by Vakey, Jenn
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Ben asked as he pulled the car onto the road. “I mean, are you sure you’re actually going to be able to sit back and wait for backup if we get there and you see him?”
She wanted to be able to give him an instant answer, but she found herself needing to actually consider it. More times than she could count, she pictured what she would do if she ever came face to face with her former partner. Not a single one of them involved sitting back and waiting for backup to arrive. On the other hand, she knew that she didn’t have jurisdiction to bring him in.
“I can restrain myself,” she said, but she wasn’t entirely certain that he was convinced. She had a feeling, though, that it was due to the fact that she hadn’t convinced herself. “You know I have to be there. After this long, I have to see it for myself, otherwise I don’t know if it’ll feel real.”
He nodded and they drove the rest of the way in silence.
The trees, a thin layer of frost coating their branches, were swaying soothingly from the gentle breeze. The way they moved seemed to almost hypnotize her. It was surprisingly relaxing.
Before she realized it, Ben was pulling off the road. He reached over her and pulled open the glove box, removing a white piece of paper before opening his door and stepping out.
“What’s that?” she asked as she watched him rolled down the window.
“If you’re ever having car problems and have to leave your car on the side of the road, you leave a white cloth or paper rolled up in your window so other cars know your car is in trouble and to go around,” he said as he rolled the window back up, securing it in place. “It’ll make it look like the car simply broke down in case he happens to pass it. If they’re paranoid, which I imagine they could be, it might set off some flags if a car was just parked on the side of the road close to their property. It’s either this or take off the tire and set the jack up, but I think that might be taking it a little too far.”
Rilynne chuckled to herself as she walked through the tree line toward the sound of the trickling stream. Once they found it, it only took about fifteen minutes to work their way up to the edge of the tree line surrounding the cabin.
It was just as Rilynne had seen it in her vision, down to the smoke swirling carelessly from the chimney. When they found a large bush that would both provide adequate cover and a clear view of the front porch, Rilynne reached for her phone.
“What are you doing?” Ben asked softly.
“Sending Byman a message to let him know we’re here,” she said. She had no sooner finished the message and slid the phone back into her pocket when she heard the creak of the front door opening. Her heart nearly jumped from her chest, but plummeted back when she saw only the end of a broom push out of the door. After being slammed several times onto the deck, it was pulled back in, the door closing behind it.
She looked over to Ben and found that he looked nearly as let down as she was. “I thought for a second that we were going to be lucky and that would be it,” he said when he caught her looking.
“I won’t lie,” she replied, lowering herself down onto the small log right below them, “I did, too. Nothing on this case has come easy, though, so why would that. I’m just hoping we don’t end up having to sit out here all night.”
“Hey, it’s my first stake out,” he said with a grin. “It wouldn’t have counted at all if it was over as soon as we got here. At least they don’t have a dog. It would have been near impossible to remain hidden out here if they had let it out.”
Rilynne glanced over at him suspiciously. “How do you know they don’t have a dog?” she asked.
“I’m psychic,” he said with a grin. His comment, though undoubtedly an innocent remark, left her stomach in knots. She raised her eyebrow and forced a smile on her face, attempting to hide its effects. “When you went out to call Wooldridge, Byman called the clinic to see if either Victoria or Mike Wilson had any known pets.”
“Smart,” she replied.
“We both knew you’d suggest we sit on the house, and that’s pretty hard to do if there’s a yapping dog around.”
She nodded gently, returning her gaze to the front door. “I’m actually surprised they don’t,” she stated a few moments later. “Sarah loves dogs. Christopher kept trying to convince me to let her take ours, but I wouldn’t hear of it.”
“He didn’t like dogs?” Ben asked.
She tilted her head slightly to the side. “He loved dogs, he just didn’t like mine. He wasn’t very pleased with me when I brought her home.”
“What happened to her?” he asked.
“After Christopher was killed, I started spending most of my time at work. It wasn’t fair to her, so I gave her to a family who lived down the street with a couple kids. Last I heard, she had a litter of puppies and they agreed to allow the children to keep one of them for her,” she explained.
They sat staring at the house for close to an hour before the front door swung open again. Rilynne jumped up to her feet, careful not to let her head stick out above the top of the bush as she strained her eyes to see who had pushed it open. As she did, a woman appeared with a squirming bundle in her arms. Though her hair had been dyed blonde, and she was carrying a few pounds more than the last time she had seen her, there was no doubt in her mind that the woman walking out onto the deck was Sarah.
“Is that her?” Ben asked, leaning forward to get a better look himself. Rilynne nodded, her eyes shifting to the source of the faint crying that was being carried by the breeze toward them. Sarah had been just a few months pregnant when Christopher had died, and Rilynne had only seen her a handful of times since. The look of joy that now sat on her face left Rilynne with an almost unbearable sickening feeling.
Before she could respond to it, though, a tall man walked out of the cabin behind her and took the fussing child from her arms. He bounced the pink bundle slightly as he walked up and down the length of the deck, apparently trying to soothe her. After just a few moments, the cried stopped, along with it Rilynne’s breath. She felt the color leave her face as her jaw dropped.
“Rilynne,” Ben whispered as wrapped his hand gently around her arm. “Rilynne, what is it?”
She thought that she must have been dreaming, because she couldn’t really be seeing what was right there in front of her. As the man handed the baby back to Sarah and walked back toward the front door, she felt a surge of anger rush through her.
“Is that him?” Ben asked in a hushed tone.
“That walk,” she muttered at she tried to make sense of what had just happened. “I know that walk. That’s his walk.”
When she didn’t move, Ben reached for the phone that was peeking out of her back pocket. Before dialing, he took one last look at the confused expression sitting on her face.
“Detective Byman,” she heard him say. “We’re going to need back up at the cabin. He’s here,” he said. “Yes, we’ll wait.”
She didn’t take her eyes off of the door, even when Ben informed her backup would be arriving in about thirty minutes.
“I can’t believe he’s still here,” he muttered in disbelief. “He doesn’t look anything like his picture, though. I guess he must have…”
“No,” she cut him off before he could continue. “No.” She had so many thoughts running through her mind at one time, but she couldn’t seem to verbalize any of them.
Her urge to explain things to Ben was surpassed by the desire to find the truth herself. Though she knew she should, she had to get the answers she was looking for and couldn’t wait for the others to arrive. She reached down to her ankle and grabbed her backup gun. She pulled her eyes away from the cabin and turned toward Ben. “Take this,” she said as she handed him the gun. “Stay here and wait for Byman to arrive.”
“Rilynne, no. You can’t go in there alone,” he argued. “You know that we’re supposed to wait for backup. You’ll have your chance to talk to Mifflin. Right now, you need…”
“No.
” She didn’t let him finish. “That isn’t Mifflin.” She stood up without another word, leaving him with a dumbfounded expression.
The moment Sarah stepped into the door, she began making her way toward the cabin. Her insides jumped with every step she took, but the building rage within her kept her moving.
Before she knew it, she had reached the gate, then the steps, and finally she found the door just inches in front of her.
She watched her hand pull up and knock, though it wasn’t something she seemed to be in control of. As the door swung open, the last bit of hope that her eyes were just fooling her disappeared.
The man standing in front of her no longer had the neatly combed brunette hair that she remembered. It was now almost black and several inches longer than she had ever seen it, and his face was half hidden behind a thick beard. There was no denying the eyes, though.
He seemed to be as speechless as she suddenly found herself as he stared down at her in apparent disbelief. His eyes left her and swept quickly across the yard before returning, but the fact that she appeared to be alone seemed to provide no comfort.
“Uh, how…” he trailed off.
“Quite accidentally, believe it or not.” She cocked her head slightly to the side as she fought off the urge to deliver a punch to his now pale face. So many questions ran through her head at once, but she seemed to only be able to get one thing out.
“Hello, Christopher.”
Chapter Fourteen
He didn’t respond, but instead took a step back into the room. As he did, he looked side to side in the room, as if looking for a way out.
“Don’t even think about it,” she said as she followed him into the cabin, careful to leave the door open behind her. “Where’s your sister?” she asked, keeping her hand consciously over the gun on her hip.
He backed into the side of the sofa before resigning to the fact that she was really there, and he had nowhere to go.
“You look good, Rye,” he said as he folded his arms in front of him.
“Don’t,” she said firmly. “Where’s your sister?”
“She’s upstairs giving the baby a bath,” he replied. “You don’t have to do this, Rye. You can just walk away and pretend that this didn’t happen.”
She let out an involuntary laugh. “Pretend that what didn’t happen, exactly?” she asked, the anger inside of her starting to build again. “Pretend that I didn’t find you, or pretend that nothing that has happened over the last few years was real? I don’t understand, Christopher. There’s so much that I don’t understand about this, so don’t think for a second that I would even consider pretending that this never happened.” She didn’t realize that she was yelling until she saw the startled look on his face.
“I know you’re mad, but can’t we talk about this? Do you really want to uproot everything that you have now by stirring all of this up again? I hear that you’ve started a new life, and are living in Texas now.”
“I heard you were dead,” she snapped at him. “Wow, catching up has been great, but why don’t we start with the important stuff, like what the hell happened nineteen months ago?”
“Well,” he started, but before he could go on, she felt a sudden pain spread across the back of her head and everything went black.
When the room came back into view in front of her, she was no longer standing in front of the door, but sitting on the floor at the back of the room. She made a motion to stand back up, but when she tried to push her hands down to support herself, she found they had been tied to a pipe coming out of the antique oven.
“Are you sure she’s alone?” she heard a woman’s voice coming from the other side of the room. She looked over to find Sarah peering out of the window, frying pan in hand.
“You hit me with a frying pan?” Rilynne asked with a vague amused note in her voice. “I didn’t think that anyone other than cartoon characters actually used them to attack people. You were always a bit of a character yourself, though. It says a lot about a person when they’re willing to hit someone from behind.”
Sarah seemed almost amused by the situation laid out in front of her. “I would say that of the two of us, I’m definitely on top. I’m not the one tied up on the floor.”
“Shut the door, Sarah,” Christopher demanded as he pulled a chair from the table over to where Rilynne was seated. Sarah looked affronted, but complied. She stuck her head out and looked around, apparently checking to make sure that Rilynne was truly alone before pushing it closed. “Go back upstairs with the baby. I want some alone time with our guest.” As she did, he leaned down and ran his hand down the front of Rilynne’s shirt.
“Don’t touch me!” she exclaimed as she tried to pull away.
“I’m just checking for wires,” he responded as he made it around her upper body. He paused briefly to admire the bruise on her side before lowering her shirt back down. “Do you honestly think that if I had backup with me, they would have just sat back while you knocked me out and tied me up?” If he agreed with her logic, he didn’t show it because he continued his search. When he seemed satisfied, he sat back in the chair and folded his arms.
“No phone?” he asked, looking at her curiously. “If memory serves, you never went anywhere without a phone.”
“I…” she paused before remembering Ben had taken if from her pocket. He must not have given it back. “I dropped it when I was hiking this weekend and it broke. I’m still waiting for a replacement.” He didn’t seem to believe her story, but didn’t question her about it further. “You aren’t planning on letting me go, are you?” she asked a few tense moments later.
“I took great care to cover our tracks the first time, and you still found me. If I let you go, there’ll be a nationwide manhunt before I even make it out of the state. I have to do what’s necessary in order to protect my family,” he responded coldly.
Rilynne looked up at him, trying to read the look on his face. She was hoping he was just bluffing, but the look he now had told her he wasn’t.
“I want to know what the hell is going on here,” Rilynne said as she struggled against the restraints. “I saw the blood, there was too much blood for anyone to survive. And what about Mifflin? Was he in on this with you, or…” She trailed off as the pieces slowly started to fall into place. “The body,” she said, anger growing again. “The body found in the woods was wearing your clothes. All of the teeth had been removed, so we had to rely on the blood from the clothes for identification. Ben said that he found a second set of DNA on them, but I assumed that Mifflin had just transferred it onto you when he killed you. You killed him, didn’t you?”
He didn’t answer her, but the look on his face said enough. The rage was now bubbling within her as she thrashed to free herself. “You bastard!” she yelled as she swung her leg out, trying her best to catch him with it, before finally giving up and sitting back up.
“What happened to you?” she asked out of utter disbelieve.
He seemed almost amused by her question, but again he didn’t give her an answer.
“You’re going to kill me anyway,” she snapped. “Why not tell me what I want to hear first. What happened that night? How was Mifflin involved?”
He looked down at her, the smile on his face growing even larger.
“Tell me,” she insisted. “I think that I deserve to know.”
“What’s to know,” he said, finally speaking. “I decided to start over, so I did.”
“What about Mifflin?” she asked. She knew that if she stalled him, her backup would arrive. More than anything, though, she didn’t want to have to wait to learn the truth. “It was his body that was discovered this week, wasn’t it? You didn’t need him anymore so you killed him?”
He chuckled as he pulled his arms up behind his head. “Poor Lamar,” he grinned. “You should have seen the look on his face when he bumped into me that day. He had just left the hospital after visiting you, and was actually on his way to a flower shop to pick somet
hing up for you. It didn’t take much to get him into the car.”
Though he stopped there, Rilynne could picture how the rest of it played out.
“Did you kill the girl, too?” she asked, kicking her leg toward him again out of anger. “Did you kill Melissa Roberts? Or…” she trailed off again, already knowing the answer before he could answer. “It was you,” she continued. “You were having an affair with her, not Mifflin. So, where is she? She’s here too, I’m guessing. Out running errands in town?”
“Are you figuring all of this out the old fashioned way, or are you using that little ‘skill’ of yours?” His tone was so hateful that she would have never believed it could have come from him if she hadn’t heard it herself.
“That’s one thing I don’t understand,” she replied. “You must have known there was a chance that I would see something that would lead me to you. Why take such a big risk? Wouldn’t it have just been easier to file for divorce if you wanted out? Instead, you murder a cop, and you tried to kill me. You must have been so disappointed when I survived.”
For the first time, she detected a note of tenderness in his eyes. “It was never my intention to kill you,” he stated. “I was supposed to be long gone before you came home. I just did what I had to do when you walked in on me.”
“I still don’t understand, Chris. Why wouldn’t you just leave? If you wanted to be with Melissa Roberts, the two of you could have just left and started over together, you didn’t need to go to such extremes.”
“It’s simple,” he said dryly. “What better way to start over than with two million dollars?”
“You knew that I’ve always had trouble seeing things when I’m emotional,” she said. “You were counting on that, weren’t you?”
As she said it, the room disappeared in front of her.
“We can’t do this.” Melissa had tears rolling down her cheeks. “He’ll kill me if I try to leave him.”
Christopher reached out and embraced her. “I won’t let him anywhere near you,” he said in the soothing voice Rilynne remembered well. “I have a plan, and we’ll be free of them forever.”
