Robert did say earlier that he thought the charges could be dropped for Rosita’s murder. They had nothing except that she was shot with the same caliber gun as the one they took from James’s house. There was no proof he’d done anything to Tessa, and the extra DNA was still being analyzed. And the VLPD, that Solomon prick, made his point with James’s arrest—his intention was to make James look like a homicidal maniac in case they couldn’t find Jane Doe’s killer. Or if Tessa turned up somewhere—no, James wouldn’t think about that. Tessa was fine. He was going to find her.
Well done, Solomon, you asshole.
It took James about forty minutes to get to Robert’s office, in a town that had a little bit more of a city feel than Valley Lake’s Main Street. Robert’s building was sleek, with a mirrored outside that reflected the bridge connecting the city in the background. Thankfully, the parking was underground. He took the ticket from the machine, happy there was no attendant who would possibly say “Hey, you look familiar, aren’t you—” before stopping and shielding themselves from the vicious murderer they’d just come face-to-face with in a parking garage.
He parked far away from the elevator, on purpose, not wanting to run into anyone. He approached the seventh floor where Robert’s firm was situated and felt the apprehension as soon as he opened the glass doors. Prying eyes from behind the receptionist’s desk cut through him like a saber.
“Hi. I’m here for Robert Brown. James—”
“Yes, James Montgomery.”
Her hair was red and cut into a short, straight bob just above her shoulders, and she wore thick black-framed glasses. Her lips were outlined a dark red to match her hair, and they didn’t move from their straight line. No matter how many criminals she dealt with daily, James was sure this was her first double homicide in suburbia. Guilty killer!
She got up and walked around the desk and curled her finger, indicating he should follow her, so he did. She led him to Robert’s office at the end of the hallway, behind another set of glass doors. James could see it was a huge corner office with a great view of the bridge and the water, but what concerned him was Robert’s frantic stance. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbow, his usually sleek hair was out of place, and voice was raised at whoever he was talking to on the phone. His head snapped to their direction and he waved James in.
James turned around. “Thank—” Nope, no need for thank you, redhead was already gone. Guilty killer!
Robert pointed to the empty seat in front of his desk. His face flushed with frustration.
“I don’t care!” He slammed the phone down and blew out a puff of air. “We have a problem, James. Rosita’s body was missing an earring on her left lobe. A big emerald earring. And they just found it in your house. Your bedroom, to be specific.”
What the— “Wait. What? Who? Who’s in my house?”
“I got a courtesy call from the DA about executing another search warrant. Your phone is still busted so I couldn’t get in touch with you and I knew you were on your way already. There was another anonymous tip, someone claiming to know about your affair with her, just like someone who said they saw you go to her house the night she was murdered.”
One hundred percent impossible. Who was framing him? “This is insane, Robert. How are they allowed in my house?”
“I sent Evan over to let them in—you said he could be the point of contact. He’s overseeing the whole thing.”
James was panic-stricken. How were Rosita’s belongings in his house? She was only there once, for his promotion party. And he’d seen her in those earrings after that. She always had those things on.
“Well, you were already arrested for her murder, but this is going to make the charges impossible to drop. Impossible!” He slams both hands down on his desk. “I don’t know what we’re going to do. I mean, the anonymous tips are all hearsay. But still. This isn’t good. They might revoke your bail.”
He was going to die in jail. For something he didn’t do.
Time for the big guns.
“Look, I’m not accusing him of being a murderer, but I’ll bet my last dollar I know who the father of that baby was. I wonder if—”
Like an angel on his shoulder knowing James was innocent, Robert’s phone rang, and he lifted a finger to stop James’s rant before he answered the phone.
“Robert Brown,” he answered as he picked up the phone. “Oh, your timing couldn’t be better. What did you find out?” Robert wrote something down on a notepad. “Got it. I have James Montgomery here right now. I’ll find out.” He slammed the phone down. “That was my guy who was getting information about the rent-a-car. Do you know anyone named Maribel Lopez?”
35
Tessa
When I pull the door back and my eyes adjust, I think they must be betraying me. I’m beyond stunned at the woman standing in front of me. She’s tiny and afraid, dressed in all black, with her blond hair tucked inside a baseball cap.
“Maribel?” My voice catches in my throat, full of shock. “Oh my God, what are you doing here? How did you find me?”
“Can I come in?” Her eyes are rimmed red, so I know she’s been crying. “Drew is here. He found you. We need to talk.”
My carefully cultivated world spins out of orbit in front of me. Drew is here. He found you. The words, while spoken aloud, don’t register immediately. Yet I nod, surely white as a ghost, and move away from the opening to let her in, and she shuffles past me inside. I stick my head out the door and look left to right to see if she’s been followed. Someone—Drew—could be hiding anywhere at the end of the cul-de-sac. Hell, he could be in the bushes right outside the front door and launch an attack. I need to protect her, and myself.
I close the door slowly, quietly, like I’m keeping the whole meeting a secret.
I wish I made more noise and caused a ruckus, one that would inform the neighbors, because after I turn to her, I only remember pain.
Blackout.
When I wake, it’s darker, but not proper nighttime so I assume I’ve only been out an hour. What happened? My head hurts. My hands are tied. How did—
“Welcome back, Tessa.”
Maribel is sitting in front of me in the kitchen, a gun in her hand.
At the sight of the gun, my anxiety kicks in and the sweat starts to run down my back. A gun. Wait—a gun? Maribel. She’s not on my side. What happened?
“Where’s my dog?” Motherly instinct.
“The dog is fine. Locked in the office. I’m not a monster,” she says, although that’s exactly what she is. “But you’re about to find out what I’m really capable of.”
Fear hits my insides like a lightning strike, and the woman in front of me no longer looks the way she did the last time I saw her, months ago, when she told me she’d help me put Drew away. Now, she’s dressed in monochrome black like a vigilante, pointing the cool steel barrel of the gun toward me.
“I don’t understand.” I struggle with the ropes. They’re loose. “Let me out!”
As I writhe on the ground, she watches with a smile. “Really, Tessa, what are you going to do if you get out of the ropes? I have a fucking gun. You might want to think twice about trying to escape. You aren’t in charge anymore. You never were.”
“What are you talking about?”
She scratched the side of her head with the tip of the gun and I wonder for a hot second what I’ll do if she accidentally blows her brains out right in my kitchen.
“You, Tessa. What’s so fucking special about you?”
“I don’t know what you mean. Why are you doing this? You were helping me!”
“I was never helping you, you pathetic bitch! How thick are you? Drew is mine, and he always will be.”
“You can have him!” I shout. “I’m married to someone else! I don’t want Drew!”
“Oh, maybe not. But Drew wants you. Hasn’t stopped talking about you since the day you left. I had to tell him I was working with you, because I wanted him to know what a whore you
really are. Jumped right into bed with this latest one, didn’t you? For sure Drew would know I was better suited for him, but no, he wants his perfect life on paper back. The obeying wifey, who cooks his dinner and cleans his clothes and runs his errands and comes to business functions in designer dresses. Me? I’m his plaything on the side—he didn’t let me slide into your spot the way I should’ve after you left. It should’ve been easy. Help you disappear, and he’d get over you. Didn’t. Quite. Work. That. Way.” She emphasizes her words.
“No,” I say and shake my head. What she’s saying doesn’t land. “You helped me frame him.”
She scoffs. “That’s what I wanted you to think. That’s why you were able to find the one article—so you could think I was on your side. I was hoping you’d tell me where you were so I could take care of this sooner. I’d never put Drew away. We love each other. And you, you idiot. You had previously told me you were going south, but on the phone, you said you were going out to the shore. Everyone knows that means New Jersey. How stupid are you? You didn’t go far enough away. And that’s a problem for me.”
“Oh Maribel, no.” She fell into the same trap I did. “No, he’s going to do the same thing to you.”
She laughs a hearty laugh. “To me? Me? I work at a hedge fund. I have an MBA. I’m not someone to be fucked with. But you? Shit, he told me all about you, you piece of shit. Fucked by foster daddies and shuffling from truck stop to truck stop? He knew what you were. A white trash waitress. A target. Someone who could be fucked with. So, he did.”
“Don’t you see what type of person that makes him?”
She waves the gun, and I wince.
“No, no, no, sweet, stupid Tessa. He acts like that to you, because that’s all you deserve. I deserve better. I command better.”
“I don’t understand. I thought the cops had evidence against him?”
“Jesus, you’re not listening to me. I never told the cops about the affair. I never put my grandmother’s ring in your bedroom or planted a gun in his sock drawer or put the blood in his trunk. Yes, there was one casualty—his job. The firm looked at the original report as a distraction. After the initial brouhaha died down about you being missing, everyone just assumed you left. No biggie, right? Spouses leave all the time.” The gun goes to her lips, as if she’s deep in thought. “But no, Drew became obsessed with finding you. He’s not used to losing. And our little plan stopped working for me. And as fate would have it, when we found you, I decided it was time to annihilate my problem once and for all.”
She wasn’t lying earlier. Drew knows where I am?
“D-Drew is here?” I know my voice is warbling.
“Our man fell into a bit of a funk with his name attached to a missing wife. Our Andrew reinvented himself as Andy. Got a new job as CFO for a builder. Since I knew you were at the shore, he researched areas here that needed new shopping centers, so he could spend more time here. And wouldn’t you know it, right here in this shit town in New Jersey, he saw you. Your wedding picture to Jason, right on his desk when they were having a meeting earlier this week about getting financing for that town center.”
“James. His name is James.” James, my knight in shining armor. Please save me again.
She rolled her eyes. “Like I give a fuck what his name is. Drew called me, all excited that he found you, and he was looking for a way to bring you back into his life. Our life. My life. I can’t have that, Tessa. I can’t.”
“You’re not listening, Maribel. I don’t want him.” My thumb slides under the knot. I can get out. I have to get out.
She shakes her head back and forth wildly. “But he wants you. No one will take him away from me. Not you, and not that other slut at the bank. He fucked her last night, you know. Rosita. Called me and bragged about it too.”
For a hot second, I see her humanity, like she almost hears how ridiculous she sounds when she speaks out loud. But then, the wild-eyed beast is back, the one trying to get rid of me permanently. I try to reason with her on a human level. A woman’s level.
“Maribel, please. Don’t you see what type of man he is? He brags about cheating on you? Like you said, you’re smart. You’re beautiful. You can do so much better than an asshole like him.”
She points the gun at me again. “Don’t talk about him that way.”
I look away. “It’s okay, Maribel. I get it. You’re obsessed with him. I was too, which is why I let him do what he did. He’s a narcissist. You don’t realize you’re being manipulated. There’s a better life out there. I found one. You can too.”
“No. I need you gone.” Then she nods, like she just made up the next sentence on the spot. “Yes, I need you gone, and Rosita too. I won’t have him leave me for her either.”
My eyes are closed, and it hits me. “Rosita? Are you—”
“Of course, she’s next!” She waves the gun around in the air again. “You think I’m going to let her come between us?”
“Maribel, you’re never going to get away with this.”
“Sure I am. I had a great teacher.” She taps the side of her head. “Once, someone told me it was a good idea to plant my grandmother’s ring in her bedroom to prove an affair.” Her eyes are digging into my brain and I know I’m fucked. “Of course, I pretended I did, and that Drew’s influence kept it all under wraps, but the truth is, it’s a brilliant ploy. I’ll kill you and hide your body for a few days. I’ll kill Rosita. I’m going to plant this gun in the house.” She waves it around again, too casual, like water is going to spout out of the tip, not bullets. “I have my ways to get into your house again—trust me—and I’ll plant something of hers in your bedroom. She’s a climber. Fucked Drew, told him she’s been fucking Trey too. Nice pillow talk, huh? She’s a climber and a slut.”
That can’t be true. Trey loves Aleesha; I’ve seen them together. “Rosita isn’t like that. You don’t know her.”
“You don’t know her. Drew asked Rosita to steal your wedding picture from James’s office so he could examine it and make sure it was really you. She’s doing it tomorrow. She’s going to take the thing right off the desk in the morning and give it to Drew later in the day when they have a meeting. She’s helping him break you and James up, then she’s going to take your husband’s job, which she feels she should’ve gotten anyway. She’s a horrible person. Don’t defend her.”
That’s unfortunate, if true. But it doesn’t mean she needs to die. “Please, don’t hurt Rosita,” I beg.
“I can make it look like James and Rosita were having an affair, and that he wanted to get rid of you both. I know where to put your blood, Tessa. I know how to frame James for both murders, so thanks for that. You’re smarter than you look.”
The plan was brilliant and, unfortunately, mine.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” I whisper. “Maribel, please. Please don’t do this. Don’t do it to James. He’s a good man. I’ll do anything, I’m begging you.”
She rises and goes to the living room, just as I’m able to squirm out of the ropes. But it’s not soon enough, and she comes back into the kitchen with my favorite pillow. The huge gold memory foam pillow that James and I leaned on together on the L-shaped couch while watching TV in the evenings. The bronze tassels swing as she positions the gun deep into it to muffle the sound.
I squeeze my eyes shut, waiting for the gun to go off.
Goodbye, James. Goodbye, unborn child. I never even got a chance to see his eyes light up when I told him. It’s the one card I have left.
“Maribel, I’m pregnant. Please. Please don’t.”
She twitches and I immediately see the regret in her eyes when the gun goes off, likely by accident. Memory foam is everywhere. I’m on my back, the pain is searing, hot, and my first instinct is to try to rip the bullet out, but I’m no surgeon. I’m going to die. Worse than that, my baby is going to die. I’m sad, hopeless, and desperate.
I’m also enraged. Maternal instinct is real.
The guttural sound
that comes out of my mouth stuns me, especially as I leap up and attack a shocked Maribel, who doesn’t expect me to be free from the ropes. Before I know it, I’m on top of her, the gun goes flying backward, and my hands are around her throat, my nails digging into her neck. There’s so much blood around us, I don’t know whether I opened her throat or it’s just pouring out of me at an alarming rate. She screams a high-pitched scream, as much as she can muster while I attempt to strangle the murderer out of her. Her arms flail around me, and she reaches out and plunges her finger into my wound.
I don’t think the bullet hit anything vital, but it’s in my shoulder and it fucking hurts when she presses into it. I falter.
Now she’s standing above me, and punches me with all her might. I know how to take a punch, but she sends me backward and my head hits the side of the stone table. She scrambles for the gun and holds it on me.
“Fuck!” she screams, the gun slipping from her grip due to all the blood. “Don’t fucking move.”
I’m seeing stars anyway, Candy is barking from the office, and Maribel is pacing back and forth. “Fuck. Are you really pregnant?”
My shoulder is bleeding, and with all the torture I’ve been through in my life, this is the worst. “I am.”
Her voice cracks. “Drew is going to kill me.” She grabs her phone, yet she’s not distracted enough for me to make a move, which is impossible anyway. The pain is like nothing I’ve ever experienced, and I’ll pass out from dizziness if I attempt to stand.
She throws a rag from the kitchen at me. “Put pressure on it.” She dials and panic comes out of her mouth when the call connects. “Drew, I need help.”
Holy shit, she called that asshole. I only get one side of the conversation.
“I need help… I’m at Tessa’s, and baby… baby, I shot her. No, she’s alive. She’s pregnant… she needs help, who’s that guy you know up here?… Okay, I’ll bring her… a new one? Where is it? …No, I’ll remember… fine, just fucking tell me where it is… yes, 899 Centaur Parkway… yes…” She looks at me. “I will.” She disconnects the call and walks toward me. “Sorry about this. Well, not really.”
Finding Tessa Page 23
