50. Piper
FIFTY
PIPER
NINETEEN YEARS OLD
Piper couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t process what had happened almost a week ago.
She’d seen what had happened on the news.
The old man whose wife had died six months earlier killed in a robbery.
Jewelry and a significant amount of cash had reportedly been stolen.
She’d been sick.
Horrified.
Repulsed and appalled that she’d been the one to go to his door, unwittingly a diversion for Justin to break inside.
She was even more appalled at herself that she hadn’t gathered the courage to go to the police. To pick up the phone and report who had so clearly committed the atrocious crime.
She’d tried.
Four days ago, she asked to borrow her mother’s car again, but as she drove toward the police station, she felt a sticky sense cover her from behind. She realized it was Justin on a motorcycle trailing her from a distance.
His face had been concealed by the helmet that he wore and a handkerchief across his face.
But she knew.
She knew.
She panicked and turned around, and he followed her all the way back to her house before he rode away.
The heavy roar of the engine had cleaved through her like a threat of what would befall her if she did what she so desperately wanted to do.
What she had to do.
But she remained a coward. Hiding behind closed doors. Too spineless and selfish to stand for what was right.
But she couldn’t go on like this.
She couldn’t pack her bags and return to New York and pretend like this never happened.
She couldn’t carry this guilt.
It was just before nine in the morning on the day she was supposed to leave that she finally forced herself out the door.
Early enough that Justin would likely still be asleep.
She took her father’s car, one Justin had never seen or ridden in before, praying if he was watching, he wouldn’t recognize it.
Her hands clattered against the steering wheel, and she was barely able to keep hold of the leather as she slowly wound through her family’s neighborhood, taking the two turns required to get her out onto the main road.
Nausea churned in her guts as she searched, terrified that Justin was going to pop out of nowhere.
Her pulse boomed then thundered when a blue car suddenly pulled out behind her.
It was right there, following her, one turn and then another.
A breath of relief curled from her lungs when she finally was able to make out that it was a young woman in the driver’s seat.
Probably close to her age.
“Get it together, Piper. You can do this. You have to do this. It’s your duty,” she muttered below her breath.
An obligation.
Her soul’s charge.
It didn’t matter what happened to her. What consequences she faced. She couldn’t allow Justin to get away with this.
Sucking in a cleansing breath, she pulled out onto the main road. Every molecule in her body trembled as she drove toward the police station that was five miles away.
Fear gripped her in its steely fist. Her pulse careening as she carefully drove down the street.
The light ahead turned red. Agitation blistered through her as she slowed to a stop.
She glanced in her rearview mirror again and noticed the blue car was still there.
Sitting at the stoplight two cars behind her.
Foreboding slogged through her consciousness.
Her chest felt like it was being slowly pulled apart, the pressure increasing on her ribs with each passing second.
“You can do this. You’re just being paranoid,” she urged herself.
Still, she turned on her blinker and shifted into the left turn lane, needing the reassurance that she was making it up.
Her spirit tumbled when the blue car slowly did the same.
Sweat gathered at her nape and slipped down her spine. Panic surged through her as she made the next right and the blue car did the same.
“No. No, no, no.”
She wouldn’t let this happen.
She fumbled to get her phone, fingers quivering as she tried to dial 911.
A scream ripped out of her when she was suddenly slammed from behind. Her phone flew out of her hand, and she rammed on the brakes, her eyes frantic as she looked around for help.
Two cars passed coming in the opposite direction and another one that came up from her rear kept traveling.
None of them bothered to stop.
Panic surged through Piper when the girl jumped out of her car.
A frenzy was on her face. Her own panic. A storm as she rushed up to Piper’s door.
Frantic, she smacked her hands on the window, and Piper yelped, fumbling to get to the phone that had landed on the front passenger side floorboards.
“I’m here to help you. Please, open the door. You need to listen.” Hysteria spilled out of her as she shouted through the glass.
Pure desperation.
Piper warred.
Three more cars were coming up the other way.
She was right out in the open. Nothing was going to happen to her there.
Swallowing around the barbed wire in her throat, she slowly cracked open the door, terror still clattering through her bloodstream.
“You have to listen,” the girl rushed. Her attention whipped around like she was afraid that someone was following her, too. “He sent me to kill you. It’s a test for me. A test to find out if I’m loyal to him. But I won’t. I won’t hurt you.”
Horror seized Piper’s heart, and she reared back, struggling to get the air into her failing lungs.
Turbulence vibrated from the girl as she searched the area again before she angled back down. “He knows that you are going to go to the police. He set you up. Your face is on the camera at that man’s door. You have to get out of here. You have to get out of this city and never come back.”
Piper didn’t realize she had a duffel hung on her shoulder until she tossed it onto Piper’s lap. “Take this. Use it for good instead of whatever terrible things he has planned for it.”
Shock held Piper, and she stared blankly at the duffel on her lap.
It was the same one that Justin had come out of that house with.
“I…” Confusion clogged Piper’s throat.
“I was so stupid to trust him. To think he actually wanted me,” the girl wheezed, pain lancing through her features. “But I won’t do this. I don’t want this life. He was right. He was right. ”
Pain bled into the last, the words meant only for herself.
A battle of fear and determination roiled through Piper. She needed to go to the police.
“I know you want to do what’s right. But he’s watching you. I’ve witnessed the things he does. If you report him, he’ll kill everyone you love. You have to get out of here. Right now. Go and don’t ever turn back.”
She gripped Piper’s arm. “Go. Try to save your life. Just like I’m going to try to save mine.”
Then the girl turned and ran back for her car. She jumped inside and the tires squealed as she peeled out, swerving left then right before she flew down the road.
Mania pumped through Piper’s veins, her brow pinched as she jerked the duffel’s zipper open to find what was inside.
It was stuffed with cash.
Uncertainty whipped through her, and her conscience screamed.
She had to report this. Do what was right.
He’ll kill everyone you love.
Alarm blared inside her. A feeling that she might already be too late.
No.
She shoved the car back into drive and rammed on the gas.
She had to get help. Warn her family. Tell them what happened.
Her dad would know what to do. He always knew what to do.
The deepest, most gut-wrenching type of regret burned through her insides as she raced back toward her childhood home.
Afflicted by what she’d been a part of.
Infected by the memory of ever allowing Justin to touch her.
Sickened that she hadn’t listened when her Nelly had been trying to warn her that she was being taken down a path that she didn’t want to travel.
She had been so blind.
So foolish.
So stupid.
And now, that poor, kind man was dead because of it.
Tears blurred her eyes, and she frantically wiped them away so she could see.
She just had to get home.
Her father’s car skidded as she took a sharp left as she flew into their neighborhood.
She whipped around another turn then came to a screeching stop in front of the house.
Her heart ravaged her chest as she jumped out and ran for the front door.
She threw it open, her father’s name a shout at the tip of her tongue, though it shriveled into a whimper when she stumbled through the door.
Blood.
It was everywhere.
Her mother was face down in a pool of it in the sitting room to her left.
Piper’s knees buckled, and her hand shot for the wall to keep herself from falling.
No.
“No, no, no, no.”
Bile rushed her throat, and she stumbled deeper into the house.
Grief a knot that closed off her throat, her hands clinging to the walls as she went to keep her standing.
Her father was in the living room.
And her brother…
Piper bent in two and vomited on the floor.
Oh, God. Please, no.
It was her fault. It was her fault.
Agony shredded her apart, and she slipped through a puddle of blood in the kitchen as she went for the phone on the counter.
She froze when the voice hit her from behind.
“Told you that we would have been just fine if you kept your fucking mouth shut, but you couldn’t do that, could you?” Justin tsked from across the room. “You made me have to go and do this.”
Ice slicked down her spine.
A slow melting of fear and misery and disbelief that crawled beneath the surface of her skin.
She was facing away, and the partition counter that sectioned off the kitchen from the family room separated them.
She could do this. She could do this.
Her fingers crawled for the telephone.
“Wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
She stilled like she was giving, then her hand shot for it. She managed to get it around the handset and yanked it from the cradle.
Justin blew through the opening and into the kitchen in the same second. The phone tumbled from her hand as she whirled toward him.
A bloodied knife dangled from his hand.
She attempted to slowly back away.
“We could have been so good.” His voice teemed with feigned regret. “And here you told me you were game for a good time.”