Toni's eyes light up as she sees the half-broken blade.
"You forgot about this, didn't you."
She stares at the knife. "Yes."
Fumbling a little, I slip the weapon backward into the small gap between my hands while still holding the gun. It's not an easy task, but I manage to free myself. A moment later, I work my legs loose. "Much better," I say, feeling like a fresh breeze has blown through the car.
"How could I forget the knife?" Toni asks me. "I assumed you threw it aside."
"Don't beat yourself up. We all make mistakes. Now hold out your hands." I jab the revolver at her. Toni does as she's told, the same way she did when she was pretending to be her father's captive. I carry the gun back in one hand as she turns her head from me. After a fumble, I restrain her wrists forward as tightly as possible.
"Much better. Keep up appearances. Don't let on that matters have changed to your father out there, got it?"
"Okay. No problem. And we can continue talking. There's no need for things to end badly. After all, I just wanted to chat to you and nothing more."
I shake my head, stopping myself from laughing. "You're kidding, right? All you've ever wanted from me is this damn confession, like little else in the world matters. That reminds me." I reach down to the floor of the car and retrieve the cell Toni dropped in the fight for the gun. The video is still recording everything we've been saying. I hit stop and then delete the file. Then, I go into the trash folder and destroy it for a second time before ensuring there's no cloud backup associated with the phone. All that's left to do is to smash the phone in case someone takes it to a recovery specialist, but I'll worry about that later. I still need the device to make an important call.
Toni mutters under her breath and looks out to her distracted father.
"Hey, eyes forward. You didn't think I would forget that this thing was recording, did you?"
She chuckles to herself, half losing it. "Part of me wished you would, but I knew it was only a matter of time."
I grip the cell tight in my hand, hoping to God it has credit on it. I need to make one call, and it's not to the police. If I request the cops now without having Steven under control, he might fight the responding officers and end up in a shootout that could see me shot dead as a result. The only person I want helping me through this situation is Deputy US Marshal Dustin Taylor, and I have his number flying through my brain.
"This night has been an absolute bust," Toni says without prompting. "Hell, these last three months have been a total waste of time."
"Why? I thought you wanted to find me and make me confess everything."
"I did. When I moved in, we had eliminated our suspects down to you and one other woman. My job was to keep an eye on you while my dad watched over the other person. Do you know how hard it was for me to act like I was your friend all the while knowing you could be the one we were after? I used to stand over you while you slept, hoping that my dad would contact me that night and tell me you were Tommy's killer."
My skin crawls. "What would you have done if you found out during one of those nights?"
She glances sideways. "It's hard to say what any of us will do in any given moment."
"That's reassuring to hear."
Toni shrugs. "In the end, I found out when I was away from the house with Dad. That took us nearly three months. When I learned the truth, it almost broke me, but I pushed through it all to be here, for Tommy."
I feel the revolver falling down as Toni's honesty came through in her story. "Let me ask you something: were you always planning on drawing a confession out of me? Was that the intention from day one?"
"We never had a plan at first, but the more I learned about you, the more I wanted you to pay and be publicly shamed for getting away with his murder."
"I never got away with anything, and I didn't murder him," I say, while the gun in my hand shakes more. "I've had to live like this for five years. You of all people know how limited and pathetic my existence is."
Toni scoffs. "You think you've suffered, that your life has been hell all this time. Well, I know you enjoy your miserable world. It's clear it suits your personality down to a T."
"That's not true," I reply.
"Oh, but it is. You want to feel sorry for yourself and justify not spending a second in prison for what you did to my little brother. What better way to do that than to live like a loser.”
"You don't know what you're talking about," I growl. "I am in witness protection."
"That's debatable. Yes, technically you are still in the program, but you were only under strict care for one year. Then you got transferred out here because Zach was no longer considered a major threat. He'd forgotten about you and moved on from the two people who'd put him behind bars. Maybe he even accepted his fate. But not you. No, you hung onto that romantic idea that he was obsessed with finding you. You used it to justify hiding away from the world the way you still do."
"No, I didn't. I'm not..." I say. The cell and the gun both jitter in my hand. I feel my breath quicken, but one thought keeps me going. "I was still under threat from Zach. The Deputy US Marshal assigned to my case told me to continue keeping a low profile to be safe."
"Of course he did. But he didn't tell you to hide away like a hermit and never live your life again, did he."
He didn't. But I couldn't convince myself that Zach wasn't around the corner waiting to strike. I did help to bring him down. He was never the most level-headed individual. Sure, he knew how to rob a bank with a cool steady hand, but he also would go off the handle if any of his guys questioned his methods. Why did I ever love him? What made me fall so hard for a man clearly so wrong for me in every way?
I snap out of my daydream and realize I've wasted valuable seconds talking to Toni. It won't be long until her father returns from his smoking break to find things have changed in the back seat. It's time I called Dustin. He could save me from these people and make sure they never find me again.
With one hand on the gun and the other wrapped around the cell, I do what I can to calm myself down with a few deep breaths in and out.
As I go to dial, I glance up to see Steven coming toward the car. In only a few seconds he'll be on top of me.
What the hell am I going to do?
Chapter 51
Toni - Then
Time could be your best friend or your worst enemy depending on how you looked at it. For me, time had become a slow agonizing drain on my life. Like a vampire sucking the blood out of me drop by drop, the days dragged by. I'd work at the coffee shop, come home, and do the bare minimum to keep the house afloat. I couldn't handle much else.
A cute guy had been hitting on me at work. He'd show up there just to see me, only ordering a coffee at the most. He did his best to get me talking whenever I brought it out to him. I didn't want to hear what he had to say no matter how sweet or handsome I found him. Eventually, I gave in and went back to his house. One thing quickly led to another before we'd even had a single date. The surprise on his face was priceless, but it dropped when I told him not to contact me again. He no longer visited the coffee shop.
I didn't have the emotional availability to endure a relationship. Sure, I felt bad for the guy. He'd done nothing wrong, but I wasn't in a good place. It was easier to send him away than to wait for him to discover my numerous flaws one at a time.
I tried to help Dad wherever I could with our Zach and Dustin problem. Without being able to approach either man directly, there was little we could achieve. The only thing we could do to stay sane was to attempt to solve our problems on our own.
We needed to identify who out of Rose and Marie was the killer. Not only that, we still needed to locate them. It was like pushing an oversize boulder up a hill without knowing how much farther you had to go. We chased false leads into dead ends and worked the wrong people for information they weren't privy to. All we had to show were the girls' names and nothing more.
Time passed me by in a sw
irling blur. Days turned into weeks, weeks morphed into months. Almost two years evaporated before we saw our next development. Dad managed to find the two women's addresses. I preferred to remain in the dark as to how he obtained their locations, but he told me he'd found the right person with the appropriate access and paid them whatever they asked. The breakthrough was amazing but short lived as we still failed to establish who the killer was. That's when Dad came to me with an idea.
"You want me to what?"
"I want you to move in with Marie Williams. Pose as a student and keep a close eye on her."
I could feel my mouth hanging out of my jaw. "Why? You've been keeping tabs on her, right?"
"I have, but there's something about her that bothers me. I get the feeling from what I've seen that she might up and leave one day."
"And your solution to some gut instinct is for me to live with a person who may have killed my little brother?"
"I realize it's a lot to take on, but you fit the bill."
I stared at him with narrowed brows.
"She takes in students from time to time. You could pose as one. As luck would have it, she's just put up a post online to take a new one in."
I shook my head and squeezed my temples. "This is madness. You see that, right?"
"I wish there were another way," he said with genuine concern in his eyes. He wasn't messing around.
"And what about Rose Melton?"
"I'll continue to monitor her. She doesn't strike me as the sort who's looking to leave."
I exhaled, feeling the air flow over the two palms gripping my face. "Fine. But only for Mom and Tommy."
"Thank you," Dad whispered as he pulled me in for a hug.
"Just promise me something," I said. "As soon as you realize who did it between Rose and Marie, you wait until I'm away from her before you tell me. If I find out it was Marie when I'm with her, I don't know what I'll do."
He stared at me without judgment. We both had no idea what we'd do if we ever came face to face with the killer. "I promise."
Chapter 52
I thought about the only two people in the world who could tell dad and me who shot Tommy: Deputy US Marshal Dustin Taylor and Zachary Sanchez.
Dustin was fast becoming our best hope of finding the truth when we got rejected for the third time in a row to visit Zach. Despite using false names, he refused to let anyone come and see him. The prison had done something to his mind. The Marshal became the only person we had left.
Whether he knew it, the man was a barrier between us and everything we wanted. None of Dad's research ever indicated the guilty one. Whenever it seemed like we had a solid lead, the trail fizzled out. Short of bribing Dustin, we'd hit a brick wall all the while knowing we could never climb it.
I moved in with Marie. Dad seemed to focus less and less on the two girls. While I had to live with the potential enemy, he gave me fewer updates and even talked about returning to work. I couldn't discourage him from doing so, but I also didn't want him to forget about Tommy or Mom. Especially while I was down in Arizona side by side with ‘Karen’. We were so close to the end.
"What are we going to do?" I asked him when I was home one day taking a few days off from watching Marie. We were sitting in traffic on our way to Walmart. It was apparent that we might never learn the truth.
"What can we do?" Dad asked. "We've exhausted every other avenue, and Zach is a no go. Maybe it's time we moved on from all of this and got you back home for good, you know."
My mouth fell open. I couldn't believe what he was suggesting. "Are you serious? You're saying we should cut our losses? That I shouldn't continue to live with Marie?"
He gave me a shrug. "Well, yeah. We've wasted too many hours on nothing. I've ruined my career and need to retrain if I ever want to be an EMT again. You've spoiled your chances at finishing college. What will they make you do before you can retake your course? It was crazy for me to put you down in Arizona with one of the girls."
"I don't care about any of that. Besides, I have the rest of my life to finish school."
"I can't have you wasting more of your time only to work back to where you were when this all began."
"That's my problem. Plus, I chose to do this. I wanted to come home and help the family. I made the effort to live with Marie like you asked me to."
Dad shook his head. "I know that, and I appreciate everything you've sacrificed for me, but you should be thinking of your future instead. It's the way things are supposed to be done."
"No, Dad. You were right to put all of your focus on this. Tommy's death can't be shoved aside and ignored. His killer needs to pay for what she did. Mom deserves for her pain and suffering to have meant something."
Dad fell silent for a minute and stared out his window away from the traffic ahead. There'd been a car accident outside the giant parking lot holding us up.
"What is it?" I asked him. I never liked it when he went quiet on me.
"Nothing."
"Come on. You can't do that. Tell me."
He sighed with closed eyes. "I shouldn't say anything, but it's about your mother."
"What about her?" My heart skipped a beat.
"It's more about what she did," he said, turning back to me.
My pupils darted in my head as I attempted to understand what he was getting at.
"How she died," he said.
"What about it?" I sat up straight.
"I wish I had said this to you at the time, but what she did was wrong. She shouldn't have tried to solve her problems with drugs and alcohol. Sure, we weren't there for her the way we should have been, but it didn't give her the right to choose that path. She knew better."
My hands reached for my temples. "I don't know how to respond, Dad."
"You don't have to say a word."
"Maybe I should though. Maybe it was the appropriate choice for her to make."
Dad gripped the steering wheel tight. "No, it wasn't, okay? It was the easy thing to do."
I pressed myself sideways against the door. "How can you think that? She was suffering. She was in agony in a dark place with no one there to pull her out. It was the only way she could cope."
"We're all in pain over what happened to Tommy. Every single day I'm reminded that some pathetic loser shot and killed my son. But you don't see me drinking myself to death, do you?"
I remained silent and allowed his words to hang in the air, unanswered. He didn't drink himself to death or take a fistful of pills each day, but his pain had transformed him in other ways.
Dad continued. "You understand what I mean, right? You may never want to hear about it, but it happened. And now we're left behind to deal with it all. I've spent my time trying to get justice for Tommy, and it's taken a toll on my wellbeing."
"Have you given up?" I asked, keeping my eyes locked onto his.
"Not given up. I'm just coming to the end of it all. There's a light out there in our dark world, and I want to find it."
I wanted to ask him something more, but the words never came out. Instead, I tried to understand what he was saying. Was he right? I couldn't allow myself to think he was correct in any capacity. My mother was suffering. She was hurt. I always felt now she didn't have to deal with the torment of living each day with a dead son in her wake, but really, it was naïve of me to believe.
I faced my dad again and asked him a question I never hoped would come out of my mouth. "Should we give up?"
He drove the car forward as the traffic eased. He turned to me with a shrug. "Maybe it's time. Maybe the best thing we can do for Tommy and your mom is to just move on with our lives."
I felt the sting of tears filling my eyes as a lump in my throat formed. The pain held me frozen in place and stopped me from responding. How could we ever consider giving up? Would anyone else do so if someone murdered their little brother? Would they let their mother's overdose equate to nothing? I tried to speak, but all I managed to do was cough and cry at the same time.
"Are you okay?" Dad asked me as we reached the Walmart parking lot. He pulled into the nearest space he could find despite it being almost a few hundred yards from the entrance.
As soon as we stopped, it all came out. I burst into tears and threw both hands over my face. Dad grabbed hold of me and yanked me toward him.
"It's okay, honey. Let it out. Just let it out." He patted my back and tried to soothe me like I was a little kid who'd fallen off their bike and scraped a knee. I felt warm and safe in his arms, something I hadn't experienced in too long a time.
Once I settled down, I thought about what he'd said about quitting. There was still one thing weighing on my mind. One leaf left unturned: Dustin Taylor. I couldn't consciously let this all go without going down that avenue.
I explained myself to Dad as best I could. He nodded and remained quiet. I could tell this was an issue he was hoping to avoid. "Well?" I asked.
"Okay. I'll call him tomorrow and ask to meet somewhere at least. If he won't agree to that, I'll throw it all out there and pray for a good result."
"Thank you. If this doesn't work, I'll come back home, and we can give up."
Chapter 53
Marie - Now
Steven reaches the car on Toni's side and sees her wrists bound with a zip tie. By the time his eyes find me on the opposite seat, I have the revolver aimed at his heart through the rear window.
"Don't move!" I yell loud enough for him to hear. "Arms up."
He stares at me for a few seconds with a snarl at the edge of his lips that is dying to come out. His fists slowly rise.
"Put them on the back of your head and interlace your fingers." I have no idea if this is what I should do to keep him at bay. I'm only doing what I've seen actors do on police dramas.
"Good. Now don't move," I say as I remove one of my trembling hands from the gun to open the door behind me. I pat around until I find the handle and give it a quick pull. The door remains shut. I try it again and a third time only to remember the child-lock feature is engaged. "Crap," I mutter. How could I forget?
He's At Your Door: a gripping psychological thriller Page 17
