Not Quite Perfect (Not Quite Series Book 5)

by Catherine Bybee

  Calm him down . . . let him believe he has the power.

  The classes she’d taken in college to recognize psychosis started coming back. Identifying what she couldn’t treat had been a big portion of her job.

  “You’ve been very helpful.”

  “I have. You liked my attention. Even my flowers.” He twisted her chin toward the flowers still in the vase on her counter.

  “They’re beautiful.”

  “Like you.” He pushed his nose into her hair and took a deep breath.

  She shivered. “Don’t.”

  He snapped his head back.

  “Please don’t hurt me.”

  The grip on her waist loosened enough for her to breathe and not feel like she was going to break a rib in the process.

  “I don’t want to hurt you, Mary. I want to take care you. Didn’t I show you how much you can depend on me? Haven’t I been there every day since we met?”

  “You have.”

  His lips moved close to her ear again. “Then you started pulling away. I don’t like it when people want to leave.”

  “I didn’t leave.”

  His voice started to clip and the grip on her waist tightened again. “You left all the time. You would think after the mess this house was in the first time, you’d want to stay and keep it from happening again. But no . . . you left again, Mary. Why did you do that if you weren’t pulling away?”

  “I have a boyfriend. I told you that.”

  He shoved the side of his hip against hers, pinning her against the counter with enough force to pull a cry from her lips. “Your boyfriend doesn’t do anything for you. I’m the one who helped you with your car. I’m the one who makes sure you’re safe at night. I’m the one looking over you. But he gets to fuck you. Where is that fair, Mary?”

  She winced with the vulgarity of his words, his actions. “You’re hurting me. Please stop.”

  “You need time to see how good I am for you. Then you’ll understand. I’ll make you forget him.”

  Borderline. The man had a borderline personality disorder, she’d bet her master’s degree on it. Borderline with enough psychosis to force his way into her life.

  “Did you break into my house?”

  He took several breaths before he answered. “I came to see you. You were with him. I was angry.”

  She closed her eyes to keep from seeing him out of her peripheral vision. “And the rocks through my windows?”

  “I’m a grown man, I don’t throw rocks.”

  His twisted logic somehow made sense inside his head.

  “Don’t you see, you need me to keep away those nasty people who did that.”

  She nodded as if she agreed.

  “Now . . . we’re going to leave so I can help you.”

  She shuddered. “We don’t need to go. I know you’ll help now.”

  Kent started to laugh, slowly at first and then to the point where she felt his crazy coming on. “You will run the second my hands aren’t holding you back.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Don’t lie.” He jolted her from the counter and pulled her back against his chest. “We’re going upstairs.”

  “Why?”

  He didn’t answer as he pushed her out of the kitchen.

  She struggled against him and was rewarded by him slamming her shoulder against the wall.

  Pain vibrated through her arm and down her spine.

  “Don’t make me hurt you.”

  She clenched her teeth together. “You’re going to hurt me anyway.”

  “I don’t want to. But sometimes when you’re training someone, they have to learn through pain. The quicker you learn, the less it will hurt. I promise.”

  “Did someone train you, Kent?”

  Emotion filled his face. “I learned quickly. You will, too.”

  Mary felt herself slipping into the role of a victim. The need to cry and beg sat close to the surface. She sniffled, from her cold or from fear, she didn’t know.

  Kent rushed her up the stairs, past her bedroom, and into her office.

  Once again he used the force of his body to pin her against the wall and used his free hand to rip cords from the back of her computer.

  “Put your hands behind your back.”

  “Don’t do this. I won’t run.”

  “Put your hands behind your back!” He grunted the last three words.

  She wanted to scream.

  Where were the police? Didn’t Glen get the hint?

  Didn’t the giraffe comment make him understand she wasn’t okay?

  Kent got tired of waiting for her to move and grabbed the back of her head and smashed it hard against the wall.

  Mary’s knees buckled and she saw stars.

  Kent followed her to the ground and bound her wrists together exactly where he wanted them.

  He flipped her over and straddled her body. Kent looked down as if she were a puppy in need of a handout. “Look what you made me do.”

  Mary turned her head when he reached out to run his thumb on her forehead. It hardly registered that he drew it away with a splattering of blood.

  The screeching of her phone pulled them both from the moment.

  “I should get that.”

  They stood in a state of frozen time while it rang.

  On number five, her answering machine in the kitchen picked it up.

  Kent’s shoulders slumped when the ringing stopped.

  He lifted his weight and dropped it back down when it started again.

  This time when it stopped, Kent lifted them both from the floor, out of the room, and down the stairs.

  Mary tripped on her own feet trying to keep up and felt her ankle twist. They hadn’t reached the bottom step when a voice on what sounded like a bullhorn blasted from outside. “Kent Duvall. This is the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. We’d like to talk to you.”

  Thank God!

  “Help!” Mary didn’t rejoice long before Kent slammed her against the wall again, hitting her head in the exact same place. The stars she saw before were a distant memory as blackness faded in.

  Chapter Thirty

  Glen and Trent pushed the Challenger as much as they could but they were still hours away from California when a call from Officer Taylor came in.

  “Mr. Fairchild?”

  “Tell me she’s okay.”

  “We believe she’s okay.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “What’s going on?” Trent asked from the pilot seat.

  Glen shook his head.

  “They are still in the house and we’re outside keeping him from taking her anywhere.”

  “Someone has her?”

  “Yes. Holding her hostage at this point.”

  “Damn it . . . no, no, no.”

  “We have things under control. A hostage negotiator is en route. I need to know if you have any information about a man by the name of Kent Duvall?”

  Something clicked, switched to a different circuit in his brain, and clicked again. “Yes . . . not much. He asked Mary out. I met him at the deli she goes to for lunch.”

  “Can you tell me anything more?”

  Glen pushed his palm into his forehead as if that would knead free the information he knew was there. “Uhm . . . damn . . . her car. She told me he helped her jump her car when it didn’t start.”

  “Did they date?”

  “No.” For a nanosecond he wondered if that was true or not.

  Then Mary’s words drifted into his head in her sweet voice. I don’t lie.

  “No. He wanted to. She told him no.”

  “Does he work in the same complex?”

  “I think so. I’m not sure. Is he the one holding her hostage?”

  “His car is in the driveway and we see a man and a woman inside the house.”

  “Get her out.”

  “We will, Mr. Fairchild. We’re in the process of evacuating the surrounding houses. We have no idea if he has a weapon and
we will not jeopardize the hostage.”

  The hostage.

  The hostage.

  “Her name is Mary.”

  “I know that, Fairchild. But I need to distance myself from that right now in order to keep everyone safe.”

  “You should have thought about that when you didn’t take this case seriously.”

  He heard Officer Taylor muffle the phone and bark an order.

  “When you arrive I’ll let you past the police line only if you agree to remain calm and follow instructions. If you fuck that up, I’ll make you leave. Do you understand?”

  Why was everyone treating him like an idiot?

  “I got it. Keep her alive.”

  “I plan on it.”

  Glen stared out at the black, moonless sky as Trent placed a hand on his shoulder.

  Mary woke on the floor in her small dining room with her feet and arms bound and a pillow from the couch under her head. The irony of that would hit her later, but for now she thought of the pain in her shoulder, her ankle, and the side of her head.

  She could see the flashing of red and blue lights from outside and hear the radios and the continual request that Kent pick up the phone.

  Kent sat on the opposite wall, watching her and not moving. He’d taken a knife from her kitchen and sat scraping it against the new hardwood floors of her home.

  For what felt like a decade, the phone would ring, be ignored, and stop.

  After what had to be the twentieth time, the phone stopped ringing and Mary finally spoke.

  “Kent?”

  He glared up at her.

  “They’re going to want to know I’m okay.”

  “Shut up!”

  Mary heeded the harshness of his voice.

  When the phone rang again, Kent jumped to his feet, pulled the phone from the wall, and threw it through the kitchen window.

  Mary cringed in the corner and ducked her head to avoid the spray of glass.

  There was one brief breath before they both heard the phone ringing from the extension in her bedroom.

  The voice on the loudspeaker blasted through the house a second time. “Mr. Duvall. We just want to talk to you.”

  Mary watched Kent’s reaction wordlessly.

  His jaw clenched and his hands fisted around the knife as he moved back into the corner where he’d been sitting.

  “Kent?” She said his name as softly as she could and still be heard. “I know you need to think.”

  “Shut up!”

  She sucked in a breath. “They’re going to keep calling until they know I’m okay. If they know I’m okay, they’ll give you time to think.”

  He glared. “What do you know?”

  She tried to smile, knew it probably looked forced. And then Mary lied through her teeth. “I worked with a hostage negotiator for over a year.” Actually, she’d read a few novels where women were held hostage and the theme had been the same. She prayed now the authors had done their homework.

  “You’re not a hostage.”

  She wasn’t about to disagree with him. “They just want to talk to you.”

  The phone in Mary’s purse, which was still lying beside the door leading to the garage, started to ring. It was well after midnight and not likely anyone but the people outside.

  “They want to know you’re okay?”

  She nodded.

  Kent scrambled to her purse, never truly standing up, and then over to her corner of the room.

  He dumped everything out, took her phone, hovered a finger over the answer button. “Tell them you’re fine.” He put the phone on speaker.

  “Hello?” The voice on the line was female and not familiar.

  “Hello,” Mary said.

  “Miss Kildare, are you okay?”

  When Mary hesitated, Kent placed a hand on her thigh and squeezed.

  “I’m fine.” She heard her voice waver.

  “Can I speak to Mr. Duvall?”

  Mary looked at Kent, who shook his head.

  “He’s not ready to talk yet.”

  “Okay. That’s all right. I’m getting everyone calm out here. My name is Fiona. Tell him I’ll call again in fifteen minutes. I want to hear what he has to say.”

  Kent blinked several times.

  “I’ll tell him,” Mary said as if Kent couldn’t hear the conversation.

  The negotiator hung up.

  It was pitch black and nearly three in the morning, and Glen waved hundred-dollar bills in front of the driver to move faster.

  When he and Trent turned onto Mary’s street, there were police barricades set up and no one was being let through. As much as he hated the scene, he knew that it meant Mary was still alive.

  Glen turned to Trent inside the car.

  “I’ll call you from in there and let you know what’s going on.”

  “I’ll keep everyone up to date.”

  Glen felt the adrenaline rush from the rapid flight across the country dump into his system and tried to keep the emotion from taking over.

  He shoved the door open and approached the officer keeping everyone out. “Glen Fairchild. Officer Taylor is expecting me.”

  A quick conversation on the radio and Glen was being led through.

  The closer he came to the outside of Mary’s condo, the harder it was to keep from running to the door and forcing his way in.

  Police stood beside their squad cars. Several had guns pointed at the house.

  Officer Taylor stood beside a tiny brunette wearing jeans and a sweater.

  “Fairchild!” Officer Taylor extended his hand for a brief shake.

  “I take it they’re still in there.”

  The older cop nodded. “This is Fiona Ratcliff, the hostage negotiator.”

  Fiona Ratcliff didn’t talk in pleasantries. “You’re Mary’s current significant other.”

  The word current took him aback. “Yes.”

  “Tell us everything you know about her home. Does she have weapons? Where are the phones? What can you tell us about her relationship with Kent Duvall?”

  Glen stood staring at the home. “No weapons. She was picking up a shotgun on Monday. She might have a stun gun, she said she was going to get one, but I don’t know if she did.” He pictured her home. “There’s a phone in her kitchen. One in the living room . . . no, wait. That one was destroyed during her break-in and I don’t think she’s replaced it. Another in her bedroom and a handset in her office.” He leveled his eyes at Fiona. “And the only relationship she has with Mr. Duvall is in his head.”

  “Two minutes, Ms. Ratcliff,” an officer standing one squad car away called out.

  “You’re a guest, Mr. Fairchild. I don’t care what happens, you stay right there and wait like the rest of us. Got that?”

  “I got it, I got it . . . I got it!” He was going to lose it was what he was going to do.

  Ms. Ratcliff took a cell phone from her pocket and put it to her ear.

  Glen heard her side of the conversation.

  “How is everything in there?”

  Glen placed his hands on the squad car to keep from running in.

  “I just want to talk to you, Kent.”

  Fiona listened for the next thirty seconds, then removed the phone from her ear in obvious frustration.

  “What’s happening?” Glen yelled his question.

  “The calls are aggravating him, and unless I can keep him on the line for more than two minutes, I’m unsure of how we’re going to talk him out.”

  “We wait him out,” Officer Taylor said.

  Fiona’s lips became a thin line with the scowl on her face. “I don’t think so. He’s taking his aggression out on the hostage.”

  The hostage. “Mary, her fucking name is Mary.” Glen was getting tired of people talking about his lady as if she were an object.

  Fiona lifted a hand in the air. “Mary,” she said for his comfort. “We need SWAT. If I can’t talk to him, I can’t get him to come out on his own,” she said to Taylor.<
br />
  Taylor turned away and called the SWAT team in.

  “How did she sound?” Glen asked Fiona.

  “Tired . . . stressed. What she didn’t sound was scared or hysterical. Which is good. If she can keep herself together, all the better.”

  “Mary’s a therapist. She won’t fall apart easily.”

  After close to six hours of sitting in the same position, with her hands bound behind her back, her ankles shoved together with the same cord, Mary couldn’t feel her tailbone. The numbness was a relief compared to the pain throughout the rest of her body. There were times the silence actually had her closing her eyes, but then the phone would ring and the world came into grim focus.

  “I took good care of you . . .” Kent stared at the wall above Mary’s head as he spoke.

  “You did, Kent.”

  “Just wanted to keep doing it.”

  “I know. I’m not sure if this was the best way.”

  He blinked repeatedly, as if his eyelid movement fueled his brain. “I do that.”

  This was the calm Kent she met at the deli . . . Mary just hoped that she could keep him talking.

  “You do what?”

  “People say I hold on too tight and don’t let go.”

  All borderlines do, she wanted to say but didn’t.

  “But no matter how bad things got, you just kept pulling away. Why did you do that, Mary?” His eyes fluttered to hers briefly and then darted aside.

  “I think it’s because I’m an orphan. I had to take care of myself for as long as I can remember. I’m not used to depending on someone else.”

  Kent looked at her again, kept blinking. “I didn’t know that.”

  She tried to smile. “Are your parents alive, Kent?” Keep him talking, keep him calm.

  For a minute she wasn’t sure he was going to answer her. “My mom was sick. Smoked. I was a kid when she left me.”

  “She died?”

  He answered with one nod. “My stepdad trained me.”

  Trained . . . what was he? A dog? “He hit you.”

  Kent shrugged. “I didn’t listen. He trained me to listen.”

  His troubled stare told her he was remembering dark times. “Do you have brothers or sisters?”

  “Not anymore. My brother left after Mom . . .” He swallowed hard. “After. Ran away.”