“In that case, I have a surprise for you,” Dom said, laughing. “This is so great! I wasn’t going to tell you this before I killed you, but since you are the second to last person I will ever kill, I think I’ll have my fun.”
Dom went and got more rope and tied Jenny to the couch.
“Now don’t go away, you hear? I’ll be right back with your surprise!”
Dom left the house and Jenny closed her eyes. The pain in her leg was excruciating, as was the pain in her side and face from the kicks and his fist. She wanted to kill herself rather than have him finish the job, but had no way to accomplish it. She was at the killing mercy of Dom. Five minutes later, she heard the door open and she opened her eyes. It was him.
“Are you ready for your surprise?” he asked and before Jenny could comprehend what was happening, he reached down beside the door and grabbed something and dragged it into the room. At first, Jenny wasn’t sure what it was. Then she finally figured out what the object was. It was a man. A beaten, destroyed, and damaged man, but nevertheless, a man. He was covered from head to toe in mud. His hair was matted and full of grass and twigs. He had leaves and branches stuck to his body and there were places that the red crimson blood pushed its way through the mud as it oozed from wounds all over the man’s body. His right arm was twisted at an odd angle and it just hung there. Jenny thought she could make out the bone jutting out of the skin. His right leg was equally as bad. The man was naked except for a pair of briefs stained the color of death.
Jenny wasn’t sure who this person was of if he was even alive. She felt sorry for the poor soul and she wished she could take away his suffering. Finally the broken figure spoke. It was barely a whisper, but Jenny knew immediately who it was.
“Jenny…” he whispered. “Jenny, I’m sorry I let you down.”
There was no mistaking the voice. It was Dom.
“And you both thought he was crazy,” the madman sneered. “I’m going to tell you both a little story. I’m telling you this to further the pain, to further the suffering that you are both going through. I want you to relive all of the pain you’ve already lived through once, Dom. I want you to suffer one last time, to end the lifetime of suffering that I have dedicated my life to make sure you had.”
Dom stared into Jenny’s eyes, his heart breaking. Their eyes did not leave each other’s. His eyes apologized again for not being there to protect her. With her eyes, Jenny told Dom how much she loved him, how sorry she was for doubting him and how she wanted their souls to spend eternity together. They did not break eye contact during the story they were to hear next. They wanted to spend their last minutes together, even if together was only through eye contact.
“I was eight years old,” the doppelgänger began. “I lived with two people that called themselves my parents. I was a happy little kid. Nothing could ever be wrong with my world. After I turned nine, my parents took me on a vacation with them to Phoenix, Arizona. It was a big city, new to me, and I was in awe over it. After all, I came from a small town in Iowa.
“I stared out the window of the car as we were driving one day and I saw that we were passing a mortuary. My curiosity being what it was, I looked to see anything that I could see. We stopped at a red light, so I had a couple of minutes to watch. That was when I saw myself walk out of the mortuary. Only it wasn’t me, it was you!” He pointed at Dom, a hatred in his eyes.
“I didn’t say anything to anyone, but all I could think about was seeing myself. I was perplexed and disturbed. I felt lied to. I waited until my parents took me to the hotel and when they went out for a swim, I made a phone call. I called the mortuary to find out who had died. I was told that a Jerry and Betty Maxwell had died. I was intrigued, but I didn’t have all of the facts.
“When we got home, I rode my bike to the public library one day after school and started looking for articles that would give me the information I was so hungry for. It was there that it started. I unburied the truth. The truth was that my whole life had been a lie. The obituary for your parents listed you, your brother and sister as survivors. I had to find out who you were.
“Your parents actually died by accident. It was not like all of the others. But you had no idea what it did to me. I knew my birth date, so I looked up birth announcements for around my date of birth in the newspaper archives. There I found a listing for twin boys being born to one woman. I was perplexed. If I was born at the same time as you were, by the same mother, why did I have different parents?
“Over the next few years, I dug up the truth. Your parents were not expecting twins when your mother was pregnant with you. When they gave birth to you and realized that there was two of us, your parents were not prepared for it. Their plan was to have one more child and be done with it and when they found out about me, they decided that they could not let me inconvenience them, or their lives, so they immediately put me up for adoption. I never even got to come home with you. No one knew but the people at the hospital, and of course the people that adopted me, my parents.
“My parents never told me I was adopted. The entire time, I thought I was their son. When I finally put all of the information together, I felt the loss that I had suffered. The mom and dad that I should have had didn’t want me. They only wanted you. You selfishly kept them for yourself and then you let them die. I never got to see them, visit them or love them.
“The impostors that called themselves my parents made the situation worse. All that time, they had been pretending that I was theirs, but I really wasn’t. They had to be punished, so one night while they were sleeping, I started the house on fire. They never made it out alive.
“I was never suspected when they saw my little act of grief. I was put into foster care where I stayed until I ran away a few months later. Somehow, I fell through the cracks and eventually, they forgot about me.
“I could never forgive you for keeping my parents away from me. I could never forgive you for taking them and not letting me share in their lives. You took them, hogged them, and then let them die before I ever got to be their son. You took away any chance I had at a happy, normal life.
“My life was shit from then on, so I made myself a promise. I decided that the only way to avenge myself was to make your life miserable by taking away everyone you ever loved. But this is the ultimate, the grand finale. I decided long ago that my final payback was going to be killing the first woman you ever fell in love with, in front of you, and then finally, after all of these years, killing you. This day, I have worked for all of my life. I thought you would never meet anyone that you would fall in love with. But the day is here. Now is the time for my ultimate payback!”
Looking down at his two victims with a satisfaction like no other, he pulled the gun out of the waistband of his pants.
“It’s a shame to spoil such a lovely piece of meat,” he laughed as he leveled the gun at her head.
Dom called out to Jenny as he heard the sound of the gun go off. He couldn’t bear to look and so he closed his eyes as he heard the blast. His life was over. He started to cry as he waited for the next bullet to pierce his skull. Instead, he heard shouting.
Dom opened his eyes and saw his brother crumpled on the floor, blood flowing out of a hole in his head. Not daring to hope, but not being able to withhold from looking any longer, he glanced at Jenny. She was alive. The shot he heard was the shot that took out his brother.
Glancing towards the door, he saw Kent Perry enter the house with five uniformed officers. The look on Kent Perry’s face was a look of shock as he saw the ruined, broken man lying on the floor.
“Dom?” he asked.
“Present,” Dom whispered.
“Who in God’s name is this?” Kent asked as he turned the corpse over with his foot.
“Long story,” Dom said. “Do you have a frigging ambulance coming, because we both could use one pretty bad.”
“There are two on the way,” Kent said.
He went over to Jenny and ungagged her
and untied her.
“Hang tight you two. They’ll be here shortly.”
Dom could hear sirens in the distance. He knew they would be all right. In time. Dom called out to Jenny with what little strength he had left.
“Are you okay, Jenny? I was so scared that it was you he killed.”
“I was scared too,” she said. “I’ll make it, I’m just glad you’ll be around to share it with me.”
“Me too, Baby,” Dom agreed. “Hey Perry?” he yelled to the best of his ability.
“Yeah Dom?” Kent Perry asked.
“I think you owe me an apology, you asshole!”
Kent Perry smiled. “Indeed I do,” he agreed with an embarrassed look on his face.
Outside, the sirens stopped and Dom saw the paramedics rush in. That was when he let himself slip into unconsciousness.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The city fell behind them as they made their way down the highway. Previously, their flight across the state had been out of necessity. This time, things were different. Things would actually never be the same, but Dom didn’t feel that was unnecessarily a bad thing.
Glancing over at Jenny, he felt the same feelings that he had felt four months earlier when he had walked into the gas station. The same, only stronger. He watched the rise and fall of her chest as she slept in the passenger seat of the Jeep. He adored her and wished he had an adequate way of showing her. His breath catching in his lungs, he smiled and turned his attention back to the road.
The road for them had not been an easy one. They had endured many obstacles and had overcome all of them. After the brutal attack in Strawberry, many questions had been answered, yet many more unanswered questions seemed to replace them. Thankfully, between their statements and the information that the rest of the investigation unturned, Dom and Jenny were cleared of anything to do with Nina’s murder. The other charges were not as easy to dismiss, however, because of the guilt that Kent Perry felt for his role that set the chain of events in motion, he was extremely instrumental in minimizing the damage.
Because the owners of the dune buggy felt sorry for Dom after hearing his story, they decided not to press charges. The owner was satisfied that he got his dune buggy back and the matter was dropped.
As far as the burglary of Spy Headquarters, no one ever tied it to Jenny or Dom, so it never became an issue. The gun that Jenny had stolen from the parked car was associated with Dom’s brother since he had used it to shoot Jenny, and it was officially noted that he and Jenny had nothing to do with the gun’s disappearance. Dom was happy that the dead did not talk.
The one thing that Kent Perry could not make go away was the jail break and the assault on the police officers. There were too many others involved and too many witnesses. Jenny and Dom were charged, but based upon their story, they were offered a plea bargain. They both pleaded “no contest” and both received a suspended sentence and probation.
The legal ramifications were not the only obstacles they both had to face. Dom had been hospitalized for two weeks and Jenny for three days. Both had slowly healed over the past four months, although Dom was still not one hundred percent.
Jenny and Dom had not been apart one day since they first met. Jenny stayed at the hospital with him after she was released. She immediately moved in with him as soon as he was also released. Dom quit his job at the electronics store and they spent their days together. With all of the things that had to be taken care of over the past few months, Dom didn’t have the time to be working.
Physical healing was not the only healing that took place. Mental healing was hard for both Dom and Jenny with everything that had happened to both of them. Dom had attended a few counseling sessions to help him with his grief, however, the biggest healing element in his life was Jenny’s love and support.
Many things had changed as the days and weeks passed. Dom was introduced to Jenny’s parents. After they heard the entire story, they opened up their home to Dom and accepted him as family. He was so thankful to once again have a family. A family he knew that he would not lose this time.
Dom and Jenny had put the house up for sale. It sold two months after they listed it and it had just closed a couple of days before. Although Dom loved his house, he felt it was time for a new chapter of his life. The past was painful and he did not want to dwell on it or be constantly reminded of it.
He thought about the stop they had made an hour before. The look of shock on the man’s face was incredible. Dom had always been a person that liked to make others happy, however, he hadn’t realized how happy the man was going to be when he pulled the Cadillac into the empty driveway and rang the bell. The man was speechless as Dom handed him the keys to his Cadillac.
Dom thought about what lay ahead for him and Jenny. The house was sold, his Toyota was sold, and the Arizona landscape was soon going to be behind them. He and Jenny had decided to embark on a new journey to celebrate their life together. They had decided to move to a small coastal town named Florence, Oregon. With all of their belongings already on a moving truck that was headed in that direction, Dom and Jenny would join their possessions shortly and start their new life. Jenny wanted to open a small store near the ocean. Dom would help run the business, however, he had decided on a new hobby. His life had been such a strange adventure that he decided to write a book about it.
Dom glanced at Jenny again as he drove north. He could not wait to start their new life and leave the past behind. He was so fortunate to have such a beautiful, loving woman in his life. Life had been one tragedy after another for him before and now, life was completely different. He was complete.
Dom reached over and placed his hand on Jenny’s abdomen. She was barely showing. In six months, there would be one more person in the world whom Dom loved and who loved him unconditionally. He couldn’t help but hope that the little girl growing inside Jenny would look just like her.
About the Author
R.E. Sargent, the author of Relative Terror, lives in Oregon with his wife, Sandi and their two fur children, Mason, a Bernese Mountain Dog, and Riley, a Chocolate Lab.
Correspondence to the author should be addressed to any of the following:
R.E Sargent
P.O. Box 637
Newberg, Oregon 97132
Facebook.com/r.e.sargentofficial
You may also contact the author through his website – www.resargent.com
Publisher Feedback
If you would like to contact the publisher of this book to make a comment or report an issue, please send your comments to [email protected].
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