The Eva Rae Thomas Mystery Series Box Set 2

by Willow Rose

  “My house is what? Matt? What’s going on here? What’s going on with my house? Are the kids okay?”

  “There are police everywhere,” he said and got out of the car. He saw four officers approach the house, wearing Kevlar vests, weapons drawn. He knew all four of them and yelled out to one.

  “Officer Ross, don’t…”

  But it was too late. Matt saw them kick down the front door, while Eva Rae yelled at him on the other end.

  “Tell me what’s going on. Why are the police at my house!”

  Matt ran toward them, yelling out their names, but they were already inside. His heart throbbed in his chest, threatening to explode. The phone was now in his hand, and Eva Rae was yelling in the distance while sweat sprang from his forehead as he ran through the driveway and stormed up toward the entrance. Just as he reached the doorstep, he heard yelling from inside, a child screaming, then an officer yelling:

  “Hands up!”

  “Sir, there’s no need to…” a voice said.

  “Keep your hands where we can see them!” an officer yelled.

  “Get down! GET DOWN!” another officer yelled.

  “STOP!”

  Matt screamed at the top of his lungs and stormed inside the living room just as the panic erupted. Loud voices were yelling at one another, and then a shot was fired.

  Chapter 91

  I wasn’t breathing. I stood in my small office, yelling into the phone, but receiving no answer.

  “Matt? Matt? What’s going on, Matt?”

  But there was nothing but yelling and screaming. And then came the shot. The terrifying sound of a gun going off.

  Inside my home? Inside my house where my children were?

  I screamed into the phone and fell to my knees.

  “NO!”

  I heard scrambling and realized the phone had fallen to the ground. Matt had dropped it, and now I could hear him whimpering in the far distance, and then he screamed again.

  “No! No! No!”

  “What happened?” I said, feeling more confused than ever, fearing the worst. Had any of my children been shot? Had my mom?

  “Someone, tell me, please; what’s going on!” I yelled into the phone, feeling desperate, crying in fear and worry. I imagined the most horrifying scenarios.

  My poor children. My poor, poor kids.

  “Please,” I said, sobbing. “Please, just tell me what happened. Is someone hurt? Who was hurt?”

  It was eerily quiet on the other end—only the sound of someone sobbing loudly. After a few minutes, I realized it was Matt. He was crying, and I could also hear a child crying. It sounded very much like Christine.

  Was Christine hurt?

  Please, say it isn’t so.

  “Hello?” I said, fumbling nervously with the collar of my shirt, pulling it till it almost ripped while tears were gushing down my cheeks.

  “Hello?”

  “Oh, dear God,” Matt said. “Why? Why?”

  I heard more sirens now and figured it had to be an ambulance approaching.

  Someone in the distance mumbled, “I thought he had a gun; I really did.”

  He? Could it have been Alex who was hurt? Oh, dear Lord, say it isn’t so.

  “Please,” I said. “Please, say it isn’t so.” I bent forward in anguish, crying heavily when there was scrambling on the other end, and a small weak voice spoke.

  “Hello?”

  I almost screamed. “Christine!?”

  “Mom?” she said, her voice shrill and wailing. “Mo-om? Oh, Mom, it’s terrible.”

  “What happened, Christine? Tell me what happened.”

  She was speaking through sobs, making it hard to understand. “I…I was in the living room; the police came, they thought…Grandma…she…”

  “Was someone shot?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Grandma came out as the police burst into the house screaming and…and…yelling and then…”

  “Was Grandma shot?”

  “No,” she said, sniffling.

  “Then what happened?”

  “Irvin…was here,” she said.

  “Irvin, Grandma’s boyfriend?”

  “He was here for dinner, and he came out too, and they just went berserk when they saw him, pointing their guns at him. He was holding a baseball bat in his hand because he and Alex had been outside playing ball, and they thought…they must have thought it was something else because they yelled and screamed…and…and…then he tried to calm them down, but then they asked him if he was armed, and he…he said…yes, he was carrying, but he had a license for it and to calm down, but they didn’t listen, oh, Mommy, they wouldn’t hear what he said. They just yelled at him after that, and then they fired a shot.”

  “Was Irvin hit? Was it Irvin?”

  Christine whimpered again. “No. He…he moved, and they missed him, but the bullet, it hit someone else.”

  Oh, dear God!

  “Who, Christine? Who did it hit?”

  She sobbed, trying to speak, but hyperventilating too heavily. I was crying so badly now that my stomach was cramping.

  “Please, Christine, tell me who it is.”

  “Elijah. It was Elijah.”

  Chapter 92

  “I’m coming home, Christine. As soon as I can, okay?”

  I sat on the floor for a few seconds, gathering myself, tears gushing down my cheeks, unable to comprehend what had just happened. An ambulance had arrived, Christine said, and they were taking Elijah to the hospital. Matt was going with him. I asked her if Elijah was breathing or even moving, but she said that she didn’t know. She couldn’t get close enough to see.

  “He doesn’t look good,” was all she could give me.

  Then she handed the phone to my mother, who was completely out of it, understandably. I told her I was coming back home as soon as possible and to make sure the kids were all right until then.

  “Of course,” she said.

  “How are Alex and Olivia?”

  “Crying,” she said. “I can’t blame them—what a mess. And the door is completely destroyed. Irvin said he can put up a temporary one.”

  “Good,” I said. “Thank him.”

  “I…I don’t know how this could have happened, Eva Rae. I thought these people knew us, knew you and…and Matt?”

  “They do,” I said heavily. “But they have to react when a call like this comes in. My guess is that someone called in an active shooter situation and it gets highest priority, and well…they didn’t know Irvin. They didn’t know he wasn’t the gunman. He could have been holding all of you hostage.”

  “But who would make such a call?” she asked.

  I think I might know this one.

  “Poor Matt,” she continued, and I could just see her shaking her head and tightening her lips like she always did. “He was completely crushed.”

  My heart was aching for him as we said our goodbyes and hung up.

  I checked online to look for a flight but wouldn’t be able to get on one till the morning. And they were all filled up till the one at ten o’clock. I looked at my watch. It was a thirteen-hour drive. I would get there faster if I drove. I rang Isabella in the taxi on my way to Avis Car Rental and told her, sobbing, what had happened and that I was going back there.

  “Of course,” she said. “That is awful, Eva Rae. Send Detective Miller our deepest sympathies.”

  As I got into my rented car and plotted in the address to my home, I felt like everything exploded inside of me. I stared at the GPS on my phone, heart pounding in my chest, ears ringing, while thinking about everything.

  It had to be him, didn’t it? Of course, it was him. The Swatter had struck again. And this time, it was personal.

  “All right,” I said and changed the address in the GPS. I floored the accelerator, and the car jolted into the street with me hissing in anger and spitting as I spoke:

  “If that’s how you want to play it, then so be it.”

  Chapter 93

  T
he drive was two and a half hours in the wrong direction, getting me farther away from my family, but I still did it. I loaded up on Red Bull and coffee, then drove the entire way there in one stretch, not stopping once, speeding excessively most of the way, cutting about twenty minutes off the drive.

  I arrived after midnight, parked the car in the street, and got out. I grabbed my gun between my hands and hurried up the walkway leading to the front door. I looked inside the windows and saw him in his kitchen.

  Cooking at midnight, of course.

  I lifted the gun, then reached over to grab the door handle, but it was locked. I then snuck around the house, found a back door, and tried that as well.

  Also locked.

  I stared at it for a few seconds, then made the decision. I kicked the door down. It slammed open, and I rushed inside, holding up my gun. I had barely made it inside before a knife darted through the air, whistling past my face, stabbing me in the shoulder. I saw it too late to move out of the way. The hand holding the knife let go of the handle, and the person stepped backward. The pain in my arm made me drop the gun to the floor. Blood gushed out of the wound, and I fell forward to my knees.

  A set of well-polished shoes stood next to me. They stopped by the gun, which was picked up. I lifted my head, wincing in pain from where the kitchen knife had penetrated.

  Liam reached down again, grabbed the knife, then pulled it out forcefully. I screamed and held a hand to my wound, which was gushing blood. I felt lightheaded. Liam handed me a towel. I pressed it against the wound, then looked up at him, biting back the pain.

  “Don’t look so surprised,” he said. “I was expecting you.”

  I closed my eyes, trying to remove the black spots dancing in front of them, obscuring my sight, then rose to my feet, straining with pain.

  Liam had his back turned to me, and I stormed toward him and slammed into him headfirst.

  “You bastard!”

  Liam was pushed forward and fell to the tiles, sliding across them. I stood above him, grunting like a bull.

  “Matt’s son was shot. Elijah was shot. Because of you.”

  Liam lifted the gun and pointed it at me, signaling for me to back away. I didn’t obey. I stared down at him, blood dripping from my wound onto his black shoes.

  “What do you care? You don’t love him anyway,” he said and stood up. I felt like punching him, but the gun in his hand kept me from it. And perhaps the throbbing pain in my arm and shoulder.

  “You don’t know anything about that,” I hissed. “I have loved Matt my entire life.”

  “Why are you running away from him then?” Liam asked. “In all the time I have known you, that’s been all you’ve done.”

  I shook my head. “What’s it to you?”

  The look in his eyes changed. He burst forward, grabbed me around the throat, and lifted me in the air, pressing me against the wall behind me. I screamed and then fought to breathe, gurgling. Liam kept pressing harder and harder until my face felt like it was about to explode.

  “Please…Liam, let…me…go.”

  His expression changed, and he let go of me suddenly. I slid to the floor below, coughing and fighting to catch my breath. I crawled across the floor, trying to stand up, but he kicked me hard in the stomach, and I fell, face first, unable to move.

  “That was exactly what she said,” he said and kicked me again. “But you didn’t let her go. You and your pigs just let her die right there while she fought for her life.”

  Chapter 94

  “Her…” I spoke between coughs, spitting up blood. “You…mean…your wife, you mean Anna?”

  Another kick fell, this time in my side. It felt like he broke every rib in my body.

  “Don’t you dare say her name. People like you…pigs like you don’t even deserve to say her name.”

  “She was killed, right? She didn’t die from pancreatic cancer like you told everyone. She was killed. At a traffic stop?”

  “So, you know, huh? How did you find out?”

  I rolled to the side while holding a hand to my stomach. “There were two notes in the reports from the blast in D.C. Two numbers had been written on the side of the document. One was the case file number from your arrest in Orlando. When I ran the other number in the system, your wife’s story came up. Someone in the FBI had run your name in the system and found those two cases and put the numbers in there. They just didn’t put the pieces together the way I did because they’re not profilers. They thought we were still looking for a terrorist organization, not just one mad lunatic. They didn’t know what I knew, that the person we were looking for is someone who holds a grudge against the police because of what happened to him, or rather to the one person he loved the most in this world.”

  Liam sat down in a chair heavily, placing the gun on the table in front of him. I looked at it, then at him. I tried to move, but it hurt too much. He stared into thin air, tears shaping in his eyes.

  “I did love her more than anything in this world; you’re right about that.”

  “But she was sick?”

  “She got sick. Six years ago, she suddenly lost her appetite. She was fading away from us, and then she got the diagnosis. She went through treatment, but it wouldn’t kill it. It kept eating at her, and soon she was nothing but skin and…”

  Liam stopped talking. I could tell he was getting emotionally distressed by talking about this. He grabbed the gun in his hand again and clenched it.

  “But then she got better, much to everyone’s surprise,” he said, clearing up suddenly. “She got better for a little while. She was still heavily medicated, but we had hope, you know? The doctors said she was responding well to the chemo and that the second time around, it was like she was finally fighting off the cancer. She was getting better. We thought she might actually make it. Then, one day in October, five years ago, she wanted to go buy herself a new scarf. We had a charity event we were going to the coming weekend, and she wanted to look nice for that. I told her she didn’t have to go if she wasn’t up for it, but she said that for once, she actually felt like it. She had energy enough for small talk and all that other stuff that she used to hate. Going to this would make her feel normal again, she said. Like she didn’t have cancer. So, I agreed. I asked her if I should drive her to the store, but she brushed me off, saying I was treating her like she was a child. I laughed and kissed her on the cheek before she left. I can still feel her skin against my lips when I think back on it. She tasted like fall, like rain and fallen leaves.”

  “But she never made it home?” I said, finally able to push myself up on my only good arm and sit up while groaning heavily in pain.

  Liam shook his head. “No. She didn’t. Because of people like you.”

  Chapter 95

  “I saw it happen on the footage from the officer’s body camera,” Liam said. He had taken my phone from my pocket and was playing with it in his other hand, turning it between his fingers while talking. “My lawyer had it released to me. I wanted it; I wanted to see what had happened, how she died. At first, I wished I had never seen it, but today, I’m happy that I did. It opened my eyes to what is really going on out there.”

  I stared at my gun in Liam’s hand while blinking my eyes to focus better. My head was spinning from all the pain, and I couldn’t really see straight. I needed to buy myself some time.

  “So, what did happen to her?” I asked. “How did she die?”

  Liam sniffled and wiped his nose with his hand. “She was stopped because she failed to signal when turning at an intersection. That’s the police officer’s story. In the video, you see him walk up to her car and open her door. Anna is scared at this point. You know how we hear all those stories. She’d seen those videos online. It was her biggest fear—that Tim would be one day be chased by the police and killed in the street. You don’t know this, being who you are, but as a black person, this is a mothers’ greatest fear and one you live with every day. A simple traffic stop can become deadly.
Now, Anna was scared, naturally, so she started to scream when the officer opened her door. She yelled at him and asked him why she was being stopped. “You’re coming into my own car and threatening me,’ she yelled. ‘Why am I being apprehended? Why are you opening my door?’”

  “And all the officer yells back is, ‘Get out of the car. Get out of the car.’ The officer has now pulled out a stun gun that he is pointing at her while he continues to yell at her to get out of the car. Anna doesn’t dare to get out, so she keeps yelling for him to explain why he has stopped her. ‘I will light you up,’ he says. But Anna doesn’t come out of the car. She is screaming in fear, and he reaches inside, then shocks her with the stun gun. Anna screamed even louder, and then he told her again to ‘Get out of the car.’ She finally got out, and he used the stun gun again. Now he was mad and yelling at her, and you see her fall to her knees, screaming, while he shocks her again and again. Anna begins to scream for him to stop, telling him that she has cancer, but he doesn’t listen. He keeps going, again and again, shocking her a total of seventeen times. All you can hear is her screaming, ‘Let me go; let me go.’ Finally, she fell to the ground, lifeless, and that’s when the seriousness of the situation finally occurred to the pig. Anna was taken to the hospital in an ambulance and died that same night from heart failure.”

  “Because she was weak after a year of chemo and radiation treatment,” I said. “Her heart couldn’t take it.”

  “At exactly eight fifty-six that night, the doctor at the hospital declared her dead. And my world crashed. She was my everything.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the world? Why did you keep it a secret?” I asked. “You could have filed a civil lawsuit?”

  “My lawyer advised me against it. I was too weak back then, too destroyed with grief to understand how powerful it would have been if I had spoken up right away. But later, I could see the possibilities in it, as soon as the haze was gone, and I could see things more clearly.”