“Come on Lissa, don’t be that way, I just want to talk to you.”
She recognized the voice and the sound of it kicked up her escape effort but her momentum was robbed from her when she was suddenly slammed against a wall, the push causing a kitchen chair to topple over in the dark.
“I said stop, goddamn it,” he said, giving her a small shake before letting her go.
“What are you doing here, Jed?” she wheezed out, pushing her hands against his chest. He was still too close. He was always too close. “Was that you, whistling?”
“What?” he said peering down at her in the dark. “Whistling?” He said it like he thought she was crazy. Like she’d imagined it. Maybe she had.
“Yes, whistling. I heard it, just a second ago. Someone was...” she let her words die out. She was either crazy or staring into the face of the person who killed her mother. Both scenarios put her in a dangerous place. “I thought I heard someone.”
“No, I wasn’t whistling...” He finally took a step back to shove his hands into his pockets, seemingly sheepish. “I saw you pull in and... I followed you,” he said quietly. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
He’d shoved her hard, knocking her head against the wall with enough force to put a hole in the paper-thin wall of the trailer. She looked at him, trying to see his face in the dark. Trying to read whether or not he heard the insanity of his own words.
“I’m fine, Jed.” She took a steady breath, let it out slow. She needed to get out of here. Away from him. She turned to leave but he threw up an arm, bracing it against the wall to stop her retreat.
“Didn’t expect you’d be comin’ back here. Not after...” she couldn’t be sure but she thought his gaze strayed to the side, toward the kitchen floor where she’d left Pete weeks before. Without even asking, she was suddenly sure he knew what she’d done.
“I left something here—money. I just came to get it.” She shook her head in an effort to push away the panic that having him so close brought on. “Please, Jed... I have to go.”
Incredibly, he dropped his arm and leaned away from her. “Back to him. To the hospital.” His tone sounded heavy. Like it was somewhere she shouldn’t be.
“No. I’m not going back there.” She shook her head frantically as she inched her way along the wall, farther and farther away from him until she finally stood clear of him. “I’m leaving, Jed. I’m done with Tommy, okay?” she said from the open doorway, one foot on the porch, poised to run. “I’m never gonna see him again.”
“You’re leaving?” He sounded like the thought scared him. “Where are you gonna go?”
“Away,” she said. “I’m going away.”
Jed shook his head. “But—”
She didn’t wait for him to answer, she just left while he stood in the dark and watched her go.
TWENTY-FOUR
AWAY. THAT’S WHAT SHE’D said.
She was leaving Jessup. Going away. What she’d meant was someplace he couldn’t find her. What she didn’t know was that there was no such thing as safe.
Not from him.
She’d been gone three months. Just up and vanished with those kids she insisted on carting around. Not even her grandmother seemed to know where’d she’d gone and that asshole fry cook? He didn’t know either. She’d been long gone before he’d even opened his eyes.
With her gone, there’d been no reason to stick around so he’d left too. Traveled around. Wandered. Sometimes it felt like he was driving in circles but he knew what he was really doing. He was looking for Melissa.
Waitressing was about the only thing she could do so that’s where he started. He hit every shithole town between Jessup and Oklahoma City looking for her. Ate in every truck stop and diner he could find, hoping to catch a glimpse. Hoping to find her. Each time he drove away empty-handed—like she’d vanished into thin air. It began to wear on him, being without her. Began to eat away at the tenuous threads of self-control that held him together.
The first time was an accident. Maybe accident wasn’t the right word... he’d meant to kill her, that’s for sure but he hadn’t planned it. Not really. Like stabbing Tommy, it just sort of happened.
It’d been early June and her name was Jenny. She had pale blonde curls and soft pillowy breasts that lay heavy on her chest. With her upturned nose and too small mouth, she certainly wasn’t the caliber of beauty he was accustomed to but then he saw her eyes. Not Melissa’s blue but close enough to bring a genuine smile to his face.
He had, up until this point, ignored her but now he grinned at her while she poured his coffee. “Y'all got any peach pie, Jenny?”
“Pie?” She jerked her head toward the revolving display case on the counter as if she’d never heard of such a thing. “Yes,” she said a bit breathlessly. “We have peach pie.” For some reason, she blushed.
“Why don’t you shoot me a piece along with the coffee—it’s my favorite,” he said with a wink and like he’d goosed her, her dumpy frame was electrified, ready to jump through hoops of fire to please him.
He spoke to her, flirted with her just enough to convey interest but not enough to be noticeable to an outside observer. He showed her the face they all saw when they looked at him—handsome, cocky but ultimately harmless.
With a shy smile, Jenny handed him his check for the coffee and pie and when he brushed his thumb along the back of her hand as he took it from her, he wanted to laugh at just how easy it all was. Flipping the check over he saw that she’d written on its back.
I get off at midnight.
He made a show of reading the back before he folded it up and tucked it into his pocket. She was watching him, hopeful that her brazen behavior was about to pay off. He peeled a twenty from the wad in his pocket and dropped it on the table before he winked at her, letting her know that it had. He’d be back for her.
He intentionally made her wait, pulling back into the darkened lot well after midnight, wanting to make sure that everyone was gone, that no one was left to see them together.
If she minded being left to wait, she didn’t show it. Sliding into the seat next to him, she was transformed from a shy, dumpy waitress into an incessant chatter box. She talked non-stop about anything that popped into her half-empty brain as if she actually thought he cared about what she had to say. They drove aimlessly for a while, him smiling and nodding as she prattled on, all the while wondering just how heavy her eyeballs would feel in the palm of his hand.
“How about you and me find someplace quiet to park,” he said, offering her a grin that held just enough bad boy to excite her. “I dyin’ to get my hands on you.”
“Big Thicket isn’t too far,” she squeaked out, all breathless and blushing again. “It’s closed this late at night but getting in is usually easy. We could park. Look at the stars...”
He reached over and laid a hand on her thigh, let if glide upward while shooting her another wicked smile. “Sounds like a good idea to me,” he said, fighting the urge to laugh when she preened beneath his gaze.
Big Thicket was a national park, so finding their way in wasn’t a problem. Closed at dusk and not offering overnight camping during the week, the park’s gate was unmanned, the booth deserted. Bolt cutters from his trunk took care of the padlock and chain that secured the gate and he swung it wide in the dark, careful to cut his lights before he got out of the car. It was a Tuesday—not many late night parkers on a school night but he needed to be careful.
Finding a small clearing surrounded by a thick band of trees, he killed the engine. He sat, hands wrapped around the steering wheel, while he endured the incessant flap of her jaw. She hadn’t stopped talking since he’d picked her up and it was beginning to wear thin. He was waiting—not for her to shut up but for someone to knock on his window. A park ranger or maybe the police. Someone of authority, telling them to move along. Five minutes stretched into ten and no one came. No one knew they were here.
She was still babbling, about how he
r parents had kicked her out because she’d dropped out of high school and how they just didn’t understand when he hit her in the mouth, pulling his punch at the last second, preferring to stun his prey rather than incapacitate it. The blow knocked her words back down her throat and she swallowed them along with one of her front teeth, blood dribbling down her chin as she stared at him in shocked surprise. The shock lasted only a few seconds and what replaced it was understanding coupled with acceptance and that wouldn’t do.
No, it would not do at all.
Reaching across her, slow and deliberate, he opened the glove box and pulled out his hunting knife, the same one he’d used on Kelly. The same one he’d stabbed that asshole fry cook with. A double-edged blade, razor sharp on one side while the other boasted the serrated teeth of a shark.
He opened it slowly, wanting her to see what was coming her way. Wanting her to read the intention in his movements. Her fear didn’t smell sweet like Melissa’s. It stank like defeat as she cowered back in the seat, clutching her mouth, her large, round eyes bulging slightly and for a moment they really did look like robin eggs. He wanted to slit her throat for ruining his game but then he remembered that it wasn’t the fear that smelled so good, it was the hope of survival that came with it.
With his free hand, he reached out and opened the car door she was pressed against and she tumbled out, ass over tea kettle, landing in the dirt outside his car.
She stared up at him with her eyes yanked wide, her ruined mouth gaping open. For a moment he thought she would simply sit there, waiting for him to kill her but then she scrambled to her knees, her eyes never leaving his face. “Time to run,” he told her and it was the slap in the face she needed to finally convince her that this was real.
She found her feet and stumbled for the trees. He decided to be a good sport about the whole thing and waited for her to disappear into them before he followed, knife in hand, drawn by the sweet smell he had missed so much.
The initial chase had been exhilarating, if a bit predictable. The hard huff of her breath and the loud, frantic scramble of her retreat made the business of tracking her almost embarrassingly easy.
The catch and kill was fun. She’d wailed and squirmed underneath him like a fat fish on a hook. This, he took his time with. Told her what he was doing—made her watch him while he did—but it was only afterward, when she was dead and finally quiet, that he’d been able to seduce himself into believing that he’d found her. That he’d found his Melissa. That he’d finally be able to make her his... but reality intruded too quickly and not even the weight of her eyeballs in the palm of hand had been able to cheer him up.
She was not Melissa.
“Jenny,” he said, muttering her name like a curse word. “What a disappointment you’ve turned out to be.” He stabbed her over and over, her limbs jerking quietly in the grass while he yanked and thrust his blade into the soft, wide plank of her stomach. Yank and thrust. Yank and thrust. Over and over until the word he stabbed into her was fully formed.
LIAR
He stared at it for a while, the word he’d cut into her—admiring his handy work always made him feel better. Then he dumped a five gallon can of gas he kept in the trunk of his car on her and set her on fire.
TWENTY-FIVE
Yuma, Arizona
September ~ 1998
“DO ME A FAVOR...” Val sing-songed at her as she strolled past, hip checking her as she went. Melissa let out a soft sigh. That could only mean one thing.
“Oh, no,” she said, loading glasses with ice before adding water. “I took them last time. It’s your turn.”
Them. It was one AM on a Saturday and the diner they worked at was the only open sit-down restaurant for fifty miles. If you were a drunk minor in Yuma, out past curfew, and you wanted pancakes, Luck’s truck stop is where you ended up. She’d heard the lot of them walk in—rowdy and obnoxious—and wanted nothing to do with them.
“Pleeeease,” Val said, clasping her hands together and holding them under her chin. “I’ll be your best friend.”
“You already are my best friend.” Melissa laughed, half charmed, half annoyed. “Why can’t you do it?” she said, eyeballing her friend. “You got Brad Pitt sitting in your station?”
“Almost as cute and twice as sweet,” Val said, laying on a lazy southern drawl. “If he tips more than fifteen percent, I might offer to have his baby.”
“Val,” she said, laughing at her friend’s brazen statement. “What would your boyfriend say?”
“We’ve been out twice. Josh isn’t my boyfriend... yet.” Val's voice took on a wheedling tone. “Come on... take the table from hell so I can flirt while I’m still young and single.” She pushed out her bottom lip and fluttered her eyelashes. “Pretty please...”
She caved. “Fine, but I have to leave at two,” she said, loading her tray with the waters she’d poured. “If your sister is late getting home, your mom will kill me.”
“My mom loves you more than she loves Ellie and me put together—you could probably kill Ellie and my mom would say oh, thank you, Mija—you sure you can’t stay for dinner?” Val rolled her eyes while she pulled a pie from the case on the counter.
She shot Val a look. “She’s fourteen—she shouldn’t be spending all her free time taking care of kids,” she said over her shoulder even though if it weren’t for Val’s sweet kid sister, she had no idea what she’d do.
“Please.” Val’s laughter pushed at her back. “If she spent more time babysitting and less time running around with that group of degenerates she hangs out with, she’d be better off.”
“There’s nothing wrong with having a little fun,” Melissa said to her friend’s back, defending Ellie.
“You grasp the irony of your statement, right?” she called out, leaning back to make sure her voice carried. Her friend was always telling her to loosen up. To let go. Have some fun. She didn’t know how to explain to Val that letting go was something she didn’t know how to do. Couldn’t do.
When she’d left Jessup, she’d had no idea where she was going. Away—it was the only direction she’d thought of when she’d pulled Lucy’s car out of the driveway and headed out. She’d headed north for a while before shifting west. Oklahoma gave way to Kansas before she’d cut through the corner of Colorado into Wyoming.
It took her three weeks of directionless travel to realize what she was doing. She was making sure she hadn’t been followed. That whoever’d hurt Tommy wouldn’t find her.
She called her grandmother every day to ask about him. He’d opened his eyes and asked for her nine days after she left. Probably started hating her about five minutes later but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was still alive and as far as she could tell, no one knew where she was.
In Wyoming she finally bought a map, spreading it out on a lumpy motel bed while the twins napped beside her. California beckoned but she resisted. That was the old plan. The one that included Tommy. A dream life she’d never be able to have. One she didn’t deserve.
Why she chose Arizona, she couldn’t say. Maybe because it was as close to California as she dared. Maybe because it was the last place someone would look for her. She didn’t know and she didn’t care. She slept in stops and starts that night with Jason and Riley huddled against her, dreaming of sharp-looking cactus and wide swathes of brown sand that pulled you under if you stood still for too long. She woke, determined despite the nightmares, and after a quick shower and a splurge breakfast of French toast and sausage, they headed south.
She’d sold the car to some college kid for cash when they got to Flagstaff and sent Lucy the money, plus a little extra, before she bought bus tickets. She wasn’t crossing state lines so no one gave her a second thought when she slid the cash for two seats across the counter.
Visiting family was what she muttered when the old woman across the aisle from her had asked what was taking them to Yuma. She’d looked at the toddlers sharing a seat beside her, both clean and well-
fed, and nodded her head.
“That’s nice,” the old woman said with an approving smile before dozing in her seat.
The rest had happened like it did in the movies. She’d stepped off the bus, greeted by a gust of hot wind that put grit in her teeth—Jason on her hip while Riley pulled on her hand, eager to move after eight hours of sharing a bus seat with her brother.
There was a Help Wanted sign in the window of the restaurant attached to the truck stop they’d landed in front of. Forty-five minutes later she had a job waiting tables. Two hours and a hushed conversation with a busboy named Manny later, she had a fake ID and was paying cash for six-months rent on a one-bedroom apartment in a small, family-owned complex within walking distance to her new job that didn’t care about things like citizenship or credit checks, as long as you paid your rent on time.
That’d been five months ago and she’d finally started to sleep through the night. Was able to go to the grocery store and leave for work without looking over her shoulder. She’d made a home here and in Valerie Hernandez, she’d found a friend. The first real friend she’d ever had.
Now, she shot Val a withering look while she unloaded the waters on the four-top of road trippers who’d been too busy talking about paying gigs and the importance of creative freedom to look at the menu. She figured them for what they were, struggling musicians on their way to California. They’d guzzle black coffee and maybe split an order of nachos or a basket of chicken fingers before they paid their bill in pocket change, leaving her a non-existent tip.
She smiled anyway and told them she’d be back to take their order before making her way to the table from hell. She gathered snippets of information while she took their drink orders. High school kids—nearly a dozen of them—from Gila Bend who made the Friday night trek to root for their football team. A few were actual players who’d ditched the bus back to hang with friends.
Waiting In Darkness: A Sabrina Vaughn Thriller (The Sabrina Vaughn Series Book 1) Page 13
