Desperate Choices Read Online Free PDF Page B

wasn’t letting go of her. She was all he had left, too.
    They told him even if she did regain consciousness, Becca would most likely never be the same. The massive injuries to her spinal column and extensive head trauma made that nearly impossible. Her spinal injuries were irreparable. She’d be paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of her life.
    The doctors told him taking her off life support would be the most humane thing, that he should “pull the plug” on his little angel. He couldn’t. He would take care of her, no matter what.
    He sat by her side for days, waiting, hoping and praying she would wake up.
    Miracle of miracles, she finally opened those beautiful green eyes, so like her mother’s, and smiled at him. He knew in his heart that she recognized him, that she wasn’t brain damaged the way the doctors had feared. She was going to get better.
    And she had. She had beaten all the odds and survived. That’s when the real struggle began. They waited to tell Becca about her parents for several days, helping her regain her strength, to be strong enough to handle the news.
    Standing at his sister’s graveside, Steven had made her a solemn promise. When Becca awoke, he would do everything in his power to make sure she was taken care of for the rest of his life. Whatever it took. She would never want for anything.
    Steven blinked, rousing from his memories, and glanced out the kitchen window. He saw the silhouette of the converted detached garage, set back behind the house. He had worked, day after day for the last three months, to get that apartment ready for Becca. He’d made sure it had everything she would need so she could feel self-sufficient. Independent.
    When he visited her in the hospital, he told her all about it, using it as an inducement, a bribe, for her to work through the physical therapy sessions. He gave his word she would have everything she needed or wanted, if she would just get well.
    Now, that garage apartment contained his living nightmare. Guilt tore at his guts every time his gaze locked on the converted concrete-and-brick structure. Every time he looked at it, itunderscored to him what he had done. How many lives had he torn apart in his own selfishness? Good intentions or not, he had done the unspeakable, crossed a line from which there was no return.
    Steven’s abduction of Tommy hadn’t been premeditated; it had been opportunistic. He needed a way to solve his problem and, at that precise moment, Tommy seemed like the perfect answer to his prayers.
    Desperate times call for desperate measures. He hoped it was true, because there was no turning back now. The ball was in play and the game had begun. God help us all.

Chapter Seven
    A mountain of paperwork waited for Max on his desk. Filing was a gargantuan task in his line of work, a part of the job he despised, so the stack climbed ever higher, threatening to topple. With the skillful hand of a man who had built more than his share of card houses, he slid a single sheet atop the pile. He was pressing his luck, knowing it could explode in a river of misaligned pages. Though it wobbled, the stack remained upright.
    He’d thought to come in for a couple of hours, try to get his mind on to something other than his missing godson. So far they had nada, zero, nothing. His foot hit the magazines and newspapers piled high on the available floor space.
    Taking a good look around his unkempt, overflowing office, he cringed. Something was going to have to be done and soon, before he was swallowed alive by junk. He plopped down in the leather chair behind his desk, bone-weary from both lack of sleep and worry. As a former cop, he knew what life on the streets was like. Degenerates and lowlifes populated the darker, seedier realms. He prayed Tommy hadn’t fallen victim to somebody like that.
    Theresa was trying to help, he’d give her that. He just didn’t believe in all that crap about psychic phenomena. It was all B.S.
    Leaning