by M K Dwyer
“What?!” Her very worst fears were coming true.
“Terry thinks he was looking for Will or Joe or both. The person he killed was Will’s old roommate. A man named ‘Tank’.”
“This can’t be happening.”
“I’m afraid it gets worse, beautiful. Mark disappeared after that and Terry hasn’t been able to find him. But Joe is still fine. From what Terry can tell, Tank didn’t tell Mark where he could find Will and Joe.”
“It’s all my fault.”
“No, beautiful. How can you say that? None of this is your fault. None of it. Do you hear me?”
She just shook her head. He didn’t understand.
“No. The only way he got Will’s old address is from the files I left at the house. I made sure I left no mention of Will’s new address, but I didn’t look hard enough to scrub all mentions of his old address from my files. Mark must’ve gone through my records after we left town. It’s all my fault. I knew he was capable of something like this. I knew, and I was careless. It’s all my fault.”
“You couldn’t have known, beautiful. I’m his brother, and I couldn’t have predicted this.”
“You don’t know him like I do. I knew he was a heartless monster…” She couldn’t finish the sentence. She couldn’t even finish the thought.
“What, Theresa? Tell me so I can understand.”
“I can’t.”
“You can, but I can understand if you won’t.” He paused, and she wondered if that was that. “You can tell me anything though, beautiful, and nothing will change between us, except we’ll get closer.”
Her heart melted a little more. He could be such a sweet man, and she wondered again why she couldn’t have just met him first.
She took a deep breath. It was time to tell Blake exactly who his brother had become.
“I think I told you that things were okay between Mark and me in the beginning. That wasn’t exactly true. They were just less bad. He came along at a time in my life when I was particularly vulnerable. I’d lost my parents, and I was a divorced, single mom. Joe was going to his dad’s every other weekend, and I was lonely. He made me feel desired again. I didn’t see the warning signs and by the time I realized what kind of man he was, he had some sort of weird infatuation with me and wouldn’t let me go. Or maybe that started before he even asked me out. I have no idea. But it was like I was a wild animal and he’d made it his mission in life to domesticate me. I was his pet, his plaything. Barely human and certainly not worthy of any kind of regard or respect. I was at his beck and call for anything and everything he wanted whether I wanted it or not.”
She shuddered thinking about it. “If I protested, he threatened to make it worse. He threatened so many despicable things. You name it. Whatever sick or perverted thing that came to his mind, he said it with more malice in his voice than the worst movie villain you can think of. Then he started threatening to hurt Joe. And I just knew he was crazy enough to carry out his threats. So, I stopped fighting, just locked it all inside until it started eating away at my soul.”
She had tears in her eyes but refused to cry over that man anymore. “He can’t get anywhere near my son, Blake. He just can’t. He must want to murder me by now, and he’ll hurt Joe just to hurt me.”
∞∞∞
Blake
He pulled Theresa onto his lap and held her as she broke down. It was worse than he’d feared. If he thought he wanted to hurt his brother before, her confession made him want to murder his brother with his bare hands. He wouldn’t. He wasn’t that kind of person, but it made him a little more understanding of people who were driven to such extremes. Some people were so evil that they needed to be removed from the general population, one way or another, and his brother fit that mold.
He was silent for a moment, half in shock and half at a loss for words. “I’m sorry” or “It’s going to be okay” both felt like empty sentiments and he knew that how he handled things from that moment would set the tone for their relationship. Theresa was a strong, independent person who didn’t open up easily. She prided herself in not needing anyone, but everyone needs someone sometimes, and they needed each other to get through the next part. He was coming to need her for longer than that but couldn’t predict how she would feel about that especially considering her last two relationships, if he could use that term at all.
“It’s not going to come to that, beautiful. We’re going to find him, and in the meantime, we’re going to come up with a way to put him behind bars for all his sins. Joe is as safe as he can be, have no doubt about that, and so are you. I wouldn’t let anything happen to either of you.”
Chapter Fourteen
Mark
He needed Theresa back and he knew she was with his goody-two-shoes brother. When she ran away, and Blake wouldn’t answer his calls, he called his parents, and his mom let it slip that Blake went out of town with a girl. When would Blake learn that their mom couldn’t keep a secret to save her life? She didn’t mention a child though, so he assumed that Joe was still at his dad’s house. That worked for him. He didn’t have to know where Blake and Theresa went. He just had to find Joe to lure them out of hiding.
The slut was probably sleeping with him too, but he would forgive her after he made her forget all about his brother. She was the answer to all his problems after all, or rather, her money was. He found out about that by accident when he was going through her mail. He knew she somehow paid her grandmother’s bills, but it wasn’t until he saw a quarterly statement from a financial advisor that he realized just how much she was worth. He didn’t know or care where the money came from, but she was his and therefore her money was his too. He blamed her for the entire mess he was in. If she just would have told him about her money, he never would have needed to go see his brother and the two of them never would have met. Then they never would have run off together.
He just had to get her away from his brother and marry her before Blake could. He wasn’t blind, he knew she was reluctant to get married again, but he was a catch, so he would convince her one way or another. And if not, he could always use her son for leverage. She was a typical mama bear, always willing to do anything to shield her son.
Undoing the poison his brother was probably spewing about him would be hard, but he could do it. When he was younger, he wanted to be just like his big brother, but not anymore. He resented that his brother got everything growing up. He was the golden child. Their parents loved Blake more. Their sister loved Blake more. They were so proud of Blake when he joined the Marines and Mark could never compete or live up to their expectations no matter what he did.
He’d searched Theresa’s meticulous files for Will’s address after she disappeared, but he should have known that she wouldn’t make it easy for him. She never did. He went to what he thought was Will’s apartment looking for Joe. He just wanted to know where Will had moved to, but Tank wouldn’t give it up even by force.
He didn’t mean to kill the man, but he went for a gun, and in the struggle, it just went off. He hightailed it out of there before the cops could show up, but it was all for nothing. Tank hadn’t given up any information, and he was no closer to finding Joe and luring Theresa out of hiding than he was when he woke up that morning.
One thing was for sure, he needed to lay low for a while, maybe even get out of town until the cops gave up looking for Tank’s killer. It would blow over quickly. The cops won’t look for long. He was just a drug dealer.
The news was calling it a deal-gone-wrong and he was sure the cops would come to the same conclusion.
Chapter Fifteen
Theresa
They both knew they couldn’t stay gone forever, but it was past Thanksgiving and Mark was still nowhere to be found. They’d searched for him for over two months. Well… Terry and the guys who worked for him searched for Mark.
Blake and Theresa laid low in Montana helping on the Hatfield Ranch and falling asleep in each other’s arms every night. A part of her wa
s desperate to get home to her son and a part of her never wanted to leave. Maybe she could find a way to have her cake and eat it too.
Following lunch, two weeks before Christmas, Theresa was checking her email on her laptop when she came across an email from Mark. It wasn’t the first one he’d sent, in fact, he was pretty regular with his threatening emails and voicemails. He said the most terrible things and never gave up any information about where he was. So, when Blake suggested she let him deal with those communications, she gladly accepted his offer. She was intrigued with the newest email though. It was the first to come with an attachment.
She opened the email and her heart stopped. She didn’t have to open the attachment to know what it was. The email read:
I found him, you bitch. I know where he lives and where he goes to school. Looks like he’s replaced you with a new mommy. He doesn’t care about you, but I know you still care about him. If you don’t want him to end up like Tank, you’ll come back to me. Come back to me and we’ll have a baby of our own to replace him. One without any tainted leatherneck genes.
You’re mine always, Mark
He was delusional, more delusional than before and that seemed impossible. She knew her ex-husband, Will, was seeing a woman named Nikki and it was pretty serious because they’d bought a house together. She might’ve had no direct contact with Joe to keep him as safe as possible, but she still knew what was going on in his life.
She opened the attached photo and lost her breath. There was her son, on the other side of a chain-link fence, hanging from the monkey bars on his school playground, laughing and surrounded by friends. She was so glad to see her son was happy but knowing where the photo came from made her stomach turn. She jumped up from her laptop at the dinette table and ran to the cramped bathroom of the trailer where she lost her lunch. She took her time brushing her teeth and washing her face to think about her next move. Of course, she would have to respond to him. They couldn’t just ignore that he knew where Joe was like they’d ignored his emails and voicemails in the past. It probably meant walking into a trap, but what choice did they have?
She left the bathroom to find Blake had returned from his meeting with the ranch manager. The baby was getting older, but Blake still handled a lot of the smaller day-to-day issues on the ranch and left the larger, less frequent issues to Bryan to give him more time with his family.
“What’s this, beautiful?”
“I got an email from Mark.”
“I see that, but I thought we agreed that I would field those, so you didn’t have to deal with his crazy.”
“We did, but this one had an attachment, and I had to know.”
Blake pulled her into his arms for a bone-crushing bear hug. She knew he’d already read the email and seen the picture just by the way he held her. It was counter to the constriction of his arms, but she felt like she could actually breathe when he held her so tight. Like everything would be okay even when that seemed impossible.
“I can’t take it anymore, Blake. I’ve missed too much of my son’s life. I’ve never missed a holiday with him before, and now I’ve missed Halloween and Thanksgiving. I don’t even know what he dressed up as for Halloween. Now that Mark has found him, I can’t sit idly by and wait for some plan to fall into place.”
They were both quiet for a moment and she wondered what he was thinking about. Did he agree with her? Was he going to fight her on returning home? Maybe she needed to convince him.
“I’m done. I can’t sit on the sidelines anymore. I don’t care if I have to go down there and put a bullet between his eyes myself. This has to end. I will not miss Christmas with my son!” She slapped a hand over her mouth appalled with herself that she would say that to the man’s brother.
He surprised her by calmly kissing the top of her head.
“I know Theresa. I agree. It’s time to finish this. I’ll let Terry know what’s going on. Then, I’ll tell Bryan that we’re going to fly home. I’ll come back for my truck and trailer when this is all over.”
Then he surprised her again by kissing her lips. It wasn’t soft or slow. Instead, it was hard and all-consuming. Like he was pouring all his understanding and all the things he wouldn’t say into the kiss.
Chapter Sixteen
Blake
His heart broke for Theresa and the crap his own brother had put her through. What he continued to put her through. She was right. It was time to put the whole mess to rest.
“Why don’t you lay down and rest, beautiful?”
“I won’t sleep a wink until this is over.”
“You haven’t slept much since it started.”
She just shrugged her shoulders.
“Humor me. Lay down while I call Terry and Bryan. You’ve been going balls to the wall for the last couple of months, and I get that you want to keep your mind off things, but it’s catching up to you. You’re exhausted, and you can try to hide it from me all you want, but I know that you can barely keep your meals down. Rest now. Then we’ll make arrangements for us to go to San Diego.”
“San Diego?”
“Yeah. That’s where Joe is. That’s probably where Mark is. He’ll expect you to go back to your house in Yuma, but we keep the advantage if we stay in a hotel in San Diego.”
“Okay. That makes sense. And I guess I would like to lay down for a minute but wake me up if you find out anything from Terry.”
“All right, beautiful. It’s a deal.” It so wasn’t a deal. If she was asleep, nothing short of the end of the world could make him wake her.
While checking flights on Theresa’s laptop, he called Terry to ask why the hell Mark was able to get close to Joe without a heads up.
The phone rang just once before Terry picked up the phone.
“We found him.”
“No shit? Not before he found Joe.”
“What?”
“He sent an email to Theresa with a picture of Joe on the playground at his school. What the fuck man?”
“I don’t have words, Blake. I’m sorry. But it explains why we caught sight of him near Joe’s school. I didn’t think anything of it because it seemed like a coincidence.”
“I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“Well, I do, but I guess this wasn’t one. So, he knows where Joe goes to school?”
“Yeah. Do you still have eyes on him?”
“We do. And it’s no wonder we couldn’t find him before. He changed his appearance pretty drastically. He could have been under our noses the whole time.”
“What do you mean? What does he look like?”
“Not what. Who. He looks like you. An out of shape version, but you nonetheless.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. It’s uncanny. I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. He grew a beard that’s almost as long as yours and dyed his hair blonde like yours. The craziest part is how much weight he’s gained. He’s about your size now. He’s not muscular like you are, but he went from skinny to downright chunky. He’d have to eat eight meals a day to gain that much weight so fast.”
Blake was confounded. Besides laying low, why would his brother try to look like him?
“Well, keep an eye on him. Theresa and I are on the next flight down there. Now that we know where he is, we can put our plan into motion, and the sooner the better especially since he found Joe.”
They’d devised a plan shortly after Mark killed Tank to get him put away. It was pretty simple. Terry learned through means not exactly above-board that the cops already had a sample of blood left at the scene of Tank’s murder. They just needed someone to match it to, and thanks to Terry’s anonymous tip, they had a prime suspect. The police in Yuma no longer considered him an asset after he stole from the very people he was supposed to be reporting on and getting named as a suspect in a homicide.
“Agreed. I’ll call Adam and give him a heads up that Mark has found Joe. He’ll help me keep an extra eye on Will’s new house until you two get
here.”
He hung up with Terry and rang Bryan next.
“Hey, Blake. How did the meeting with Ron go?”
“Great. Nothing I couldn’t handle, but that’s only half of why I’m calling.”
“What’s up?”
“Theresa and I are going to San Diego for a little while. Do you mind if I leave my truck and the trailer here? I’ll come back for them as soon as I can. I hate to leave you without the extra help, but it’s important.”
“Of course, man. Anything for you. You know that. And I seriously appreciate everything you and Theresa have done around here, but you couldn’t stay forever. My brother will be moving home soon, so I’ll have plenty of help around here then.”
“Good to hear. I know how much you’d like to have all your brothers and sisters back home. And it was the least we could do. You’re one of my best friends and you let us stay here rent free.”
“Yeah. I did do that. Didn’t I?” They both laughed.
“All right, man. We’ll need a ride to the airport. Do you think you can spare Ron for a couple of hours tomorrow?”
“Sure. Square it with him, but I’m cool with it.”
“Thanks. We’ll see you and say our good-bye’s at dinner tonight.”
“Great. I’m cooking, so bring your appetites.”
“Will do.”
They hung up and Blake finished booking their flights before he went to check on Theresa in the bedroom. He poked his head in the door and met her eyes. He wasn’t entirely surprised to see she was still awake, but she still desperately needed to rest. Anything they needed to talk about could wait and he assumed she overheard most of his conversations anyway.
Without a word, he climbed in the bed behind her and tucked her body into his, little spoon to big spoon. After a few minutes, he heard her cute little snores and breathed a sigh of relief that she was finally resting.
∞∞∞
Two days later they woke up in a San Diego hotel room with a mission. Blake had a meeting with the detective investigating Tank’s murder, and Theresa’s task was just to keep Mark on the hook, content but waiting.
