by Mark Stone
“I used to watch her from my closet, mostly,” she said, smiling a bit as she opened her eyes. “Looking back, I can see now that she was probably just humoring me. I mean, how many times can a woman be surprised to find her daughter in the same closet? They were good times, though. I’ve never told anybody this before, but sometimes, I still get back in that closet. I close the doors and look out. I know she’s not going to come looking for me, but it’s nice to pretend sometimes. It’s nice to think that if I just sat there long enough, my mother might come back around.”
“That’s doesn’t seem stupid either,” I said.
“I was changing clothes the first night someone came for me,” she said. “I went into my closet to grab my stuff, and like I sometimes do, I lingered in there. I closed the door behind me and sat here, staring out and waiting for my mother.” Gina shook her head again. “My mom never came, of course, but someone else did.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“My window was open,” she said. “We live on the beach, so my window is always open.”
“Understandable,” I said.
“Someone came in. They just slid in right through the open window and started looking around,” she said.
“Could you see who it was?” I asked, my hands balling into fists at my side.
“No,” she replied, shaking her head. “The closet doors are completely solid. The only sliver of light that comes through when they’re closed is from the opening where the doors meet. The only time I could see him at all was when he passed by that, and even that was only for a second.”
“Him?” I asked, remembering that Amber thought the woman who helped raise Gina was responsible for all of this.
“Yeah,” she said. “He was a man. I saw that much. His head was turned away from me, but he had dark hair, or at least it looked dark without the lights on. I saw that there was a knife in his hand. He had a tattoo on his wrist too, some kind of music symbol. I was terrified, way too scared to move. I just sat there as he went through my room, looking for me. I prayed as hard as I could—to God, to the angels, even to my mom. I just wanted someone to come and save me.” She swallowed hard. “And then someone did.”
“Tell me what happened,” I said in a low, calming voice.
“The housekeeper was on that day. She knocked on the door asking if I had any towels or something. She never opens the door if it’s closed, but she will knock and see if I’m there or if I’ll let her in. The guy bolted after that. He never got around to looking in the closet for me.”
“Thank God,” I said.
“Like I said, I prayed hard,” she said, shrugging. “Anyway, since then, it’s happened a few times, and every time, I think it’s going to be the end of me. I thought it yesterday morning in the ocean, and I thought it last night in that parking lot, but you were there with me both times. You saved my life twice in one day.”
“It’s my job,” I replied instinctively, answering gratitude I had heard a thousand times before from a thousand different people in the only way I knew how. “In the ocean, anyway,” I added. “The problem, of course, is that your life needed saving twice in the same day.”
“Yeah. That’s never happened before,” Gina admitted. “Whoever is doing this is ramping it up. That’s why I need you, Danny. It’s not because you’re hot or even because I’m attracted to you. It’s because you saved me, and I can trust you.”
“You don’t know me, Gina,” I said. “And there’s an argument to be made that you could trust the police escort you’ve been dodging a hell of a lot more than me.”
“I might be a silver spoon-fed trust fund baby, but that doesn’t make me stupid,” she argued. “I do my research. I know who you are. I’ve seen the way you live your life. Even after the accident, you didn’t let it turn you into a different person. I can trust you. I know I can.”
“But the police—”
“I can’t!” she yelled sharply. “I can’t let the police handle this, Danny.”
“Why?” I asked, glaring at her. “There’s something you’re not telling me about all of this. What is it?’
She swallowed hard, obviously hesitant to continue.
“I can only help you if you’ll let me,” I said.
“I have a hunch,” she said. “And if I’m right about it, it means I can’t go to the police or even my dad. It means I can’t go to anybody.” She stood to meet me. “Anybody but you.”
“And what is this hunch about, Gina?” I asked as she bridged the gap between us.
She grabbed the sunscreen from my hand, popped the top, and started applying it lazily as she answered. “The only thing that matters to me at the moment, Danny. I think I know who’s trying to kill me.”
13
Looking at Gina, I realized that this woman was a juxtaposition of things. Before me stood the visage of a fun-loving party girl. Clad in a bathing suit that left almost nothing to the imagination and rubbing sunscreen on her arms, you’d have thought that Gina didn’t have a care in the world. You would be wrong, though. Though Gina was a beautiful woman on a beach with more money and free time than she knew what to do with, she also had a heavy weight on her shoulders, and she expected me to help her take that weight off.
“Who?” I asked, realizing that for the second time in as many days, someone was standing in front of me and telling me that they knew who was responsible for these attempted murders.
“His name is Walt Jermain,” Gina said flatly. “I went out with him for almost eight months last year, and when we broke up, it was messy.”
“Messy how?” I asked.
“Like sleeping with his best friend and texting him pictures of it messy,” Gina said, sighing loudly.
“That’s certainly one way to get messy,” I muttered.
“Anyway, he took the breakup hard,” Gina said. “Beat the hell out of Jamie—that was the friend I slept with—and he called me every day for weeks.”
“He sounds like trouble,” I replied.
“He is,” Gina said. “He always had been, actually. That was one of things that drew me to him.”
I narrowed my eyes at the woman. If I lived to be a million years old, I don’t think I would ever understand that way of thinking. Sure, I knew there was a certain type of woman who was drawn to a bad boy. Hell, I had been accused of being one of those bad boys on more than one occasion by angry dads or worried mothers. This was something else, though. Falling for someone who had the capacity to become violent, someone who you thought might literally try to murder you if something went wrong, spoke to something that I couldn’t really relate to. I had to wonder why Gina would stay with a man like that, even for only eight months. Still, bad decisions don’t equate to punishment, especially the type of punishment that threatens your life.
“Let’s not worry about what drew you to him right now,” I said. “Tell me about why you think it might be this guy. Or is it just because you had a bad breakup and he’s quick to punch?”
“It’s more than punching,” Gina said, shaking her head. “He’s violent in a lot of ways.”
“Was he ever violent with you?” I asked, and the idea of that seared through me like a hot knife under my skin. There were many things that irked me in this world, but nothing gutted me quite the same way as the idea of a woman being mistreated by someone who was meant to be good to her. The idea of a guy like Walt putting his hands on Gina—or any woman, for that matter—in anger was enough to make me punch through concrete.
“No. That’s not what I meant,” Gina admitted, looking down at the sand. “I’d have put a heel in his crotch if he ever lifted a finger to me back then. He was just the type of guy who got drunk and got out of control, but it was always either with idiots he met at the bar or with his friends if they were arguing about football or something stupid.”
The idea of that made me uneasy. While I wasn't a cop or anything like that, I had been around long enough and seen enough of the world to know that bastards who get drunk
and hit people don’t usually draw moral lines in the sand. I wasn’t sure whether I could believe Gina or not when she said this Walt guy had never raised his hand to her. Sometimes, women didn’t want to talk about that sort of thing. Sometimes, they blamed themselves for it, which was ridiculous and another form of abuse. It was a horrible thing to think about, but it also wasn’t the prime directive here. If I were going to help this woman, and everyone seemed to be really intent on my doing just that, I was going to need to dig a bit deeper and find out all I could about the man she thought was trying to kill her.
“And you think that changed when you broke up with him?” I asked.
“He broke up with me, actually,” Gina said. “And it really set him off.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.
Gina sighed loudly, her bare shoulders slumping, and I knew she was about to tuck into a story that wouldn’t be easy for her. “Dad never liked him.”
“I can see that,” I said flatly.
“Yeah,” Gina muttered. “It wasn’t about any of the other stuff. Dad didn’t know about the heavy drinking, and he sure as hell didn’t know about the violence. It’s just that Walt was never a good look for me, you know?”
“I don’t, Gina. I don’t know anything about the man other than what you’ve told me,” I said.
“Walt was a handful,” she said. “He couldn’t hold down a job and he had been arrested for petty theft and vandalism.”
“He sounds like a keeper,” I murmured.
“He stole a turkey on Thanksgiving as a prank and then spray painted his name on the side of the supermarket after charges were pressed. It wasn’t the end of the world,” Gina replied. “But dad couldn’t see past it. He kept telling me that his re-election campaign was coming up and his daughter couldn’t be seen canoodling with someone who had a rap sheet, even one as short as Walt’s.” She rolled her eyes. “Canoodling. That’s the word he used. Can you believe that?”
“You said he broke up with you,” I reminded her, ignoring her last comment.
“He did,” she said. “I told him what my dad said and asked him if we could just kind of be a secret thing for the next few months, just until Dad won his re-election. I didn’t think he’d care, but apparently, it was a really big deal to him. He said it was fine. He was even really cool about it, and then I get this letter from him three days later, and he’s saying all these awful things about me. That was the thing about him. I call it violence, and I guess it was. He was the sweetest guy in the world when I was face to face with him. Even when he was being rowdy with his friends or whatever, he always treated me well. But then he would write me these horrible letters. He’d say awful things about me and call me names. He’d say I didn’t deserve him and all that. It went on almost the entire time we were dating.”
“That’s weird,” I said. “Did you ever confront him about it?”
“Of course,” Gina said. “He was always really apologetic, though. He just kind of talked around it and said he would never do it again. Of course, he always did. He said he never wanted to talk to me again or see me again. I couldn’t believe it. I tried to call him to talk it through with him, but he wouldn’t even listen to me. He never even picked up the phone. He just walked away. That’s when I found Jamie, and—”
“I remember what you did with Jamie,” I said, cutting her off before she went through all that again.
“I tried to call him after that to apologize again, but he wouldn’t hear it,” she said. “It was the strangest thing. He still didn’t seem upset, even about Jamie. I thought it was a good sign, like maybe he wanted to give things another try, but he just told me that we were over. He said it was for the best for both of us and that it was okay. Of course, then my father got a letter from him, berating him for his audacity and telling him that he was going to make sure my dad paid for thinking I was too good for him.”
“Right,” I said firmly. That was enough for me. This Walt guy threatened Gina’s father with some sort of revenge. Now, the man’s daughter was being attacked. Given Walt’s violent nature, I didn’t need a map to draw this particular conclusion. “I need you to do something for me, Gina.”
“Name it,” she said, her voice quavering a little.
“You can stay out here with me all day. That’s fine,” I said. “But this evening, I’m going to look into Walt, and I need you to be somewhere else. If you don’t want a police escort, then I can make sure that either my friend Riley or this guy named Brick can look after you. I trust them, and you wouldn’t even have to leave the beach if you didn’t want to.”
“I mean, I’d rather have you, but okay,” she said. “If you trust them, then I trust them too.”
“All right,” I said, nodding again. “Just one more thing. You said that because of who this guy was, you couldn’t trust the cops. Why would that be?”
“Oh,” she said. “It’s because in addition to being a violent drunk with a criminal past, Walt also happens to be the sheriff's son.”
I blinked hard, taking it all in. “Oh,” I muttered. “Well, damn.”
14
I took a bite of my fish taco, thinking about how wonderfully fresh the redfish was and how in my entire life, I wasn’t sure I had ever eaten a piece of fish that had been out of the ocean more than a few hours. It was one of the many, many perks that came with living in a place like this. You never had to worry about frozen seafood or boring days. For all intents and purposes, neither of them existed down here.
“I’m glad you called,” Jules said, taking a huge bite of her own fish taco and delicately placing it back down on the plate. She asked the waitress to throw some sort of pineapple salsa stuff on hers that I wasn’t ready to try. Though she swore by the stuff, I was a purist. You don’t need anything on fish, even fish tacos, aside from a squirt of lemon or a little tartar if you feel up to it. She preferred the sweetness, and I suppose there was something to be said for that. Still, regardless of how you decided to dress them up, The Hook and Fin, the outdoor eatery we found ourselves sitting at right now, had some of the best seafood in town, and that was saying a lot.
Good seafood in Florida was no joke. Even fish sticks were fresh down in these parts. So, when someone claimed to have good redfish tacos, they had a high bar to clear. Luckily, Hook and Fin was up for the challenge, even if the food was secondary to the real reason I was here today.
“I was honestly afraid that you’d be a little upset with me after last night.” She shuffled in her chair. “Especially considering what ended up happening after you refused to get in the car.”
A rush of something closer to anger than agitation ran through me. Taking a swig of my drink to give myself a few seconds to calm down, I answered her.
“I think you knew that I wasn’t getting in that car the second you stuck your brother in it, Jules,” I said flatly.
She stayed silent for a second. She knew I was right. I hadn’t made my disdain for Nate a secret for even one second since that horrible night all those years ago, and I wasn’t about to start now. Right was right, and what he had done ranked as one of the most severe wrongs anyone had ever perpetrated against me.
“I just thought that maybe enough time had finally passed,” she said, her eyes pinned to the checkerboard tablecloth and her hands placed firmly in her lap. She was dressed plainly in a pink T-shirt and a pair of jeans. Still, even like this, it was easy to see that she was stunning. Any guy would be lucky to call her their own. Hell, if I hadn’t grown up with her and considered her more of a sister than anything else, I might have considered myself among those ‘guys’.
“You know me better than that,” I said, shaking my head and taking yet another swig of my drink, this time more out of habit than from a need to calm down.
“You are as stubborn as a desert sun,” she muttered, finally breaking her gaze from the tablecloth and turning it back to me. “If I stay around you long enough, I’m sure to end up burned and exhausted.�
�� I had seen those eyes through a lot of years, and in those years, I had learned to read them. I knew what they looked like when she was happy and when she was depressed. I knew what they looked like when she’d had too much to drink and needed a ride home, not that she’d ever admit to it. And I knew what they meant right now.
“Don’t be mad at me,” I said, running a hand through my hair.
“I’m not mad at you, Danny,” she said weakly, taking a deep breath that I knew was meant to center and calm her. “I’m just disappointed. I just want everything to go back to the way it was.”
I sighed, reaching over, scooping her taco up, and taking a bite out of it. Anyone looking at this action from the outside would probably either think that I was unimaginably rude or that Jules and I were a couple. Neither was true. This was just what our relationship was. We were this comfortable around each other, and that comfort made conversations like the one we were having right now all the more painful.
“That relish is disgusting,” I said, setting the taco back down on her plate.
“It’s salsa, not relish, and it’s perfect,” she said without missing a beat. “That’s also the third bite of my taco you’ve had since we’ve been sitting here. So, maybe it’s not as bad as you seem to want to believe.”
“I’m eating because I’m nervous,” I said flatly, shrugging at the woman.
Her eyes narrowed and her shoulders pricked up a little. “Really? That’s new. I have a question.”
“I figured you might,” I said.
“Here it is.” She smiled. “We’ve known each other long enough to call it forever, and you obviously don’t feel the need to put your best foot forward in front of me.” Her eyes moved to her mostly eaten taco. “So, that begs the question. Why, Danny Chase, would you be nervous around me?”
I nodded firmly, my eyes moving back to the door behind the woman.
“Because, Jules Conroy, I am about to ask you to do something you’re definitely not going to want to do.”
