on us as well as on Tori.
"We need to let the cops handle this." Andre says.
"NO!" I shout.
"Jade! If we continue, they'll arrest us as well!" Andre tries to reason with me.
"I won't let her escape again!" I shout, trying to reason with him.
"How do you think this will look to the cops when they catch us? Two adults chasing another one, who's armed, will looks suspicious."
"But-"I start but he cuts me off.
"I'm not going to jail for this; I'm pulling over and we'll see what happens." He says. He pulls over and he fights me off as I try to keep us chasing after Tori. Another cop car appears and comes up behind us. The cop behind the wheel motions us to pull over and Andre does.
"What're you doing?!" I shout at him as he pulls over and parks the car along the sidewalk in front of a small clothing store. The cop car stops behind us and two cops come out, with their guns pointing at us. Andre raised his hands as the cops came along the side. I do the same reluctantly.
"Hands in the air! Lemme see 'em!" one of them shouts. The other comes up to my side and goes in front of me.
"Both of you outta the car! Now!" he shouts at us. Andre and I slowly open the doors and get out of the car.
"Put your hands on the hood and spread your legs!" the first cop shouts. Andre and I walk to the hood and do as he says. They come up from behind us and spread our legs apart some more, making it uncomfortable. They pat us down and pull our hands back and handcuff them.
They lead us to their car and force us into the back. They go back to the front and radio that they caught us. They then drive us to the station.
An hour later, Andre and I are in separate interrogation rooms. I'm awaiting for someone to come in and talk to me. I sit uneasily in the cold room. My hands are handcuffed to the table in front of me. I play with my fingers as I wait.
The door opens and a man and a woman enter. The woman sits down in front of me and the man lays against the large mirrored window and crosses his arms.
"So, Miss West, what brings you and Mr. Harris here today?" the woman asks me.
"You'll probably think I'm crazy if I tell you." I reply.
"We get that a lot; so quit beating around the bush and talk." The man replies annoyed.
"The car we were chasing? Its driver is Tori Vega." I reply.
"The convict?" The woman clarifies. I nod.
"If that's half true, why were you chasing her?" the man asks.
"I had a relationship with her 8 years ago; she almost killed me and my friends and was sentenced for doing so." I reply.
"Let's say for argument's sake that that was Tori Vega you were chasing, why didn't you go to the FBI? Aren't they heading the manhunt for her?" the woman asks me.
"We did; in fact we alerted them to her presence here in the first place; she almost killed Andre in a car accident over a month ago." I reply.
"And does that justify chasing her yourself?" the man asks.
"No." I reply.
"Yet, you still did it." The woman states.
"She's kidnapped my friends and tortured my boyfriend's parents. Why don't you go to the hospital and ask for Sean and Julie Oliver? Sean was beaten badly and Julie was shot by Tori. She has a gun and is on the loose." I tell them. They exchange looks with each other.
"We'll be back." The man says and they leave me alone.
A few minutes later they come back.
"We and our friends who talked to Mr. Harris just confirmed your statement, Miss West." The man says.
"And?" I ask, not really wanting to know the answer.
"We talked to our chief and she said to cut you two loose. But you two are going to the hospital where Mr. and Mrs. Oliver are for checkup and you are given a warning. Don't pull that stunt again or your punishment will be worse than a slap on the wrist." The woman replied. I nod. They take the cuffs off me and they lead me to the station's bullpen, where I reunite with Andre. They lead us outside to a squad car, who takes us to the hospital. They impounded our vehicle for us to pick up and told us to replace the windshield. They also told us that Tori wasn't caught, but they found her abandoned car.
Andre and I sit in the back seat in silence as we are driven to the hospital. When we get there, we go inside and as to see Sean and Julie. Both are in surgery, but they seem to be doing ok at the moment. We then see a nurse who examines us. Andre busted his lips in his fight with Tori. My ear is examined and it seems to be ok. The ringing has quieted down, but will remain for a few more hours. The nurse warns me not to be near loud noises for a while so my ear can heal. No fireworks for a month. Oh, well. Fourth of July is over, so that's not a problem. I won't listen to fireworks until New Year's Day.
Andre got a call from Northridge Medical Center. Cat has awoken and is doing well. We both breathed a sigh of relief and hugged each other. Andre and Cat talked briefly. Andre tells me that Cat hopes the injury will scar. I smile at her remark. It will look sexy.
Everything seems to be going well. With the exception that Tori is out there, somewhere, hunting us and plotting her next move. Now the next issue, getting a ride.
I sigh, pulling out my phone and dialing up my mom. This will be fun. I think as the line rings.
Chapter 24. Comment or review plz. Part five! Epilogue's next. I swear it is.