by Dee Tenorio
The silence must have conveyed his displeasure because Cole hurried to fill it in. “Malcolm Hall doesn’t have many finances to search through. From what I can tell, the guy’s living off the crumbs of some old lady’s fortune.”
“Excuse me?”
“Yeah, his life hit the skids about four years ago. Before that, he was a prominent politician on the rise. His father was a partner in that law firm we were looking into before. Then after a home invasion, his life kind of went to shit. Wife left, he lost an election he was expected to take in a landslide. He went quiet for about a year, then he showed up again checking into rehab for alcoholism. Didn’t seem to go too well for him, because he racked up a few more DUIs over an eighteen-month period. The last one in an accident with a minivan. A mom and two kids coming home from soccer practice, according to the AP. The mom’s in a wheelchair and one of the kids didn’t make it.”
“Why isn’t he in prison?” Because that would make their lives a hell of a lot easier.
“Lawyers were able to prove it was the fault of the woman driving the van. She went into a yellow light too late. Hall had the green. They got him down to a fine and community service for his repeated DUIs.” Cole’s disgust almost matched Locke’s. “His father died about six months later, and from what I can tell, there was a surprise in the will. Christopher Hall left support for his wife, but he disowned his son. It was all very public, like the old man was looking for redemption after he died or something.”
“What kind of redemption?”
“The bulk of his fortune was split between the victims of the van accident and the heirs of Malcolm’s ex-wife.”
Locke heard a strange cracking noise against his ear. He loosened his grip on the phone, but he doubted it was by much. “Say that again.”
Cole cleared his throat, discomfort evident. Which meant he knew. All that digging had to have turned up images. Pictures of Malcolm in his heyday, with his pretty wife by his side… “In the case that she didn’t have any heirs, Kayla McCormick could choose to direct the money to charities of her choice, so long as she made specific donations in her own name to the NICU ward of Northwestern Memorial Hospital and to the Greenhouse Shelter of Chicago. That’s a shelter for victims of domestic violence.” Cole added the last bit softly. “If she doesn’t claim the inheritance within two years of Christopher Hall’s death, all the proceeds will be split between the two charities listed, in her name.”
Locke grunted. At least he didn’t have to tell Cole to keep his findings to himself. The man seemed to already wish he didn’t know any of it. “So where is Malcolm now?”
“That’s the problem. I can’t really tell.” Some fast tapping sounded from the other end of the line. “He remarried about a year ago. A widow close to thirty years older than him. Smart lady, I guess, because he’s not listed on any of her financial accounts.”
How Cole knew that, Locke decided never to ask.
“Whatever money he’s using, he must get in cash from her. Or he’s getting it under the table some other way.”
Perhaps by tormenting people with secrets they couldn’t afford for him to divulge? That lawyer that had scared Susie so bad… He’d been desperate, she said. Terrified that Malcolm would destroy his whole life. Blackmail was a great way to make someone desperate.
So is disowning.
Locke looked over to the Shoppe one more time, apprehension prickling his skin. He thought about the way she stared out the window of the truck on their way in that morning. Susie did have a kind of sixth sense for trouble. She picked up on bar fights before they started, clearing out of any room when tension began to rise. Her agitation the last few days had put them both on edge, but he’d put it to their state of limbo. What if it was something else?
What if it were someone else, setting off her radar?
He almost shrugged away the thoughts as paranoia, but his instincts wouldn’t let him. Susie knew something was off, even if she didn’t say as much. He didn’t have to know Malcolm. He just had to trust in her.
He was already moving to the door when the shot rang out.
“Do you have any idea how long it took to find you?”
Susie shook her head, refusing to look at the gun he held. His eyes weren’t much better, but she wouldn’t feed his ego by showing the very real terror turning her heart into a bass drum.
“You disappeared like a ghost. For a while, I was fine with that. I just wanted you gone. Like you never existed.” His gaze was blank. Everything was blank, but that wasn’t a sign of his complacency. He always zoned out a little when he was his most violent.
“How nice for you,” she murmured, well aware he took pleasure in pointing out her unimportance. Did he notice how little she cared? Because she was kind of marveling over it. His taunts had no sting anymore.
“I was free.” As if she were the one who’d tortured him.
Then again, she couldn’t be surprised he felt that way. He tended to paint himself as the victim most of the time.
“Then I realized…it was like you had actually never existed. No matter where I searched, no one had ever heard of you. You weren’t real anymore.”
She waited for some kind of explanation as to why that bothered him so much but he didn’t seem interested in filling in the gaps. He was still in his own world.
“I’d swear I saw you in a crowd, but it was never you. I’d look for you off and on. Every now and then. Sent a few PIs, but they never came back with anything. If I hadn’t seen that catalog… I was buying lingerie for Clarissa and there you were. Those moles on the back of your neck. I’d know them anywhere. I used to…” He trailed off, the gun almost starting to droop. And she knew why. He used to kiss her there, when they were first together. Before everything had gone so wrong.
He dismissed the memory like a bad thought, righting the angle of the gun so that it was firmly pointed between her eyes again. “You have no idea the things I’ve done since you left. What I’ve had to do, because of you.”
“You could have left well enough alone.” But that wasn’t his way. He didn’t believe in well enough. “You tried to kill me, Malcolm. What was I supposed to do? Thank you?”
She should have known he wouldn’t answer that. Especially not when she noticed Amanda inching out of her peripheral vision. God, if he saw her… Give her a chance. Keep him on you. “How long have you been watching me?” Did he know she’d been to the doctor? Did he know about the baby?
He blinked, refocusing on the here and now. “I’ve been here a few days. Hiding out in the trees, mostly. Long enough to see that beast you’ve been living with. I can see why you picked him to protect you. He’s big, but he’s not doing you much good right now, is he?”
Pleased with himself for not getting caught, wasn’t he? It didn't matter. She barely held in her sigh of relief. He didn’t know anything. If Malcolm was at all aware she was pregnant, he would have started his threats there. Would have been attacking her already, not taunting her about the man she’d chosen. She’d always hated when he gave himself the right to pat himself on the back but this time, she was too grateful to care. And Locke’s actions spoke for themselves.
“He’s done more for me than you ever did.” Locke had given her faith in herself again. In other people. Faith she needed so badly right now, especially if she was going to give him back his sister.
Malcolm wasn’t fazed by her remark. He had a story to tell. To gloat. And she needed to let him. Amanda needed more time to get to that door. “Larson couldn’t believe his luck when he saw you out on the street. He thought he was leaving empty-handed and screwed until you walked right past his car and you never even knew it. I almost didn’t believe him, but he’s a good talker. Good enough to convince me to come and see for myself, anyway.”
“Thought as much.” She hadn’t considered where the weasel had gone after Amanda had sent him packing. A mistake she could only kick herself for. All the same, she hoped that bastard had a ring in hell
just waiting for him.
“Did you feel me, Kayla?” His voice dropped, almost to an intimate whisper. “Feel me watching you? Know I was coming back for you?”
It made her stomach turn that he could make stalking her sound sexual. But then, Malcolm knew his weapons well.
“You always were impossible to sneak up on. Not that it ever changed anything. I always got what I wanted from you.” His chuckle made her skin crawl.
“Not everything.”
The laughter stopped. “I see four years hasn’t made you any less of a bitch.”
He had no idea.
“No sixth sense in the world is going to get you out of this room, Kayla.”
Amanda’s stealth had earned her another precious foot closer to the door. How Amanda would get through it quietly, Susie wasn’t sure, but if she could keep him from turning that gun…
Susie took a gamble, stepping toward the back of the store. “Is killing me really worth ruining the rest of your life? Haven’t I taken enough from you?”
The gun followed her, but his expression was full of warning. “I don’t have a life.” His lip curled into a sneer. “You made sure of that.”
Genuine surprise had her eyebrows rising. “All I did was leave. Alive.”
Malcolm shook his head, his once-handsome face twisting into a mask of anger. “You turned him against me. Because of you, I lost everything.”
Him. The only person Malcolm gave any credence to, though she could never tell if his feelings were tied to the man or his purse strings. “Christopher hates me. He’s always hated me.”
He’d thought his son had married beneath them, and his wife hadn’t seemed to feel much differently. She’d always thought half the reason Malcolm wanted her was to irritate his parents, and if that was the case it had worked like a charm.
“Oh he did. He hated you like a rash he couldn’t get rid of.” Malcolm’s smile was almost as frightening as the gun he brandished so steadily. “Even after you were gone. Every time he looked at me, I could see him thinking about you. About what you made me do. I was a good person before you. Now look at me. I have nothing while you take everything.”
Ah yes, everything. A few thousand dollars and some medical records that never belonged to him. The stupidity of the accusation was the last straw.
“I never made you do anything. No one makes you do anything, remember?” Her words were quiet, but she said them. They didn’t shake, even if she was starting to.
It was strange. She always thought if she was ever in a room with this man again, she’d fall apart. She’d freeze or she’d beg, either of which would forfeit her life. But here she stood, talking. Able to say the words she’d learned to bite back years ago. He could very well pull that trigger in the next few seconds, end her and her child, end Amanda, and all she could think was… “I’m not dying afraid of you.”
He blinked, almost flinching, before the corners of his mouth turned white. “You should be.” He pushed the gun closer, his gaze unfocused a little. “He hated me when he died. He hated me.”
Christopher was dead? She almost asked the question in her surprise. It didn’t matter though. He wouldn’t have helped her even if he could. The gleam on the muzzle tempted her to look away from Malcolm’s deadly glare, but she couldn’t do it. Amanda was at the door now. Almost safe. And there was still so much to say.
“Whatever you came here to do, it won’t change anything. It won’t change Christopher. Or what you did to me. To everyone you’ve ever hurt.”
“Shut up,” he ordered through clenched teeth.
“All the mistakes you made and blamed on other people. All the people you punished for your pride—”
“I said, shut up!”
“No!” God, it was such a relief to say that to him. Even though he stalked closer, shoving the gun under her chin so hard it made her teeth slam against each other. She would not go to her grave letting him believe he’d crushed her.
“It won’t change you either,” she whispered, up close and personal. Because that’s where you had to be for the truth to slip under the ribs and strike true. “Even if I’m dead, you’ll still be the weak, useless excuse for a man you always were.”
His eyes narrowed, but for the first time, she saw something there besides his rage. His blame. Flickering like a dying flame, she saw his fear. At least there was that.
The bell above the door jostled. Malcolm’s attention shifted, the gun tearing away from her throat as Amanda yanked it open. Susie struck, the letter opener she’d kept in her hand since rising from the desk sinking into Malcolm’s forearm just as the gun went off.
Amanda’s scream was almost drowned out by the explosion of the front window into the street. Susie had just enough time to see Amanda dive through the door before Malcolm’s fist plowed into Susie’s face. She hit the ground hard, but she knew better than to stay there.
“Bitch!” Malcolm’s roar was followed by the sound of something metal clattering against the wall. She was almost to the red curtain when his foot landed on her shoulders, shoving her down and slamming the air out of her lungs. Twice more, his foot landed, stomping wherever he could reach, sending pain down her back and middle. Her lungs burned, straining to find the oxygen he’d knocked out of her. One more blow, as if he thought he could flatten her beneath his shoe. His hand grabbed the hair on the top of her head, yanking her up so she could see him as he put the gun to the middle of her forehead. “You’ve taken the last thing from me.”
She finally gasped in a breath, knowing it would be her last. Used it to voice the only regret she had left. “Locke—”
Her head wrenched back and the blast of the gun stole all her senses away.
Chapter Thirteen
His feet barely scraped the ground as he ran. Amanda scrambled through the door of the shop, already heading for him. It took everything to push her behind him without checking that she was all right first. He had to leave that to the other boys following him onto the street.
“Go!” he demanded when she looked like she might reach for him. “Go!”
He should have been more careful, knowing there was a loaded gun in there, but caution didn’t register. It couldn’t. Susie’s in there.
Bursting through the door, he scanned for her, finding nothing. But a man was there, bending over something. Locke was already speeding for him, knocking past clothing racks, trying to get to her. He was too slow. Too fucking slow.
The bastard had her by the hair and the gun…
He stopped thinking, grabbing the guy by the neck and flinging him away from her, but it was too late. The gun went off, and Locke’s entire world narrowed to a single, heart-stopped point.
She lay crumpled on the ground.
Move, baby.
Rustling came from behind him, but if she was dead…he didn’t care.
Please, God, move!
Her hand flattened to the ground, her shoulders tensing to lift her head. She turned, rolling onto her side, her eyes blinking slowly as if she couldn’t quite see through the tendrils of her own hair spilling across her face. Then they went wide, her hand stretching out in terror. “Locke!”
He turned, swiping the gun from behind his head with the back of his left hand. The other was already fisted, smashing into the face of her nightmares. Malcolm Hall stumbled, reeling into another rack before crashing into the ground. Locke followed, his mind silent. Cold.
This man had tried to kill her.
Their child.
His sister.
There could be no coming back from that.
The fool climbed back to his feet, attempting to point the gun again.
Locke wrapped his hand around the wrist gripping it, wrenching it back until the bone gave a sickening series of cracking noises. Hall dropped to his knees, screaming. At least he was until Locke hammered his fist into an already bloodied cheek. Again and again, his fist landed. All the while, the pictures he’d seen flashed in his mind.
Her eye, swollen into a purple mass.
Her lips, split and bleeding.
Her shoulder, the joint pulled completely out of place…
Injuries she never should have known.
Pain this pathetic bastard couldn’t take back.
But he would feel it. He would know what he had done, just a taste of it, before Locke removed him entirely from the world.
Except…
Trembling hands touched his arm, trying to hold him back.
Hands that needed him to stop.
That wanted him to.
He turned, arm still raised, to find her crouched beside him, tears streaming down her face. Blood trickled from her hairline, her mouth and nose, redness turning them both puffy.
“Stop, Locke,” she whispered. “He’s unconscious. He’s not going to hurt anyone anymore.”
It took him a second to realize he was breathing hard. That his fist was screaming from the impact of hitting this man until he was broken on the ground.
“Please,” she added, tugging at him.
Sanity came back slowly. Because she asked. Because she needed him.
Turning away from Hall, he scooped her up into his arms and carried her out of the store. People filled the street now, but he wasn’t aware of them. Not really. He looked for his brothers, for Amanda. Dean had her tucked to his side, Daniel just behind them, his hands in tight fists. All three of them watched him come closer. Then, as one, all of them came. Circling him, arms enclosing them both tight. No one spoke, though he heard Amanda choking back her sobs. He didn’t know how long they stood there, just holding on, heads bowed with emotions Locke couldn’t even begin to name.
So close. It had all been so close. One second later and he could have lost all three of them.
None of the family would have been able to survive that, not even Cole…
That thought brought him back to the necessary. Cole didn’t know what had just happened, though it felt like hours had gone by since their conversation. It was only minutes. Seconds…
