Chapter 19
CHAPTER 19
A fter locking the door to her apartment, Scarlett took a kitchen chair and wedged it underneath the door handle. She knew it wouldn’t do much, but she had no escape out of here if Tommy showed up. She had to move quickly. That was the only weapon she had.
Still, she grabbed a paring knife out of the kitchen drawer so she at least had something at the ready. She left the lights off and planned to avoid getting too close to the windows in case Tommy was out there, watching for a sign.
Before going to the bedroom, she took the pictures out of the living room, along with her mother’s Bible and her dad’s coin collection. Then she pulled the two suitcases out of her closet. She’d grab her toiletries out of the bathroom first, her stash of cash out of a drawer, and then cram as many clothes as she could in the luggage.
And that would be it.
When she saw the print that Kyle had bought her on their first date, she pulled it from the place she’d hung it on the wall—making her think of him. As much as she’d wanted to explore their relationship further, their time was up.
As if he’d felt her thoughts, her phone began vibrating in her pocket. When she saw that it was Kyle calling, she answered it without even hesitating, turning on the speaker so she could continue packing while talking.
“Hey.”
“Hey. Everything okay?”
The words flowed out without thought as she began placing panties and bras in the open suitcase on her bed. “Yeah.”
“How come you didn’t answer any of my messages?”
Shit. Glancing at the phone, she noticed the little icon indicating she had at least one text message she’d missed. “Uh…I’ve been really busy.”
“Oh.” She understood his brief confused response. Just the night before, she’d told him this time of day at the bar was slow and boring, and he offered to send a few messages to entertain her until he had to go to work.
She’d asked him to communicate with her.
“Yeah, uh…we had some unexpected company.” The understatement of the year.
“I hope that means more tips.” He was quiet for a bit and then said, “I’m heading into work, so I’ll see you later. Anything you want me to pick up when I come over later?”
Shit! She wouldn’t be there…ever again. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt him, especially after he’d been the nicest guy she’d ever been with. In fact, she doubted she’d ever find a man like him again. “Uh…about tonight…”
“What?” Kyle’s tone changed, but she couldn’t quite tell what it signaled. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Even to her own ears, the lie was obvious.
“I’m coming over. I’ll be right there.”
“Wait, Kyle. Don’t—” But it was too late. He’d already hung up.
Well, if he arrived before she left, she’d have to quickly explain what was happening, apologize, and let him know how much she’d enjoyed their time together. Otherwise, she’d call him later. So far, her phone didn’t seem compromised, but she didn’t know if Tommy already knew about Kyle—and, if he did, she might have to sever the ties altogether.
She was willing to do it.
She had to do it.
If Tommy had found her this quickly after she thought she’d done such a good job of covering her tracks, she had to do better next time. It didn’t matter that everything had worked out so perfectly here, almost like it had been meant to be. This time, she’d ditch the car, maybe trade it in for cash and then buy a car from a person and not a dealer so she could get away with not filing paperwork.
Or maybe she’d need to find someone who could make fake IDs. She knew there were people who could do that…people who could make them look legit. She’d have to research that when she landed somewhere away from here.
She still had a little cash and she’d been saving. It wasn’t much, but it didn’t matter. She’d make do.
She had to.
By the time there was a knock at the door, she was almost done packing. She hurried out of her bedroom and stared at the door. There was a distinct possibility that it was Tommy and not Kyle. Picking up the paring knife, she stood back from the door a few feet. “Who’s there?” Her voice communicated that she was not fucking around.
“It’s Kyle. Who’d you think?”
Immediately, her shoulders dropped and her gut unclenched. Setting the knife on the kitchen counter, she unlocked the door and pulled it open. Then she grabbed Kyle’s wrist to encourage him to step inside quickly.
“What’s going on?”
“I have to go,” she said, locking the door and then rushing back to the bedroom. She’d seen Kyle’s furrowed brows, his kind blue eyes, and knew she’d have to tell him something . She couldn’t just leave in a panic without giving him a reason.
“Go where ?”
Taking the last two blouses from her closet, she started folding them. “Anywhere but here.”
Kyle shook his head. “But why? What’s going on?”
With a long sigh, she placed the blouses in the suitcase and looked at this man that she’d begun falling for. Already she was regretting that they hadn’t had a chance to see where it would have taken them.
“How much time do you have?”
“I already let the Assistant Manager know I didn’t know when I’d be in—so however much time it takes.”
Oh. He just got sweeter and sweeter…which would make leaving all the more bitter. She sat on the bed and patted the space next to her. When Kyle sat down, she said, “I don’t even know where to start.”
“Start wherever you want.”
While she appreciated his kind patience, he didn’t understand that she was under the gun. The longer she stayed here, the more danger she was in. The more danger they both were in.
But the story might not make much sense without context.
Closing her eyes, she took a long, deep breath and decided to start at the most logical place. “After my mom died, it didn’t take long for me to realize I couldn’t afford to stay in our old house. Besides not having the money to maintain it, I could barely afford the mortgage, much less the bills and stuff. So I packed up what I wanted to keep and rented a small storage unit and then had a yard sale to sell what I could—and I sold my car and kept my mom’s. That gave me a little breathing room until I sold the place. After paying off all the bills, I saved as much as I could, but it was hard. I knew rent would be almost as much as the mortgage, but I might have fewer bills. I waited tables and made decent tips and planned to get a better job at some point. But I was still in mourning, you know?”
Kyle nodded and took her hand. “Yeah. I get it.”
She knew he did, having lost his brother not so long ago. “Well, I guess my head was pretty messed up. No, I know it was. I guess it made me kind of vulnerable. There was this guy—a guy I thought was kind of a bad boy, but it turned out he was a very bad guy. I didn’t know it at the time. He came in the restaurant a lot, usually hanging at the bar, but he’d flirt with me all the time.” She remembered just how charming he’d been, wearing down her defenses. What had he actually said that had made her fall?
Looking back, it wasn’t what he said. It was all the other girls in the restaurant, many of her fellow servers. They’d all thought Tommy was the cutest guy and his bad boy aura—which turned out to be bad to the bone—just made them all weak at the knees. The fact that he’d picked her out of all of them, especially over gorgeous model-like Lara, had started to get to her.
Now, though, she knew…he must have sensed her vulnerability. A year or two later, when she’d been able to fully process the grief of losing not only her mother but then everything she had, she might have been able to see him for what he was and been able to resist his appeal.
There would never be any way to find out.
“I wound up going out with him—and one thing led to another. I thought I was in love with him, so when he asked me to move in with him, I did. The timing was perfect because an offer had been made on the house. But he became possessive and controlling. He never beat me, but he was rough. He’d grab me or hold me too tight, things like that.” Like the bruises he’d frequently left on her upper arm that she’d cover with makeup so they’d be less obvious to the people at the restaurant. “But I just thought that was who he was, you know? Maybe over time, he’d get less rough.”
Stupid.
Shaking her head, she continued. “He actually proposed to me after we’d been together for almost two years. I think I might have laughed until he slipped a breathtaking diamond ring on my finger. It was the most beautiful ring I’d ever seen. It was several small thin oval diamonds surrounding a round one so that it looked almost like a flower or the sun. I’d never seen anything like it. That first day, I just kept looking at it, admiring it, loving the way it looked on my hand. But when I woke up the next morning, I knew it had to be out of Tommy’s price range. Thing is, I knew Tommy dabbled in illegal activities. He wasn’t what I’d call a drug dealer , but he sold drugs sometimes. He supposedly worked in construction, but the whole time we were together, I didn’t once see him working. Not one time. So later that next day, I asked where he got the ring. I should have known right then, because of the way he got angry, asking why I couldn’t just be grateful for the gift.”
She took a slow breath, trying not to experience the emotions she’d felt back then, but it was difficult completely removing herself from them. “Because of how pissed he’d been, I vowed to never ask again and tried to let it go. But day after day, customers commented on it. Then there was one customer in particular who said he used to be a jeweler and guessed it was probably worth at least four-thousand dollars.
“No way could Tommy afford that. No way.
“I was sure the guy had to be mistaken. Maybe the ring wasn’t actually a diamond ring but cubic zirconia or something. When I had a day off, I went to a jeweler downtown. I wanted to know how much the ring was worth—because something in my gut told me it really was worth a lot.”
Kyle squeezed her hand, giving her strength to go on, and she looked at her left hand, the one sitting on her lap with no ring, but she could still almost see that lovely ring there, how it had somehow made her hand look dainty and delicate—prettier somehow.
“The jeweler was an old guy, nice enough, and I told him I wanted to know the value of the ring. He asked if I was wanting to get rid of it and I said no , that my boyfriend gave it to me and I just wanted to know what it was worth. The way he smiled suggested I wasn’t the first girl to ask. He said it would cost about a hundred dollars and he’d need the ring for a day. I said, ‘Forget it.’ I couldn’t afford to spend that kind of money on curiosity and Tommy would notice if I wasn’t wearing it even for an hour, much less a day. So the guy said he could give me a ballpark estimate for twenty bucks and two minutes. I hadn’t really noticed the band, but he said something about its unusual design and the type of metal it was. I just thought it was silver or white gold, but it was something else. I can’t remember what he said. Then, after another minute, he slid the twenty-dollar bill back to me but said he would have to keep the ring and call the police.”
Kyle finally spoke. “Holy shit.”
“Yeah. He said he was certain that ring had been stolen recently. I have no idea how he knew that, but he asked where I got it. I told him my boyfriend gave it to me as an engagement present. ‘Who is your boyfriend?’ he asked—and, instead of answering, I got the hell out of there. But I was sick to my stomach. For all I knew, he had cameras in his store and the cops would be hunting me down.
“Worst of all, though, I knew I’d have to tell Tommy. If he really bought it, we could go to the jeweler with the receipt. When I told Tommy what happened, he called me all kinds of names—nothing new—and then he grilled me. Did I give the jeweler my name? Which jeweler did I go to? At least I didn’t go to the Mall, he said, and then he talked about laying low for a while. But he still refused to tell me where he got it.
“Nothing happened, though. No cops came to our door and there wasn’t anything on the news at first. But I was on Facebook about a week later and someone posted something about a ring recovered by the police in a murder investigation.”
“What the fuck?” Kyle asked.
“Yeah, that’s what I said. I read through the article and then did some digging to read about the initial crime—and then I knew: either Tommy had murdered the woman that ring belonged to, or he knew who did. Either way, I knew his hands were dirty, and he’d just dragged me into it—and then blamed me for almost getting him caught.”
“Is it possible he bought it at a pawn shop or something?”
“Believe me—I tried justifying it by wondering that too, but we were arguing all the time by that point, and I knew based on everything he said that it wasn’t something like that. If he’d gotten it at a pawn shop, he would have told me. Instead, he refused to talk about it at all, so I knew he’d been involved in a serious crime. I kept asking anyway—and finally, one night, he pushed me up against the wall, holding his arm against my neck so it was hard to breathe, and he said, ‘So help me God, you say anything—’ He didn’t finish the sentence, but I knew right then that he’d kill me if I said a word to the police.
“I didn’t know what to do. I talked to my best friend about it, because at that point, I knew I was on borrowed time. But I couldn’t just disappear in Pueblo. If I stayed there, he’d find me. I had to get out of there…but I didn’t know how. Slowly, I took my valuable things and put them in the storage unit I’d kept since cleaning out my parents’ house. Tommy had never known about it. I didn’t pack, but I had a bag ready in the closet and everything I needed I kept all together so I could grab it at a moment’s notice. But it turned out to be easier than I expected. The cops picked him up on a drug charge and he called me so I could bail him out. Instead of going to the police station, I left. And my friend Marin helped. I went to her place and we dyed my hair brown and cut it shorter, and then I left town that night…and I came here to Silver City.”
“Why here ?” Kyle asked.
“We used to visit my grandparents here when I was a kid. So I kind of knew my way around. It was probably a stupid move. I probably should have gotten farther away or maybe even left the state—but I thought it’d be okay. I figured at some point, the cops would arrest Tommy for the murder and put him behind bars for a couple of decades and then I could go home. I thought I was untraceable—I’ve only been using cash and I’m paid in cash. I don’t have a bank account or credit cards and I haven’t registered my car here; I haven’t gotten any speeding or parking tickets. I changed my appearance and I’m even using a fake name, so I thought my bases were covered.”
“Wait—what? Scarlett’s not your real name?”
“No. It’s…Melody.”
Kyle smiled. “I like that.”
Despite all the distress she felt, she couldn’t help but smile back at him. “Thank you.”
“Why’d you choose the name Scarlett?”
“It’s stupid, but I picked something that came easy. My real hair color is red, so I decided to go with it.” She let out a long sigh. “But now you see my problem. I can’t stay here. If I’d believed Tommy was willing to kill me before, I have no doubt in my mind that’s why he wanted to find me. As long as I’m alive, he knows I could tell the cops what I know.” She saw understanding in Kyle’s blue eyes. “But dead people can’t talk—and, if I stay here, I’m dead.”
“You feel like that’s the only option?”
“Yeah, I do.”
Kyle wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, and—just for a moment—she allowed herself to feel safe. Protected. Loved. Looking back, she knew the last time she’d truly felt completely safe had been when her dad was alive. Even when he’d been on the road, she knew he was taking care of her and her mother. When he died, so did all the security. It was like having the ground pulled out from underneath you, she thought.
But Kyle…oh, did the feeling of his arms around her get close.
She couldn’t allow herself to indulge in that feeling, though. It was dangerous not only for her but for him, too. If Tommy perceived Kyle as a threat, she had no idea what he’d do to him. Although she knew Tommy was a criminal, one who’d likely never reform, she didn’t know if he’d ever actually killed someone…although she was sure he’d had something to do with the dead woman whose ring he’d stolen. That didn’t mean he’d actually been the one doing the killing but, even if not, with that man, there was always a first time for everything.
She was going to have to finish packing and leave…but just a few more seconds wouldn’t hurt.
Finally, Kyle broke the silence. “Why don’t you stay the night at my place tonight? It’s in Charlotte. It’s not like it’s millions of miles away, but it is a different place.”
For a few moments, she considered it. A big part of her loved the idea…but, in reality, it was just as dangerous as staying in her apartment. “Thanks, Kyle. I really appreciate the offer—but if Tommy could find me here, what makes you think he wouldn’t find your place? It’s…just prolonging the inevitable.”
But maybe that was what Kyle needed—maybe he needed a little time to let go, to say goodbye.
Could she give him that? Would it risk her life if she did?
“Maybe,” he responded. “But I kind of get the feeling that you’re looking at everything in black and white. It’s like my therapist tells me—we usually have lots more options than we think we do, but we let ourselves feel trapped and then make shitty decisions. Maybe coming to my place in Charlotte isn’t a good idea…but leaving Silver City might not be, either.”
Oh…he was so tempting. These past few months with him—especially the past week —had opened her eyes to the possibility that not all men were abusive, uncaring assholes. There were good guys out there—men like her dad, like Kyle…even like Al—who didn’t feel like the world was theirs to conquer, that women were there merely as accessories or playthings.
Kyle had made her feel so much better about life—and leaving him right now felt like it would dishonor everything they’d experienced together.
“I guess I could wait till morning—but I don’t feel safe here.”
“I’ll stay here with you—and then, if you still feel like leaving in the morning is your only option, I’ll do my best to make sure you get out of town safely.”
It was time to be completely honest. “Thank you. Uh…my car is a liability.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tommy said that was how he found me—because of my car.”
“Son of a bitch. What kind of car do you drive?”
“It’s a Saturn. It’s been a good little car—but if that’s how he found me, I’m going to have to get rid of it soon.”
“I have an idea.” Kyle pulled back a bit so that she could look up at him. “What if we traded cars? I could transfer the title to you so you could trade it in for something else whenever you needed to.”
“I couldn’t do that, Kyle. You love that car.”
“Yeah, but…you’re way more important than a car. If it saves your life, it’s worth it.”
She couldn’t take his car from him, tempting though it might be—but she wasn’t going to argue with him right now. The main thing she had to do was make sure no one had an eye on her car when she left—and, if they did, she had to figure out a way to lose them. In a town like Silver City, that might not be so easy.
If she didn’t trade cars, she should probably leave under the cover of darkness.
But maybe Kyle was right…maybe she had other options that she hadn’t considered yet. Right now, she believed she had only one: get the hell out of here as quickly as she could—but she also knew that a good night’s rest seemed to reset her brain, allowing her to approach problems fresh, with the ability to assess them better.
Besides, she also needed time to say goodbye to this man. Earlier, when she’d planned to dash without saying another word, leaving would have been easy. Now, though, she too needed to wrap her mind around it while pulling her heart’s tendrils away.
“Okay. I’ll think about it.”
“Good. Now…I have two questions.”
She forced a smile at him, trying to relax. “Okay.”
“First…should I call you Scarlett or Melody ?”
He was so sweet. Over the last few months, her fake name had grown on her, much like a beloved nickname. It had become part of her, part of this new identity. On the other hand, she’d been Melody her whole life. That was the name on her parents’ lips when they spoke to her or about her—and it was the name her friends and acquaintances from her past life had known her by.
On the other hand, it was the name Tommy knew her by.
“How about you call me Tink ?”
“Hell, yeah.” Kyle gave her a soft, sweet kiss and she was able to almost let all her tension go.
“What was your second question?”
“What should I order from DoorDash?”
Scarlett almost laughed. “I don’t think I’m hungry.”
“You saying this decision is up to me?”
“I think so.”
“All right. Well…I’ll figure that out in a little bit. First, I need to call my boss and let her know I’m not coming in tonight.”
Despite all the stress in her life, Scarlett couldn’t help but bask in the warm glow, especially when Kyle referred to her as his girlfriend on the phone to his boss. Although this would all end early tomorrow morning, she was going to allow herself this final evening with the man who had almost become the love of her life.