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  FURY

  UNLEASHED

  Book Two of the Scorned Series

  FURY

  UNLEASHED

  Book Two of the Scorned Series

  R. E. SARGENT

  Whitechapel Publishing

  Copyright © 2019 by R.E. Sargent

  Kindle Edition

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Whitechapel Publishing

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  To Ken, Suzanne, and Tere,

  I’m proud to be your brother. Keep on doing great things!

  Table of Contents

  Half-Title

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Publisher Feedback

  CHAPTER ONE

  Stephanie continued to squeeze the trigger in rapid succession until the magazine in the Glock was emptied. Without missing a beat, she removed it and replaced it with a full one she’d slipped from the pocket of her vest. As before, each round hit its mark as a shower of glass cascaded through the still afternoon air. Derek watched the intensity of her profile and the way her jaw was set, stubborn and firm. He was thankful he wasn’t on the receiving end.

  As the echo from the gunshots subsided, Stephanie removed her ear protection and looked out over the terrain of the outdoor shooting area they used as a range. She’d been shown this spot by her shooting instructor the year before and she’d quickly adopted it as her own. The sheer hill behind the boulders served as a highly efficient backdrop that kept their activities contained. Derek couldn’t help but notice the scowl on her face.

  “Want to talk about it?” he asked.

  “What’s there to talk about? Nothing’s changed.”

  “You can’t keep carrying this around with you. It wasn’t your fault,” Derek reasoned.

  Stephanie glared at him, unable to hide her annoyance. “You say that because you only know what I told you. If you knew all of it—the absolute dirty truth—you might feel differently.”

  “Well, it’s kind of hard to know the truth when you won’t let me in, isn’t it?” His words came out harsher than he intended yet Stephanie didn’t seem to notice.

  Stephanie Duran and Derek Jennings had been a thing for almost three months, ever since he’d rushed into her burning house and saved her life. Feeling like destiny had brought them together, Derek moved from Colorado to Oregon to be with her, giving up his life back home.

  “Listen,” he pleaded. “I won’t pretend to know what’s going on, but this isn’t what I signed up for. For the first month or so, you really seemed to be trying, but ever since then, I never know where I stand with you. Do you even want me here?”

  Stephanie turned her attention to Derek, looking at him for the first time that morning.

  “That’s a silly question. Of course, I want you here. I asked you to stay, didn’t I?”

  Stephanie had actually met Derek when she’d transported herself to the past to save a kidnapped child. Not wanting a relationship after being burned one too many times, she’d found herself falling for him anyway. Evidently, he’d felt the same and had searched for her for years, before showing up at her house at the perfect moment to save her life.

  Hurt by the fact that she seemed to be shutting him out more often than not, Derek couldn’t stay quiet any longer.

  “Yes, you asked me to stay and I’m glad I did, but I don’t think you realize how irritable you are all of the time. I’m walking around on eggshells.”

  Stephanie looked down at the ground, a sigh escaping her lips.

  “I’m sorry, Derek. I truly am. I don’t mean to take it out on you.”

  “I know you don’t mean to, but you do.”

  “I’ll work on it. I promise to try harder.”

  “Is it the house?”

  Stephanie had poured almost a year of her life into acquiring the old house and having it remodeled. When it had burned to the ground, a part of her disappeared with it.

  “Partially.”

  “What else?”

  Derek watched Stephanie’s face carefully for some tell-tale sign. She remained silent.

  “What else is bothering you besides your house burning down?” he repeated.

  Sighing, she answered him. “The guy in my house that tried to kill me. He should have been mixed in with the ashes, but he wasn’t. Because of me, he’s out there.”

  Derek watched her, concern in his eyes. “I understand he’s a bad dude, but he’s gone. There is no need to worry about him. He won’t be back.”

  Stephanie forced a laugh so hard that Derek jumped.

  “Did I say something funny?”

  “If you only knew,” she said, shaking her head.

  “I would know if you would tell me, but you obviously don’t trust me with your secrets. We can’t have a relationship built on a lack of trust.”

  “I told you before. It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s that you won’t believe me.”

  “How would you ever know if you don’t trust me enough to try? Jesus, Stephanie. This shit is getting ridiculous.”

  Frustrated with the round-and-round conversation, Derek turned and walked towards his truck, which was a few yards downhill from them, dropped the tailgate, and slid up on it. He faced the road, away from Stephanie and the range.

  Stephanie removed the magazine from her Glock, made sure the weapon was clear, and holstered it. This was her second one—she’d lost the first one in the fire. This time around, she purchased the G26, finding that the G19 she owned before wasn’t as easy to conceal—a big deal for her. Knowing she could use Derek’s G19 whenever she wanted was a bonus.

  Feeling
guilty, she made her way to the rear passenger door of the truck, opened it and fished around inside, coming out with two bottles of ice-cold Bud Light. Sliding up on the tailgate beside Derek, she handed him one.

  “I was saving these for after we were done shooting for the day, so I guess that’s now.”

  “Thanks,” he muttered, twisting off the cap and taking a long swig of the brew. He kept his gaze on the road, refusing to look at her.

  “You can’t be mad at me,” she prodded, playfulness edging into her voice. “I’ll try harder.”

  Finally, Derek turned and looked at her.

  “It’s not about trying harder. It’s about being my partner and my best friend. Letting me in to feel what you’re feeling. To savor your joy and cry with you over your pain. If you can’t let me be here for you, we’re both wasting our time.”

  Stephanie looked up into Derek’s eyes, her pain set deep within her own. “You better not laugh at me,” she pleaded.

  “I promise…” he answered, “…that I can’t make any guarantees about trying not to laugh at you.”

  Stephanie playfully jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow and started her story.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “I walked in on my fiancé who was in the shower with some blonde bitch.”

  “When was this?”

  “A little over a year ago.”

  Derek took a long draw from his beer. “Is that why you don’t trust me?”

  “I never said I didn’t trust you.”

  “Seems that way.”

  “Do you want to hear the story or not?”

  “Sorry. Carry on.”

  “Thought so. Okay, so I caught him cheating and kicked his ass to the curb.”

  “Obviously he was a dumbass.”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “Go on.”

  Stephanie continued. “I swore off men completely after he left. It wasn’t my first heartbreak. I’ve had several of them.”

  “Yet here I am,” Derek offered, perplexed.

  “You weren’t planned. I really had every intention of being alone for a very long time. Thanks a lot for messing that one up for me,” she teased.

  “My pleasure,” Derek answered, holding his beer in the air to clink against hers.

  “Cheers,” she added as she tapped her bottle against his and they both took a chug. “Anyway, I came across the house by accident as well. It called out to me and I had to have it. As I told you, it was a dilapidated building that needed a total restoration. I poured my heart and soul into that house. I loved that place. Now it’s gone.”

  “Is that why you’re always in a bad mood every day? I understand you loved it, but it’s a house. Why not rebuild it with the insurance money you received?”

  Stephanie glanced over at him with a sour expression on her face. “It wasn’t just a house. That’s the problem.”

  “Oh, I get it. It wasn’t just a house; it was your home. But still. What am I missing, Stephanie?”

  “A pretty big secret I have been hiding from you.”

  “Which is?”

  Stephanie paused, sucking air quickly into her lungs. “I’m nervous to tell you.”

  “You can’t not tell me. Something’s gotta give here, Steph.”

  “Fine,” she replied, knowing that by not telling him, their relationship would continue to deteriorate. “The house allowed me to travel through time and I used my powers for good by saving people.”

  Derek rolled his eyes. “Why can’t you ever take things seriously?”

  “See, I told you.”

  “Told me what?”

  “That you wouldn’t believe me.”

  “When you decide to stop screwing around, I’ll take you seriously.”

  Stephanie turned towards Derek and laid her right hand on his shoulder.

  “Look at me,” she begged. “Look at my face. Listen to what I’m telling you. I’ve never been more serious. The house allowed me to time travel.”

  Derek stopped and watched Stephanie’s facial expressions, waiting for her to bust out laughing. It never came and he simply didn’t know what to say. Finally, when the silence got awkward, he continued with the conversation.

  “You will have to give me a little more than that. I want to take you seriously, but it isn’t like time travel is possible.”

  “How do you think I got to Colorado the day I met you?”

  “I don’t know. Car? Bus? Plane?”

  “None of the above. An even better question is how did I get home.”

  Derek thought back to when Stephanie had first hailed his taxicab on that bright day so many years ago. She hired him the next day to drive her around as they followed kidnappers that had taken a baby. He was smitten by her beauty—as well as her feisty attitude—the moment he’d met her. As the police were swooping in to arrest the kidnappers, she’d simply disappeared.

  Desperate to find her, he’d searched high and low for her for many years, before getting lucky one day and finding the public record of her house purchase. It was then he’d traveled from Colorado to Oregon, only to pull up and find her house on fire with her inside.

  “So, let me see if I understand this.” His confusion was evident by his furrowed brow. “You broke up with your ex, bought a house, remodeled it, and used it to time travel to Colorado, where you met me and saved a kidnapped baby. Then, when the police were about to arrest the bad guys, you time traveled back to your house in Oregon.”

  “Well, kind of, I suppose. There was much more to it than that.”

  “Doesn’t sound like time travel to me. Sounds more like teleportation.”

  “It would be if I hadn’t hopped back ten years.”

  “Excuse me?” He’d heard her but couldn’t comprehend what she was saying.

  “I hopped back ten years in time to save that baby. If you don’t believe it, think about this: Remember how you had told me I hadn’t aged at all when you saw me again?”

  “I remember.”

  “It’s because I hadn’t. It had only been a few months in my time.”

  Derek looked at her, dumbfounded. “Okay, let’s pretend I believe you, which I don’t. How did you know the baby was going to be kidnapped?”

  “I read it in a newspaper article. I picked that child to save.”

  She decided not to tell him she’d planned the jaunt around her bigger plan to make money and quit her job. While her intentions were pure—she wanted to be free to help others as much as possible—she certainly didn’t want to take a chance of him getting the wrong idea.

  “So, you could hop anywhere you wanted, or to any time you wanted?”

  “I think so, but I’m not sure. It was all fairly new to me when the house burned down.”

  Derek paused, reflecting on the night he rescued her from the fire. “That night I saved you. Who was he?” Derek was referring to the man that was attacking Stephanie in the burning house when he’d saved her.

  “A killer.”

  “Why was he in your house trying to kill you? Why was your house even on fire?”

  “I killed his son who was a serial killer. What I hadn’t bargained for was the father being there when it happened. After I blew up and burned down their trailer, the father came back with me through time and he was physically on fire. My house caught fire while he attacked me and if it hadn’t been for you, he would have killed me.”

  “Okay, that’s really out there, but I’ll play along just to hear more. I mean, I suppose it sounds somewhat plausible since I found the house on fire with the man inside of it trying to kill you, but it’s still hard to wrap my brain around. Then there’s the fact that you’re telling me you killed a man.”

  “You don’t have to believe me, but it’s the truth.”

  “Okay, so what happened to the man—the father?”

  Stephanie took a deep breath. “I wish I knew. Your guess is as good as mine. If he’s still here, he’s stuck in the future.”

&nbsp
; “What do you mean, the future?”

  “He came back with me from the past, after I traveled there to kill his son, who was also a serial killer.”

  The look on Derek’s face was enough to tell her that he thought she was crazy. He tried to speak and couldn’t.

  “Well it looks like this conversation is over,” she complained, sliding off the tailgate and walking back over to where they had their shooting equipment.

  Stephanie started to pick up their belongings to put back in the truck, no longer in the mood to be there.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Packing up. I want to go home.”

  “If that’s what you want,” he agreed, helping her clean up the area.

  As they drove down the mountain road back to the main highway, the silence was deafening and Stephanie had to turn on the stereo to add a little background noise. She could feel the tension in the air as Derek gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were white. She pulled down the passenger seat visor and flipped open the inset mirror. She did not recognize the person that looked back at her. She couldn’t see herself in the eyes that stared back, only stress, worry and pain. Agitated, she pulled her long, brown locks back into a ponytail and secured it with a scrunchie.

  The drive back to the apartment complex was as uneventful as it was uncomfortable. As Derek maneuvered the large truck into the reserved spot that was assigned to their apartment, Stephanie thought back to when she’d been released from the hospital, after Derek had rescued her.

  Since she no longer had a place to live, Stephanie had escalated her search for an apartment complex. Even before her house burned, she’d planned to buy it anyway, to help select homeless people get a fresh start. It was rough living in the extended stay hotel that she and Derek had moved into for six weeks after she was released. She spent the first two weeks searching all day, every day, for the right complex and when she finally found one that suited her needs—which was incidentally well over her set budget—she immediately made an offer on it and they had closed in four weeks.

  The complex had twenty-eight units—twelve upstairs and twelve downstairs—that were all occupied when the property closed, so she and Derek both moved into the manager’s apartment which wasn’t included in the count. Two weeks later, when a vacancy opened up, Stephanie’s best friend Kylie moved in. Now, they simply had to wait until more units were vacated before they could start helping some of Portland’s homeless people, but she was happy that, for the time being, she was bringing in good revenue to replenish the coffers that were depleted by the hefty purchase price.