The Class Reunion: A psychological suspense thriller

by N L Hinkens

  Lindsay shook her head and then winced, as though the very movement sent waves of pain throughout her body.

  Teresa smirked. “No, of course you don’t. Trust me, there’s a good reason you’re not going to scream when I remove the rag from your mouth.” Cautiously, she loosened the top of the sack and lowered the reptile grabber inside. A distinctive rattling instantly filled the night air, followed by an eerie silence, as if every creature in the vicinity had heard the warning and taken heed.

  Lindsay’s eyes were frantic with fear. She attempted to dig her heels into the dirt and push herself farther away from Teresa.

  “There’s really no point in exerting yourself,” Teresa said, shaking her head. “You’re not going anywhere. Why don’t we just have a civil conversation instead?”

  Lindsay gave a tentative jerk of her chin.

  “Excellent,” Teresa said, tightening the mouth of the reptile sack back up and setting it aside before hunkering down and yanking the rag from Lindsay’s mouth. She put a finger to her lips in warning. “Remember what happens if you scream.” Sitting back down on the stump, she traced the end of the reptile grabber in the dirt in front of her. “Do you know who I am?”

  “No,” Lindsay croaked out.

  Teresa gave a thoughtful nod. “I believe you. In fact, I didn’t know who you were either until a few months ago when my estranged father passed away in Wisconsin. I was named the sole beneficiary of his paltry fortune.” She gave a hollow laugh. “To tell you the truth, it was hardly worth the gas it took to drive there. Or so I thought, until I stumbled on a nugget among the trash he left me—a photograph of you.” She licked her lips, watching the confused expression on Lindsay’s face. She still hadn’t connected the dots. It really had meant that little to her.

  “Who are you?” Lindsay rasped. “Why are you doing this?”

  Teresa leaned forward and stuck her face up close to her. “I’m Bill Kinney’s daughter and you destroyed my life.”

  33

  Lindsay’s eyes bulged. She shrank back from Teresa’s face, her body shaking. “I … I didn’t even know who you were back then. Your father took advantage of me. I was only seventeen when I went to work for him—a minor in his employment. I could have pressed charges.”

  “You might as well have,” Teresa snarled. “You destroyed our entire family.”

  “I’m truly sorry for the pain I caused,” Lindsay whimpered. “That was never my intention. I was naive. I … I believed every word your father told me. He said his marriage was over before he met me—that he loved me. We were going to get married after I graduated.”

  Teresa cocked her head to one side. “How touching. Funny thing is, he told us he loved us too. Just not enough to stay with us, apparently.”

  “He left me as well,” Lindsay whispered, her lip trembling.

  “But he didn’t leave you broke, did he? Your little affair that you’re so dismissive of unleashed a lifetime of consequences for my family. You broke up my parents’ marriage. They had to sell the business to pay off their debts. We lost everything—I lost everything. They couldn’t afford to pay my tuition anymore. I had to drop out of veterinary school. Do you have any idea how hard I had to work to get accepted to begin with?”

  Lindsay suppressed a sob. “I’m sorry for everything that happened to you. I had no idea. He never talked about you. I never heard from your father again.”

  Teresa narrowed her eyes at her. “Do you even know my name?”

  “I … I don’t remember.”

  “It’s Teresa. Do you know my twin brother’s name?”

  Lindsay shook her head, a tear sliding down her cheeks.

  “Damien. Say it! Say his name!”

  “Damien! I’m sorry, Teresa. I truly am. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll apologize to Damien too. Just please, untie me and let me go.”

  Teresa twisted the front of Lindsay’s shirt in her fist and shook her. “That phony apology of yours to save your own skin is twenty years too late. Damien’s dead, thanks to you. When my father abandoned us, it crushed him. He went off the rails—drinking and partying. He crashed his truck into a tree and died a few months later.”

  A gasp escaped Lindsay’s lips, the whites of her eyes reflecting terror.

  Teresa shook her loose and sat back down on the tree stump. “Which brings me to why you and I are here tonight. My family paid the ultimate price because of you, and now you’re going to pay the equivalent in return.”

  “No!” Lindsay shrieked. “Please—“

  “Keep your voice down!” Teresa reached for the reptile bag and dangled it over her. “Have you forgotten what’s in here?”

  Lindsay opened and shut her mouth a couple of times before giving an acquiescing nod. “Teresa, listen to me, please. We both got a raw deal. We were kids back then. What happened was your father’s fault. Surely you can see that.”

  “Believe me, I’m under no illusions about him. But you were the other half of the problem.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what more I can say to—”

  “There’s nothing you can say. Don’t you get it?” Teresa hissed. “Nothing can take back what you’ve done. Nothing will ever bring Damien back.” She eyed the reptile sack at her feet. “All that’s left for me to do now is mete out justice.”

  “What … what are you talking about?” Lindsay stammered.

  “Brom and Beretta are very special to me,” Teresa answered, softening her tone. “They’re the only native snakes I own. I caught them myself a few years back.”

  Lindsay took a heaving breath. Her eyes flicked around in desperation as if realizing what was coming and searching for some last-minute way out of her impossible predicament. “You … you own other snakes too?”

  Teresa grinned at her. “I have three more babies at home. Empress, my pit viper, a krait called Achilles, and my black mamba, Medusa. She’s the newest member of our family, and the feistiest.”

  Lindsay wet her lips, her breathing growing ever more audible in the night air. “Aren’t venomous snakes illegal to own?”

  Teresa shrugged. “Almost anything’s available for purchase over the internet if you know how to look for it.” She leaned down and loosened the drawstring on the reptile bag. “I know you’re desperate to keep me talking but it’s time to wrap things up here.”

  Lindsay yelped, wriggling another inch or two into the brush. “I’m begging you, Teresa. I know you’re upset and hurt, but you’re not thinking straight.”

  “Trust me, I’ve thought this through very carefully,” Teresa replied. “You stuck a knife in my heart twice, so that’s what you’re going to get in return. Brom is for stealing my father, and Beretta is for killing Damien.”

  “I didn’t kill your brother!” Lindsay howled. “You have to believe me! Please, it wasn’t me!”

  “Not I, said the pig, the cat, and the rat,” Teresa mocked in a sing-song tone, reaching for her reptile grabber. “Do you know that story—The Little Red Hen? My father used to read that to me when I was a kid. He said he wanted me to learn from her work ethic.” She laughed. “You know what struck me the most? In the end, she did what had to be done all by herself.”

  “It was Heather! My friend, Heather Nelson,” Lindsay blurted out.

  Teresa stiffened, and then turned slowly to look at her with narrowed eyes. “What are you talking about?”

  “The night Damien died. Heather was following him. She wanted to find out where he lived. He … he raped her younger sister at a party.”

  “You’re lying,” Teresa growled.

  “It’s the truth,” Lindsay protested. “Heather wanted to confront him that night. She brought a gun in the car with her. He was fleeing from her when he crashed. He was injured but still alive. He begged her to help him but she … she left him there to die. I wanted her to call 911, but she wouldn’t. I tried to save your brother!”

  For a long moment, Teresa stared coldly at her. Fishing the rag out of her pocket
, she stuffed it back into Lindsay’s mouth. Wordlessly, she reached her reptile grabber into the sack and lifted out Brom. “This is for Bill. I hope he was worth it,” she said, as she swung the snake in Lindsay’s direction and released it. Lindsay screamed, raising her bound arms in a futile defense. Brom struck, burying his fangs into her thumb before slithering off into the night. Lindsay rolled over, attempting to crawl on her belly toward the trail. Teresa grabbed the end of her athletic shirt and flipped her over. “You’re not going anywhere. We’re not done here yet.” She reached for the reptile grabber again and carefully extracted an irate Beretta. “This is for Damien,” she said, brandishing the enraged snake.

  Writhing in a desperate attempt to get out of striking range, Lindsay succeeded in spitting out the rag. “Your brother was a scumbag!” she screamed. “He deserved what he got!”

  Teresa dropped the snake on her chest and observed with satisfaction as Beretta sank her fangs into Lindsay’s cheek. She watched her baby glide off through the brush and then sat back down on the tree stump to wait for the venom to take effect.

  34

  Back at her house, Teresa sank down on the sagging couch surrounded by her dogs and pulled out Lindsay’s phone. She had checked it earlier, thrilled to discover it was unlocked—presumably as Lindsay had been running a fitness app tracking her mileage, heartbeat, and a host of other statistics as she biked. It was a stroke of good fortune that would hopefully make Teresa’s job of finding Heather Nelson that much easier. If she was a friend of Lindsay’s, then her contact information had to be in here.

  Teresa had found the phone in a pocket in Lindsay’s biker shorts after she’d checked to make sure she was no longer breathing. Once she’d untied her wrists and ankles, she dragged her body through the brush to the edge of the trail and tossed her mangled bike a few feet away. For the final touch, she had placed the rock she used to incapacitate her beneath her head and stepped back to admire her handiwork. It looked every bit the horrific accident it was meant to mimic, and she had driven away afterward satisfied Brom and Beretta had earned their freedom.

  Scrolling through Lindsay’s contacts, she soon landed on the name: Heather Nelson. She studied the information dispassionately. Now that Lindsay had been taken care of, she would concentrate all her efforts on finding the monster who had mercilessly left her brother to die. She gritted her teeth in frustration when she saw that Heather Nelson’s current home address was in LA. Teresa had never been a city person. The thought of having to navigate around the inner workings of an urban metropolis seething with people and frenetic activity gave her major anxiety. Not to mention the fact that a trip to LA would mean leaving her babies behind once again. But the biggest hurdle of all would be taking care of business in a city with a host of potential witnesses. Teresa was more at ease in remote locations where the only cameras recording activity on the ground were the sharp eyes of the hawks circling overhead.

  Glancing at the note section in Heather Nelson’s contact details, Teresa saw Lindsay had entered a birthdate along with the words, Integrity Investigations. Curious, she pulled out her laptop and Googled the company. A website popped up, and right there on the home page was a headshot of Heather Nelson, along with several glowing testimonials from satisfied clients. Teresa grunted in anger and tossed the phone onto the pile of trash and magazines that littered the coffee table.

  Things had just become complicated. She was dealing with a private investigator—one of the best in the business, if the raving accounts from her clients were to be believed. Gaining access to her world would not be as simple as it had been with the all-too-trusting Lindsay Robinson. Up against a professional PI, Teresa would be at a serious disadvantage, especially if she were forced to venture on to Heather Nelson’s home turf of Los Angeles.

  As if sensing her aggravation, one of her dogs perked up his ears and licked her hand.

  “Mama’s okay, Jax,” she soothed. “Lay back down.”

  Forcing herself to regroup, she dug Lindsay’s phone back out of the empty pizza box it had fallen into and studied Heather Nelson’s contact details. She wasn’t invincible—no one was. There had to be a way Teresa could get to her. She would travel to LA if she had to and take all the time she needed to acclimate herself to Heather Nelson’s world. Now that she knew the truth, she couldn’t let the monster escape justice. What Heather had done eclipsed even the magnitude of Lindsay’s betrayal with her father. She had caused Damien to wreck and then fled the scene, leaving him to die.

  Teresa squeezed her fingers into a fist. Her brother had been alive after the crash, but he hadn’t been found until early the next morning. Heather Nelson had had the power to save him. She could have placed an anonymous call and alerted the paramedics. But she’d chosen not to. She might as well have switched off his life support—what she’d done was equally egregious.

  Teresa picked at the stuffing spilling out from the seat cushion beneath her. And then there was the ugly lie Heather had told Lindsay about Damien raping her sister at a party—more likely he’d rejected her awkward advances. If there had been any truth to it, someone would have come knocking on their door that night. Teresa scowled at Heather’s contact photo on the phone. How dare she malign her brother’s memory with her lies!

  Exiting out of Lindsay’s contacts, Teresa perused her emails next. It didn’t take long before she discovered a lengthy back-and-forth thread about an upcoming twentieth high school reunion. Her lips curved into a satisfied smile when she spotted Heather Nelson’s name in the thread. She checked the other four names: Josh Halverson, Sydney McClintock, Reagan Evans, and Marco Romano—satisfied to see that they were all listed in Lindsay’s contacts. Apparently, the six of them had worked on the student council together in their senior year.

  As Teresa began reading their banter about high school memories, and their happy, successful lives, rage welled up inside her. They must have known all about Lindsay’s affair, but what had they done to stop her? Nothing! They’d likely been covering up for Heather all these years too. She ground her teeth in anger. She would punish them all. Every last one of them. They didn’t deserve the lives they had. As for Heather Nelson, posing as a crusader for justice all these years was a clever ploy for a murderer trying to appease her conscience. But Teresa would expose her for what she was when the time was right.

  Invigorated, she got to work extracting all the info she needed from Lindsay’s contacts and sharing it to her phone. Next, she combed through the emails and texts between the group and forwarded herself copies of everything pertinent to the reunion. When she was done, she sank back on the couch, absentmindedly rubbing Jax’s ears, a plan slowly coming together in her mind.

  She would begin with a surprise introduction at the high school reunion, a hint of what was to come—something to let them know that the crimes they had committed had not been forgotten. A floral arrangement would be in order: forget-me-knots. Symbolic, yet subtle. After that, she would begin to mess with their minds until they each suspected and distrusted the other. In the end, they would turn on Heather like a pack of rabid dogs.

  She would destroy their property, their livelihoods, their relationships—whatever it took to satisfy the burning thirst inside for revenge. Ultimately, she would eliminate the monster herself.

  “Game on, PI Nelson!” Teresa muttered under her breath. “Let’s see how the hunter fares when she’s being hunted.”

  35

  Present day

  Heather turned onto the dirt lane that led up to the remote farmhouse where Teresa lived. Her eyes swept the yard cluttered with old tires, broken pots, random piles of lumber, trash bags, and miscellaneous rusted appliances. There was no sign of Josh’s jeep, but that didn’t mean to say it wasn’t hidden in the barn that sat a hundred or so feet from the house. A frenzied barking greeted her as soon as she turned off her car. She sat quietly for several minutes, waiting to see if a pack of dogs would descend on her, all the while watching the house for any si
gn of Teresa—the faintest shadow at a window, or the twitch of a curtain, revealing her presence. Unzipping her backpack, she pulled out her utility knife and pocketed it before double checking her concealed weapon. She was under no illusions that she was going to be able to talk her way out of this situation. Teresa had already proven that she was extremely dangerous and unpredictable.

  After exiting her car, Heather cautiously approached the front door, keeping a careful eye out for anyone hiding in the trees surrounding the property. To her surprise, the door was ajar. Gingerly, she pushed it fully open, wincing as the splintered wood scraped over the cracked tile floor. It looked like the dogs had made a chew toy out of the door. “Teresa!” she called out. “Are you here? We need to talk.”

  Other than the nonstop barking coming from the back of the house, there was no response. As the dogs hadn’t launched themselves at her the minute she’d left the safety of her car, she figured they must be in a locked pen or fenced yard. Taking a quick, steadying breath, she stepped inside and began creeping along the hallway on high alert for a surprise attack. The house stank like a kennel that hadn’t been aired out in years. The kitchen was straight ahead, and to Heather’s right was another short hallway, piled high with boxes and random household items. She deliberated for only a second or two before turning and heading in that direction. Josh was most likely being kept in one of the bedrooms.

  She approached the first room and tried the handle. Inching the door open, she scanned the contents of the space: a jumble of dog pens, dirty blankets and ratty chew toys. Dog hair was matted everywhere, a thick layer embedded in the shabby carpet. Wrinkling her nose, Heather backed away and proceeded to the next door. Turning the handle, she found herself peering in at a filthy bathroom. She was about to pull the door closed again when she noticed a vial and a syringe lying on the sink. Heart racing, she stepped inside and read the label: acepromazine. After typing it into her phone, she glanced through the results that popped up. It was some type of sedative for animals—dangerous for humans. A chill traveled down her spine. If Teresa had used this on Josh, he was in dire need of medical attention—if it wasn’t already too late. Grimacing, Heather took a quick photo of the vial and hurriedly retreated from the room. There was no time to waste.