Chapter 16 #2
“I’m not sure this is the best place for the shooting area. I think it might work better over there, closer to that hillside. We could use it as the background where we set up the laser targets.”
Ember eyed the hill Marie had pointed out. “I don’t know,” she said diplomatically. “I was thinking that could be where we set up the barn and jumping area for the horses.”
“We could try it out,” Marie suggested. “You’ve got some targets in the car, I saw them in the back. Why don’t we set them up and give it a try?” Marie asked.
Ember shrugged. “Okay, sure. Why not?” It wasn’t a bad idea. Marie followed her back to the car and stood off to the side as Ember gathered two targets. She was a little irritated that Marie just stood and watched, instead of volunteering to help, but shrugged it off.
The other woman did lean in and pick up two of the laser pistols, then they headed toward the area Marie had indicated.
Ember walked quickly, jumping over a few scraggly weeds, which she thought might actually be tumbleweeds.
She’d never seen any in person; it wasn’t as if they were rolling down the streets of Beverly Hills, that was for sure.
Ember was lost in her internal amusement over living somewhere that had genuine tumbleweeds when she realized Marie wasn’t walking next to her anymore.
She turned to see where the other woman had gone, and blinked in surprise.
She’d managed to get a ways ahead, and Marie was now standing over ten meters behind her—pointing one of the laser pistols directly at Ember.
“Marie?” Ember asked in confusion. Throughout their training, coaches had said over and over again that the weapons were never to be pointed at someone.
The lasers weren’t like bullets, but if someone looked right at the light when the trigger was pulled, it could be blinding.
Every coach she’d ever had reiterated gun safety, as if the laser pistols were actual deadly weapons.
And since Marie had gotten the same training the last couple years, Ember was confused as to what in the world she was doing.
The sound of the pistol being fired was loud and obscene in the tranquil countryside.
Pain immediately blossomed in Ember’s cheek and she dropped the targets as her body was propelled backward. She landed on her ass on the hard-packed dirt amidst the wild grasses, hitting her head on the ground in the process.
A second shot exploded, just as loud and startling as the first. A puff of dirt kicked up right next to her. Ember’s head spun as she tried to figure out what the hell was happening.
Marie hadn’t said a word. Had just calmly shot her.
As the searing pain in her face registered, Ember realized the gun wasn’t one of the laser pistols they used. It was smaller—and obviously held real bullets.
Marie had deliberately tried to kill her. Could still kill her. Ember had no idea how many bullets were in the gun, but surely it was more than two.
As footsteps approached, Ember closed her eyes and did her best to slow her breathing. Instinctively she knew if Marie thought she was still alive, she’d shoot again.
Hell, she might do it anyway to make sure she was dead.
She could feel blood running down her face. She desperately tried to keep her body limp and her eyes closed. It went against every instinct she had. Ember wanted to jump up and fight, but Marie had the upper hand.
The footsteps stopped right next to her, and Ember held her breath, trying not to let her chest move up and down and alert Marie to the fact that she was breathing.
“Bitch!” she heard Marie mutter before she kicked Ember in the side. Hard.
It took everything Ember had not to react. Sharp pain radiated from her side where Marie had kicked her…but her lack of reaction did just what Ember hoped. It convinced the other woman that her bullets had done what she’d intended.
Ember kept her eyes closed and stayed motionless as Marie’s footsteps receded. After several tense seconds, she heard her car start up and drive away from the area.
Not only had Marie shot her, but she’d stolen her car and left her for dead.
Ember was in big trouble. She needed to get up. See if she could get some help. But her face hurt. Bad. And her side was throbbing. Not only that—she was having a hard time wrapping her mind around the fact that Marie had just tried to kill her.
They’d been worried about a nameless, faceless person on social media, when the danger had been right beside her all along.
Ember struggled to open her eyes, the pain in her cheek nearly unbearable. I’ll lie still for just a moment…gather my strength.
It was Ember’s last thought before losing consciousness.
Doc and the rest of the team had just finished sitting through a mandatory training session on harassment in the workplace when his phone vibrated with an incoming call. Not recognizing the number, but seeing it was coming from San Antonio, he answered.
“Doc here.”
“Doc, this is Beth, Tex’s friend.”
“Hey,” he said.
She didn’t bother with any more niceties. “I got the background checks done on those people you wanted me to look into.”
Doc didn’t like her tone. “And?”
“The security guards she hired are clean. There’s nothing concerning in their backgrounds.
Samer is good to go as well. I’m still working on finding more information on that Alexis guy you seemed so concerned about, but honestly, he’s just looking like a run-of-the-mill jerk to me.
Julio McMillian is also fairly clean. He had one incident when he was fifteen, breaking and entering, but it seems that scared him straight and other than a few speeding tickets, he hasn’t had any other dealings with the law.
He has a few social media accounts, but there’s nothing alarming on any of them.
I dug into his messages and they all seem normal for someone his age.
I also went further and checked his email accounts and hacked into his laptop, and other than some porn sites and some interesting Google searches, I’m satisfied that he’s harmless. ”
Doc blinked. “Holy shit, you did all that since Brain last talked to you?” He felt a little uncomfortable at the depths Beth had gone to while investigating Ember’s friend and employee, but he couldn’t deny he was relieved to hear the results.
“Yeah,” she said, brushing off his incredulity. “But that’s not why I’m calling. It’s about Marie Riggs.”
“What is it? Put it on speaker,” Trigger insisted, seeing Doc’s sudden distress. The seven men were standing in the hallway outside the room where they’d attended training. Everyone else had left the area and it was just them.
Doc took the phone from his ear and clicked on the speaker button. “We’re all listening,” he told Beth. “What did you find out about Marie?”
“First of all, did you know her name isn’t Marie?
Well, not her first name. It’s Alexandria Marie Riggs.
She was born in Los Angeles and had a hell of a childhood.
I won’t go into all the details now, as it’s not important, but she definitely had a hard start to life.
She bounced around between relatives, no one seemed to want her to live with them for more than two or three years. ”
“Why?” Oz asked.
“According to the notes from various psychologists and doctors, she has a whole host of issues. Dissociative identity disorder—which used to be known as multiple personalities—schizoaffective disorder, and borderline personality disorder, among others.”
“Holy shit,” Trigger muttered.
“Yeah,” Beth agreed. “The bottom line is that she was hard to live with, even at ten years old. So she kept getting shuttled to different family members. They’d welcome her with open arms, then after a few years of dealing with her outbursts, and trying and failing to discipline her, she’d be sent to someone else.
By the time she was eighteen, she had nowhere to go and one of her swim coaches took her in.
He introduced her to the modern pentathlon and she really took to it.
Did you guys know she’s thirty-two years old? ”
“Seriously? I thought she was in her mid-twenties, like Ember,” Doc said.
“She’s not. It looks like she had a handle on her mental illnesses for a few years, and actually was doing pretty good.
But after a while, her borderline personality disorder got worse.
Or maybe she stopped taking her meds. Who knows?
Her moods got more and more unstable and she began to act impulsively.
She got evicted from her apartment and had to move into a low-end trailer park. ”
“How did Ember not know any of this?” Doc asked.
“I’m guessing Marie was pretty adept at hiding that side of herself,” Beth said.
“But here’s the part that’s alarming. The zip code you gave me…
the one on the presents and letters that Ember received back in California?
It’s the same as the trailer park where she was living.
Now, that doesn’t mean she was the sender, but when I checked the IP address of the Alex who was leaving the nasty messages on Ember’s posts?
It matches the hotel where Marie’s staying.
“I didn’t look into the hotel earlier because I didn’t know where she was staying; you guys never told me and I didn’t think to ask.
But while checking the Killeen IPs again, I hacked into their database to access the guest registry, and discovered that’s where Marie and Julio were staying.
That, combined with everything else we know about Marie, makes me nervous. ”
Doc shook his head. No, Marie couldn’t be the one behind all the hateful letters and comments…could she?
“I could give you a whole lot more evidence I uncovered that would make you extremely wary of the woman—but it was the comment she left about an hour and a half ago on one of Ember’s posts that made me pick up the phone and call as soon as I saw it.”
Doc braced as Beth continued speaking.