He's At Your Door: a gripping psychological thriller

by Alex Sinclair

  He could have been the world's best surgeon when he discovered my brother. It still wouldn't have saved the little guy from an induced coma the way the bullet had bounced off a bone in his chest to hit him in the skull. I shuddered anytime I thought about what that would have been like for my dad to find, considering the dozens of gunshot victims he had treated over the ten plus years of his career. I doubted he would ever be an EMT again.

  Despite knowing Tommy would never be the same, he did everything he could to help. My mother had told me that the responding EMTs had to pull Dad out of the way when they reached the scene. All the while, I was only a short distance away, celebrating the end of the semester with my friends instead of flying home to see my family.

  If it wasn't for me and my selfish attitude, Tommy would have still been alive, my mother would have never died of an overdose, and Dad wouldn't be a shell of a person who hid in his study day and night.

  I rarely saw my father come up for air from the tiny room. Back when things were normal, he kept the door open in that space and didn't mind being interrupted. The office was only supposed to be used for tasks like paying bills, organizing important paperwork for the family, or for Dad to do any extra medical studies his job often required.

  Now he lived in there, keeping it locked, with the curtains shut and the light off. I could see only the glare from his laptop under the crack of the door if I squinted hard enough. What he got up to in there was a mystery. But whatever it was, it didn't make us any money. It seemed to only drain his bank account even further.

  I'd been given access to most of his accounts to pay all the bills he was too distracted to handle. In fact, I took over taking care of the household. I cleaned, managed our funds, and made the meals all while trying to work as many hours as I could waitressing to keep money coming in.

  It would not be sufficient long term. I didn't make enough per hour to cover even half our expenses, and my tips were lousy. I figured it had something to do with my mood. My shifts never started with a smile, and I was often ready for a stiff drink by the end of a long day. Fortunately, my boss understood what my family had gone through and allowed me to keep working for him.

  The coffee shop only served an all-day breakfast and lunch, meaning I would get home before six if I did a full shift. After that many hours of public interaction, I was wiped out but still had to look after the house my dad had spent his time ignoring. He'd pile up his dishes in the sink, not tidy any crumbs left on the bench, and make a mess in the refrigerator. I could ask him nicely or yell until I was blue in the face for him to clean up after himself, but it wouldn't change his actions. He was not the parent I once knew.

  I'd spend a solid two hours each night cleaning and making sure everything was in order before I could relax and take a moment for myself. My parents had decided they'd had enough of being responsible adults the second we lost Tommy. My mother elected to drown her pain with alcohol and pills until she died while my dad stopped living. I had no choice but to pick up the slack and keep who was left in our family going. After several years though, the rut was becoming a deep trench.

  We'd fallen into a stalemate existence with no sign of reform coming soon. I couldn't leave my father like this without severe consequence. And to make things worse, none of our relatives lived close enough to offer more than a superficial bit of help. Our lives would not improve unless something drastic happened.

  Change came our way more than two years after someone killed Tommy. I counted his death to be the moment the bullet entered his tiny body and not six months later after we'd spent countless hours staring at what was left of him. He wasn't alive during that time. Modern medicine gave us false hope he was still in there.

  I remembered the night my dad emerged from the office a lot earlier than he ever would as if it were yesterday. He normally wouldn't emerge until midnight to stumble off to bed for a few hours of sleep before he'd rise at four or five in the early morning to start his day of darkness in the study again. This time, he charged straight up to me on the sofa as I attempted to focus on some terrible reality TV show.

  "I've done it," Dad said.

  "Done what?" I asked. I looked him up and down. His faded clothing was covered in stains. His long hair was a mess, and his stubble had reached a point of becoming a beard. Still, I was happy to be exchanging more than simple grunts of communication.

  He smiled at me as I switched the TV set off. "I've found him."

  "Found who?" I asked, wondering what level of crazy my question would generate.

  "The man in the gas station. The one who pulled the woman away after she shot Tommy. I've finally got him."

  Chapter 46

  Marie – Now

  My eyes dart from Toni to the backpack she has at her feet. There's a loaded gun inside, waiting to be utilized. Is she planning on executing me the second we're finished with whatever this is? Or will the revolver be her last resort to extract the confession out of me for a second time in one night?

  I don't know what I'll do if she jams that weapon in my face and threatens to pull the trigger. Death may seem like the better option over confessing my past again on camera, but I still value living too much to give up.

  The thought makes me think about the cell I attempted to destroy earlier tonight. I know it's also in the same backpack as the gun. I saw Toni pack it. Why would she do such a thing if it were broken and unusable? Too many questions swim around my brain as usual.

  "I'm sorry about all this," Toni says.

  My eyes land on hers, unsure what she means. Is she sorry for dragging me out in the car or for this whole ordeal she and her father have thrown upon me? I don't clarify, not wanting to upset things. Toni seems calmer now we are away from the house.

  "It's okay," I mutter.

  Toni gives me a flash of a smile as she plays with the second cell again. She spins the device around in her hand as if lost in thought.

  I know what she has planned for me. "This again," I say.

  "Yes, this again." Toni holds the phone tight and taps away.

  I hear the sound effect used to indicate a video is being recorded and realize Toni is planning on holding the spare cell. This can only be a good thing in my mind. With one arm otherwise occupied, she will be less capable of torturing me.

  "So, where were we?" she asks, picking up from our last conversation. I avoid her eyes for a moment and look out the window to see Steven smoking a cigarette in the distance. I wonder how long he's been craving that hit of nicotine. He doesn't come across as a smoker.

  "Has he always done that?" I ask Toni while I point a finger out the car.

  "What? Smoked? No. It started when the stress of trying to find a woman in witness protection got to be too much for him."

  "I'm sorry," I say. "I didn't mean to—"

  "It's fine. You didn't know."

  I honestly didn't. I couldn't smell it on his breath when I had him in my face multiple times, demanding I confess. He must have been holding out as long as he could.

  "Anyway, that's not why we're here," she says, making sure the camera is level.

  My heart flutters for a moment. Toni will do what is necessary to get this confession out of me. But I still have one move to play to stop that from happening. The problem is whether I can execute it or not.

  "What is your name?" she says ignoring me. It's the same question Steven tried on me.

  "Are you serious?" I blurt with a lack of control.

  "It's a simple question. Who are you?"

  "Karen Rainey," I say, certain she will punish me for using my WitSec profile again.

  "How about this: what is your real name?"

  Her eyes lock onto mine like a guided missile while her brow narrows in, ready for a verbal assault should I answer in a manner that won't please her.

  "Well? What is it?"

  "Marie. Marie Williams. That's my actual name."

  "Was that so hard? Now tell me, Marie, where you are from? Where did you
grow up?"

  "Chino, California." The words fall out of my mouth. This is what she wants.

  "Good. So, what brings you all the way out here then? Seems a bit far away from home."

  Before the gas station, I lived in Norwalk, California. It wasn't far from where I grew up and gave me access to everything Los Angeles could offer. After spending a year in a WitSec house in Palm Springs, unable to contact a single person I knew, Dustin told me he got me a place in Phoenix, Arizona that would be ideal to lie low in for a few years.

  I never wanted to move to Arizona. Being out of Cali only made me miss Chino more so than I already had. Every day I think about the dairy farms that were beautifully interspersed between the industrial areas and the dense urban sprawl. Sure, Phoenix is only a short flight away from home, but it's not the same when the people you once knew all think you are dead.

  "Well?" Toni asks.

  I shrug, coming back to her question. She knows why I'm out here. "The same reason you and your dad are out here." I study her eyes and don't see a reaction. She is doing well to contain herself. Do I keep pushing?

  "We'll get back to that one. How about you tell me what you do for work then? Do you have a job?"

  "Three. At least I had three. Not so sure they'll still be there for me after today though."

  Toni ignores my remark and continues, guilt free. "And what were these jobs?"

  "I am, or was, a VA. A Virtual Assistant. I managed emails, schedules, and so on for a few executives who needed someone to do the tasks they couldn't be bothered doing."

  "And you did this from home?"

  I let my breath come out of my flaring nostrils. "Yes, from home. From my study as you know. Or as Beth did."

  The mention of the name Beth causes a slight twitch in Toni's face, but she continues. "So you live far away from where you grew up and earn money doing a job that a person could perform from their home. Correct?"

  "Yes. Is there a point to all of this?"

  Toni doesn't budge an inch. "I'm just establishing who you are."

  "So you can get my confession and put it online for the world to digest, right?"

  Silence.

  "Am I right?" I ask.

  "Don't you want the people to understand the real you? Wouldn't you prefer to give them a chance to find out that what you did was an accident?"

  I shift backward in the seat to the car window. She hadn't believed me when I told her the shooting was an accident. Is this a trick? Or is she defending my actions? What game is she playing?

  "Well?"

  I struggle to speak. My throat feels like it won't open, so I try to clear it.

  "Marie?"

  "Yes," I blurt. "I want them to know, to understand, I never, in a thousand years, meant for it to happen."

  "Meant for what to happen?" Toni asks, leaning in.

  I close my eyes and feel the torment stirring within. My answer wants to come out to be recorded on camera for the world to see, but in the same moment, I consider all the hatred that will forever fly in my direction. I have to focus on the plan.

  She gets in closer again, placing one arm on my shoulder. "You can do this, Marie. Think of how liberating it will be to let the truth out."

  I nod to her. "You're right," I say, closing my eyes for a second. All the while, my hands have been inching over to my pocket as one. Toni is leaning over me, her neck exposed. All I need to do is grab out the tiny blade I still have in my possession and plunge it deep into her throat. By the time she realizes what has happened, I can get to the gun in the backpack and shoot her father outside as he draws on his final cigarette.

  "Marie?" Toni says, pulling me from my dark fantasy. I gaze into her eyes and see her little brother staring back at me. As much as I want to survive, to escape this hell, I can't be the one to bring any more harm to the Price family.

  Can I?

  Chapter 47

  Toni – Then

  Dad typed away on his laptop, preparing to show me something I had a feeling would only make me nauseous. I didn't want to pursue some criminal friend of the woman who killed Tommy. My only focus was to keep our heads above water—a task I was barely achieving on a good day.

  Dad swiveled his computer around in my direction. My mouth fell open and got covered by my hand when I saw what appeared to be security footage from the gas station where Tommy got shot. I slammed my eyes shut. "You're not going to show me—"

  "It's okay. You won't see him. I cropped Tommy out of the image."

  "Are you sure? I don't want to look at it ever. Do you understand?"

  "Of course I do. Do you think I wanted to experience this? Watching my boy—your brother—be shot on some grainy surveillance camera just so we could find this guy?"

  I slowly opened my eyes, lowering my hand aside from my face. "I'm sorry, Dad. I can only imagine how horrible that must have been."

  He shook his head and glanced at the screen in thought. "It's like falling into your worst nightmare without having a way to wake up again."

  I grabbed his elbow to bring him back from whatever dark place his mind had slipped to. "Show me who this guy is. That's why we're watching this, right?"

  "Yeah," he said, anger brewing. Dad paused for a moment longer and played the footage to me. I saw the woman who shot Tommy kneeling down at the end of an aisle moments before a man rushed in through the front door of the store. His eyes stopped on where Tommy's body would be only for a moment until he noticed the woman. Anger swelled in my core as I watched her be aided out of the gas station in a rush while Tommy laid wounded off screen.

  "Who is this piece of crap?" I asked.

  "Zachary Sanchez. He's a wanted criminal. A bank robber to be specific."

  "A bank robber? Are you serious?"

  "Deadly so. He's connected to more than a dozen robberies across the state of California alone."

  "So where is he now?"

  "United States Penitentiary, Florence, Colorado."

  "Prison?" I asked, standing up and away from the tablet. I'd seen enough. "What are you talking about?"

  "He's in a federal penitentiary. Specifically, he's locked up within a supermax unit serving a life sentence. Apparently, since he went inside, he turned violent and killed his cellmate. They had to transfer him to this hellhole to keep him contained."

  I gawked at Dad with my mouth open.

  "You wouldn't believe the trouble I had getting this information."

  My hands landed on my hips. "You didn't do anything illegal, did you?"

  "Don't worry, okay? All I did was pay the right people. It's just security footage after all."

  I held my pose and watched his eyes. "Fine. But promise me you won't do something stupid and get locked up yourself. I can't lose you as well."

  "Hey, come on." Dad pulled me in for a hug, "I'm not going anywhere ever. You're stuck with me, kiddo."

  I squeezed him tight, wishing we weren't bothering with all of this, but at the same time I was starting to understand why Dad was so obsessed with finding the truth.

  "So," Dad said, drawing away. "Seeing as they locked Zach up in a supermax, it makes us meeting him a little challenging."

  "What do you mean? Like, if we went in as visitors?"

  "Yep. These prisoners aren't as accessible as your average inmate. I've also heard that a guard will listen in on the conversation."

  "So what do we do? He obviously has information on the woman in the video."

  "Exactly. That's what makes this so damn frustrating. It's like she disappeared that night and only he knows why. I swear she's a ghost."

  I paced about the carpet of the dining room, trying my hardest not to bite my nails. "Maybe she's dead."

  Dad's brow screwed up at my suggestion.

  "Well, think about it. She shot a kid inside a gas station and forced Zachary—a bank robber—to rush in and have his face recorded on a security camera. He probably drove her out to the desert and killed her. I'll bet it's one of the charges he's
facing."

  Dad closed the recording and pulled up a document on the tablet. "According to this, there are only two major bank robbery charges against him that the courts could convict him on. They ignored every other felony or crime he committed on the outside because of a lack of compelling evidence. He did, however, kill his cellmate after his trial. So it's not impossible to assume he might have killed her. If only, right?"

  "Are you serious?" I asked, certain I didn't hear him.

  "Just talking out loud. I know it's not right to wish she were dead, but some days the thought of it gets me through."

  A minute of silence clouded the air between us. I'd never seen this side of my father before. Worried for his mental health, I continued the conversation.

  "Okay then. The two robberies he got charged for. What happened? Was he sloppy?"

  "Not at all. They were textbook and perfect like the rest. But there was something each had in common that the feds used to bring him down."

  I shrugged.

  "Each case had a female eyewitness who pretended to be a customer of the bank. They robbed the banks alongside Zachary. Both women weren't a normal part of his operation. Can you guess who one of these people was?"

  I stared at the table for a moment in thought until it hit me. "The woman who shot Tommy?"

  "The very same. I have the names of both girls who testified against Zachary Sanchez. They got kept from the public record, but after a bit of digging I found them."

  I felt a mix of excitement and terror flood my stomach. "What are their names?"

  "Rose Melton and Marie Williams. Both are now in lower levels of witness protection."

  My eyes narrowed. "You're kidding. How can they have been witnesses if they were a part of the robbery?"

  "Neither handled a weapon or gave any orders. They simply kept a lookout and watched the bank managers via secret signals. It's all been caught on security footage."