Take a Risk (Risk #1)

by Scarlett Finn

  ‘What you went through must have been very traumatising,’ she said, leaving the bed she took half a step toward him. ‘Denying who you are is never the answer.’

  ‘I know that now! I know that!

  ‘Ok,’ she said, holding up her hands again. ‘Good. I’m glad that you are ready to move past that experience.’

  ‘I met Keith at the camp, we were supposed to… to support each other, and make sure that we didn’t… revert.’

  ‘Keith knows that you are here today?’

  ‘No, I couldn’t admit to him that I… that I failed.’

  ‘You haven’t failed,’ she said. ‘This is a triumph and you should be proud of yourself for recognising your true self. You have nothing to be ashamed of. If being with a man, in a relationship with a man, is what makes you happy then you should embrace that.’

  ‘How can I? The only man I want is Brett and I already lost him. You made sure of that!’

  ‘Maybe it’s not too late,’ she said. ‘Maybe you can get in touch with him and—‘

  ‘I can’t find him! He left me and he took everything with him! The man I love is gone! That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘Why you’re here?’ she asked, unsure what she was meant to do about the situation.

  ‘You’re going to undo this. You’re going to find him. You must be able to find him.’

  ‘I… I don’t think that I have a phone number or an address for him. We could go downstairs and check for—‘

  ‘No! I don’t want your lies and your manipulation! Fix it! All I want you to do is to fix it.’

  When a tear skittered down his face, she saw an opportunity. ‘Why don’t we start by making sure that when you do find Brett, that you can be with him and never find yourself in this situation again.’

  From the way his brow shifted she knew that he hadn’t considered this. ‘What…? What do you mean?’

  ‘Well Brett wanted to be with you and it was your reluctance to be open about your relationship that caused it to end.’

  ‘No! No, it was you! Brett loved me but you told him to leave me!’

  ‘Is that why you’ve been doing all of this?’ she asked. ‘You blame me for losing Brett?’

  Moving back until his back hit the wall, he strengthened the arm that was holding the gun, it had to be tiring from being held aloft for so long. ‘I came to find you. I wanted to talk to you. I… I called your office, but as soon as I told you I was the partner of a patient you refused to see me. I didn’t get to explain, I didn’t even mention Brett and you cut me off.’

  It was her policy not to treat both sides of a relationship without the express consent and knowledge of the other party, and even that was rare. Usually when she saw both partners it was as a couple with only perhaps the odd complementary solo session if that was what was needed.

  ‘It can create a conflict,’ she explained. ‘If you told me that you were the partner of a patient and that the patient didn’t know you were contacting me I would have been against treating you. It’s only fair that my existing patient takes priority.’

  ‘But he wasn’t your patient, he had already left me! But you didn’t let me explain.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, assuming that she had been busy, or perhaps his erratic nature had come through on the phone.

  ‘I started to watch you, to see if you’d been telling the truth about your patients, and if Brett was still coming to you. I thought then that he might still be in the city.’

  ‘You watched me through the city network of cameras,’ she said. ‘That wasn’t the appropriate thing to do.’

  ‘It’s no big deal to get into that system,’ he said. ‘If they really wanted to keep people out then they would protect it and they don’t.’

  After the truth of what Pete had done came out in the press, the city would no doubt be more particular about the security of that system. But that would be too late to help her and Suzette.

  ‘It’s very intrusive,’ she said.

  ‘The cameras are there to watch people who need to be watched, and if you were going around telling people to break hearts then that makes you dangerous. I wanted to know how you could live with yourself, and what made you so special that you thought you could determine who should have love and who shouldn’t. So I just tapped in now and then to see how you lived your life after you had ruined mine.’

  ‘But your need to see me grew?’

  ‘I saw you with your friend, happy and laughing, and I couldn’t understand how you could be happy when you’d torn my world apart.’

  ‘So you wanted to hurt those I cared about? Was that your goal?’

  ‘No,’ he said, his gun slipped lower, and Suzette was beginning to quiet.

  Worried about her friend’s wellbeing, Lyssa glanced back to see that Suzette was listening, she was obviously interested to see how she was involved. ‘Why get involved with Suzette? Were you trying to convince yourself that you were straight?’

  ‘I wanted to get closer, to talk to you, to make you see that what you were doing was wrong. I also wanted to be around, in your life, in case Brett came back to see you or got in touch with you. I even thought about getting into your office to find out if you knew where Brett was. But I couldn’t approach you directly, so I got a job at the hospital where you had privileges and sought Suzie then.’

  ‘To seduce her? I don’t—‘

  ‘How she could be friends with such a callous person was beyond me,’ he carried on as though Lyssa hadn’t spoken, further displaying his narcissism. ‘Suzie gave me the chance to get close to you, she made it clear that she was interested in me. When she started to lose interest, or noticed my lack of interest rather, I proposed. Maintaining interest in her when I knew my heart was Brett’s was difficult, after the proposal I didn’t have to, she just ran with it.’

  ‘You used her,’ Lyssa said, wondering if he saw the callousness of his own actions. ‘But I don’t understand the rest, the flowers, the notes, the brick through the window?’

  ‘You told Brett that I wasn’t a good person to have a relationship with. I proved you wrong, I sent flowers, and was attentive in watching you everywhere, just like I would watch over Brett. You should have been impressed that I was so thoughtful… you took it all the wrong way.’

  The first note saying, “I see you” creeped her out, apparently it was supposed to make her feel watched over, that was probably his reasoning behind the photographs and the video too.

  ‘You were filming me.’

  ‘To protect you,’ he said. ‘I showed you what it was to protect someone. I’ve done more for you than your own supposed boyfriend. You told Brett to get rid of me because I hurt him, and I wanted to prove to you that I wouldn’t hurt him, that I could be the best boyfriend there was.’

  ‘Is that why you killed Bobby?’

  ‘He was telling people that you were sleeping with patients. If you lost your licence then Brett would never come back. Lee was pissed at you too after Archie showed up in his session. I protected you. I am a good partner and you’re going to tell Brett that.’

  ‘I can’t, I don’t know where he is.’

  ‘You’ll find him,’ Pete said. ‘You will find him and you’ll make him come back to me, you’ll tell him all the nice things I’ve done for you, how I’ll do anything it takes to protect someone important to me.’

  She somehow doubted that even if she found Brett he would be tempted to come back just because Pete sent her some pretty flowers and murdered people who were mean about her. But it was clear that Pete wasn’t in his right mind, perhaps he had always struggled with mental illness, or it could have been the conversion camp that tipped him over the edge, but his rational mind was long gone now.

  ‘What about the brick?’

  ‘I wasn’t happy when Suzette told me you had taken all my good deeds in the wrong way and were calling me some kind of crazy stalker who was set on scaring you,’ he said, his weight was against the wall now and he lo
oked woozy, like maybe it was all too much.

  She wanted to correct him and say that she hadn’t been scared, but being freaked out was close enough and she wasn’t going to argue semantics.

  ‘You were angry at me?’ He’d already been angry at what he saw was her interference in Brett and Pete’s relationship. ‘You wanted me to be scared?’

  ‘I wanted you to think twice about what you were saying to patients. I had no idea how many happy couples that you were breaking up.’

  ‘That doesn’t explain the brick through the window or the shooting outside Risqué.’

  His smile inched up. ‘The brick was just a bit of fun, I wanted to see you scared. I thought it would serve you right to feel a tiny bit of the fear I felt when I lost Brett. That’s why I paid that kid to throw the brick through the window while I was there. I wanted to be there to see your face when it happened.’

  ‘No wonder you wanted to run away so fast afterwards,’ she said. ‘You didn’t want to talk to the cops. You wanted to get out of there.’ Her sympathy for him was waning.

  ‘It was my chance to get you and Suzette apart. Like I said, I didn’t want her involved. I wanted her to stay away from your poison and I didn’t want her to be here now, for this.’

  ‘You didn’t want anyone looking for you,’ she said. ‘You didn’t want Suzette to support me because you didn’t want to be caught. But surely you wouldn’t have married her? She would have been hurt when you dumped her.’

  ‘I planned to be gentle,’ he proclaimed. ‘By then you would have ensured Brett and I were back together and Suzette would understand where my heart truly lay. When I had Brett, I would have left quietly, and none of this would have happened… then Warner got involved.’

  ‘Colt? What has he got to do with…?’

  Sirens outside broke her concentration and Pete grabbed hold of her to drag her through the house and into the living room. Holding her body in front of him, he peeked past the edge of the curtain. There outside in her street were a dozen police cars and as many officers organising a cordon as were focused on the house.

  ‘What have you done?’ Pete shouted, throwing Lyssa back.

  She stumbled on the edge of the rug and collapsed next to Archie’s body, but she kept her eyes on the gun. ‘I think they’re here for you.’

  ‘You were supposed to call them off! What am I supposed to do now?’

  His panic matched his alert eyes and edgy movements, she still had questions, but those would have to wait until he got over his surprise at this latest development. Suzette was in the bedroom and was crying again and trying to scream, but it didn’t matter. The police knew that they were here, they just didn’t know who would come out alive, and right now, neither did Lyssa.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ‘What’s going on in there?’ Colt hollered at Hoburn who stood not too far away on the other side of the cordon.

  ‘We don’t know yet,’ Hoburn said. ‘No one is answering the phone.’

  This was a crazy situation and he’d known the minute he spoke to Lyssa that something wasn’t right. Calling the cops in had been a no-brainer for him; he just hoped that the guy wasn’t now spooked by all of this activity.

  ‘Who is in there?’ Colt asked. ‘Have your guys got a line of sight—‘

  ‘We’re still getting set up,’ Hoburn said, marching off.

  Colt was frustrated by his ex-colleague’s reluctance to include him in the operation, but for now he had to remain a bystander because there was no way to get any closer to the house while all of the activity was centred here.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Ruger asked, coming up next to Colt with Flick at his side.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Colt said. ‘They’re going to try and get a line of sight, but I don’t know where Harding is, that building has a lot of dark corners and hard to see places, from out here anyway.’ Flick nodded and rolled her eyes toward the building, but she did loiter behind Ruger, which made Colt suspicious. ‘Are you worried that someone will see you?’

  ‘The police?’ Flick asked. ‘No… not around here anyway. Now if we were in New Jersey and all of these cops were here…’ Her attempt at a joke only made him more suspicious.

  ‘Where’s Rushe?’ he asked.

  ‘Rushe does have an aversion to cops,’ Ruger said. ‘He’s probably wanted in every state... and maybe Canada too.’

  ‘He is not,’ Flick said. ‘He’s doing his bit to help. Standing around on the side-lines isn’t Rushe’s style.’

  Colt had noticed that Rushe had vanished almost as soon as he gave them the news that Pete was at Lyssa’s. Colt hadn’t finished dialling Hoburn’s phone number when Rushe kissed the face off Flick, turned and took off. But he’d probably never find out what Rushe’s intention was. Flick certainly wasn’t from New Jersey originally, but he assumed that’s where she and her lover were based. Travelling down here to North Carolina meant that they were serious about helping Martin Schifford, who had gone out of his way to conceal his visits with Lyssa by scheduling them when he was down here on business.

  ‘Where is it Martin lives?’

  ‘Not far from my parents,’ Flick said.

  ‘Which is where?’

  ‘New Hampshire.’

  So she wasn’t one for giving too many specific details. ‘Does he know that this is going on?’

  ‘We don’t talk much,’ Flick said. ‘He only comes down here once a month or so to deal with clients and that’s when he saw Doctor Cutler. He’s at home with my sister right now. We would all rather if this little problem went away without him having to be directly involved.’

  Like having to give a statement to the police, or standing up in court against the suspect. Narrowing his eyes, Colt turned to examine the house. What that meant was that they wanted a dead suspect to come out of that house and not one who would be able to plead innocent or insanity in order to go to trial. With that clarity Colt didn’t have to wonder where Rushe was anymore.

  Harding was tying Lyssa to the radiator in the living room, which was on the back wall of the space. Suzette was already tied to the other end. Whatever the outcome Pete expected, having the police surrounding the property wasn’t part of it.

  ‘You have to talk to them,’ Lyssa said, the phone had just stopped ringing for the tenth time or so. ‘They’ll want to know what you want.’

  ‘You know what I want!’ he snapped.

  As much as she didn’t like him to shout, it was an improvement over the stony silence he’d displayed since discovering the police outside. ‘If Brett is what you want then tell them that, they are the police, they should be able to find him.’

  Sitting on the floor, behind the back of the couch, which was about ten feet from the radiator, Pete appeared to be considering this. ‘Do you think that they could?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Tell them that you want to talk to him. Maybe he’ll want to come back.’ That could buy them some time for Colt and the police to come up with other options.

  ‘It will take him time to get here,’ Pete said, shaking his head.

  ‘What choice do you have?’ she asked. ‘You have to talk to them or we’ll never get out of here and you’ll never see Brett again.’

  Again, he took his time to think about this and she saw a range of emotions flicker across his expression. This situation was terrifying, there was no doubt about that, but Pete did offer an interesting professional conundrum. Often those who were this far gone in their psychosis struggled to return to any sort of normal life in the same way that they had lived it before. Pete’s insanity had extended to rationalising murder, which meant he was at the peak of the scale. Now he would spend the rest of his days in an institution. Even if he managed to deal with his issues through medication and counselling, there would be little hope of him returning to society.

  ‘You talk to them,’ he said, crawling across the floor toward her. He was smart enough to be worried about snipers, and her long w
indows would provide an excellent view of this room.

  He began to loosen her bounds and she glanced at the gun resting beside his thigh, but she wasn’t sure that she was brave enough to grab it. Except she didn’t have to. As she considered her options, Suzette made a sound like a squeak which brought her, and Pete’s, attention around to her. Before she could blink another figure appeared, Pete scrambled for the gun, but it was already gone.

  Free of her bonds, Lyssa scrambled toward Suzette, covering her body with her own and trying to loosen her restraints, then there was a bang. Her back had been turned so she hadn’t seen the kill shot, but when she turned to see what had happened there was no doubting that Pete was dead. Gaping at the lifeless corpse that had been threatening her life only moments ago, she took her eyes around to the looming form in the shadow of the hall doorway.

  ‘Rushe,’ she said, having just enough breath left in her body to form the word.

  ‘I was never here,’ he said. ‘You guys got the gun yourselves.’

  ‘I…I…’

  Suzette must have been free enough to finish untying herself because she pulled down the gag and got to her feet. Her limbs were shaking and her face tear stained, but there was a determination in her. Suzette passed Lyssa and held up an open palm toward Rushe.

  ‘Give it to me,’ Suzette said.

  ‘What?’ Lyssa said.

  ‘I’ll tell them I did it,’ Suzette said, her eyes fixed on Rushe. ‘Thank you for saving our lives.’

  The situation had come to a quicker end than she had thought, but after shock subsided, only relief remained in its place. The phone rang again and after a disbelieving pause, Lyssa got up and ran over to grab the phone.

  ‘He’s dead,’ she said, whipping around to seek out Suzette, and she saw that Rushe was gone. ‘It’s safe to come in. Pete is dead. Archie is dead too… and I really need to speak to Colt Warner.’