by Donna Fasano
~*~
Luanne couldn’t even think about the for good part at the moment. So she focused on the rest. “All right. If Gregory doesn’t show up for his class and you don’t take him into custody today, we’ll move in with you until you catch him.”
A slow smile spread on Chase’s face. Then he reached for his phone. “I’ll call mom so you won’t be alone while I’m gone.”
“Wait.” She was so not ready to spend an afternoon with Chase’s mother. She could only imagine the questions about their time in Petersburg.
“We’ll go to Jen’s while you’re at the takedown,” she said quickly. “Billy will be home. He works the night shift this week. And the girls missed Bobby.”
Chase took her hand, his gaze suddenly gentle. “Don’t run from me again.”
“I’m not running. I just need girlfriend support. I swear.”
He didn’t look happy about her choice, but he nodded. “All right, let’s go.”
The twins protested when Luanne turned off the TV, but as soon as she told them they were going to see Bobby, they were ready to roll. Chase drove them over, left her on the front stoop with a brief but thorough kiss, then headed to West Chester.
“Oh my God, is it hot in here?” Jen grinned and fanned herself with her hand when Luanne walked inside. “I saw that. When did this happen?”
“I don’t even know what’s going on.” Luanne shook her head.
“I want details. Sex?”
Luanne glanced at the kids, already at the toy chest at the far end of the living room, lost in play. “I’m not going to discuss it.”
“No fair!” Jen cried. “Just because I said something that one time! I said I was sorry. Good grief, years ago. I’m begging you.”
“Amazing.” And that was all Luanne was going to say about that. She stuck to her guns, even as Jen tried to pump her for information for the next half hour while they had coffee.
When she realized she wasn’t going to get details, Jen switched to another topic. “So what’s with the running off and the coming back? Any progress in the case?”
Luanne wasn’t sure how much she was authorized to say. “They found Gregory in West Chester. If all goes well, they’re going to grab him this afternoon.”
Jen pressed a hand against her chest, listening in fascinated horror. “Wow. Just like on TV.”
“What’s like on TV?” her husband asked from the stairs. Billy was padding down barefooted, hair sticking up every which way. He must have gone straight to bed after his night shift and was just getting up for the day.
“The police got the guy who killed Earl. I mean, they’re getting him today.” Jen shot to her feet. “I’m glad that’s over. It’s been nerve-racking to think there’s a killer out there, right in the neighborhood.”
Her husband grabbed her ass and squeezed as he passed her.
Jen smiled at him. “We don’t have any butter. We’ll need that for dinner.”
“I’ll run out,” he volunteered immediately.
“Thanks. And grab some milk?”
Jen came back to Luanne on the couch, while Billy went to the door to pull on his sneakers. “Anything else? Last chance.”
Jen flashed him a brilliant smile. “That’s it.”
“Are you nervous?” she asked Luanne once Billy left.
Luanne thought for a second before answering. “Not for myself. I don’t think Gregory knows that I’m even back in town. I’m nervous about Chase and the other officers. What if there’s a shootout?”
Jen patted her knee. “They train for that. Come on, I’ll distract you. I want to show you something. Come upstairs with me for a second.”
Luanne carried her coffee mug as she followed her friend up the stairs, into the master bedroom. “New curtains?”
“That too,” Jen said and opened the top dresser drawer. Then she pulled a gun and pointed it at Luanne. “Close the door behind you.”
“What? Wait…” Luanne set the mug on the dresser next to her, shock making her movements stiff. “What are you doing? If this is a joke—”
But Jen’s hard expression said she wasn’t joking. The harsh lines on her face transformed her from a friend to a stranger. “I’m sorry. I don’t have another choice. You have to be dead before Gregory is captured. That way the cops can think that he killed you. Like he killed Earl.”
“What are you talking about?” Luanne wanted the world to stop for just one darn second until she could catch up to what was happening.
Jen pressed her lips together. “You were supposed to go to jail. Just for a few years.”
The thought slamming into Luanne’s head was wild and crazy, but nothing else made sense. “You killed Earl?”
“I had no choice,” Jen said matter-of-factly, as if murder was completely normal.
“Can we talk about this?”
“I have to be done by the time Billy comes back.” She was as calm as if they were talking about dinner.
“Why did you kill Earl?” Luanne still couldn’t make any sense of anything. She felt like she’d been sucked into a parallel universe.
Jen’s eyes turned cold. “He threatened to take Bobby away if I didn’t sleep with him again.”
“You had sex with Earl?” Jen had quit the motel after Bobby was born. “Did Earl push you into sleeping with him?” Luanne’s heart sank. “You never said anything.”
Jen looked away for a split second. “I couldn’t. I didn’t want Billy to find out. I got pregnant. We’ve been trying for so long. Billy was so happy.”
She swallowed hard. “I ran into Earl at the store a couple of weeks ago. He took one look at Bobby and figured out that Bobby was his. He followed me to my car in the parking lot, told me if I didn’t sleep with him again, he was going to sue for custody of his son.” Pain filled her voice. “It would have broken Billy’s heart.”
Even with Jen holding a gun on her, Luanne’s heart went out to her friend. “You have to talk to the police. He raped you. He blackmailed you. There are extenuating circumstances.”
But Jen shook her head stubbornly, her mouth set in a narrow line.
Luanne couldn’t think. So she blurted out the screaming question that banged around in her mind. “Why me? Why did you set me up?”
“For the girls.” Jen’s expression softened a shade as she put her other hand on the gun, keeping it aimed. “I wanted babies so much, for so long. I wanted daughters. And there you were, two perfect little girls dropped on your lap without you having to do anything for it. No hormone injections, no painful fertility treatments, no surgeries. No difficult pregnancy, no twenty hours of labor.”
Luanne stared. She’d never known how much all that had affected Jen. She’d never even suspected.
“If you went to prison, I would have offered to raise Mia and Daisy. You wouldn’t have wanted them to go to the foster system. I would have adopted them.” Jen smiled confidently, her eyes remaining cold. “I’m going to adopt them now. They already know me. Social Services is going to take that into consideration.”
Luanne was still half in denial as her brain churned. “You put a roofie in my soda Friday night before I went to the bar.”
“I didn’t want you to remember what happened.”
“How did you know Brett wouldn’t show?”
“I made up Brett.” Jen gave a smug smile. “Fake Facebook account.”
The sense of betrayal was staggering. Luanne had a hard time catching up with reality. Come to think of it, she’d been doing that a lot lately. She stared at the woman she’d thought was her best friend. Just… Unreal… No other word for it.
All those times she’d spent talking about Brett to Jen, getting her hopes up that she’d found a decent guy. While Jen was probably silently laughing her ass off.
Behind the fear and betrayal, anger gathered. “Where did you get the drug?”
“Billy got it for his back injury when we went to Ireland to visit his grandmother.”
Such a s
imple answer. Why hadn’t she thought of that? Then another question popped into Luanne’s head. “You left the kids home alone and came to the bar after me?”
“I would never leave the kids home alone,” Jen shot back with her voice full of heat, clearly offended at the suggestion that she was a bad mother. “Billy had the night off.”
And, of course, Jen knew about Luanne’s little back-alley fantasy about Earl. She’d mentioned it a time or two when Earl had pushed her to the edge. “I thought you were my friend.”
Jen snorted. “Yeah. A good friend you are. We were supposed to go off to college together. You chose your loony mother over me and stayed home. Then when I came home, married Billy, and had Bobby, needed your support here, you skipped off to college. You only came home because of the twins.”
Jen’s voice grew colder with each word as she continued. “I just want the girls. If you got convicted, you would have gone away for a few years. You’ve worked so hard for so long. It would have been a break. People can even go to college while they’re in prison.”
Okay, so the woman was completely delusional. Her best friend was seriously off her rocker, and Luanne had so little time to socialize, so little time and energy to spend even with her best friend, that she’d never noticed.
How much had they even talked? Five minutes when she dropped off and picked up the girls. Less if she was running late.
“Don’t do this,” she begged. “We can explain Earl. The police already know he abused the staff. But you’re not going to be able to explain away killing me in cold blood.”
“I want the girls,” Jen repeated, her eyes unblinking, her hand dead steady on the cold, unforgiving weapon.
~*~
Harper had a search warrant for Gregory’s apartment, so the quickly put-together joint Broslin PD–West Chester PD team went there first. They had time before the 1:00 p.m. class at the library.
Gregory still wasn’t home. And they couldn’t find anything incriminating at his place either—nothing to tie him to Earl, nothing to tie him to Luanne. As far as Chase could tell, the suspect was a single guy, between jobs, volunteering once a week at the library.
No history of previous violence. The only reason he was in the fingerprint database was that he’d taught computer classes at various summer camps, and he’d had criminal background checks to qualify for that.
They sealed the place anyway. One of the West Chester officers—round, bald, serious as a sledgehammer—stayed behind in case Gregory showed up here instead of going to class. The rest of the team went to the library and waited in the community room.
When Gregory arrived, ten minutes early, they took him into custody without a hint of trouble, transported him straight to the Broslin police station, with West Chester PD’s full cooperation.
“Why did you kill Earl Cosgrove?” Chase grilled him when he finally got the man in the interrogation room with Harper.
In his midthirties, brown hair, brown eyes, Gregory was sweating bullets, had already sweated through his tan, button-down shirt. His eyes, filled with confusion and fear, darted from Chase to Harper, then back. “I swear I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Hell of a thing was, Chase could swear he was telling the truth. The man displayed none of the telltale signs of lying, his gaze frightened but direct, the desperation in his voice authentic. Chase exchanged a glance with Harper.
“Why did you set up Luanne Mayfair? Why her? How do you know her?”
“Who?” Gregory squinted.
“You targeted her at Finnegan’s two weeks ago, drugged her drink so you could take control of her car,” Chase snapped, losing his legendary patience at last.
“That blonde at the bar?” Gregory shook his head frantically, his eyes begging them to believe him. “No way. I talked to her for like ten minutes. She was completely wasted. Looked good one second, then cross-eyed the next. When I walked up to her, I didn’t realize how far gone she was. She wanted to go home. The night was a total bust. I left a minute after her.”
“And grabbed her by her car in the parking lot?” Harper demanded.
“No, man. I swear. Her girlfriend was driving her home. I was actually glad to see that. Luanne was in no shape to get behind the wheel.”
Chase exchanged another look with Harper. “What girlfriend?”
“Tall redhead. She was waiting for her in the parking lot. Roundest ass you’ve ever seen. I was thinking I wished she was in the bar earlier.”
“Jen,” Chase told Harper, and took off running.
~*~
Luanne could see the handle of a baseball bat under the bed, probably Billy’s. She took half a step that way, her heart trying to beat its way out of her chest as panic filled her. She was seriously close to hyperventilating.
“You tried to kill me. The moving van, the grocery store, the sewer grate. The girls could have fallen in!”
“I didn’t do the grate. Someone probably stole that for scrap metal.”
“But the moving van and the grocery store… You were watching the kids. You had them with you?” She would have noticed, wouldn’t she?
“Billy was watching the kids. I told him I had to run out for something.” Jen shrugged.
Luanne had no idea how to handle the situation. What did you do when your best friend turned into a homicidal maniac?
What would Chase do?
He’d stay calm, for starters.
“I want the girls to know about me.” She stalled. “I don’t want them to forget me. You’ll be their mother, but I want them to know that I was their sister. They should have roots.”
“Of course.”
“We got a box of family pictures from Aunt Hilda.”
“I’ll bring those over.”
“And you can’t let Mia run roughshod over Daisy. Daisy has to be heard too.”
“I already know that. I spend as much time with them as you do,” Jen said defensively.
That she was right filled Luanne with guilt. She pushed that aside. She was done with people bullying her with guilt. She needed to concentrate on survival. “Do we have to do this here? The shot will scare them. I don’t want them to be scared. Couldn’t we do it in the garage? You don’t want that kind of mess in your bedroom.”
“Why would you be in the garage? This makes more sense. You had a headache. You lay down. Gregory came in through the window.”
“How did he find me?”
“He followed you from home.”
“Chase would have seen him.”
“Nobody is infallible.” Jen was surprisingly calm, making it all up as she went. She was determined to get the girls and had committed to the cause.
Stall. “How did he get up to the second-floor window?” Luanne asked, shifting another half a step closer to the bed.
“I’ll put up the ladder later.” Jen adjusted her finger on the trigger. “I don’t want to drag this out. Billy will be back in a minute.”
Luanne dove for the bed in the same second as Jen squeezed off a shot.
Chase’s voice filled the house the next instant, coming from outside, magnified by a bullhorn: “Jen O’Brian, come out with your hands in the air. We already have the children here safely.”
“Leave my kids alone!” Jen screamed and ran out of the room, thundering down the stairs.
Luanne stayed where she was, heart racing, limbs shaking, half under the bed, clutching the baseball bat. Sweet Jesus. Did that just happen?
“Drop your weapon! Drop your weapon!” multiple voices shouted outside.
Then, a minute later, footsteps on the stairs, then Chase skidded into the room, dove for her, pulled her onto his lap, checked her over, his hands moving over her, following his darting gaze, his voice thick as he asked the single question: “Are you hurt?”
His gaze hung on her face as if his life depended on her answer.
“Only my pride.” Her heart pounded. “The kids?”
He touched his forehead against hers,
grunting with relief. “Sitting in the back of my car, playing bank robbers.”
The last of the tension ran out of her. Oh, thank God. Her knees began to shake. How stupid was that, now that the scare was all over? Yet when she tried to push to her feet, she couldn’t quite stand.
Chase stashed his gun back in his shoulder holster and stood, pulling her up, then tugged her into his arms, against his mile-wide chest.
She snuggled her face into the crook of his neck, her heart still beating wildly.
“That little adventure just shaved ten years off my life,” he said, his tone rough. “Don’t ever do that again.”
“I promise not to be held at gunpoint by a psychopathic friend.” She groaned. “I can’t believe I missed all the signs. How could I suspect nothing?”
He pressed his lips to the top of her head. “It’s not how your mind works. You’re not criminally insane.”
His radio crackled, a disembodied voice telling people to stand down. They had the suspect in custody.
Luanne wrapped her shaking arms around Chase. “Thank you for coming for us.” She drew her lungs full of air. “It’s over now, right? All the way. I’ll be cleared of the charges?”
He nodded. “I still want you and the girls to move in with me.”
“We’re not in danger.”
“In a proper family, the mother and the father live together.”
Her head snapped up, and she stared at him.
“I like your voice,” he said with a lopsided smile. “It’s all velvety and stuff. Gets under my skin. Makes me think dirty thoughts, to be honest.”
“You’re marrying me because you like my voice?”
“You have other positive attributes.”
“Such as?”
“Fantastic boobs.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Chase Mortimer M—”
He kissed her. Lingered endlessly because, hey, when did he ever do anything in a hurry? He didn’t pull back until her brain was mush.
“I love you. We’re getting married,” he said mildly in that easygoing way of his. “I’ve already waited nearly an entire damned decade. I’m a patient man, but I’m not going to wait endlessly.”
