Why (Stalker Series Book 2)

by Megan Mitcham

  Gen’s gaze locked on the door, or where she knew the door to be. If he came for her, she’d fight. She didn’t know how, but it was the only way to survive.

  The chime rang again and then once more. It was too sporadic to be an alarm, too singsong. She exhaled a long breath and then stepped back to the door in time to hear the slide of a lock and the snick of another. The sounds came from far enough away that she went for it, pushing on the closet door.

  It popped from its frame, and Gen shoved from the confines. If someone was at the door, she could signal or call for help. She closed the door behind her, making certain to walk on the heel of her cut foot, and slid along the wall toward the bedroom door.

  The now familiar trill of a door being opened sounded.

  “Hello, Perry.” A woman’s voice … no, the woman’s voice—the one from the rear office elevator and the one from the phone and the one Perry admitted to having an affair with—echoed loudly through the sparsely furnished, modern house.

  “Millie.” Perry’s voice was clipped. Cold.

  Sharp heels created a tattered tap through the entryway. The front door closed.

  “You’re early,” Gen’s capturer, her would-be murderer groused.

  “I’ve waited long enough, don’t you think?”

  Millie’s clacking steps brought her into the kitchen, Gen judged. She held her wild hair back from her face and peeked her left eye around the jamb. The door to the garage was five yards away on the right. Just across from a closed door, another door a yard past it was open, and then the corridor opened up into what she assumed was the kitchen. A shadow appeared on the floor, and she jerked herself back into the corner.

  “I suppose you have waited long enough.” His voice sounded so close Gen’s skin attempted to crawl from her body.

  These two sounded nothing like captivated lovers. They sounded more like civil enemies.

  “Great. Where is it?” Millie wasted no time making requests, though Gen had no idea what she wanted.

  “Patience isn’t your strong suit is it, Millie? Lucky for you, it’s mine.” There was a pause, then a sound of two bottles clinking, and then the trill, and another she didn’t recognize. A sliding door maybe. “Please, join me.”

  “It’s cold out there,” Millie protested.

  “It would be without the fire and the heat lamps. With them, it’s quite nice.”

  “What’s all this?”

  “This is an accord. Since we’re going to be in a lifelong relationship, it should begin the right way. Civilly. With a meal, don’t you think? It’s nearly finished.”

  “Civilly? Let’s hope you’re not trying to grant me the same kind of civility you showed your wife.”

  Despite it all, Gen expected Perry to rebuke the comment.

  “Red or white?” he asked.

  “Whichever is unopened.”

  His chuckle slipped down the corridor and down Gen’s throat. The clack of heels faded. And then the sound Gen hadn’t recognized lit a memory. That rolling whoosh was the ocean. She held her breath and peered around the corner once more. Sure enough, past the kitchen she caught a glimpse of a sliding glass door, a patio strung with the zig-zag of large bulb strands, and the grassy top of a dune.

  The clack returned, and Gen jumped back. Perry’s wing tips followed.

  “Thanks for the offer, really, but I don’t like scallops or pasta or you for that matter. I’ll take the money and be on my way.”

  “Is that so?” Perry’s voice dropped an octave, showing no form of emotion even if it was anger. “I don’t like you much either.”

  "Great. Then we're on the same page. The money.” Millie grew either bolder by the second or more terrified, using the added bluster to hide it.

  “Dinner first,” he demanded.

  “It’s poisoned, isn’t it?” Millie charged.

  “Why would I kill you?”

  “Because it’s cheaper than paying me.”

  “You’re forgetting that you didn’t threaten to blackmail me. I offered to pay you. Besides, it’s not cheaper to kill you if it lands me in prison. You have what we call plausible deniability on your side. If you die in my presence, after the trial I just survived, no jury on earth could be convinced of my innocence twice.”

  “You killed the children.” Her whisper unsettled Gen more than Perry’s laughter.

  “You killed those children, Millie.”

  “No!”

  “What did you think would happen when you blackmailed Pamela?”

  “I thought she’d pay me to keep quiet.” From the sound of her tapping shoes, she paced. “A few years into my marriage, after several miscarriages, Daniel and I found out that I could get pregnant, but I’d never be able to carry a baby to term. I suggested adoption, but he wouldn’t consider it. I suggested a surrogate, but no. He always said it wasn’t a big deal. If we couldn’t have a baby naturally, then we weren’t meant to. Work kept him busy. We traveled. Life was good.”

  “When I found out about Pamela, I was angry, hurt. Even then, I was willing to make my marriage work. He served me with divorce papers the following week. Based on our prenup, since I never bore him children to take control of his flourishing investment business, I got nothing. After twelve years of marriage, I had nothing.” She growled through the sobs. “He thought I’d take it on the chin as if I’d had the affair.”

  Perry barked a laugh. It quickly turned into a series of belly rolls.

  “No, you didn’t take it on the chin. You set in motion a chain of events that shattered his legacy.”

  “I didn’t know—”

  “That I’d recognize the red in Pamela’s eyes and root out the cause of her sorrow? You didn’t count on me finding the pictures you sent. My wife with her lover.”

  “With my husband,” Millie shouted.

  Sniffles filled the empty space. “I never meant for …”

  “Oh, you wanted me to hurt those kids, his little bastards.”

  Thirty

  Gen wiped at the tears that had slid down her face while the two callously spoke about their cheating spouses and the children they produced. Everything was upside down. For the first time, it all made horrible, twisted sense.

  Perry killed any woman who betrayed him. Pamela hadn’t just taken a lover; she’d had another man’s children and passed them off as Perry’s. The ultimate betrayal.

  An entire bottle of vodka was gone by the time Perry and Millie finally took their plates onto the patio and started on the wine they’d left there. The phone beckoned Gen as it had for the past hour. There had been no way to ensure they wouldn’t see her cross the doorway, so she’d stayed glued to the wall. She eased her head around the doorjamb. The two sat at a small dining table facing one another, neither facing the house.

  Finally, a break!

  Gen dropped to her hands and knees. Her entire body screamed. Ignoring it, she crawled until she reached the nightstand. Without thinking of all the things that could go wrong, she grabbed the receiver and put it to her ear.

  An obnoxious dial tone had never sounded so good. Gen pressed it to her ear in an effort to muffle the noise.

  911 had been engrained in her since law school, but she found herself dialing another number she hadn’t realized she’d memorized.

  Why was she wasting her chance at survival on a man who probably wouldn’t answer her call, especially if he knew it was her calling. This wasn’t her number, which lowered the chances of him answering even more. 911 always answered, and still she wound the numbers into the circular face.

  The line clicked over.

  A ring.

  “Graham?” He barked the most beautiful word she’d ever heard.

  Emotion clogged her throat threatening to strangle her.

  “Hello?”

  Gen slapped her hand over her mouth. She drew in a breath and shoved back the sorrow.

  “Owen, it’s Gen.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I … I’m
sorry for earlier.”

  “Forget it, Gen. Tell me where you are?” His voice was pitched and worried. Why was he worried?

  “I don’t know exactly. Perry …” She suppressed a sob. “He attacked me at my apartment. He took me.”

  “Genevieve, listen to me.”

  “Okay,” she whispered.

  “You’ve been gone for nearly eight hours. Since we figured out you were gone, Douglas and I have been pooling resources to find you. Tell me what you see, hear, smell.”

  “I’m in a house. It’s modern, on a beach. I don’t know which one, but I can hear it. He had me tied up in a …” That didn’t matter right now. “I got free. He’s here with the woman, Millie. I thought she was his girlfriend, but she was the wife of Pamela’s lover. She tried to blackmail Pam, but Perry found the pictures. He found out the children weren’t his. Both were Pamela’s and Millie’s husband’s.”

  “Why is she there?”

  “Money.”

  “That woman knew Perry killed Pamela and the children but did nothing to out him. She’s not your ally.”

  “I know.”

  “Are you injured?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Good. Gen, we were on route to one of three Hampton’s properties Perry bought through a shell corporation. Before the trial even ended. The police have been dispatched to the others. I’m tracing your call now. If you have to leave the phone, don’t hang up.”

  “Okay.”

  “Can you get out of the house?”

  “I don’t know. The garage is the closest door to the bedroom I’m in, but if he looks to the left just a little, he’ll see me.”

  “What about a window?”

  She looked around the room at the large paned windows on the far wall. Each of them had connection sensors near the latches. She remembered the trills when the doors opened. They probably worked similarly on the windows.

  “They have sensors.”

  “Another door?”

  “I don’t know. I think they all have sensors. They make a sharp sound when they’re opened.”

  “Fuck. What if you create a diversion? Open the door, but instead of running out, hide inside the house. Help will be there soon.”

  “I’ll try something.”

  “As much as I want you to stay on the line, you’re exposed. Either get out of the house and hide in the bushes or divert and hide.”

  “Owen?”

  “Yes, Gen?”

  “I love you.”

  “Don’t you dare say that to me right now,” he growled.

  She pulled the phone from her ear and stared at it.

  “Gen? Gen?” His voice bellowed from the series of tiny holes. As ordered, she placed the handset on the nightstand and used the table to push to her feet.

  There was no time to catalog her hurt feelings. Too many other things hurt. Too many other things took precedence. She shuffled to the corridor and peeked out. From this vantage point, she could only see the back of Perry’s ego-inflated head through the sliding glass door.

  She eased out of the bedroom slowly, shuffling along the wall on her heel and one good foot to the garage door. Her hand reached for the knob but stopped partway there. A deadbolt secured the door. A deadbolt that required a key to unlock it. Her gaze searched for a hook, an end table with a little bowl, the frame.

  With no key in sight, Gen pressed on toward the kitchen. Maybe he’d left them on the counter. Maybe she could find the front door, and maybe it would be a levered deadbolt.

  And just maybe there would be peace on earth.

  Hysterical laughter bubbled in her throat.

  Fear cemented it inside.

  Her ankles quivered with every step. Sweat slicked her brow, yet soul deep cold made her shiver. The draft coming from the open sliding glass door didn’t help. That wasn’t true. It allowed her to hear the edges of their now slurring conversation, which let her know exactly where they were.

  At the mouth of the kitchen and a small sitting area, Gen stopped and assessed the surroundings. A cozy fire burned in the hearth along with a massive one burning in a fire pit on the edge of the patio. A marble island split the kitchen into two sections. It offered a barrier to keep her cloaked from Perry and his unwitting victim. Another counter mirrored it against the wall that she peeked around.

  Nowhere, not on any surface, did she see a set of keys, a single key, or even a briefcase.

  Gen hunched low, steeled herself, and crawled into the kitchen. Slowly, staying low, she opened the top drawer of the first set she reached. It was the first drawer anyone arriving at the house through the garage would come to, so it offered the best chance of holding a key. She reached inside and slid her hand along the smooth bottom. One inch at a time, her fingers fumbled over nothing. The drawer was completely empty. She tried the next drawer, working her way down to the lowest. All of them were empty.

  She shifted to the island, opened the top drawer, and plunged her hand inside. Her middle finger collided with a hard and round item. It shot from under her touch and careened away.

  Her hand lurched after the object, wide and flat, desperate to catch it before it created a ruckus. Straining to stay out of sight, she pressed the crook of her stiff elbow onto the drawer’s metal track. The thing stopped, wedging between her pinky and ring fingers.

  A slight sigh exited her lips until she realized what she was holding. She pulled the empty pill bottle from the drawer and stared at the label.

  Lorazepam

  2-4mg at bedtime

  2mg tablets, quantity: 100

  The most upsetting part was the bold name at the top of the label.

  Genevieve Holst

  She clutched the bottle so tightly it bit into her flesh. Her hand shook in a steady back and forth. It wasn’t possible. Sure, she’d never used the drugs prescribed to her before the start of the trial, when nothing in the world made sense no matter how her brain tried to twist it in the darkest hours of the night. This bottle was in her medicine cabinet in her apartment. She’d seen it yesterday when she’d opened the cabinet to brush her teeth before returning to bed, to Owen.

  Were they there this morning?

  Her emotions had been so all over the place, she couldn’t be sure. She’d blindly reached for her toothbrush this morning.

  The neatly stacked file flashed in her mind. Her gaze bloated. Her heart sank. Perry had stolen the full bottle from her medicine cabinet. Perry had rearranged the files, not Owen. Perry had been inside her apartment with her and Owen.

  Knots bound her stomach. Icy, gooseflesh plagued her skin.

  Perry hadn’t emptied the bottle into her. He’d stopped with a quarter of the bottle remaining.

  Gen replaced the bottle, closed the drawer, and scooted to the far end of the kitchen. She peered toward the front door. It stood thick and silver with a keyed deadbolt similar to the one on the garage door. Her gaze swung toward the sliding glass door, the open door.

  Millie sat with near-perfect posture on the plush patio chair. Her legs were crossed at the ankle like a class act. A goblet of red was perfectly poised in her hand. The words exiting her mouth, though, were as misshapen as Perry’s moral compass.

  “I agree.” Perry extended his glass across the table. “To a long and prosperous partnership.”

  The woman’s, “Here, here,” sounded more like a, “Huh, huh.” Dilated pupils zeroed in on the wine Perry held. She leaned forward, reaching her glass out as though his were a moving target. Her light hip slipped off the edge of the seat, and she tumbled forward.

  Perry caught her goblet and placed it on the table in a smooth motion. Millie careened toward the ground but caught the edge of the sturdy chair at the last minute.

  “Whoa there, Millie.” He stood and offered her his hand as though he were a gentleman. As though he were the man Gen always thought him to be. “It looks like you could use a breather.”

  “I … fi …” The words that came out of her mouth were nonsen
sical.

  He ignored her attempt at communication, grabbed her upper arm, and hauled her to her feet. His smile was familiar. Gen had seen it right before he attempted to kill her.

  “This way, Millie. The salt air will do you good.” Perry ushered her to the back of the patio.

  The woman tried to speak but made less and less sense.

  Perry stopped at the edge, where the sand met the concrete, and pulled something out of his pocket. He set it on the concrete barrier, before adding another item, and then ushering Millie toward the roar of the ocean.

  Gen stared at the open doorway, at her freedom for several heartbeats, used the counter to pull herself upright, and hobbled as fast as she could out the exit. The crackle of the fire and the whoosh of the gas lamps cocooned the intimate space in excessive warmth, given the low temperature outside. She slunk low at the patio wall.

  His phone, wallet, and the keys she’d been so desperate for sat on the small pillar.

  Gen strained her ears for Perry or Millie. An eerie quiet, save for the constant sway of the ocean, eroded Gen’s determination to run and hide.

  If she hid, Millie would die. The woman had made a deal with the devil, so it was an earned outcome. Yet she couldn’t make herself flee. She’d left her sister in the clutches of evil, and in the end, it had killed her.

  It wasn’t her fault.

  It wasn’t Evangeline’s.

  It had been her uncle’s. It had been Judge Faraday’s. Two men who should have protected her and her sister, instead betrayed them in the worst ways.

  If Gen hid, Millie would die. She could live with the woman’s death. Millie seemed all too comfortable to live with the deaths of Pamela and the children. Gen could not live knowing she could have helped. She would not live with Perry getting to commit another murder.

  Thirty-One

  “911. What is the address of your emergency?”

  “I don’t know. My name is Genevieve Holst. I’ve been abducted by Perry Carter Jr. He has another woman; first name Millie. He’s taken her to the beach behind the house to kill her.”

  “Miss Holst, is there a—”