Revenge of the Scorned Witch

The next morning I had gotten up early, ready to get my day started, but I noticed Ellis was already up, except he was nowhere in the cabin. An hour later, he came through the door carrying donuts and some coffee, which was cold, even though he was trying to say it was supposed to be ice coffee.

"I got our stuff all packed up, so we can leave whenever you're ready." I offered as I took a bite out of a doughnut.

"I do have some work I gotta get done, so we can start on the project tomorrow." We finished eating, then gathered our things and headed for home. While he was driving, I sent Bryan a message telling him that Ellis and the rest of his white supremacist group was going to meet tonight. It seemed that Ellis was in more of a hurry to get home than I was. He sped all the way home. I was happy when we pulled onto the driveway leading to my home. "Why did you have to go so fast on the way here?" I screamed when I jumped out of my pickup.

"I just wanted to test it out." He laughs.

"Well, you are not driving my truck again," I say hotly. I head inside the house with my bag where everyone was waiting for our grand entrance, but all they got was a very upset me stomping up to my bedroom. Ellis came in a few seconds behind me.

"What did you do to my daughter, sir?" Randy ordered, stepping in front of him. He wasn't about to let Ellis walk past him without some kind of explanation of why I was upset so soon after our wedding.

"She just got pissy because I sped in her truck all the way home." He answered with a chuckle. Randy turns at Bryan and the girls.

"Keep him down here while I go talk to Joy." With that order, he turns to head upstairs, but Kaylee and Logan stop him.

"She needs a woman's touch, grandpa," Kaylee advises him as they head upstairs.

"Mom, can we come in?" Laura asks after knocking lightly on the door.

"Come on in," I answer her. Kaylee and Laura enter the room to see me lying on the bed, trying to relax after the horrifying ride I had just gone through with their father. They lay on either side of me on the bed. "Mom, are you ok? What did dad do to make you mad this time?" Kaylee asks almost in a whisper.

"He just took me on a high-speed ride down the interstate in my pickup, with no regard for me or anyone else on the road."

"No way, why would he do that?" Laura asks. "You would figure he would want to take his time to get back home."

I just look over at her and shrug, "I don't know, dear, he just said he had a meeting, or something like that, that he had to get to today, but still that wouldn't make an emergency."

"Do you think he was trying to scare you?" Kaylee asks a little too seriously.

"I don't know, doll, he could have been. He is the only one who would know what was going through his head at the time."

We lay there silent for what seems like hours until there was a knock on the door. This time, it was Bryan checking on all three of us. We told him we were fine, just talking, and we would be down in a little bit. We got up and went downstairs to find out that Ellis had left without saying a word. Thankfully, Randy had been keeping a close eye on him and was following close behind, sending updates to Bryan's phone.

"He is probably going to his meeting tonight. He was telling me something about a big project he had to get ready for tomorrow," I mention to Bryan while nobody is around. "I bet the massacre is taking place tomorrow in Ardmore." "If you're right, I better alert the director, and you still need to identify everyone in Ellis's group so we know who to look for."

Not long after, I am sitting in my office on video chat with one of the agents on the case. She is going through the photos of the wedding and reception, and I go through telling her who they were from what Ellis had told me. Bryan knocked on my office door a short time later with an update for me from Randy.

"It looks like they have all met up at Ellis's place in the woods," He informed me with a grim look on his face. He didn't have to tell me what he was thinking because I had the same thought-that they were getting ready for the massacre tomorrow and we needed to stop it tonight before anyone got hurt. The agent I was talking to on the computer overheard our conversation and ran to get the director. Bryan came around to the backside of my desk so he could tell the director what was going on and our thoughts on what might be going on. He did agree with us that we needed to have them arrested on the spot, but not while they were all in the building with the armory they had. They were going to wait until they left to head home. We relayed the orders to Randy so he would know what was going to happen so he wouldn't be found out, or worse, blow his cover. All he needed to do was to inform us of when they were leaving. The FBI was going to be sitting on every road in and out of where they were located, and they were even going to have some set up in the woods where the hideout was. We were hoping that there wasn't going to be a standoff because those never ended well for anyone. For hours we all sat in the living room, not really watching the television. We just had it on for noise. We were just waiting on any word as to what was happening north of town. Kaylee and Laura had gone to the movies in Ardmore with some of their friends, so they had no idea what was fixing to happen to their dad. I hadn't had the heart to tell them that their own flesh and blood was going to become a cold-blooded murderer. At least stopping him this way, I wouldn't have to tell them that, but telling them that he was a terrorist wasn't going to be much easier. All they knew was that he had anger issues and that he was going to get his just rewards for abusing their mother many years ago. When I started my revenge plot for Ellis, I had no idea that he was a white supremacist who was going to massacre lots of people. All I knew is that he was an abusive man who needed to pay for the pain he had caused me and was still causing other women in his life.

Tomorrow, I get to inflict my pain on him and tell him that this whole thing was because of me. He would have gotten away with it if I hadn't gone snooping around in his house, or better yet, my whole plan to get him back for the years of abuse I endured at his hand, along with his verbal abuse. I knew that I was going to frame him for terrorism, but nothing like what he was actually going to do, hurting innocent people is going too far.

What seemed forever really was only two hours when we got the message saying that the guys were leaving. I knew it wouldn't be much longer until I got the call that Ellis had been served with a federal warrant and arrested for terrorism. It wasn't me that got the call several hours later though, it was Bryan from one of the agents that had arrested Ellis.

"Hello, is this Agent Bryan Moore?" He asked.

"Yes, it is," Bryan replied.

"This is Agent Burton. I have an Ellis Carter in my custody, who is saying that he is a friend of yours and that you can vouch for him on certain things. Is this true?" Thankfully, Bryan had his phone on speaker, so I could hear the conversation. "Well, Agent Burton, I cannot do that. I'm just friends with his new wife, Joy. I just met him a couple of months ago, so I don't know him well enough to vouch for him on anything."

"Well, sucks for him, sorry to have bothered you, sir." With that, he hung up the phone. Not two seconds later, I get a call from Ellis fuming mad about Bryan not helping him, saying I needed to gather some money to bail him out of jail. "Well, how much do you need?" I ask, trying to sound worried.

"Well, I don't know yet. They haven't told me. They are holding me and my friends here in Carter County jail until tomorrow. I heard them say something about transporting us to a federal lockup."

"Ellis, what the hell did you guys do? You are not going to get bail if you get shipped to a federal lockup."

"I don't know. When they arrested me, they said I was getting arrested for terrorism or something."

"Just do what they say. I'll be there at your hearing, and I'm sorry, but there isn't anything Bryan or I can do for you now except get you a lawyer."

"Dammit, I don't care what you guys do, just get me the hell out of here, Joy!" He screamed into the phone. Just then, the call disconnected. I figured the agent guarding him hung the phone up on him.

I turned to Bryan and said, "Step two done." He laughs, then stands up and stretches.

"Well, I'm heading to bed. Tomorrow is going to be a long day too. You should get some rest. You have an annulment to file in the morning. A socialite like you can't be married to a terrorist," He jokes. But he was right. Tomorrow was going to be a long day.

I got up and headed for my bedroom when I heard the alarm on my phone go off, alerting me that someone was coming up the driveway. I looked at the security feed and realized it was just Randy. I decided to meet him on the porch. It was a nice night to sit and look up at the starry night sky. I missed this so much when I was traveling around. Being in the country, looking up at the night sky, has always been relaxing for me. Randy came and sat in the rocking chair beside me. "Nice out tonight, isn't it?" He observed, staring out into the darkness. "Yes, it is," I breathed.

"Randy, do you think I did the right thing?" I pondered. "I mean, Ellis wouldn't be in this situation if it hadn't been for me." He looked over at me with his dark sympathetic eyes.

"Doll, if you hadn't done anything, a lot of people would be dead tomorrow, so don't fret, my dear, you did the greatest thing by saving a lot of people's lives."

I stood up and bent down to give him a hug, then whispered in his ear, "Thanks, dad." Then I kissed his cheek as I went into the house. He was the closest thing I had to a father, and I wasn't about to let him go just yet. I still needed his strong shoulders to hold me up.