LUCY: The Complete Lucy Kendall Series with Bonus Content (The Lucy Kendall Series Book 5)

by Stacy Green

  “He’s going to recommend the record be expunged.” Justin’s long strides were reminiscent of a happy toddler’s drunken walk. “Thanks to you. The work you put into researching the evidence. That’s what did it.”

  “You did it,” I said. “Because you told the truth. I’m proud of you.” I hugged him, feeling the recent weight gain of living a healthy and happy life.

  Wearing his usual dark clothes, Todd stood next to his brother. They hung loosely off his thin frame, giving him the appearance of carrying too much weight on his shoulders. “Thank you, Lucy.”

  “It’s the least I could do.”

  He scratched the back of his neck and then fiddled with his crooked tie. “Did you call the lady I mentioned?”

  Todd had given me the name of a therapist who specialized in post-traumatic stress. He seemed to believe my ordeal in Jake’s garage might have messed me up. As if I was fine before that. As if I could sit down with a stranger and tell her all my sins so she could cure me.

  I liked that Todd wanted to help.

  “Not yet, but soon. I promise.”

  Of course I had no intention of calling anyone. We said our goodbyes, and I went home and crawled into bed.

  2

  My windows rattled with a fresh blast of winter wind. I pulled the blanket to my chin and tried not to see the dying face of Riley. How much life had I stolen from her? Was it her destiny to die young anyway, or had I interrupted the cosmos’s great plan and snuffed her out well before her time?

  Or maybe there was no plan for any of us.

  My happiness at Justin’s chance for a new life had evaporated with each passing hour of the night, replaced by what had now become a ritual: visions of Riley’s final moments haunted me with the power of demons sent straight from hell. The way her eyes widened and then flickered around the garage as she realized what would happen. The fear that painted her skin gray, and worst of all, the satisfaction I took from her death. In the days that followed, I wondered if that was the moment I purchased my ticket to hell. Riley wasn’t all evil. In the right circumstances, with someone fighting for her, she could have been saved. But I couldn’t trust her to keep my secret.

  Self-preservation, after all.

  Maybe I should have gone willingly to Mother Mary and taken my chances with whatever she’d planned. I could have killed her and then escaped to a brand new life. Or I could have allowed her to use me up and throw me out. If people knew the real truth about me, most of them would probably say my actions merited punishment.

  But there’s no escaping the path I’ve laid out. It was all of my own choosing. My only choice was to move forward.

  Then my sister took over my head the last few days. Sometimes I felt like my thoughts belonged more to her than me. I used to think she must have been crazy to end her own life, but now I realized she truly saw no other option. Victimized and accused of lying, Lily must have stood in that bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror and thought, “This is your life. It will never change. Even if you escape these circumstances, you’ll always be this dirty person.”

  I know that’s what she thought because it was how I felt right now.

  Because I could almost hear her saying those exact words to me.

  What would Lily think of what I’ve done? She was the one who said to take care of myself first. Surely she would understand my desire to right the wrongs committed by so many. Then again, how could I know? Lily died with the underdeveloped mind of a traumatized teenager. Just like Riley.

  Because of me–both of them, really. If I’d fought for Lily, maybe she would have had the strength to live another day.

  I didn’t know any of the answers, but the conversation went round and round in my head until I just wanted the voices to shut up. Yesterday wasn’t that day because I still had a mission to complete. But Justin no longer needed me. Today might just be that day.

  Unlike my long-dead sister, I knew my options. I didn’t have to limit myself to razor blades. Even though Connor the chemist got cold feet and walked out of my life months ago after my name hit the papers for saving Kailey Richardson, I still managed to get some cyanide. I still had some ketamine left over. I bet that was a trippy way to die. Then there’s the oxycodone I bought at the same time as the ketamine. I could definitely take enough to kill myself.

  Laughter swelled in my throat. How had I gone from being so afraid of the nothingness of death to being ready to embrace it?

  I shoved the blanket off me and sat up. Gray morning sky now streamed beneath the drawn blinds into my dark bedroom. Sitting on the edge of the bed, my bare toes grazing the chilly wood floor, I stared at the closet. Everything I needed stashed just a few feet away. Surely it would only take a few moments. My clammy skin broke out in goose bumps. My stomach flipped the way it used to when I was kid and ready to experience something new and unknown, like the tornado rollercoaster Lily and I had gone on the summer before she died. I never knew if the feeling was fear or excitement, but I loved it.

  I stared at the closet, my fingernails digging into the edge of the mattress. I extended my toes and then my entire right foot, wondering what it would feel like to make the walk across the room and open that closet door. Could I really go through with it?

  Something warm and furry brushed against my dangling feet. The hollow feeling emanating from somewhere deep inside me eased just a little. I reached down to scoop the fat cat into my arms.

  “Mousecop, you’re the reason I’m still here,” I murmured into his silky fur. “At least for tonight.” And every night, really. Because this was just another one of the conversations that played in my constantly raging mind.

  Should I kill myself, or should I stay?

  Purring, the heavy cat settled into my lap. I stroked his fur, the silky softness and the warmth of his body the only things that made me feel any sort of life. I might have sat for hours if I hadn’t noticed the blinking green light on my phone. I’d set it to vibrate sometime after dawn, knowing I’d miss a call or two.

  The missed calls were from Chris, along with two new voicemails. I didn’t really feel like listening to him rail at me again. In fact, I thought about calling and telling him to leave me alone once and for all.

  I latched onto the anger and pulled up his number. It went straight to voicemail. Was he working last night? I ran through my fuzzy memories, trying to remember what Chris told me yesterday. No, he’d had the night off.

  I called again. Same result.

  So he’d decided to ignore me. At last, some sort of peace. At least I’d have a break from the questions about his mother. Kelly had hoped to get information from the email addresses I’d stolen off Jake’s computer, but so far, she’d found nothing that led us back to Mother Mary’s physical whereabouts. But Chris carried on daily about making a plan because surely the information would present itself soon, and we needed to find her before the police did. For Lucy Kendall justice. He embraced that term so lovingly, as if it were some sort of rare gem instead of poison.

  With the worst of my personal darkness shoved into its proper cage for the moment, a shower sounded good. I left Mousecop on his side of the bed and headed for the bathroom. The hot water soothed my tense muscles, and the steam seemed to clear my head of a few shadows. I even brushed my teeth. Tomorrow I might change my sheets.

  But the blinking message light tormented me–a dangling carrot of confrontation I could only avoid for so long. Finally I decided that listening to it would give me more reason to be irritated and feel sorry for myself. Hearing Chris’s voice was just a bonus. Bargain made, I called my voicemail.

  “It’s me.” The tiny note of something different in Chris’s voice set my nerves on edge. He took his time, breathing into the phone, evidently thinking about what he wanted to say. “So I know you’re all messed up in the head. And I’m not helping the situation. I get that.” He sighed, and I imagined him scratching his cheek or the back of his head the way he did when he concentrated. “But y
ou keep doing all this research and coming up with all these excuses why we can’t just do something, and I can’t keep waiting. That’s not on you, it’s on me. Kelly hasn’t been able to find anything, and I don’t think she likes dealing with me anyway. So I did something you’re not going to like.”

  I paced beside my bed. At his words, I stopped short, my movements matching the uptick in my anxiety level. “What did you do?” I whispered to the empty room.

  Mousecop yawned and stretched, going back to sleep.

  “The email Mother Mary used to contact Jake, it bounces off a foreign server.” Chris spoke faster, obviously amped up from the courage of calling. “Kelly’s stuck, like I said. So, I figured why not email Mary back? Worst thing she can do is not answer. Or answer, depending on how this all turns out.”

  Another pause. Shifting. Had he been pacing too?

  “But she did answer. I thought about lying and pretending to be Jake, but he’s all over the news. So I told her who I was and that I wanted to see her. I promised I just wanted answers. And that’s not a lie. I don’t know anything about her side of the family. Why is she like this? What made her this way? I don’t know if she’ll tell me anything, and maybe I’m just kidding myself. But I can’t stop thinking about it. I want to talk to her, face-to-face.”

  “Are you nuts?” My shocked voice woke up the dozing cat, who laid his ears back in disgust. Now I felt out of breath. Surely he couldn’t be that stupid, could he?

  “So it’s 5:00 A.M., and I’m leaving for Harford County, Maryland. Jarrettsville is the name of the town. I’m supposed to email her when I get there, and she will tell me where to meet.”

  He didn’t go alone. He wouldn’t be that damned dumb. He’d called the state police, told them everything. He must have.

  “I don’t know if I’m going to talk to her.” He stumbled over the last word but then cleared his throat. “If it’s even her. Maybe she’s working with someone. Maybe she’ll send someone to deal with me. I know this sounds nuts, and I’m an idiot, but I’ve got to do this.”

  “Call the police!” I screamed this time. Mousecop jumped in the twisted way that only cats can do and then leapt off the bed, disappearing under it.

  “I’ll call you when I get there.”

  The call ended, and the pleasant computer voice asked me if I wanted to save or delete my message. I saved and went on to the next. Three hours later.

  “Lucy.” Chris’s voice hissed into my ear. “Why haven’t you checked your voicemail all day? I guess some part of me thought I’d hear from you, and you’d tell me to get back home where I belonged. But I said I was going, and I couldn’t chicken out.” He huffed, and I pictured him slogging through the cold and snow, cheeks pink, his impenetrable blue eyes shining with fury. “She sent me to some empty lot for sale, out in the sticks. Prime hunting land, according to the “For Sale” sign. Nothing but woods and snow and fucking misery. She didn’t show. I should have known she wouldn’t.”

  Part of me was glad I couldn’t see his face. The pain in his voice made me feel lousy enough.

  “I guess there’s something wrong with me,” Chris continued, still sounding as if he were walking. “Even after all this time, all the terrible things she’s done, I don’t understand how she can completely reject the person she gave birth to. Doesn’t she have some kind of maternal flickering?”

  “No.” I hadn’t realized how much the child in Chris still longed for his mother’s affection and approval, and I understood that need. But I’d also learned it would never be fulfilled and that sometimes all we can do is cut our losses and move on. I spoke out loud as if he could really hear me. “She doesn’t. Just because she could physically create a child doesn’t mean the connection was there. She’s a psychopath, period.”

  “So I’m headed back to my car.” He sighed again, the restlessness from earlier in the morning now sounding like despair. “I know it’s dumb, but part of me still feels like the abandoned five year old she dumped on her brother-in-law.”

  My heart jammed into my throat, half relieved, half broken. I felt for his pain, but he wasn’t equipped to handle this alone, especially if his mother stuck to her usual mode of operation and had a partner. I didn’t know what to say to make the empty ache in his heart go away, and I wasn’t sure if that was even possible. Some wounds don’t heal. They just keep festering, and a person had to put up with the scab.

  But why had his phone gone straight to voicemail when I’d called back? If he were driving back, he would have had the phone connected to the Bluetooth in the car. He’d have known it was me calling.

  Maybe it died.

  Maybe he’d caught his mother and had done something terrible and didn’t want to talk.

  “Lucy, I wish you’d answered the phone.” Chris’s snappy tone listed toward impatience. “I know that’s shitty, but I really do. Anyway, I’m going to call the police. That’s what I should have done in the first place.”

  I prayed that’s exactly what he’d done, but the pit forming inside me said otherwise. Had he brought any kind of weapon, thinking he’d have the courage to attack her? Or was he defenseless? Why didn’t he answer his phone?

  “Hang on,” Chris’s recorded voice said. “I see…oh shit. Someone’s coming. I can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman, but they’re in a hurry.”

  I pressed the phone to my ear as if that would somehow give me a vision of what had happened over two hours ago.

  Shuffling, quick breaths, and a faraway shout.

  Followed by an ear splitting gunshot.

  3

  One hundred and thirty-seven minutes ago, Chris’s message ended with a gunshot. My call still went straight to his voicemail. Standing motionless in the center of my dark bedroom, I stared at my phone. The back of my neck felt as if I’d been doused with a spray bottle, my face warm and my heart racing until it seemed ready to burst from exhaustion.

  What do I do?

  My brain slogged to catch up.

  Call the police.

  They’ll think you’re crazy. You could make up a story. But then if something did happen, that’s one more lie to deal with.

  What happened to Chris?

  Call Todd.

  My fingers searched for the number in my phone before I registered the relief the idea brought me. And before I could stop and think about what I wanted to say or how to protect myself.

  “Lucy.” Todd’s steady voice gave me hope. “I’m so glad to hear from you.”

  “I need help.” I cut him off before he had a chance to ask about my fragile psyche. “Chris went after his mother, and I think something happened to him.”

  “What? What do you mean he went after his mother? No one knows where she is.”

  “It’s a long story, and I promise I’ll tell you, but I need your help first.” My head pounded, tiny nails of fear inching their way into my brain. “He’s in Maryland, in Harford County, in Jarrettsville. She sent him to some hunting ground that was for sale. He was supposed to meet her there.” I fired the words like shots from an automatic weapon. They sounded scrambled to my ears, and I hoped Todd could understand me. “He left me a message almost two hours ago that he didn’t know if she was there, and he was going to call the police. But then he thought he saw something, and there was a gunshot. And now he’s not answering his phone.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “I’m not,” I said. “I swear I’ll tell you everything, but right now we need the police to go out there and see what happened. Something’s wrong. He wouldn’t have ignored my calls.” I dug my toes into the floor in the hopes of finding some kind of anchor before I fell over.

  “I’ve got a friend with the state police,” Todd said. “Let me call him and see what he can do, but those are pretty ambiguous directions.”

  I dropped the phone on the bed. Sitting tight wasn’t exactly my strong suit, even if I’d gotten rusty over the past month. I switched on my lamp and immediately swore at t
he intrusive bright light. Whatever had happened to Chris happened in another state, and somehow I knew I needed to be there.

  My suitcase was in the closet. I allowed a second to appreciate the irony that just a couple of hours ago, that closet represented the end of everything for me, and then got busy packing. I’d be driving to Maryland. No need to worry about airport security. I stashed my drug kit in the suitcase’s bottom compartment. I wished I’d taken the time to get my weapons license. Since I’d been wearing nothing but pajamas the last several days, most of my clothes were clean. Jeans, sweaters, and other necessities were shoved into the suitcase, followed by an extra pair of shoes. Snow still covered the tri-state area. I’d need to wear my boots.

  What about the cat?

  Mousecop sat in the bedroom doorway, flicking his tail, eyes narrowed as if he knew I’d nearly forgotten about his ever demanding tummy and his litter box.

  I’d call Justin. He’d want to help with Chris, but he’d take care of Mousecop for me. And the cat abandoned me every time Justin came over, so the little traitor would be just fine.

  My phone rang, Todd’s number flashing on the screen.

  I snatched it off the bed. “Did they find him?”

  “No.”

  I knew it then, the frigid truth infecting my system. I liked to think I could handle a crisis–I’ve certainly created enough of them and come out physically unscathed. But the lack of control and being miles away, completely powerless, made me feel like jumping out the window. “They found something.”

  Todd cleared his throat. “No, they haven’t found anything yet. It sounds like there are a few different acreages for sale, and they’ve got to search them all. I’m sure you realize that’s manpower the state police won’t use without more information.”

  “Are you telling me they just blew you off?” No matter. I’d find Chris myself.

  “No,” Todd said. “But it’s limited. My friend called the county sheriff, and they’ve sent a couple of deputies out to look. But it’s going to take a while.”