Chapter 24
C hloe’s head shook wildly as she swiped a hand through the air, waving off my words, before she briefly rested her head in her hand.
I didn’t ask if she was okay. I didn’t expect her to be during this conversation.
“It doesn’t change that hands as cold as death start gripping my spine whenever I see him,” she claimed as she slowly lifted her head, words dripping with honesty and disgust. “It doesn’t change that I am terrified of how easily he can convince me of anything. It doesn’t change that I hate myself for every part of my relationship with him, and for being so easily swayed.”
I studied the obvious self-loathing in her eyes for a moment before taking a step closer. “Understood,” I muttered, “but what I just told you is the least of it. So, tell me now if you don’t want me to continue.”
“I deserve to know,” she maintained fearlessly, and I hated that I would tear away that boldness if we continued.
With a hesitant nod, I said, “You heard us talk about the Wrecker family this morning...”
Outright dread replaced everything else as she faced me fully, silently waiting for me to continue.
“The principal of the school you taught at?” I went on, my voice lower than before. “Vance’s wife? She’s a Wrecker.”
Chloe’s head snapped back as shock and denial burst from her. But just as the tiniest whisper of relief started creeping into her features, I continued.
“Vance is from another mafia family outside of Texas. They got married to form an alliance between the two.”
“No,” she said on a delay, the word sounding like a question and as if it’d been a struggle for her to form.
“We didn’t want you to know about the specifics of all his ‘relationships’ because we were worried if you knew you were his only real relationship during that time, you’d go back to him. But, Chloe, you need to understand how dangerous it is just being near him.”
She looked at me as if in a daze, still unable to process the mafia part. “But he’s not dangerous.”
“Chloe,” I began, then stepped closer until I was pressed to the side of the bed. “I can’t begin to get into how mafia families work, or how easily they blend in because they often don’t look mafia. But, trust me, Vance is dangerous in his own right. And whatever he and his wife are doing in the schools is extremely dangerous.”
Her eyebrows drew close in confusion. “Working?”
I drew in a slow breath, then released it with the words, “The last thing Owen Vance needs is to work. His family comes from so much old money, his grandkids will probably even be set.”
Chloe blinked slowly, a dull laugh tumbling from her. “You’re—no. This has to be someone else. Y’all have to be looking into the wrong person. I’ve been in his house,” she added, almost sounding frantic, as if she needed me to be wrong. “He isn’t wealthy.”
I gave her an apologetic look. “He and his wife started working at the exact same time—both in the positions they’re in now, even though neither of them had experience for any jobs, let alone those. But resumes and backgrounds can be created to look impressively real, and they chose to go into schools for a reason...”
I waited to see if Chloe would say anything or ask me to stop, but she just sat there, looking slightly nauseous and like she desperately wanted everything I was saying not to be true.
“We had our theories on why,” I went on. “After Monroe spent her second week in the schools, we narrowed them down. But we wanted to be wrong on all accounts, so we reached out to a group of people we work with from time to time who seem to know that life in a way we don’t.”
“And did they get back to you? Were you wrong?” she asked hopefully, and I knew down to my soul that her hope wasn’t because she needed Vance to be a good guy. It was because she was already so sickened by him and was afraid to find out he could be worse.
But the response we’d received had been the reason I’d stopped fighting Briggs on Chloe coming with me to Colorado. Not that I’d suddenly been okay with what her coming home with me would mean, or what it would do to my family. But as soon as I’d read the response, I’d felt torn in an inexplicable way.
Wanting desperately to avoid the confusion and sadness that came with introducing Chloe to my family all while needing to be the one who protected Chloe. Needing to keep her with me, where I could see her and know she was okay.
“Just before midnight last night,” I confirmed. When her eyes wildly searched me, silently prompting, I tried to ease her into the pieces we’d put together. “The teacher turnover rate in Dallas is about twenty percent right now, which is a lot higher than it used to be a few years ago, but that doesn’t have anything to do with Vance.”
“Right...” Chloe said, drawing out the word and making it sound like a question.
“Which means other teachers and staff don’t think much of it when a teacher doesn’t come back,” I told her meaningfully.
“Right,” she agreed, clearly not understanding, and I realized I didn’t want her to. But she needed to know what kind of danger she’d been in. What kind of danger we thought she was still in.
“In our meeting yesterday,” I began, watching her carefully, “we thought Vance and his wife might be targeting all the women he flirts with and teases—the ones who aren’t in relationships with Vance, like you’d been. But Gray and I have been going through staff who’ve transferred out of district or quit since Vance started, and we finally stumbled onto something yesterday afternoon.
“Every year since Vance and his wife started working in the district,” I went on, “one or two of the young female staff who quit have also disappeared, but not in ways that raise warning with any family or friends they may have. A couple of them posted on social media something along the lines they were gonna live off the grid for a while, another said she was gonna take time to find herself .”
“But they’re gone?” Chloe asked, horrified.
I nodded. “We think those women are ones he actually dated...like you,” I informed her, intently watching each shift in her expression and twitch of her hands as her chest pitched sharper with each breath.
“But...but, why? I don’t—I don’t understand,” she said breathlessly. But I had a feeling from the way she seemed to be putting things together as she spiraled closer and closer to a panic attack that she did understand, she just didn’t want to be right.
“Trafficking,” I said softly, gently, and watched as her entire body rocked with the word.
“No, because then—because that would mean— no ,” she wheezed. “No, because I’m still here, and I—” Panicked, hazel eyes darted up to me, pleading with me as her chest pitched more wildly than before.
“Need you to breathe, Bubbles,” I said calmly as I sat on the edge of the bed and grasped her shuddering shoulder.
“Why am I still here?” she nearly cried.
“Breathe,” I demanded, my other hand reaching for her before I even realized I was moving. And then I was cradling the side of her head and forcing her to continue looking at me as I spoke. “Slow, deep breaths. You’ve got this.”
Her head moved in a tight mess of nods and shakes against my hand, but I just gave a single dip of my head and leaned closer as I tried passing all my calm into her.
“Force those slow, deep breaths,” I told her softly and nodded encouragingly when she took a fuller breath than before. “You’re good, Bubbles.”
Her pale lips trembled when she asked, “But why am I still here?”
I hesitated for long seconds, then sat back, my hand falling from her and feeling oddly empty at the loss of contact.
Before I could find a way to answer, a sad laugh of understanding fell from her. “I won’t be soon,” she assumed. “That’s what y’all think.”
“I won’t let that happen,” I told her, then cleared my throat when I realized a second too late the slip in my wording and the depth of my vow. “There’s a reason two of us followed you and sat outside your house from the minute you left the office last night. There’s a reason I won’t leave you at a hotel now.”
She numbly nodded for a while before asking, “Is there any way you’re wrong? About him—about me ?”
I studied her pleading eyes, then mumbled, “I shouldn’t have told you.”
“I deserved to know,” she argued, “and I want the answer you aren’t giving me now.”
Nearly a minute passed as I wavered before finally conceding, “We’re not wrong. What you overheard in the meeting yesterday...that was us thinking you were different for him in a way that would send you back to him. But we had his targets mixed up. When we looked into the women who disappeared, they were all...well, like you.”
At the question in her eyes, I explained, “Not a lot of family, if any. Almost no social life.”
An embarrassed sound left her, but she tried covering it with a laugh. “A loner. Right.”
“The teacher he recently started dating is new to the area, and her only living relative is some deadbeat in Kentucky.”
I waited for the pain or betrayal to cross her expression at the news that Vance was dating someone, all while trying to win Chloe back, but there was nothing other than resigned humiliation and fear.
“What’d he say?” she asked just as I started pushing off the bed. When I hesitated, she clarified, “In the texts.”
“He was trying to get you back,” I said vaguely. At her delayed nod, I told her, “You can’t let him anywhere near you. Do you understand?” Her eyes drifted back to me as I continued. “It probably isn’t Vance who takes the women, but the more he comes around, the more opportunities he has to lure you into whatever trap is set.”
“So, the Wreckers are traffickers,” she said, mostly to herself, when I finally stood.
“From what Briggs says,” I admitted. “But this is different. Wreckers pick people at random in broad daylight—Lainey in a coffee shop, for example.”
Chloe’s head reared back at the information I casually tossed out, her eyelids blinking rapidly. But before she could ask for details that I only knew the bare minimum of, I continued.
“This thing with Owen Vance is a lot more calculated, so we have a feeling this might have to do with his family on the West Coast. We haven’t gotten that far yet. However,” I said with a slant of my head, “the odds of both you and Lainey are...slim. Insanely slim. Even though they tracked her in Dallas, and you were working in a Dallas school, it’s a stretch for two friends from the same, tiny town to end up as targets.”
“Then maybe you’re wrong about what they planned,” she said doubtfully.
“Or maybe the Wrecker that Vance had following you noticed a friend of yours fit the description of the girls they normally tag. That’s Briggs’ theory, anyway.”
A stunned sound burst from her. “Lainey isn’t a recluse though. She knows everyone in town, and they all know her.”
“ Vance goes after women who don’t have ties,” I reminded her, gently correcting her. “ Wreckers go after people at random, but they’re always around Lainey’s age and beautiful.” I noted the undertone of sadness in her eyes but forced myself to continue. “Before Lainey moved in with you this summer, would the two of you hang out whenever she came home from school?”
“Are you saying I’m the reason Lainey was targeted?”
“Chloe—”
“So, yes ,” she surmised, the words lifeless, even though the corners of her lips were lifting in a dull smile. “We wouldn’t hang out because, as we’ve established”—she listlessly gestured to herself—“practically a hermit. But whenever I bumped into her, we’d stop and talk. Maybe sit and have coffee until we were all caught up.”
Chloe drew in a shaky breath and seemed to focus on the room and then me. “Not that we were really friends before she moved in, but I always liked her because—” Her gaze bounced between the comforter and me a few times before settling on the comforter. “Well, because I felt like she was understanding.”
“Of what?”
“I don’t owe you that,” she said on a breath, then hurried to add, “Can we be done with this, please? I’m tired.”
“Yeah,” I said after a delay, but it still took a few more seconds before I started backing away with a nod. “Night, Bubbles.”
She didn’t say anything until after I’d rounded the other side of the bed to grab a pillow. “Are you—this is ridiculous. This is your room,” she said, the words coming out fast and awkward. “You shouldn’t have to sleep on the floor. We can?—”
“I’m not sleeping next to you,” I said over her, the dread filling my voice stilled her movements halfway through making an imaginary line down the middle of the bed.
I noticed the hurt and self-consciousness that stole across her expression before a mask of nothing replaced them. I heard the way she quickly brushed off the idea of a wall of pillows between us, instead suggesting that I take the entire bed—she’d go out to the couch. But I couldn’t find a way to comfort Chloe, or tell her my reaction had nothing to do with her . I couldn’t make myself explain what this was when only a few people knew. When a fear I couldn’t control was pressing against my chest and plaguing me with flashes of waking up in random places throughout my apartment, mentally back on a mission.
“Stop. It’s...” I began, the words hushed and strained as they scraped past the shards of glass in my throat. “Chloe, stop,” I finally ground out just as she finished climbing out of the bed. “Take the bed. Please. I’ll...” I struggled to swallow, then gestured toward the door. “I’m fine on the floor. But just...just stay .”
I let the pillow fall and stormed into my bathroom, dropping to a crouch to grab the gun I’d hidden in one of the cupboards. Because it suddenly didn’t feel like enough—not that I’d ever really thought it would be.
Just wishful thinking of being in a different place, and all that.
Most of us kept guns throughout our houses or apartments as precaution because we knew from first-hand experience how easily it was to be taken unaware. But all of mine were stored in a gun safe when I wasn’t carrying because I couldn’t trust myself once I fell asleep.
There wasn’t a gun safe here though.
Holstered gun in hand, I stalked back through my room and out the door, never once meeting the eyes I could feel on me. Once I made it across the house to my parents’ room, I knocked and pressed the button that would turn on a light for my dad to see. Something close to failure weaving through my fear as I waited for one of them to answer.
And when my dad did, I felt my spirit crumple because his saddened understanding told me he knew why I was standing there. Then again, we’d done this every time I’d come home with an off-duty weapon. And even though I knew he wasn’t disappointed in me , it didn’t make me feel like any less of a disappointment.
I’d done the therapy. It hadn’t worked.
But this was more than that. I’d seen their excitement when they’d first met Chloe. They’d thought I’d met someone who could make it “go away,” as if that were possible.
Passing the gun over to him, I let him see all my dread and fear as I begged, Hide it.