Page 100 of Beautiful Life

They’re muted, anxious, and jerky. He’s looking around the room as if he’s trying to decide his next move. It’s hard to decipher what he could be thinking or maneuvering next in his head.

“Cory?” I call out over the alarm.

His frantic eyes come straight to me and his body starts shaking.

“Where is she, Cory? I know you know her, you’ve been following us. Where’s my wife?” I demand.

“Where’s my wife!” he screams back at me.

Fuck, he’s out of it. He keeps moving backwards and I keep moving toward him with my gun. His arms are out and slightly elevated, as if he’s trying to decide his next move.

“Cory,” I call again. “Where is she? She was here, tell me what you’ve done.”

“She was here, she was here!” he screams at the top of his lungs.

I’ve had enough. I need to find Leigh so I quickly move toward him. Realizing I’m coming for him, he reaches for the first thing he sees and grabs the pitcher with Leigh’s bouquet in the middle of the island. He tries to fling it toward me but it goes wide, hitting a cabinet. Pink rose petals fly every which way, flitting to the ground in what seems like slow motion. He looks at the mess, realizing he missed me. I take advantage, move in, and tackle him from the side. We both land with a “humph”. I roll him to his stomach as he starts screaming and flailing, but not in an economical way where he has any chance of escape. I pull my knee up to his back and give him all my weight. With my gun still trained on him, I grab one of his hands and pull it up his back until he belts out in pain.

“What did you do with her? Where is she, Cory?” I scream over the alarm.

He flails from the pain. “What did you do with my dad? He went away because of you. You took him! He went away, he went away!”

Fucking-A. He’s a mess—totally unstable.

On the brink myself from worry and thinking I might have to torture the information out of him, I hear voices from behind me. “Police!”

Not moving a muscle and with my gun still pointed to his back, I don’t look away from Cory. I see five police officers out of the corner of my eye moving toward us with their own weapons drawn and pointed at us.

“This is my house,” I yell over the alarm. “I came in through the basement and found him here. My wife was home and I still don’t know where she is.”

One of the officers lowers his gun and goes for his cuffs while directing the others. “Go. Clear the main floor then two up and two down. Do it fast.” He comes to me. “Let me get him cuffed and you go turn off that alarm.”

He quickly radios in what’s happening and moves to take Cory’s arm I have pinned between his shoulder blades. I stand, vaguely realizing Cory is crying—almost sobbing—as I move to the alarm panel.

I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket. Yanking it out, I feel my heart clinch when I see the words on the screen.

“Leigh?” I bite into the phone.

“Hey, honey, sorry I missed your call. My hands were busy.”

Hearing her voice across the phone, I let my head drop with the phone still to my ear and bring up the other to run it through my hair in relief. Holding the back of my head, I mutter, “Fuck.”

“Tony?”

“Sweetheart.” I fight to control my voice. “Where are you?”

“I was in a hurry, I couldn’t call first because I was worried about Rosa. She called and was out of breath, felt like her heart was racing. She couldn’t get ahold of any of her kids and refused to call an ambulance herself. I know you didn’t want me to leave but I had no choice. I had to check her blood pressure. I got her to take an aspirin, but it’s not as high as I expected it to be and, my guess, it’s a side effect of her new medication. We got hold of her son and he’s on his way to take her to the ER just in case,” she rambles on. I have a hard time concentrating on all she’s saying because all I can think about is the fact she’s ok.

I don’t say anything as I try to find my breath when she calls out for me again, “Are you there?”

Finally, jerking out of my stupor from learning she’s okay, I look quickly around the house as the police finally make it back to the kitchen. I recognize something else is missing. “Where’s Fin?”

“He’s with me.” She answers like I’m absurd to even ask the question to begin with, as if there was any other place on Earth he would be other than with her.

“Come home when you’ve got Rosa settled. Something happened. We’ve had a break in.”

“A break in?”

“Yeah. I’m just fucking grateful you weren’t here. If you need help with Rosa, call Paige but get home as fast as you can.” I have the need to see her, touch her, make it real that she’s healthy and unharmed. “Soon, Leigh.”

---