Identity--A Tale of Murder, Mystery and Romance

by H. D. Thomson

  The scrape of a shoe on cement sounded from outside the front door. Skye rolled her shoulders and straightened in the chair. Calm. Cool. Jay needed to know she was in complete control.

  She would find Tyler, and God help Jay if he got in her way.

  The key grated in the lock. Her breath whispered between clenched teeth. The deadbolt turned, a slight slide of metal against metal. Tension slashed into the muscles of her shoulders and back. The door opened. Skye didn’t move. Jay stepped into the foyer, closed the door with a shoulder and turned toward the living area, a six-pack of long-necks in one hand.

  He hadn’t seen her yet.

  She stared at the lamp on the end table beside her and focused. Light flooded the room.

  Jay blinked, then stiffened. “What the hell.”

  As he took a step backward, their gazes caught and held, his narrowed, suspicious, hers unblinking, without expression. At least that’s what she hoped he saw.

  “Hello, Jay.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve come for Tyler.”

  “Tyler?”

  She dug her nails deeper into the chair until her fingers hit the wood concealed beneath. Her composure cracked. Damn him. She was tired of his games.

  Jay set the beer on a scratched table against the wall and glanced down the hall to where both bedrooms were.

  “Don’t bother. It’s not there.”

  His expression grew bland. “What are you talking about?”

  “The gun in the nightstand by your bed. Not the most original place to put a weapon, but then you were never the imaginative type.” Lips twisting into a resemblance of a smile, she picked up the revolver in her lap and dangled the trigger guard with an index finger.

  His face tightened. “Aren’t you the smart one?”

  She frowned, sensing a deeper meaning beneath his snide tone as she crossed her legs and eased the gun back to her lap. “How much were you hoping to get?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Blackmail. Your plan to use Tyler to get money from me.” Saying the words aloud turned her stomach. How low could a person go? She couldn’t even fathom how Jay could use an innocent child, never mind his own son, for personal gain. “After all, you showed up in Las Vegas looking for cash.”

  Jay laughed. Shaking his head, he latched onto the neck of a beer and pulled it from its case. “You’re way off. Tyler’s the last person I’d want.”

  “I seem to remember a different story.” Memories flooded her, painful and raw and not dulled by time. “You fought me every step of the way. You were determined to get sole-custody.”

  He twisted the top, tossed the cap up, and caught it in mid-air. “That’s the past. Things worked out better for me going solo. I like my life the way it is now.”

  She glanced around the room, at the dirt smudges bracketing the doorways and handles, the worn, beige carpet. She wrinkled her nose at the sway-backed, gray sofa opposite her. Patches of velvet were scraped off from overuse. “Really? Seems to me you’ve lowered your standards.”

  After he tipped the bottle and downed several swallows, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You haven’t changed a bit. Still a bitch.”

  His words... She’d heard or seen them before. Oh, God. Shock slammed into her chest. An image of the mirror in David’s home flashed in her mind’s eye. You can’t run from your past. You were a bitch then, and you’re a bitch now.

  He’d lied like every other time he’d opened his mouth. Jay had been the one who’d taken Tyler, not some faceless kidnapper. He’d had Tyler all this time, while she’d be going insane with fear.

  Clutching the gun’s handle with a rigid hand, she jerked to a stand. “You sick bastard.”

  She glared at Jay from across the room. Anger rolled through her body with such force that it choked the breath from her lungs. The emotion built until she drove it from her body and directed its power at Jay. She yanked him off the ground with the force of her rage and shoved him through the air. The bottle flew from his hand, spewing foam and liquid into the air before it dropped and rolled across the carpet. His head and back hit the wall with a loud thud.

  Shoved up against the wall, feet dangling centimeters above the floor, he glowered back at her. “Fuck you.”

  Skye hurled the gun at him. The weapon spun through the air until its barrel froze inches from Jay’s temple. Using her telekinesis, she kept him pressed against the wall with a large invisible fist and eased the trigger slowly.

  His throat contracted with an audible swallow. Fear radiated from his body and turned his jaw rigid.

  Good. She wanted him to be afraid. That was the only way to get the truth out of him.

  “Tell me where he is.”

  He opened his mouth. When only a gurgle bubbled from his mouth, she eased the pressure from his chest and throat.

  Jay struggled, kicking his legs, twisting his body against the force that pinned him to the wall. Skye let him struggle until eventually he must have realized how futile his attempts were and he stilled.

  “Come on you bastard. Where have you hidden him?”

  “Nowhere. I don’t have him.”

  Fury ate into her. “Still the lies. You haven’t changed, but I have. This time I know how to get answers.” She stepped toward him, keeping the gun trained on his temple with her mind. “We’re going to play a little game. Your revolver’s perfect for it. It’s called Russian Roulette. Ever hear of it?”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Maybe. I left one bullet in the chamber. It’s anyone’s guess when a bullet will blow your brains across the room.” She shoved the gun against his temple, pleased to see a new wave of terror etched across his features. Gone was the dimple, the smile, the charm. No façade, just raw emotion. “Now where is he?”

  “I don’t know.” Eyes wide with terror, he stared at the gun, transfixed.

  She eased back the trigger until a click resounded over Jay’s frayed breathing.

  No bullet.

  This time.

  Jay slumped and started to slither down the wall until she wrenched him upward. She again inched back the trigger, then dug the muzzle deeper against his flesh. She wasn’t about to let the bastard go without a fight.

  “Jesus, Skye! Stop it. I’m telling you the truth. I don’t know where he is!”

  She didn’t believe him, but what the hell would it take to get the truth out of him? The trigger clicked again. Skye saw the dark stain appear along the crotch of his pants, but she didn’t give a damn.

  “That’s two now. We’ve got a total of six. The odds of a bullet in the next one just climbed.” Jay may not have ever gotten violent, but the way Skye was feeling right now, she was breathing, craving violence, anything to fill the yawning hole tearing at her insides. “You’re a slimy piece of shit. Do you know that? You lie, lie and lie. You wanted him before. It doesn’t make sense that you’ve completely changed your mind. Can you tell me why? Can you?”

  She twisted the muzzle against his flesh, enjoying the shiver of fear that visibly shook his body. Slowly the trigger eased, the whisper of metal against well-oiled metal. He squeezed his eyes shut. Tears pooled at the corner of one eye and etched a path down one cheek.

  “Because... because he’s not mine.”

  “What?” She edged the trigger back. That made no sense.

  “Tyler isn’t my kid.” He gulped in a ragged breath. “He never was.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “They showed me. I saw the DNA test and everything.”

  Skye shook her head, beyond shock, beyond disbelief. She eased the gun from his brow, but continued to aim the muzzle at his head. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m not Tyler’s biological father.”

  “That’s impossible. I’ve never slept with anyone else while we were married.”

  “Yeah, right. You had yourself an immaculate conception, did you? If not that, you’ll be sayin
g you were abducted by aliens and secretly impregnated.”

  Skye’s gaze narrowed. Even with a gun to his head and having wet his pants, Jay had the gall to be snide. “Then why fight for sole custody of a boy you never fathered? You’re the crazy one if you think I’m going to buy that.”

  Jay must have sensed her patience fray even further, because alarm flared in his eyes. “They paid me. They promised me a whole lot of cash if I got custody of him.”

  “So you’re saying that you intended to sell Tyler?” She stepped back, repugnance crawling across her flesh. To think that she’d been married to this man for years. Had the drugs completely leached his ethics or had he been like this the entire time she’d known him and she’d been a blind fool?

  “What the hell did I care? He wasn’t mine. You’d lied to me, screwed around behind my back.”

  She searched his face. Sweat gleamed off his forehead, the stink of urine clung to him, while fear radiated from him in large waves. All the signs revealed Jay might be finally telling her the truth. But this story of his sounded too bizarre.

  It was crazy. It was impossible.

  But was it?

  A man had kidnapped Ty. That same man had died in a car crash where Tyler had miraculously survived the head-on collision. The mystery behind the kidnapper’s motives lay buried in the ground with him.

  “You mention ‘they.’ Who are ‘they’ and why would they want Tyler?”

  But she already had one of her answers. They wanted Tyler for his power. His telekinesis was far more sophisticated than her own and David’s. With what her son could do, it would allow a person to achieve power, money, any imaginable, twisted dream.

  “I didn’t want to know who they were,” Jay finally said. “And even if I did, they were careful. I never got a name or place. Just cash, and random calls.”

  She jammed the muzzle against his temple and pulled back the trigger.

  “Jesus! Skye don’t do it.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “For God’s sake. I made a mistake. I fucked up. But don’t kill me!”

  “Give me a name.”

  She dug the muzzle deeper into his flesh.

  “I don’t know... I swear—”

  Click.

  “Shit!” He blinked. Tears clung to his lashes.

  “We’re down to three now.”

  “Ferguson. I caught the name Ferguson. And a house. Something to do with a house. That’s all I know. I swear. Just don’t. Don’t kill me. I want to live. I’ll change. I swear. I’ll get clean.”

  “House. What do you mean?”

  “I overheard talk about a house.”

  “October house. It that it?”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  Skye eased back on her telekinesis and her hold of him against the wall. Jay slumped to the ground in a quaking mass of wretched humanity and urine. Sweat clung to his brow, his hairline. Mucus dripped from his nose as deep, anguished cries shook his body.

  Skye stepped away from Jay, pulling the gun hanging in mid-air into her hand. She’d broken him, a man she thought she’d once loved. A man she believed had fathered her child.

  The world tilted. Dizziness assaulted her. She grappled to keep her telekinesis in line. Skye didn’t dare panic, didn’t dare crumble. Maybe later, but not now, not when her son desperately needed her.

  October House. A foster home from her youth. The scrawled writing on the mirror, the kidnappings were all tied to her past. But how?

  She stumbled from the apartment, got into the rental car without heaving the contents of her stomach. She tossed the gun in the passenger seat and gripped the steering wheel with a clammy hand. Blankly, she stared through the windshield as the chill of sweat formed on her brow, temple and nape.

  She didn’t have the energy to drive off. Hell, she didn’t even know where to go now. She’d focused so much on Jay, not thinking much of any other possibility. She’d stepped through the threshold of Jay’s apartment believing she’d find Tyler, but other than the name of Ferguson, she had nothing other than more questions and a fresh wave of terror. Jay had been tangible, a person she could find, while this Ferguson was a faceless threat.

  Her hand tightened around the steering wheel as she peered through the driver’s window to Jay’s apartment. A street lamp from the parking lot revealed his closed, front door. She didn’t think he’d be leaving anytime soon. Not with the way she’d left him. She would have killed him and not cared.

  With horror and disgust, she stared at the shadow of the revolver on the passenger seat. The fluid metal lines gleamed through the darkness. She’d stepped over the line, used a violence beyond anything she thought capable of. She’d become one of them, a person she’d always abhorred and taught her son never to emulate. Self-loathing crept across her flesh and tightened around her throat.

  Shifting, she reached inside her front jeans pocket and pulled out six bullets and stuffed them in the cup holder.

  “What the hell am I becoming?”

  She wiped her damp hands across her face, curling into herself. Sobs wracked her body until her stomach muscles cramped with pain. Gasping, she rubbed at her face with her forearm, fumbling for some measure of restraint.

  Her son. Oh, God. He needed her.

  She thought of the scrawled words on the mirror in Las Vegas. You can’t run from your past. You were a bitch then, and you’re a bitch now. If these people wanted Tyler so much, why make it so personal? Why scrawl those vicious words on the mirror as if she’d wronged them?

  None of it made sense.

  Skye ruthlessly pushed down the panic bubbling up her throat. Tyler had to be in Boston. There was no other logical place. It had started here with the kidnapping.

  Jay’s words leaked into her thoughts. “Next you’ll say it was an alien abduction.”

  A fresh wave of foreboding rolled through her insides. She shivered. Images of the alien from her nightmares, savage incisors, yellow reptilian eyes flashing hatred, bombarded her. No matter how much she wanted, Skye couldn’t shake the images from her mind.

  She dragged in a long, panicked breath that rattled her entire frame.

  What the hell was going on?

  Chapter 19

  Once the estate’s front gates whispered shut, Peter glanced over his shoulder and backed up his car into Ferguson’s garage. The lack of banging from inside the trunk didn’t worry Peter. He’d pulled one of the seats down in the back, which gave direct access to the trunk and allowed air into the small enclosure. He’d also checked on the kid a couple of hours ago, found his pulse normal and his breathing a bit agitated, but the kid was alive.

  After he cut the engine, Peter hit the garage door remote attached to the car’s visor and watched the metal panels roll shut. Daylight filtered through garage door cutouts and into the enclosed space, lightening the shadows across denser, darker ones.

  He popped the trunk, then shut the driver’s door after him. As he walked around to the rear of the car, he snapped on the switch by the door that led into the house, throwing bright, fluorescent light into the garage’s interior and chasing away the remaining shadows.

  Peter peered inside the trunk. The boy lay curled in much the same position Peter had left him in when he’d checked on his pulse and given him water. Except for two brief and remote stops to take a piss, the kid had been inside the trunk for almost nine hours, ever since Peter had smuggled him out of the last cheap hotel they’d stayed in and into the car.

  At nine, thinner than most boys his age, he was far from any threat to an adult male. So why did Ferguson want him so badly? Peter glanced at the immaculate storage cabinets lined on either side and to the Bentley parked against the far wall of the three-car garage. Money didn’t seem to be the motivation.

  Revenge?

  Peter grunted. His eyelid flickered. He blinked and rubbed the skin with the back of his hand. He understood revenge all too well, and because of it, he began to wonder if it was such a good idea to hand the kid over as planned. Yeah, th
e money was good, but this went beyond financial gain. The idea of killing the boy in front of Skye drummed into his thoughts.

  Now that would be perfect. To witness her suffering firsthand. You couldn’t get much better than that.

  “Hey, kid. I’m about to pull you out. Don’t give me an excuse to hurt you. I will if you try something.”

  In response, the pillowcase over the boy’s head quivered and contracted by his mouth with each quick inhalation. Still terrified. Not that Peter could blame him. Getting kidnapped—especially at such a young age—was bound to get someone scared shitless, but hell, that wasn’t Peter’s problem.

  Now Skye. Yeah, that was very much her problem. By now she must be sweating pretty badly. Good. She deserved it. Karma was a bitch.

  He grabbed the boy’s duct taped wrists and pulled him from his fetal position. Using his other hand, Peter grabbed the waistband at the back the kid’s pants and yanked him from the trunk.

  The boy twisted, flung a foot into Peter’s groin and an elbow into his throat. Gasping, Peter dropped the kid but hooked two fingers around a belt loop before the little shit sprang away. The kid struggled against him, all knees, elbows and hard angles. His frantic movements wrenched the pillowcase from around his face.

  “You little shit.” Peter squished the kid against his side, hindering more jabs and frantic contortions. Peter thought about snapping the kid’s neck and ending the craziness but then reminded himself that Ferguson wanted him alive.

  The boy arched against Peter. Sweat glued short spikes of hair against his face. The pillowcase clung to the crown of his head. For the briefest moment the boy’s gaze, dark brown, fathomless, weary yet wise, meshed with Peter’s before he looked at the car and around the garage.

  The sharp cry of the car alarm cut into the enclosed garage, pounding into the air and into Peter’s skull. Then the high screech of the house alarm broke over the car’s warning system.

  What the hell? Tensing, Peter searched the garage for an intruder. No one jumped from the storage units lining the two walls. A freezer and sink rested against another wall. Neither held enough bulk to hide a person.