5

Little Toy Bikers and a Woman on the Run

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Chapter 396 Come to Me

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Scarlett would never forget Tara's pale face and her brown eyes staring at her as she left. She knew that Tara was going to be in for a tough few hours at the police department, but it was only a tough few hours. David Hale was the best possible person to handle the investigation. He knew the history with Kohn and would be sympathetic.

David had told Jax that Kohn had gone back to Chicago. He must have been wrong or Kohn went to Chicago and returned. Either way, David would feel some guilt over what happened. That would be a help to Tara.

Killing Kohn in Charming was going to give Tara the best chance at getting away with it. They weren't going to be looking at Tara for murder. It was self defense even if the second shot was a little late. As she put it to Tara, it was preemptive self-defense.

Tara should have shot him a second time right away. All she needed to do was stick to her story and believe it happened that way. And now she would never have to worry about him coming after her again. Once these next few days were over, that fact that Kohn would never hurt her again would be worth it all.

She drove back to her condo her thoughts looping endlessly over what had just occurred. She knew she might have lost Tara as a friend over her refusal to call Jax. Scarlett didn't believe for a second that Tara wanted to ask Jax for his advice. She wanted him to kill Kohn for her. Scarlett wasn't about to let Tara use Jax as her personal assassin.

The more she thought about Tara's repeated pleas for her to call Jax, the angrier she was becoming. She just wanted Jax to come over and kill Kohn because she didn't have the guts to do it herself. Jax was not going to be Tara's on call assassin.

Scarlett had a realistic view of Jax and knew he was involved in violent MC activities. Her father told her that he was sure that Jax had killed. It was probably true, but that didn't make him an assassin. And there was a difference between killing someone in a rival MC and killing an ATF agent in cold blood.

She had been focused on protecting Jax and keeping him away from the Kohn mess, but stupid her, another thought had finally come to her—if Jax had come over and killed Kohn, that would have involved all three of them in murder.

Killing an ATF agent could have caused all three of them to go to prison. What the hell had Tara expected them to do? Kill Kohn and then bury the body and hope no one came around looking for him? What a stupid stupid way to think!

As she thought about it more and more, she was beginning to feel anger at Tara for what she was trying to pull. Once the worst of this was behind them, she was going to have a talk with Tara and they might not be friends when she was done. She was willing to lose her friendship over this.

When she pulled into the garage, she felt oddly jumpy. She hit the button to close the garage door and waited until it was down before going inside her condo. She'd left the lights and TV on. She had only planned on being gone a few minutes.

Without giving it any thought, she went through her condo in every room, looking to make sure no one was in it. This wasn't something she normally did. The Kohn thing had frayed her nerves.

She decided to take a nice hot shower and calm down. Of course taking a shower brought up images of Hitchcock's version of Psycho and Gus Van Sant's later much less scary "why the hell did he make it" version. By the time she got out of the shower, she was shaking inside. She went into her bedroom and settled in to watch some TV, but she was scared.

Her emotions didn't make sense to her. She went through her condo again this time she had the handgun she kept in her nightstand in her hand. She returned to her bed leaving the gun next to her.

Seeing Kohn dead hadn't bothered her. She'd been too focused on making sure Tara's story for the police would work and then playing her part for the police.

Now it hit her with the force of a tsunami. Seeing Kohn's dead bloody body and those open vacant eyes gave her flashbacks to a few months ago when she'd found the bodies of her co-workers shot to death. That shaking she thought was on the inside was on the outside.

Back when it happened, she'd stayed sane by focusing on running and saving her life. Each time her mind tried to think about the day she found her work friends slaughtered, she'd immediately thought of something else back then. It had been coming up with a plan to destroy Clay.

Now, she tried to focus on something else but she couldn't. All she could do was see the bodies and the blood and most of them had their eyes open. She couldn't get it out of her mind. Her father warned her that she was going to have to deal with what happened. She thought she'd dealt with it.

She couldn't shake the fear. It was hitting her in waves now. She knew she was being irrational and she was perfectly safe now. Whenever her mind wasn't behaving, she could talk herself through it.

Take a breath. She could get through this. First, she needed to tell her body to stop shaking. Next, she had to quit seeing the faces of her dead friends. Stop it, she told herself over and over again. She could do this. She could get through this.

And then she thought about Jax and how nice it would be to feel his arms around her. She didn't need him. She could get through the night without him. She would breath and get through this one minute at a time, but she wanted him. She wanted to feel safe in his arms. She loved him. It was natural to want the comfort that he could provide her.

She hated weakness in herself. She could get through this night on her own. If she and Jax weren't together, that's exactly what she would do. She would get through this night alone. But, she and Jax were together. They loved each other. She wanted the comfort of his arms.

She shut her eyes, but opened them quickly. She saw dead bodies when she closed her eyes. For five minutes, she fought the urge to call Jax. There was no weakness in calling him. She picked up her cell phone and called.

"It's me," she said when he answered the phone. Her voice was unsteady.

"Are you OK?"

"No. Could you come to me and stay?"

"I'm on my way."

When Scarlett ended the call, her body was still shaking.