by Penny Wylder
“I did suggest that, originally,” Merill responds, tone pert and snippy. “Then he walked in on us raiding his hotel room. What were we supposed to do, let him call the police?”
Tommy groans. “I don’t like this. First Bradley, now Jenna…”
“Jenna’s not from here. Nobody’s going to be looking for her.”
“What about Gil?” Tommy points out.
Yeah. I’d like to see the two of you assholes face off against him when he’s mad, I think, viciously pleased at the idea.
“When we’re done getting rid of her—” (my heart beats rabbit-fast at the sound of that—this man casually discussing my murder) “—we’ll go back and clear out her hotel room. Tell Gil she ran off. It’s not like it will be a hard sell—they’ve known each other what, a week? And he’s never been much for a relationship. He’ll just assume she was another fling, running away.”
Tommy huffs out a sigh. “Didn’t you hear she’s pregnant though?”
“Well yes, but she came that way. Didn’t she?” There’s a long pause. I can tell Merill is watching Tommy now, because we stopped moving again.
“Not the way I heard it,” Tommy finally says, and Merill curses.
We pace a few more steps in silence. “Well, adds to the believability, then,” Merill says. “Girl gets knocked by a stranger, girl runs off. It’s happened a million times before. Gil will buy it.”
My heart aches. Not just at the thought of my own death—that’s terrifying enough to contemplate. But it aches for Gil now, too. I’ll be gone, and he’ll think I betrayed him. He’ll think I ran off, rejected him and the crib he built me, the whole life he dreamed of.
Fuck.
Finally, the pacing stops. I feel the pressure on my ribs ease, as Merill rolls me off his shoulder and tosses me toward the ground. I land hard on my ass, trip backward until I’m lying prone. Someone bends down—even through the hood, I can smell foul breath, close to my face.
“Stay there,” Tommy growls. I can’t tell if it’s a warning or a threat.
Then he straightens again, and I hear another, far more terrifying sound. The sound of a shovel striking into dirt. This is really happening. They’re digging my grave right now.
“Merill,” I hear Tommy say. “She’s pregnant. This isn’t right.”
“What’s not right, Tommy, is you and I winding up in prison just because we tried to fix one damn thing about our shitty lives in this shit hole town. Now are you going to stand there like an idiot or are you going to help me?”
“This is too far. That tourist jerk was one thing, but Jenna? She’s Gil’s girl. She’s probably got family back home; Christ, can you imagine what a jury will do to us if we’re caught murdering a pregnant woman?”
“Then you’d better get digging, before someone stumbles up here and we both get fucked,” Merill snaps.
“I’m done, Merill. I’m out.” I hear a distant clatter, which sounds like a shovel being tossed down.
“You can’t be done, Tommy. You don’t get to just back out of something like this. You have to finish what you start.” I hear snapping leaves now. Merill moving toward Tommy, maybe.
I curl in on myself. Squeeze my eyes shut and clench my teeth around the gag in my mouth. Please, God, someone help me. Then I hear a horrible, deafening crash, and despite myself, I scream through the gag.
21
Gil
It doesn’t take me long to find where Tommy’s trail joins with another. The second set of footprints are heavier, deeper. The way they’d be if, say, they were made by a man carrying a heavy load.
My fists clench. If that’s Jenna, she had better be alive and unharmed. Or fucking else.
I follow the double set of footsteps through the woods. Past the still-visible fire damage in the distance, over where Bradley Myers was buried. Even past the trailhead toward my cabin. Far, far into the forest, where there will be no prying eyes to notice, no witnesses to speak up.
Or so Tommy thinks.
Finally, I spy two figures up ahead. I step between trees, moving closer and closer. I watch the figures argue. One is clearly Tommy—I’d recognize his stringy hair and pudgy form anywhere. The other seems oddly familiar too, skinnier but more fit, all lean muscle. Then he turns toward me for a second, and I duck behind a tree, heart beating fast.
Merill.
That fucking snake. That goddamn fucking bastard. I’ll rip his fucking arms off.
I drop to a crouch and creep closer, because the last thing I want is for either of them to see me coming and do something to Jenna in the meantime.
When I make it a few paces away, I spot a third figure out there with them, lying prone on the ground, a bag over her head, hands and feet bound. For a heart-breaking, mind-numbing second, I think she’s already gone.
Then Merill shouts something, and she curls in on herself, reflexive, and I realize she’s still alive. She’s all right.
I’m going to make sure of it.
Merill is brandishing a shovel at Tommy. Tommy is cringing away, and I catch a snippet of his words. “I’m done, Merill. I’m out.”
“You can’t be done, Tommy,” Merill shrieks. He sounds deranged. Like a madman.
Clearly he is.
I creep closer. Just five feet away now.
“You don’t get to just back out of something like this,” Merill is saying. “You have to finish what you start.”
I grab the other shovel from the ground where it fell. The shovel Tommy was clearly supposed to use. I heft it in one hand. Only then do I rise from a crouch, right behind Merill. Tommy glances past Merill at me, his eyes huge, mouth open in fear.
Merill half-turns toward me, just as I raise the shovel to swing at his head. He blocks it just in time with his own shovel, and the metal ends clash together in a deafening crash. Behind me, Jenna screams, but it’s muffled. These assholes must have gagged her.
“You fucking bastards!” I scream. I swing again, and again, Merill blocks the hit, but he’s stumbling backwards, terrified. Tommy tries to dart past Merill, make a break for it. But there’s no way I’m letting him go. I race around Merill and tackle Tommy to the ground. I punch him straight in the fucking face.
Behind me, twigs crack as Merill races at me. “Get off him!”
I roll out of the way, pulling Tommy with me, and Merill’s shovel hits the ground, digs in. It sticks. I grin. I launch myself upright and throw a punch at Merill’s stomach. It connects, and he groans, staggering backwards. He trips over Jenna’s prone form, who’s now shouting through her gag, though I can’t understand the words. Merill curses as he falls backwards, landing hard on the packed earth.
I whip back to Tommy, who’s trying to squirm away from me again. I grab his leg and drag him back toward me, then punch him in the face again. There’s a satisfying crack as his nose breaks.
“Gil, I didn’t mean to,” he blubbers, sounding muffled like Jenna now, with his nose cracked. “I tried to stop him!”
“Liar!” I shout, spit flying in his face. “You fucking bastard.” I knee him again in the stomach, which will be enough to keep him down, knowing Tommy.
But then Tommy’s eyes dart past me, go wide. “Gil,” he wheezes.
I whip around just in time to see Merill staggering toward me, shovel raised, aimed to swing straight at my head.
And then, just as quickly as the blow was about to come, he goes down. Because Jenna has twisted herself around on the ground, kicked out her feet under his. He trips again, falls face-first to the ground, and I kick the back of his head, just hard enough to knock him the fuck out.
I stand there, breathing hard. I glare at Tommy, who cringes and curls up into a ball. He’s not going anywhere.
Then I whirl on Jenna and gently help her upright. “You’re all right,” I murmur. “It’s okay now, I’m here.” I pull her hood off, my heart wrenching at the sight of her gagged and bound. Those fuckers. I undo the knots, and she spits the gag out, gasping for air.
“Shh, shh, it’s okay.” I grab her, pull her into a hug, before I set to work untying her hands. “They aren’t going anywhere, I promise. We’re going to make sure they’re thrown straight into jail where they belong.”
Belatedly, she seems to notice the other figures in the campsite. Merill, knocked out cold nearby, legs still stretched out where she tripped him. His eyes are shut, but he’s breathing, I can see from here the rise and fall of his chest. And beyond him, Tommy, still curled in on himself, bruised and bleeding from the broken nose I gave him.
“I’m sorry,” Tommy blubbers, the second Jenna makes eye contact with him.
“Fuck you,” she spits in his direction, and there’s that fire I love about my girl. I finish untying her hands and feet, and help her upright, then pull her into a tight hug.
She sinks into my arms, burying her face in my chest. I can feel tears staining my shirt, and it makes me want to rip into Tommy and Merill all over again. Hurt them just as deeply as they hurt her. Make them as terrified as she was in their clutches.
But, for Jenna’s sake, I restrain myself. At least for now. I lean down to kiss the top of her head, her forehead, her temple. She tilts her head back, and my lips find hers, tender, reassuring. “You’re safe now,” I whisper to her. “I’ve got you.” I tighten my arms around her once more. “And I’m never letting you go again.”
“Good,” she murmurs against the fabric of my shirt. “Don’t.” And she nuzzles her head into my chest, and relief floods through me. It’s really over. She’s safe.
And these two assholes are going straight to fucking prison.
22
Jenna
The police are able to reconstruct the images on my camera using higher-def equipment than I had available. The images are grainy, but you can make out a distinct flop of hair like Merill’s on one of the shadows, and a protruding belly like Tommy’s on the other.
Those images, combined with Gil’s and my testimony about my kidnapping, and everything I overheard Tommy and Merill say in the woods, is plenty to get both men arrested. That morning, Gil scooped me up in his arms and carried me back into town, straight to the police precinct, where Detective Hartman was chatting to Officer Creepy. Just a couple words about how he found me, and how he’d left the two assholes who did it, set the detective off running.
Stacey and three other officers brought Tommy and Merill in, and from there, we went straight to work on the trial.
The reason Stacey had been out of town so long, it turned out, was because she’d salvaged some forensic evidence from the grave, even despite the fire Tommy and Merill tried to set in the forest around it. They’d been running forensic tests on some hair and a little bit of blood that didn’t match the victim’s blood type. It turned out to be Tommy’s hair and Merill’s blood, so that evidence pinned them both in the woods at the location of the murder too.
All that added up to a pretty fast trial, and a big sentence for the men. Life with no possibility of parole.
Good riddance, I remember thinking as the cops led them both handcuffed from the trial room.
At the time the trial finished, I’d been six months pregnant, but I’d still insisted on being there for every day of the proceedings. I wanted to make sure the jury did the right thing, and saved the rest of the world from ever having to confront assholes like that again.
As for Bailey Village, it’s still recovering from the foundation-rocking event. Learning that two of your own people, two guys who grew up in your village and lived their whole lives there, could commit murder, it was a pretty difficult blow. Especially to people who’d moved to Bailey for the small-town vibes, in order to feel safe and secure.
“You hear about things like this happening in the big city,” judgey little Mrs. Grant kept saying as she shook her head, incredulous, and rocked her purse dog in her arms at the same time. “You just don’t think something so horrible could happen in a small town like this.”
They quoted her saying that on the news too. I watched it in the pub with Gil on one side, and, surprisingly, old Mrs. Baker on the other.
As for old Mrs. Baker, she took a different view of things. “Bullshit,” she told the television, lips pursed. “This is the same interview they get every time. ‘Oh I had no idea anything could ever happen in my neighborhood.’ Well no shit! Why would you move there if you thought it was Murderville USA?” She rolled her eyes and tossed back a long sip of her scotch. “You ask me, this town is exactly where I thought a murder like that could happen. Small towns get so insular, so afraid of anyone who’s different. They see a rich tourist amble in and they think, well why not off him? He’s not one of us.”
Gil and I had nodded in grim agreement.
Which is why now, 10 months since that horrible, fateful morning when I spun around in my hotel room to find Merill blocking the door, we’re sitting here instead. In our brand new apartment downtown, a few blocks from my office.
My old place was too small for all of us. Not now that there’s me, Gil, and the baby to squeeze in. But this new one is perfect—high ceilings, great location (quiet but not too quiet), short walk to work for me, close to a workshop space that Gil was able to rent to continue his business out of… And it’s two bedrooms. One for me and Gil, and one for little baby Samuel, once he’s old enough to sleep on his own.
For now, I stand in the doorway of our master bedroom and gaze in at Sammy, sound asleep in the gorgeous crib his daddy built him, long before we knew how any of this would turn out. I pad across the bedroom to peer over the side and watch him sleep, my heart swelling the way it always does, every time I look down at Sammy.
He’s got Gil’s eyes—huge and blue. And Daddy’s smile, too, which Sammy uses all the damn time. Especially when he knows he’s being naughty. I swear the kid’s a troublemaker already.
That might be my influence, I think. He’s got my cheeks, my small nose… and my penchant for causing trouble. I noticed that last night, when he decided to scream around 3am.
“That’s right, sleep now,” I whisper, still smiling. “Rub it in. All the sleep for you, none of it for Mommy and Daddy.”
I hear footsteps behind me, and I hold still, smiling. I feel warm hands cover my eyes, rough and calloused from all his work. “Guess who,” Gil whispers, right against the nape of my neck, where he knows the hot kiss of his breath will drive me wild.
“Hmm… Santa,” I say.
He snorts softly. “Guess again.”
“Mmm…” I pause, taking my time to answer. While I do, I wriggle my butt back against him, until my hips bump his thigh. “Daddy,” I say.
His hands slide down to wrap around my shoulders. He draws me back against him in a tight hug. “Yes. Daddy.”
I grin and turn to kiss his cheek. “Naughty, aren’t you, Daddy.”
“You have no idea.” He winks, then turns to gaze at Sammy with a sigh. “We do make beautiful children together, don’t we, Mommy?”
I quirk a single eyebrow. “Children? Plural, huh?”
“Well, I’ve got this new crib design I’d like to try out,” he says, slowly, a smirk on his mouth. “And pretty soon Sammy will outgrow this one. So we’ll need a new kid for the next crib.”
I snort and roll my eyes. “Wow, talk about hard to satisfy. We hardly get one kid out and you want to put another in the oven, that it?”
“Well, I at least know that the trying part is fun.” He spins me around then, so we’re face to face, and rests his forehead against mine. He leans in to kiss me, soft and slow, the way I like. I tilt my head, let my lips part, and his tongue slides between mine to taste me, the same way I’m tasting him.
Sammy twists a little in his sleep, letting out a sigh, and we break apart. My cheeks are flushed, as I steal a glance down at Sammy.
“Let’s let him get some rest,” Gil murmurs, catching hold of my hand as he draws me toward the door
way. “Me, I’ve got some other ideas about how Mommy and Daddy can spend the afternoon…”
23
Gil
I draw Jenna backward into the living room, unable to keep my hands off her.
This woman. This beautiful, fucking sexy, amazing, incredible woman, is the mother of my child. I still can’t believe I’ve gotten so lucky. We were right about change—our lives have completely changed since the day we met. I moved away from Bailey for the first time in years; I’ve become a city-slicker now, and I actually am loving it. The workshop I found, which is within walking distance of our house, is the perfect size to house all of my project. My furniture store hasn’t collapsed—if anything, it’s expanded. I’m getting more orders now, even walk-ins from the street, since I hung a little sign out front to advertise, with a big photo of the crib I made for Sammy.
That’s turned out to be really popular with a lot of the new parents in the neighborhood where we live. More and more requests for fanciful cribs are coming in, and as people spread the word about them, the orders have become so frequent I had to take on an apprentice, train up a few shop assistants to handle the books.
Business is booming, in fact. I should’ve made the move to the city a long time ago.
But then, I’m glad I didn’t. Because if I’d moved here sooner, I never would have been at Bailey Village for the festival. I never would have met Jenna. And she’s the real reason that all of this is working. Making me so fucking happy.
As for Jenna, she looks happier than I’ve ever seen her lately. Every time she’s holding Sammy, she just lights up. I don’t even think she realizes she’s doing it. It’s instinctive, a reaction she can’t hide.
It’s the same reaction I have around our beautiful son. And around her.
She leans in to kiss me now, smiling up at me. “You’re a good father, you know that, Gil?” My heart skips. My face falls a little, and she tilts her head with a frown. “What’s wrong?”
